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Any Half-Decent Hacker Could Break Into Mar-a-Lago (alternet.org)
MrCreosote writes: Properties owned and run by the Trump Organization, including places where Trump spends much of his time and has hosted foreign leaders, are a network security nightmare. From a report via ProPublica (co-published with Gizmodo): "We parked a 17-foot motor boat in a lagoon about 800 feet from the back lawn of The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach and pointed a 2-foot wireless antenna that resembled a potato gun toward the club. Within a minute, we spotted three weakly encrypted Wi-Fi networks. We could have hacked them in less than five minutes, but we refrained. A few days later, we drove through the grounds of the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with the same antenna and aimed it at the clubhouse. We identified two open Wi-Fi networks that anyone could join without a password. We resisted the temptation. We have also visited two of President Donald Trump's other family-run retreats, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and a golf club in Sterling, Virginia. Our inspections found weak and open Wi-Fi networks, wireless printers without passwords, servers with outdated and vulnerable software, and unencrypted login pages to back-end databases containing sensitive information. The risks posed by the lax security, experts say, go well beyond simple digital snooping. Sophisticated attackers could take advantage of vulnerabilities in the Wi-Fi networks to take over devices like computers or smart phones and use them to record conversations involving anyone on the premises."
Dumb news organization admits it broke the law!
Because Trump himself configured all of these insecure WiFi points, and not some clubhouse staffer making $12/hr?
But heaven forbid, should he be mislead into using a personal email server no one tells him isn't locked down properly.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Now. Show me that you were able to do more than break into the equivalent of Starbucks public network.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
In other words, you know that violating the CFAA has draconian penalties and you want some stupid script kiddie to take the risk for you....
Yes it is "just a country club". The real question you should be asking is should such a place be used for business that needs to remain secret? No governmental official should be conducting sensitive business in their home office or anywhere else.
Well known Russian spies like Kizlyak might break into his network, and get top secrets, maybe even 'code word' level secrets. Oh wait, all they have to do is visit Trump and ask him and he'll tell them.
There's still the matter of the two spies, one FSB and one ex-FSB which fit the profile of two US contacts source to verify the pee memos. They were arrested for treason just after Trump got the unredacted version of the memos listing the sources that confirmed parts of the memo as true.
So who gave Putin the names of these (likely) US agents? Was that another one of Trumps telephone calls?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-treason-fsb-spies-kaspersky-labs-us-intelligence-denies-cia-hacking/
"MOSCOW -- Russian news agencies are reporting that former members of the domestic security agency and a cybersecurity expert have been formally charged with treason."
"Reports emerged last week that three officials of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and an executive for cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs had been arrested for treason. Government officials haven’t commented on the case .... citing a named Russian official said to be close to the Kremlin, Mikhailov was the leader of a covert hacking group known by the name “Humpty Dumpty” that “cooperated with the Ukrainian SBU (security service), which is the same as working for the CIA; he worked with them, which is obviously treason.”
So likely CIA agent names were given to Putin shortly after Trump got access to that data.
McMasters tried to misdirect the leak that you witnessed Trump give to the Russians. But was there all the time? i.e. could Trump have given them more details of other secrets? Trump seems to feel comfortable giving top secrets to Russian spies likes its an everyday thing, so I wonder how much he said that McMasters didn't witness in that session alone.
They went all James Bond on folks and pointed their " hacker-antenna " at the building and found weak or unprotected access points.
And ?
Guest access is typically open access which would explain the latter pretty quickly.
Weak access could be any number of networks, but not necessarily one that would be useful to anyone.
I swear, the media is going full Autistic when it comes to trying to destroy EVERYTHING that is Donald Trump. If the information is negative, or can be spun into a negative light, they are making sure the entire world hears about it. 24/7 Regardless if there is any truth to it or not.
Lots and lots of rumors, " secret sources ", and whatnot, but not a shred of concrete evidence.
WTF has happened to journalistic integrity ?
I hope nobody here thinks that this is a Trump-exclusive. He's in really good company, the more exclusive and elitist a club or establishment, the more likely their non-physical security sucks big time. Why? Same reason as everywhere, nobody who could sensibly demand it knows jack shit about it, so why bother throwing money at it? Worse, securing something invariably cuts into its usability. I'm actually surprised those access points had any kind of security. None of the oh-so-important people complained yet that they're too stupid to configure their toy to connect? Oh, sorry, let me rephrase it: None of them complained yet that you idiots cannot configure your computer thingie right so their expensive and highly intelligent device can connect to it? Because MY thing was expensive and it's very high tech, so if it doesn't work, it OBVIOUSLY has to be that you're too stupid to configure YOUR end!
This is basically why security sucks in such places. Not the physical, mind you. But IT security usually is a mess. And as long as there are computer illiterates who dictate what has to be and what must not be, this also will not change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This whole story screams spin to me, by simple omission of critical details and wording. Humans tend to fill in the blanks with their imaginations. Note that the article states only that they "found 3 weakly encrypted WLANs". Not a word on what other WLANs they may have found (or maybe couldn't detect). So why assume the 3 that they mentioned that they found are the **only** 3 WLANs that they actually found? This article is likely a half-truth, made to create a particular impression. "Hey, we detected 5 WLANs at Mar-a-lago, but look, 3 of them are a security joke! Let's harp on that. " People are going way out of their way to bash Trump with glee, so this seems not at all improbable.
They don't say anything like, "all of the WLANs we found were insecure", or even, "all three WLANS we could detect were insecure", nor do they say, "3 out of the 4 WLANS we found were weakly encrypted" either. This is vague-speak.
Obviously, there are going to be a few normal consumer grade WLANs there, it's a freaking public resort, first and foremost. It's also possible that Trump doesn't use the wireless at all if he's conducting business there, it seems likely his WH security people would recommend using cabled LAN only. He may not be that tech saavy, but the staff should be.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Why would a hacker need to break in though? All you need to do is just talk with Trump to get classified info.