Posted on 11/26/2017 6:45:07 AM PST by mandaladon
The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin's crosshairs, The Associated Press has found.
Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting.
"It's utterly confounding," said Philip Reiner, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who was notified by the AP that he was targeted in 2015. "You've got to tell your people. You've got to protect your people."
The FBI declined to answer most questions from AP about how it had responded to the spying campaign. The bureau provided a statement that said in part: "The FBI routinely notifies individuals and organizations of potential threat information."
Three people familiar with the matter — including a current and a former government official — said the FBI has known for more than a year the details of Fancy Bear's attempts to break into Gmail inboxes. A senior FBI official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the hacking operation because of its sensitivity, declined to comment on timing but said that the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks.
"It's a matter of triaging to the best of our ability the volume of the targets who are out there," he said.
The AP did its own triage, dedicating two months and a small team of reporters to go through a hit list of Fancy Bear targets provided by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
The Feckless Bureau was too busy tapping Donald Trump and his campaign to warn hacking targets. And they probably thought any hacking was being done by the Democrat Party, so they were good with that.
Why are US officials using GMail accounts at all? You would think that they would know (or be taught by our all-encompassing bureaucracy) that free e-mail accounts come with risks and that they should not be used for anything but the most banal and benign of communications with non-government officials.
I have a GMail account, and I only use it for mailing lists and the occasional communication (that is not sensitive) when there are problems at the data center where my e-mail server is located. That box is locked down and employs a fair amount of security measures to ensure that anyone trying to break in is going to spend a long, long time doing so.
GMail?
So should I change my GMail password from password to something else?
That’s a huge problem with the “intelligence” arms - they have too many that want to keep data from the proper individuals so they can try to leverage it for their own political agendas - the deep state swamp exists with them more than anywhere else.
Absolutely. Change it to 12345.
Obama didn’t know about this until he heard it in the news. /s
The FBI stated the War On Cops too when they sent 75 agents to Ferguson... they have blood on their hands...
But then I would have to change the combination on my luggage.
Fancy Bear worked for western intelligence, that’s why no one was informed.
Thanks mandaladon.
No, no, no...ya gotta make it difficult: go with I2E4S
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