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White House Officials Tricked By Email Prankster (cnn.com)
Jake Tapper, reporting for CNN: A self-described "email prankster" in the UK fooled a number of White House officials into thinking he was other officials, including an episode where he convinced the White House official tasked with cyber security that he was Jared Kushner and received that official's private email address unsolicited. "Tom, we are arranging a bit of a soiree towards the end of August," the fake Jared Kushner on an Outlook account wrote to the official White House email account of Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert. "It would be great if you could make it, I promise food of at least comparible (sic) quality to that which we ate in Iraq. Should be a great evening." Bossert wrote back: "Thanks, Jared. With a promise like that, I can't refuse. Also, if you ever need it, my personal email is" (redacted). Bossert did not respond to CNN's request for comment; the email prankster said he was surprised Bossert responded given his expertise. The emails were shared with CNN by the email prankster. White House officials acknowledged the incidents and said they were taking the matter seriously. "We take all cyber related issues very seriously and are looking into these incidents further," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told CNN.
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.
Or in jail. I would never dare to even attempt something like that. Hurting a powerful person's pride/"face" is just about the dumbest thing you can do... if you aren't also (very) powerful..
Let me get this straight. John Podesta gets fooled by a phishing attempt and suddenly the Russian government colluded with Trump to steal the election that Clinton was promised, but when someone in the Trump admin gets fooled by an email it's just a harmless prankster.
Right this is a "Prank" when the UK does this but its a Cyberattack when other countries do it.
Again see how liberals use treason (with collusion and deep state frends in CIA and NSA) to undermine strong American authority. This is the exactly kind of unpatriotic action I come to expect from liberal determined to keep American from being great, and another strong reason for everyone on slashdot to join me in making BIG donation to the NRA and Trump 2020 campaigns.
...I am tired of "winning".
Social engineering is easy and to be honest the "prankster" should be a bit more discreet in sharing the information.
But it is very en vogue to be anti-trump so I guess putting this up on CNN and acting like this is the first administration that fell for this sort of scheme is the right thing to do. /S
Trump has a sonâ"heâ(TM)s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers. Itâ(TM)s unbelievable.
"I promise food of at least comparible (sic) quality to that which we ate in Iraq"
Really, who talks like that. This a is a member of the Trump White House staff.
"Good food, better food than Iraq. Food will be greatest food, simply the best, I promise." seems a little less suspect.
"Thanks, Jared. With a promise like that, I can't refuse. Also, if you ever need it, my personal email is" (redacted).
A "food" promise will work most of the time.
Now, just suppose it were something to do with [propositioning] the fairer sex! Now, that would have been a scandal big time.
My take: Those folks are lucky, for now.
Looks like some people need training on how to spot phishing email attempts.
A good many Republicans trashed the DNC for their "lax security". Crow soup anyone?
Table-ized A.I.
Poor kid is going to get swatted in 3... 2... 1...
How did he get their email addresses in the first place? Are they publicly available?
I'd hope that they have separate "front facing" email addresses which are monitored by their flunkies, and private ones for official communications. If not then this will probably happen again (if it hasn't already) only it won't be a "prankster" next time.
Any time a corporation or government screws up and gets hacked, they say "We take security very seriously". Any time a corporation is caught hoovering up customer data, they say "We take the privacy of our customers very seriously". Any time a country says "We want peace and safety for all people", you can be sure they just unloaded a pile of bombs somewhere and killed many people.
Noted contributor to Russian intelligence agencies - and Hillary! aide - John Podesta says "It can happen to anyone!"
...cuz that's who they got tricked by first...
Has never been known for being tight-lipped.
Take that as you will. It literally works both ways. The unspoken way is likely true given her behavior.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
PGP was introduced in 1991. Now it's 2017 and we still don't know how to make sure we are talking to the person we think we are talking to. *weep*
It was tagged [Suspected Spam], how could it NOT have been a legit email?
