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Comment by cavisne | Hacker News Reader

“Most public of those was the Kremlin-backed intrusion that hit the Gmail account of Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta”

friendly reminder there is no proof for this claim, Podesta either fell for a generic phishing page(Reset your gmail password here!), or from his known passwords (password and runner<some number>) someone could have easily just guessed his password.

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There's actually quite a lot of evidence that it was a politically motivated spear phishing campaign from FancyBears, which is most likely from Russia. So technically yes there's no definitive, smoking gun proof but "no proof for this claim" seems to be a bit dismissive of some glaring hints. It certainly wasn't just a "generic phishing page" or guessing of a weak password.

They went after quite a few politicians on both sides of the aisle and journalist's, the Podesta camp just happened to be the ones who fell for it.

https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/russi...

Just to add to this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_Bear has links to multiple security companies which have publicly drawn the link to the Russian government.

The list of targets is also convincing: various NATO organizations but also things like the World Anti Doping Agency at the time the Russian Olympic team was being disqualified from everything. You could argue that, say, China might be interested in hacking the US or France but Eastern Europe and WADA really aren’t of interest to most other major powers.

Keep in mind that the companies which pointed to Russia also have contracts with the executive office of the president - i.e., making up stories to support the administration's narrative is good for business. Let's be honest, this is Washington D.C. we're talking about, and that level of collusion is nothing new. I'm sure the administration offered perks to anyone who could present convincing "evidence" of a Russian connection.

Let's also not forget that the initial Fancy Bear claim was discredited: https://www.voanews.com/a/cyber-firm-rewrites-part-disputed-...

It was widely reported that his password was stolen via a phishing attack. If the phishing attack was carried out by someone backed by the Kremlin, then I believe that makes the statement quoted true (I'm not sure about the level proof here as I am sure some of it is non-public).

Yes there is.

Indeed, no proof, as almost always the case with hacking. Just probabilities. Moreover, intelligence agencies that routinely use misdirection to point the blame at each other. Who knows what happened. Could have been hacked by multiple attackers too given how simple it was.

Regardless, I think the next sentence is the most telling:

Or, as CDT's Hall puts it, "If John Podesta had been able to turn this on sometime last year, the world might be a very different place."

Implying what - that Trump wouldn't have won? The leaked emails were real though. What he's saying is that if the USA had known less about Clinton, they might have picked her to be prez. That doesn't seem very likely given the very long track record Clinton had and the high level of familiarity Americans had with her, but even if true - "this feature is good because it would have kept Americans in the dark" does not seem like a positive message to send.

Great point. Personally, I'm glad all of the emails, leaked and subpoena'd, came to light. Some very damning things were revealed that the public should be aware of.

Eneryone is 100% positive it was The Kremlin and not Podesta’s IT Chief who “misspoke” when telling Podesta the phishing email was legit and to go ahead and click in.

There is proof that his password was password, and there is proof that his IT told him the phishing email was legit. There is no way that same IT was capable of securing a mail server for HRC.

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