
How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gmail Accounts - danso
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john-podesta-and-colin-powells-gmail-accounts?trk_source=homepage-lede
======
danso
It's too late to brag about predicting it now, but it was too obvious back
then to be worth bragging about: of course GMail didn't get hacked. Why would
any hacker attempt that when phishing is so straightforward and as cost-free
as a Nigerian prince scam?

That said, I don't fault Podesta or Gen. Powell for failing to catch a
phishing attack. Even though the phisher slaughtered the spelling of
"Mountain" and "Amphitheater", most people don't read that boilerplate text
[0]. In terms of the quality of the fake email...unless you are routinely
receiving transactional email from Google, you're not going to notice the
sloppiness of the CSS and typography.

What does tick me off is that Podesta has already been hacked [1] since
Wikileaks has been dumping his emails. I don't think it's hyperbole to say
that Podesta's email fuckup made Clinton's campaign much harder (or, at least
annoying). OK, if we can't expect our senior statespersons to understand the
Internet and URLs and etc., can't we at least expect them to have hired
reliable tech folk and to follow their advice? -- e.g. Let me set up 2-factor
authentication for you.

[0] [http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-
images/contentima...](http://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-
images/contentimage/38680/1476913065736588.png)

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/john-podesta-
twitter-...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/john-podesta-twitter-hack-
hillary-clinton/)

