phishing scams and politics

Discussion in 'Politics' started by sculptor, Jul 18, 2018.

  1. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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  3. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Nope.
    I didn't see where the Russians specifically sent a message asking for passwords. But is your point that if one person is duped into making a stupid mistake that it is OK for a foreign country to steal document from a political party to influence an election?
     
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  5. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Do you honestly think the only targeted the DNC?
    Every member of congress and government generally would have been targeted and probably successfully so...
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Technically, some of it may not have been a "hack". According to some of the tech stuff floating around, the download speed on some of the extractions was too high to have been a remote connection, but matches the typical download speed of a thumb drive perfectly.

    Meanwhile, we can agree that Clinton was well advised to set up a private server for anything she wanted to keep secret from the Russians.
    It's in there. At least one top exec is identified as having clicked on a link specifically to change his password and other security arrangements, and at least one underling likewise.
    Not with this size and expense of operation.

    Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton herself was apparently not hacked, even when under coordinated and high-ability assault.
    At least, her personally controlled email and agency setup have been pretty thoroughly investigated, without discovery of a hack.

    As no one else has been investigated as thoroughly, we are looking at the possibility that Clinton was the only Presidential candidate - or even national politician - in 2016 whose emails were not hacked.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2018
  8. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    If you take the link and ain't really bored reading legalese, you'll come upon the claimed "spearphishing".

    origin:
    I know that we do the same to other governments in one way or another, and have been doing so for decades.
    (My old army unit, "Stratcom" has been using "hackers" in/for cyber-warfare for well over 20 years now.)
    Your, "is it ok for a foreign" government to steal documents to influence an election-----------My answer would be NO-----however, we[the usa] do it on a regular basis----------so us decrying the behavior in others would be hypocritical on a good day and just wrong the rest of the time. )

    I was just surprised by the stupidity of the leaders of the democratic party.

    QQ Aside from wikileaks, I had actually not even thought about the "leaks" and "hacks" until hearing it on tv, and reading the above.

    .................
    Do you personally know anyone who has fallen for such a phishing scam?
    Have you, personally, ever fallen for such an obvious trick?
     
  9. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    its a little unfair. most of our governmental leaders of both parties are of an older generation that is less technologically sophisticated. they are ripe for such things.
     
  10. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Not to mention that everyone acts this this is ancient technology and all the holes have been plugged. Wrong.

    Of course, your weakest link will always be humans. (Or, as I have heard tech support people say, "The problem is somewhere between the chair and the keyboard.")
     
  11. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    Glad to see that I'm not the only one who thinks that was actually a smart move on her part.
     
  12. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    As Chris Hayes↱ of msnbc noted several days ago: "Of the many ironies in this story, surely at the top is the fact that the Clinton private server appears to have been the most secure and impregnable of the servers that were targeted."
     
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  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Sure. My parental inlaws - each of them, separately - for starters.

    I know a guy who entered into good faith email exchange with a Nigerian prince who needed help getting some money out of a US bank they shared.

    Probably the only thing that saved me in the early days of this stuff (aside from refusing to bank, do taxes, or pay bills on line anyway) was the poor and unidiomatic English of the scammers. No doubt the Russian pros are less obvious nowdays, and could think up something I would fall for. Maybe they have, and I just haven't found out yet.
    And consider: they are visibly more technically adept than the leaders of the Republican Party. Whatever likely happened to the Dems is even more likely to have happened worse to the Reps. Remember Trump posting live feed from classified cabinet meetings to Lou Dobbs's studio rooms over his Android speakerphone? Kushner doing backdoor business and political negotiations involving the Yemeni and Israeli finance ministries on WhatsApp?
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2018
  14. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    I am not surprised. But stupidity is not limited to the democratic party - don't forget Trump is the leader of the republican party and he is a fucking moron or an idiot (depending on which one of his cabinet members is being asked).
     
  15. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    True, but that also includes tech support, programmers, developers, managers, executives, and investors. For some reason, tech support traditionally pretends it's only the user.

