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Gizmodo Went Phishing With the Trump Team -- Will They Catch a Charge? (arstechnica.com)
Earlier this month, technology publication Gizmodo published a report on how it "phished" members of the administration and campaign teams of President Donald Trump. The blog said it identified 15 prominent figures on Trump's team and sent e-mails to each posing as friends, family members, or associates containing a faked Google Docs link. But did the publication inadvertently break the law? ArsTechnica reports: "This was a test of how public officials in an administration whose president has been highly critical of the security failures of the DNC stand up to the sort of techniques that hackers use to penetrate networks," said John Cook, executive editor of Gizmodo's Special Projects Desk, in an e-mail conversation with Ars. Gizmodo targeted some marquee names connected to the Trump administration, including Newt Gingrich, Peter Thiel, (now-ex) FBI director James Comey, FCC chairman Ajit Pai, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, presidential advisor Sebastian Gorka, and the administration's chief policymakers for cybersecurity. The test didn't appear to prove much. Gingrich and Comey responded to the e-mail questioning its provenance. And while about half of the targeted officials may have clicked the link -- eight devices' IP addresses were recorded accessing the linked test page -- none entered their login credentials. The test could not determine whose devices clicked on the link. What the test did manage to do is raise the eyebrows of security experts and some legal experts. That's because despite their efforts to make it "reasonably" apparent that this was a test, Gizmodo's phishing campaign may have violated several laws, ignoring many of the restrictions usually placed on similar tests by penetration-testing and security firms. At a minimum, Gizmodo danced along the edges of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
So I'm guessing that Gizmodo is now Russian.
But yes, these guys went too far.
I hope the Secret Service finds some law with which to hang these fuckers.
How is this not different than putting a fake gun in your carry on to "test" security?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
But did the publication inadvertently break the law?
Maybe they didn't think the consequences through, but I find it hard to believe that nobody involved realized that this sort of thing is illegal.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
A story on how Gizmodo failed to phish the current administration with legally questionable methods == anti-Trump post???
If anything, this story highlighted the fact that nobody in the Trump administration fully fell for the phishing and that they really may have learned from the failures of the Clinton campaign debacle. Methinks the bias may be yours...
As opposed to the candidate whose official site allowed people to phish their friends?
http://cybertical.com/clinton-phishing.html
Actually, the record shows that Trump won and America has been starting to win for the first time in 8 years.
First they go after Hulk Hogan's genitals, now they're phishing Trump? Do they realize how stupid and illegal that is? The entire Gizmag/Gizmodo/Jezebel syndicate is a load of politically sponsored crap.
They didn't dance along the edge of legality. They danced over and never looked back. Legitimate pen test services are painfully aware of this and have the paperwork to prove it.
Ars should have enough sense to check things out for the sake of their own credibility. If Ars Technica bothered to ask anybody who's ever worked in the security industry they would have quickly learned the indemnification is taken very seriously.
http://www.isaca.org/chapters3...
https://pen-testing.sans.org/b...
Hell, even metasploit has been talked about this for years!
https://dev.metasploit.com/pip...
The only people fooled by Gizmodo's phishing logic were the editors who signed off on this to begin with. Next time ask a pro before you publish, it will help you avoid looking the fool.
Trolls like you are so obvious you do not deserve to be heard out.
Trolls are quickly modded down, so most people will only see the troll's post because YOU RESPONDED TO IT.
Do not feed the trolls. If you do, you are part of the problem.
Makes it sound "inconclusive"--that's not a great way of putting it. The test was a success from the perspective of the administration and a failure on the part of Gizmodo. Gizmodo surely wanted to prove that Trump's administration is as inept as the DNC, and it's clear that nobody fell for it.
I don't really care that Gizmodo did the test, though it seems like they were pretty dumb to go for it without checking on the legality first, but they should be punished in the court of public opinion for failing at a blatantly partisan attack.
Sure... call them names... pretend you are smarter than your opponents...
Strong argument.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
i never thought id say this brian, but you smoke entirely too much reefer
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What's mildly surprising is that after everyone knew the DNC was hacked and that it was by way of phishing still a lot of these key players still clicked on the links. Some of the potential targets have not only partisan information but probably have access to national security information. If they don't then by compromising them, it would be possible to further spread malware to those who do.
Gizmodo may have run afoul of a law designed to prevent thieves from knowing just how vulnerable some targets actually are. But it's also true that along with thieves learning the general public should learn to be more wary of clicking on links.
I have mod points, but can't find the "Irony" tag...
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
First of all, post with your real name to undo the downmod you've just done to my post. You can either participate in a discussion or moderate it — doing both is dishonest.
Following the same logic, NSA should be left alone until much larger offenders — like city and state governments — are prosecuted for violating the Second Amendment and the damage done by the violations is undone. Forget "assault rifles" — one can't carry a freaking knife or a slingshot in some locales.
Also, NSA has not obviously violated the Constitution — only someone's understanding of it. For example, there is a seriously put forth line of reasoning, that the above-mentioned Second Amendment only covers arms contemporary to its approval: muskets, single-shot pistols, swords (never mind that many places ban even those). Under that logic, electronic communications are not protected by the Fourth Amendment at all. Perhaps even more importantly, even if we stipulate NSA is breaking it, the Constitution prescribes no punishment for violations. There is no law, under which a "reasonable prosecutor" (wink-wink) can prosecute them.
For all intents and purposes, NSA are allowed to do, what they are doing. It may have been Reagan's executive order, that started it, but neither Carter nor Obama (much less Clinton) has repealed it since.
USMC and other military branches are similarly allowed to kill people — no judge, no jury. Hence my analogy...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why doesn't he just set up his own independent email server that's totally against departmental rules and traffic classified information through it? Then the media would excuse anything he ever did and the FBI would leave him alone completely!
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Just because the email was opened, doesn't mean it was done intentionally by an actual human being.
It can be difficult to distinguish between a human being opening an email and a malware scanning engine opening a email. Modern systems will actually follow links and run executables in sandboxes before releasing the actual email to the end user. What looks like someone opening the email, usually a callback via a pixel image or js include, doesn't involve a human actually opening the email. In fact, just using a preview pane can make it seem like the email has been opened.
Sorry to be a kill joy, but this phishing test proved absolutely nothing.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Gizmag is a respectable tech blog, it wasn't owned by Gawker.
This is what happens when you let your SJW predilections override and interfere with doing journalism. The frothing desire to embarrass members of Trump's administration completely bypassed the normal "is this a good idea?" discussion that should have stopped this ill-conceived venture before it ever started. But it's also totally unsurprising. Gizmodo's not-very-slow descent into left-wing rant rag began a while back. It's clear they have no interest in attempting even the pretense of objectivity anymore. They should just name themselves "Salon" or "HuffPo" so those who like that kind of stuff instead of tech news can feel right at home.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
How is this not different than putting a fake gun in your carry on to "test" security?
Gizmodo actually got caught?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
... the answer is "no"
davecb@spamcop.net
Not just a great Metallica tune, but explains a bunch of what's been going on in the US.
The Progressive/Leftists have been working long and hard at the change, but they played their hand too early and now it's pretty easy to see whats been happening.
Progressives from the 1800s-1940s or so were also known as communists. The term progressive went into hiding for decades, but relatively recently resurfaces. While the term still lacks the negative connotation it had earlier, it is once again becoming a bad word. Same type of person, same ideology, same ideas of a grand Utopia as long as they can rule the world, but more history to argue against them as well.
Hell, in California communists are now welcome.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It looks like the laws used to prosecute phishing at the federal level are:
18 U.S.C. 1029 (access device fraud)
18 U.S.C. 1028 (fraud in connection with identification documents and authentication features)
18 U.S.C. 1028A (aggravated identity theft)
18 U.S.C. 1343 (wire fraud)
18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(4) (accessing a computer to defraud and obtain something of value)
18 U.S.C. 1001 (making false statements in any matter within the jurisdiction of the government)
There are a number of state laws that handle it, too.
Not a wise move on their part.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The inane responses to this, and the downmodding of MY comment, only serve to show how far Slashdot has fallen.
Trump can only do so because he won the election. I voted Clinton (warts and all) but like many I liked neither candidate. Trump was elected because the high percentage of voters last year who liked neither candidate voted in their majority for Trump. They did so in part because enough people were tired enough of being put down by supercilious snots like the one I replied to that it got them over their distaste for trump.
Your partisan hate backfired and will continue to help trump oh but it's never you the problem, it's always them.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
So you want to override her personal choice?!? Roe/Wade is about allowing women to choose for themselves, not forcing either choice upon them!
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Yeah, you're right. A fake gun is a lump of metal and mostly harmless.
A phishing attempt is an explicit attempt to access secure credentials and could potentially have succeeded.
Cynically I have to ask whether Gizmodo would have used the credentials had they succeeded, and so whether this was even a fake attack at all.
It's much more akin to telling security that you were testing them with the very real and fully loaded gun that they found.