How much stupider can these people get?
"A self-described "email prankster" .. wrote to the official White House email account of Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert .. the email prankster said he was surprised Bossert responded given his expertise"
What expertise? Have these people never heard of encryption and digital signatures, cause using standard email mean anyone can read your email or impersonate a real person. But then again these are the same people who decided to run Homeland Security on Microsoft Windows.
You elect amateur hour, you're gonna get amateur hour.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Hey if Whitehouse staffers are so dumb and uninformed when it comes to basic OPSEC then I think we'd better have the FBI investigate whether they're using private email for official purposes, too, just in case!
camp gimo and you are not an USC so no jury!
Our new government is fucking retarded as they come.
Jared Kushner
He probably just saw light blue "Jared Kushner". This kind of information hiding crap is getting more pervasive all the time. The same goes for file extensions "FamilyPhotos.jpg.exe"
"We take all cyber related issues very seriously and are looking into these incidents further,"
Given this administrations ranting about "leakers" & "treason" I would bet that is code for "we plan to harass/prosecute these people for pointing out our ineptitude".
Meanwhile a Fox reporter is suing Hannity and Fox 'News' for making up the Seth Rich story.
Apparently it was cooked up to kill the Russia inquiry and he didn't like them faking quotes from him to give it credence.
If Seth leaked the emails to Wikileaks, then the Russians are innocent, which was the aim of Hannity, clear the Russians of involvement in the hack by pinning it on Seth:
"Congress, investigate Seth Rich Murder! @JulianAssange made comments u need to listen to! If Seth was wiki source, no Trump/Russia collusion https://t.co/QPHZwypU34
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 22, 2017"
Which is why it is such a big deal that Hannity, Mooch, Trump and a former Fox executive were having a dinner. It explains why Mooch flew off the handle over what should have been an innocent meal.
Sigh. It's always the same, there are always people who will side with Putin if he offers them money or power, even if they are undermining their own country. Hannity should be ashamed, but he is ashamed all the way to the bank.
And by "taking it seriously" we mean we have launched a drone strike targeting certain individuals and their grandmothers.
What's with US politicians and email?
Don't they know it's like postcards that can be written by any idiot?
I guess not.
Pretty sure that spear phishing is a crime, regardless of your success level or whether you self style yourself as a prankster or not. The only way to legally do what was done is to immediately reply back to the targeted official/business/government agency and inform them that you were not who you said you were and that they need to improve their IT security training/systems. This guy may very well wind up extradited and charged with a crime since he went to CNN with the intention of damaging the organization that he attacked which by definition makes his spear phishing a crime.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
It HAS to be hard to verify that the key you were issued belongs to the person you're communicating with. Guess what? You verify that once, however hard and rigorous, and you never have to worry about anything other than the key being changed without your notice.
If it were EASY to verify, then it is also easy to fake a verification.
But guess what? They all meet in the White House and can personally verify the keys. Better yet, the White House security can create keys for all the personnel in the whitehouse and distribute the public ones in a single read only medium. In actual fact, it would have to be "point a gun at someone as you tell them to follow the list of instructions that create their key, secure it with a passphrase and copy the public key to the medium provided for collecting the people's keys.
And even better, roles rather than people can be given set fixed private keys that "belong" to a position so that multiple people can "speak" as the representative. So they can all sign it as "White House Staff", the head of Homeland security and every secretary and aide of his can sign as "Homeland Security" and therefore add another identification to the list that ensures the source is appropriately and correctly identified.
And that may have been enough. Jared's not quite as stupid as Orangina and may know more words, even if he can't speak them in public.
Email pranking exists! Much Wow!
Obviously this story is insanely newsworthy and totally explains why Slashdot has "bravely" and "honestly" refused to cover this: http://dailycaller.com/2017/07...
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
"So we had to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is a huge problem. I have a son—he’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers. It’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe, it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that’s true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester. And certainly cyber is one of them."
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.