Gmail Hack Targeted White House
June 3, 2011
By DEVLIN BARRETT and SIOBHAN GORMAN
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People who work at the White House were among those targeted by the China-based hackers who broke into Google Inc.'s Gmail accounts, according to one U.S. official.
The hackers likely were hoping the officials were conducting administration business on their private emails, according to lawmakers and security experts.
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The Obama administration reiterated Thursday that no official messages were compromised. But lawmakers and outside computer-security experts said recent White House history suggests administration officials sometimes use personal email to talk business, despite rules against doing so.
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White House officials in both the current and previous administrations have been accused of using personal emails to conduct business. No matter which party is in power, critics have argued, officials use personal accounts as a way to avoid having those messages turned over to congressional investigators, released under the Freedom of Information Act or retained for historic archives.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20130328011032/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/technology/04hack.html
Hacking of White House E-Mail Affected Diverse Departments
By DAVID E. SANGER and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF
Published: June 3, 2011
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White House classified systems run on dedicated lines and information on those systems, the officials said, cannot be forwarded to Gmail accounts. But investigators were trying to determine if the attackers believed that some staff members or other officials used their personal e-mail accounts for confidential government communications.
“Right now,” said one senior official, “that’s a theory, not a fact.”
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Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday that all White House-related electronic mail was supposed to be conducted on work e-mail accounts to comply with the Presidential Records Act, which governs how those communications are protected and archived. Mr. Carney said there was no evidence that any White House accounts were compromised.
White House employees are permitted to have private e-mail accounts, he said, but cannot use them for work purposes.
Officials at the White House and other agencies often keep two computers in their offices, one for unclassified work and another for classified. Senior officials sometimes have a “secure facility” in their homes, in which computers and telephones are on dedicated lines and communications are encrypted.
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