Officials Say Russian Hackers Read Obama's Unclassified Emails 109
An anonymous reader points out that Russian hackers reportedly obtained some of President Obama’s emails when the White House’s unclassified computer system was hacked last year. Some of President Obama's email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House's unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation. The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department's unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama's BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly. But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation.
One email found (Score:5, Funny)
"Putin, I know you are snooping here. Give back the Superbowl ring and Crimea, you thief. And wave Hello to Mrs. Palin for me."
Re:One email found (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh and good luck getting Hillary's email because no one here has it either."
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"Oh and good luck getting Hillary's email because no one here has it either."
Oh, what sad times have befallen Slashdot, when no one knows Hillary's email address!
C'mon Slashdotters! Do that "my niece's boyfriend delivers newspapers to someone who used to live next door to Hillary Clinton once . . . "
We can stretch it . . . a bit . . . !
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That email from Nigeria? They opened it. (Score:2)
That's the problem with being in the White House or State Department. Sometimes you really *do* want to read email from the corrupt ex-dictator of Nigeria.
Snowden is a hero (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Snowden is a hero (Score:4, Insightful)
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Snowden is a hero
He is, yes. Your continued attempts at smearing him are boring.
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You seem to be suffering from delusions. You should get help.
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Thanks kind of funny since the Russian army stil uses the goose step, and the US military never has. Interesting symbolism.
To be fair, the US military does have a duck walk [google.com]. Similar animal, just as goofy.
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Not really.
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I can't tell if you are denying the similarity between ducks and geese, have not seen a duckwalk in open ranks [youtube.com], or just have some sort of humor aversion.
Re:Snowden is a hero (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you find it interesting that this incident occurred while Snowden was in Russia? Maybe he gave them the White House wifi password in exchange for his 1-year visa.
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Putin and Snowden are the new heroes of the gop and fox news
I think that Obama derangement syndrome has taken a serious toll on the American right wing's sanity
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The GOP is rather divided on the NSA/Snowden stuff. Only two candidates thus far have said anything negative about the NSA while two others have spoken up strongly in favor of domestic spying. The silence on the part of other candidates can likely be taken as tacit endorsement of NSA spying (otherwise they'd choose to make it into an election issue).
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Just before the whole snowden thing went greenwald, the gop was getting destroyed in the polls because everybody under thirty was voting for the dems
The spring of generated scandals was effective, not in turning these people into republicans, but getting them to become disgusted enough with their government to not show up at the polls on election day
The gopers do not have to publicly support snowden to benefit from his revelations because everybody who votes for the gop lived through the cold war and pretty
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Hi cold
Not drinking anything harder than gatorade, but you certainly have to consider this side of it:
The righties were terrified after the 2012 election when the millenials all went dem
Even young republicans were being interviewed and saying that they saw nothing interesting in the gop
The common wisdom was that if people voted for the same party in their first two elections, then they would stick with that party for life
Next thing you know the gop opens up with every imaginable scandal, IRS blocking teapar
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Hi Gary....,
Interesting theory, but it leaves some ground uncovered:
2014 was an off year election and turnout for them is pretty much always lower.
There were many democrats that were more than a little disenchanted with the Obama admin.
Obamacare was already starting to give people sticker shock, and it will get worse.
With the Republicans back in control of the House they could engage in meaninful oversight, especially on things that were "uninteresting " to the Dems. The IRS scandal is one of those. (I con
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Pretty funny coming from an AC
Re:Snowden is a hero (Score:5, Funny)
the White House wifi password
'admin'.
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I thought it was '123456'. Maybe they have TWO WIFI routers?
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Oops, they are smart. They just changed it to 00000000, hey, if it's safe enough for nukes why not for wifi router?
The Football's password has to be "NoMoreJayCutler", though I might be wrong about the capitilization. My other guess is "CubsWillWinWorldSeries".
Just a guess ;-)
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Don't you find it interesting that this incident occurred while Snowden was in Russia? Maybe he gave them the White House wifi password in exchange for his 1-year visa.
Oh come *on!* It's not too hard to guess, it's the same one in 10 Downing St!
Scr3w7h3pr0le5
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Oh no, these Russians didn't have a warrant? It's okay that Americans working at government agencies can unconstitutionally access my stuff, but now I should be concerned? Who the propaganda cares?
I wonder how many millions of Putin's emails they have on the NSA servers?
Oh, wait, but it's "ok for us", but horribly evil if they do the *exact same thing*. Got it. Pot meet kettle.
