Democratic Party Computers Wide Open

For John, BLUF:  You know you are going to be hacked, but still, you should use precautions.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Emails and Russians

From Mr Francis Turner, who is resurrecting his old blog, “L’Ombre de l’Oliver“.  It appears Mr Turner lives in rural Japan, but blogs about things of interest here in the United States.

Before we get into what Mr Turner has to say about the Russians and the DNC EMails, I would say I am not enthusiastic about his view on "victim shaming".  That said, here are some of Mr Turner's blog words:

For the last few months, ever since Wikileaks started publishing DNC related emails, a lot of outrage has been generated about how this was all the result of attacks by groups related to/sponsored by the Russian government.  I have no problem believing that the Russians did in fact get Podesta’s emails, and the DNC ones, and probably whatever was on Hillary Clinton’s server.  The security of all of them seems to have been sufficiently lax that I expect multiple groups got in.

That laxness should itself be a major news story because it’s been apparent to anyone who actually pays attention to these things that state (sponsored) actors have been looking for vulnerable systems for the whole of the Obama administration, if not before.  It has been glaringly obvious to anyone who reads the relevant technical press that this has been the case for at least the last four years and one would hope that organizations such as the DNC would have technically savvy staffers who do read these articles.  Yet, despite that, Podesta apparently had a password of ‘password’ and the DNC, after learning they had been penetrated by at least two different groups, used their internal email system to send out new passwords.  People this incompetent are not victims who deserve our sympathy, rather they deserve our contempt for their willful negligence.  [To make a parallel with rape victims, this lot were walking through a bad neighborhood in Detroit butt-naked in the middle of the road talking loudly.  At some point, no matter how bad the crime and evil the criminal, victim shaming is appropriate.]

And that would be contempt expressed in the ballot box.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff