The DNC Didn’t Get Hacked in 2020. Here’s Why | Hacker News Reader

The DNC Didn’t Get Hacked in 2020. Here’s Why

nytimes.com

27 pointsjrochkind115 comments

>wasn’t so much a cybersecurity issue as it was a problem of workflow and corporate culture

That really seems to be the first issue in most cases. You need people to be suspicious of emails, check closely, and be willing to just not click that darned juicy link.

> Mr. Lord had proudly turned them paranoid.

I get that this is necessary, but it also puts a lot of friction into the system that never gets accounted for in terms of cost.

If that friction costs more than the cost of being hacked, it is a net loss.

As usual, there is no discussion about Gov officials and employees using private email for Gov business - in order to avoid FOIA accountability.

The DNC is the leadership group of a political party; it's not a government agency. As such, their e-mails and other records are not subject to FOIA. (If any DNC members happen to also be government officials, their e-mails concerning government business should, of course, be done via government e-mail accounts.)

> It's not a government agency.

Be nice if the general public knew that.

"We" have no idea our primaries can be a rigged joke, legally.

> The DNC is the leadership group of a political party; it's not a government agency.

As a response to my point, this implies there was zero Gov business ever handled the DNC servers. This seems unlikely, given it is common for officials to remain active in their party while in Gov employ.

While Secretary of State, HRC routinely used her personal Blackberry to conduct Gov business. DNC servers are a likely candidate to have handled that mail.

> While Secretary of State, HRC routinely used her personal Blackberry to conduct Gov business. DNC servers are a likely candidate to have handled that mail.

Except that the whole "buttery males" thing was based on her running her own email servers. How are DNC servers "likely" to have been involved?

It's also not accurate to say that using private emails was a "routine" activity. In almost all (if not all) cases, it was her responding to emails sent to her personal address(es), rather than her initiating government business discussions from her private accounts. In almost all (if not all) cases, they were sent to her personal address(es) unintentionally, due to autocomplete dialogues in the addressee line(s).

http://archive.is/Lzixd

TLDR: They didn’t click any suspicious links.

See though, this is kind of the problem right here. Doing everything right is super rote and boring and apparently deserves your mocking commentary.

Whereas doing things wrong (or taking advantage of other people who do things wrong), well that’s fertile soil for good storytelling.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean for it to be sarcastic (I didn't mean for that to come off as sarcastic either). I was just trying to summarize the article for those who might have been blocked by the paywall.

Ah, ok. Sorry I assumed sarcasm because your summary was super short and, in my opinion, kind of missed the point of the article.

A better summary might be:

There was no silver bullet that fixed everything, rather a vigorous campaign of teaching a security mindset.

I don't really buy that they weren't hacked. Between the absolute absurdity of Watergate and various intelligence sources commenting on how multiple different groups had access to the DNC in 2016, I'm under the impression that they are always compromised.

Instead, I bet the DNC actively made sure no possible leaked documents were overly politically damaging, so no "hack" occured.

> they weren't hacked

>I'm under the impression that they are always compromised

So they were?

> I don't really buy that they weren't hacked

I believe the complete sentence brings clarity.

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