“E-mail prankster” phishes White House officials; hilarity ensues | Hacker News Reader

“E-mail prankster” phishes White House officials; hilarity ensues

arstechnica.com

38 pointsrbanffy16 comments

I would think that the White House would flag incoming email that is not internal as "external" to at least give some more context that the sender should be treated cautiously given (obviously what this pranking reveals) how easily someone can be impersonated digitally. The ruse is still malicious because it attempts to elicit responses that can be used to ridicule the target via public humiliation - and could accidentally release sensitive information.

The idea is good for a jab and opportunistic, but then making a "career" out of pestering people like this seems less than interesting in the long run. The barrier to entry seems quite low, so if one person shows how easy it is to gain public notoriety (and $$$, the pranker is creating a "book"), then I suspect we could see more of this publicized pranking.

What do you think? Are you for or against this?

This person is basically a troll who can spell. This makes him no better than those he attempts to fool. I don't think such behavior should be encouraged, especially considering how often it happens...

Oh come on. It's a form of social engineering and I'd say it has a net benefit for society.

These emails have brought to light some weaknesses in these systems. Hopefully they'll be patched very quickly.

I think there are ethical ways to publicize vulnerabilities in a system ala Google's Project Zero, and then there's public shaming through trickery. Not to say how the administration reacted may be overblown, but "ends justify the means" is a slippery slope I find unpalatable.

There's no "The Email Company" to fix such vulnerabilities.

Given the damage that could have been caused, the prank is incredibly harmless. At worst it has temporarily embarrassed a few people already shown to be immune to embarrassment.

What's even worse is that the guy that got phished is responsible for U.S. cybersecurity. (http://time.com/4881849/white-house-email-prank/)

There's a reason this works that I haven't seen discussed much. Namely that because of archiving rules (these are historical documents from elected+appointed officials) and the propensity for emails to be subpoenaed in investigations that much of the "work" of elected officials has been pushed off to private email services.

While it's tempting to think this happens for nefarious reasons, I suspect that it's mostly for the same reason that security is routinely circumvented in non-governmental organizations: it's cumbersome.

So it's not wildly unexpected that you might get an email from a senior White House staffer from a non-official address.

This has officially hurtled past joke and into the realm of really frightening. Nobody with even a scrap of power should have skin this thin, not even if they only had that power for less than two weeks. What's worse is this is just a pale reflection of our commander-in-chief, the real nutter.

Isn't impersonating someone illegal, just like publishing a response in a private email conversation?

There's nothing illegal about publishing a response.

Perhaps, but I'm pretty sure that impersonating someone, and especially impersonating someone with the intent to acquire non-public information, is illegal.

IANAL but it's also complicated by the fact that the prankster is in a different country.

th3j35t3r strikes again!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com