A Typo Led To Podesta's Email Hack, Says Report (thehill.com)

tomhath quotes a report from The Hill: Last March, Podesta received an email purportedly from Google saying hackers had tried to infiltrate his Gmail account. When an aide emailed the campaign's IT staff to ask if the notice was real, Clinton campaign aide Charles Delavan replied that it was "a legitimate email" and that Podesta should "change his password immediately." Instead of telling the aide that the email was a threat and that a good response would be to change his password directly through Google's website, he had inadvertently told the aide to click on the fraudulent email and give the attackers access to the account. Delavan told The New York Times he had intended to type "illegitimate," a typo he still has not forgiven himself for making. The email was a phishing scam that ultimately revealed Podesta's password to hackers. Soon after, WikiLeaks began releasing 10 years of his emails.

Comments

Article disagreement

[suso]

Clinton campaign aide Charles Delavan replied that it was "a legitimate email"............he had intended to type "illegitimate,"

If that's true, shouldn't they have used "an" instead of "a". These are college graduates after all, right?

Re:Article disagreement

[whoever57]

What about the second part, where he told him to change his password? There isn't a single letter typo that can reverse the meaning, plus, if there is no action, then "immediately" is completely redundant.

No, this is a poor cover story from someone who fucked up massively.

Re:Article disagreement

[ShanghaiBill]

This is just CYA bullshit designed to make them look less incompetent.

I am confused. Up till now, I thought they were the victims of sophisticated Russian ex-KGB agents using quantum cryptanalysis. But it turns out they fell for a common phishing scam written by some script kiddie. How does this make them look less incompetent?