Reality of DNC ‘hack’ a simple phishing scam that’s landed in your inbox

Hacking has become a buzzword in our society and it’s been misplaced on the leaked DNC emails that were almost given away, not stolen.

The reality of this hack was it was simple, so simple your twelve-year-old daughter or son probably would have caught it. However, a DNC staffer fell for it. This is something I’ve long wanted to write about – the reality of politicians and their staffers. Obviously, some good, some bad, but many are young – and aren’t experienced in any way you’d expect. Politics and the art of being there seems to be a kind of philosophy. But, it’s also how things get done. For the most part these ranks are filled with people who want to help. Yet in this case, it was a colossal screw up.

When we think of hacking, we think about social justice coders and self-taught computer scientists sitting around a school of computers churning away. They’re chasing something and the authorities are chasing them. It’s all happening in an abstract realm that we can’t see day-to-day. But it’s a part of our daily lives and is the undercurrent of society. BUT, this time it was a stupid email that more or less literally asked for the Campaign Chairman’s password and someone fell for it. That’s not that cool. If that’s a hack, then I feel safe.

Russian hackers should speak out and remind the world they’re capable of so much more. If the RNC wasn’t hacked it wasn’t because of their security apparatus; they got lucky one of their young staffers or interns didn’t receive that email and believe it to be real.

All of this being said, or written, we should not believe there is not a very real and credible threat. It’s so serious the CIA Director has come out into the public light to communicate that reality to us, the people. It’s something that rarely happens and because of that we know the threat is serious. This is what he said:

“I think that we have to be very, very wary of what the Russians might be trying to do in terms of collecting information in that cyber realm as well as what they might want to do with it,” Brennan said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

He said Russia has “exceptionally capable” and “sophisticated” cyber capabilities.

“We’ve known this for quite a while. Their intelligence services are quite active around the world,” he said.

“And this is something that we have to make sure that we’re on guard for, not just for our national security purposes but also for making sure that our system of government here is going to be preserved.”

 

Featured image courtesy of The Hill