Friday 3 March 2017

spear-phishing

Whilst the then Indiana governor and the current US vice-president was technically following state statute regarding mixing private and official email accounts and those individuals who hacked into his America Online account—despite having prised their way into a cache of correspondence that has been deemed unsuitable for public-release for its sensitivity—apparently did not know and appreciate who this figure was, it’s really ironic given his deportment shown towards the opposition for showing the same degree of sloppiness handling her official missives.
Notwithstanding the undisclosed material, it seems no harm came of this transgression save that those who had commandeered his email account had full control and made entreaties to all those in his contact list that he and his wife were in dire straits, stranded in the Philippines and having lost their credit cards and mobile phones. I wonder how their friends and family responded. Of course this take-over was part of a much wider campaign and anyone who has ever held an AOL or Yahoo! account or a security-clearance in the past and present is arguably similarly compromised and equally poses a liability insofar as the account-holder might be susceptible to extortion, but I wonder what dirty-laundry might be left to fester.  Despite one’s self-styled skills at dickering about, these arrangements seem quite asymmetric and fraught with weaknesses.