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Rather pointless for the Russians to hack the Whitehouse, the puppet house, nothing there but implied instructions from their corporate campaign donors. Want to know what the actual American government is doing, Russia needs to hack the boardrooms and homes of the US's dominate corporate leaders to find out what is actually going on and to be able to get actionable data. This to bring them down or to force better behaviour, lots of dirt there and of course even more in the tax havens positive gold mine of
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Foreign Intelligence agencies do not need warrants or any other legalistic justification when spying on foreign countries. The only rule is don't get caught. While you may hear speculation about the Chinese or Russian espionage attempts you never hear them announcing they have caught the US running around in their high security systems and I seriously doubt they are so secure that they are invulnerable to outside attacks. While the world decried the US phone intercepts of foreign leaders at the same time so
Unclassified security (Score:3)
I heard one of Obama's unclassified speeches, it was on TV, does that make me a hax0r ?
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You're not doing it right! You're supposed to be SCAAAARREED!!! Hackers.Hacking. Computers. Scary. YOUR PRESIDENT! RUSSIANS! HACKERS!!!!
Aren't you FRIGHTENED?!?!
THEY'RE FOREIGN! We called them *hackers*! Scared yet?
Damn. Guess we have to find another way to make out this is a problem and you need to be frightened.
Fuck.
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They call pretty much anybody that can run a script a hacker these days
In the old days we used to call then spies
White House Email "Security" (Score:1)
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The clueless naivety of some slash posters can be hilarious.
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Oh noes, don't read my unclassified email that is likely to be public record after a FOIA request!
These are either the shittiest spies ever, or someone is trying to drum up nationalistic sentiment. I'll get worried when they're reading secure diplomatic cables that haven't already been posted to Wikileaks.
A Blackberry? (Score:3)
Goose/Gander (Score:5, Insightful)
In the words of the great James Baldwin:
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I left off the most important part of the Baldwin quote, the second half:
Spies are just spying (Score:1)
What'd you expect them to do? They're just doing their jobs and keeping the country safe.
Oh, wait, they're spying on us? Well then HOW DARE THEY.
My question (Score:1)
Did those russian hackers read Hillary Clinton's email ?
And did they save a copy ?
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http://politics.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Because Qualys, one of the top security scans out there, said her server security was awful?
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It may also mean that it was more secure than what the "government-trained information security specialists" would have done.
Isn't baseless speculation fun?
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Ya think?
As if Hillary's server was any more secure than the White House UNclassified system?
If you think Hillary's server wasn't compromised by any government, corporation, or force that cared to, you are naive. It was surely pwned over and over. It was also probably so pwned that it was a good place to study the various attacks.
The irony... remember when he took office... (Score:3)
... and his team laughed at the existing tech infrastructure? Maybe the previous administration got hacked as well or maybe the Russians weren't trying as hard then... but I find it ironic that these people that came in saying they were superior at everything keep proving themselves to be incompetent.
Fuck the politics. Just remember back to when they were dissing the old email server/old it department and look at how much better the new people ran things... aka worse apparently. That's just funny.
On purely nerd principles you have to have a bit of a laugh at the administration's expense. So much hubris.
how many of the tech people obama brought along do you think knew how to defend against state sponsored hacking? I'm guessing zero.
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In this case, I don't think so... I can't speak to every situation but on the case of the email... sounds like they were inferior.
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You're joking but someone is actually is going to be shameless enough to make that argument.
And my eyes shall roll like slot machine tumblers.
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I'm sitting here, trying to think of one single liberal politico who was competent at anything. All that comes to mind, is Chapaquidik Ted's rum-running dad. Was the old man a liberal?
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You still have people trying to claim Ted Kennedy was the greatest statesman to have ever lived. No joke. I always get a headache when I hear that.
Transparency (Score:3)
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I am still unsure that Obama knows what transparent means.
Attribution (Score:3)
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Please stop trying to reason about what the government tells the public about cybersecurity, it's just a ridiculous prospect.
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How can they know the attackers are Russian? I understand it would be nice for US government because it could help justifying the policy against Russia, but that will not make a proof.
Nowadays All is Russia's Fault :-D
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So... (Score:1)
No condescending comments from Barack Obama about how the 80s called and wants their foreign policy back?
LK
Russian hackers hack White House .. (Score:1)
Good thing... (Score:3)
No problem! (Score:2)
If he's got nothing to hide, he's got nothing to fear.
A private email server... (Score:1)
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I was with you until the "high quality development tools" part.
Re:Windows 10 Will Free Your Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I was with you until the "high quality development tools" part.
Last I heard, Microsoft's IDE was still broadly considered to be one of the best in the business, if not the best. Granted, their revision control system is one of the worst, so they're not all winners.
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*cough* Webmatrix
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Remind me which is the cult again?