    To the other, some historian somewhere has the patience to collect the various iterations of the MLA style guide over the last three decades, and virtually, if not precisely, all the instability in standards of research writing over the last twenty-plus years, at least since Win95 and Mozilla, attempt to accommodate the shortcomings of the software industry.

    It's the irony of the software industry: Once upon a time I lost an internet argument—here at Sciforums, in fact—about the evolution of language and the way of the dodo. I still stand on my line: Language and communication aren't "evolving" when the change reduces communicative value, potential, and range. On the occasion I am recalling, the argument that prevailed considers the elimination of standardized spelling of words an example of language evolving. Intervening years have shown the notion is hardly rare.

    Remember, this is also the sector of society that tried to reinvent psychology and came up with cats who can't spell.

    Nor is it a coin toss. Tech specialization or business executives? Who says it can't be both?
     
  16. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    That's true. As a programmer, I have seen much bad code. Hell, I look at programs I wrote 25 years ago (that are still in use today) and wonder "what was I thinking?". Live and learn.
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    It's not just - or even primarily - bad code. It's bad design, bad motivation, bad customer relations.

    The entire industry treats people with contempt, and wastes their lives with impunity. This is a setup for a crash as a business model alone, never mind the sociopolitical aspects. And the mystery is why, how - with at least one obvious possibility: no women.
     
  18. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    I would have to disagree with that. I, and most programmers I know (male & female), try to do a good job.

    Then again, for a programmer I am a Luddite. I do not pay bills or bank on line. (Stamps, envelopes and handwritten checks!) I only bought a cell phone a year ago. I think the move to do everything online is a bad idea. I prefer storing data locally as opposed to in the "cloud" (code word for "someone else's computer"). Any PC in my home that holds important data does not have internet access.
     
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  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That's commendable, but largely irrelevant in my view - it's not, as noted, primarily a bad code problem.
    (I don't blame programmers for the industry practice of having the general public beta test and debug their code at public expense, for example.)
    I'm stealing that. Someone else's computer it is.
     
  20. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I guess the point I was attempting to make was that:
    "Why limit Russian hacking to just the DNC?"

    There is no reason to believe that the Russian Hackers some how decided to limit their ambitions, when the whole Government was probably ripe for the hacking. (not so much now but certainly before the USA got a wake up call from wiki leaks)
    The amount of potentially damaging info garnered could be truly staggering if the truth be known. Every congressman could be compromised if not for sending damaging emails ( to other congress members) but also receiving damaging emails from other congress members)
    The government has every reason to cover up the extent of the hacks. ( regardless of party)

    As I posted over 12 months ago the use of the private server issue for Hillary only surfaced shortly after the big wiki leaks fiasco and of course her decision to use a fortified private server was due to her lacking confidence in government IT security. Like wise, to me, it is obvious why the issue has been "hushed" up subsequently, to avoid a melt down in USA cyber security confidence.

    (do remember that 30000 odd emails have to go somewhere and to some one. It wouldn't be hard to reverse trace emails sent by Hillary back to Hillary's server from the recipients email account)

    The Mueller investigation secrecy may also include the sheer scale and scope of it's investigation and needed to be publicly demonstrated ( even as limited to DNC ) if anything to prevent any further attempts and to declare ( by default) that all Russian cyber activity is under serious investigation.
    The Mueller investigation acting as a way to mitigate ANY Russian cyber attacks against ALL government... sort of thingo... (putting Putin on notice so to speak)
     
    Last edited: Jul 19, 2018
  21. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    Hell, no. When I wore the network security/systems analyst hats. that was lesson number one to the children I was supposed to manage.

    Quantum Quack seems to wish everything to be related to left versus right politics, which really has nothing to do with the original question. As usual, deny, deflect and obfuscate.
     
  22. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    There is also plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Trumps ascension to leading the Republican party could have been aided by his collusion with those hackers by way of inferred threat upon Republican Party senior members.
     
  23. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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