Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was informed this week that Chinese hackers may have gained access to phones used by the former president and his running mate JD Vance.
According to The New York Times, Chinese hackers are believed to have gained access to data from phones used by the Republican candidates. However, investigators are still trying to determine what data was stolen or examined by the hackers following the telecom system breach.
China, if you’re listening…
I get the sense that you’re probably not getting the best IT people if you have to select from people who are bought into really bad misinformation. Good critical thinking skills are kind of important for infosec gigs.
Our entire government has played like it cared about infosec for years, but has always made weird exceptions for high-up officials. They have spent way more time and effort concealing merely “embarrassing” things which show they don’t actually promote the values they preach worldwide, (a thing they would prefer their citizens to not know) than they ever have for stuff that really matters for national security.
Like Bush ignoring intelligence warnings about 9/11, or the response to 9/11, the TSA, being all Security Theater, as called out by Bruce Schneier at the time. Destabilizing the middle east in the Iraq War was a small price to pay for Halliburton to get no-bid contracts to rebuild Iraq, and the oil that was claimed would pay for the war would go to private companies, in their eyes. Security has always been secondary.
So I mean, this is the natural end-game of such a system that always makes security exceptions for “special” people, because those people are too fucking lazy to take security seriously.
Our entire government has played like it cared about infosec for years, but has always made weird exceptions for high-up officials.
This isn’t the government, though. Like, this is Trump being hit on campaign, not as a sitting president, and Vance has never been a sitting VP, just a candidate.
Trump and Vance, as of today, are just private citizens.
When Trump was President, or when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State or something like that, okay, yeah, I get you. I’m not saying that we always do the right things for government officials – like, I’m not saying that your broader concern isn’t valid.
But for this particular Trump/Vance compromise, I don’t think that that’s what’s driving the situation – I think that it’s the vulnerability of political candidates, people who are not yet officials.
Trump and Vance, as of today, are just private citizens.
JD Vance is a sitting US senator.
God when you say it out loud it makes me realize how far gone this country is.
Can you imagine how weird the porn on JD Vance’s phone is? I almost feel sorry for the hackers.
The weirder thing is that JD Vance’s phone is probably squeaky clean, other than Raymore Flannigan and Wayfair
His Tor history however…
“he’s just recording an Ashley Furniture store?”
I always wonder now how his wife feels when they’re ready to relax for the night on the couch
10 years ago I’d say this was a bombshell, and the results of what was released could have unprecedented effects on our election.
But now a days? Meh. I mean, half the people in the country have read 10000 horrific stories about Trump already, and the other half believe there’s a group of baby-eating satanists running the world, so I can’t imagine either group really bring too surprised at any announced leaks. I dunno, I guess I still hear about these supposed undecided voters, even if I can’t comprehend how they still exist. Maybe this will change 12 of their minds, or whatever.
Considering the election is likely coming down to tenths of a percent in a dozen districts in a handful of swing states I’ll take those 12 votes.
Yeah, me too. Sorry, I’m just tired.
That’s weird. I’m sure Trump would have sold them access at a reasonable price if they asked.
Password was “Hamburder”
Vance:
“SexualSectional69!”
Coincidentally also the passphrase for Mar-a-lago
Used to be ivankas tits
* Hamberder
No matter how many times he types hamberder2, it will show to us as **********
He eats the hamberder in his robe and wizard hat.
Release the peepee tape and the NSFW raymour and flanigan pics.
When it’s so easy to get what you want through the front door with this hamburder ($$$$) why bother with blackmail?
These idiots are dumb enough TO GIVE ACCESS to the Chinese if they thought they could gain something from it
I mean, Russia and Iran have broken into campaign sites. I suppose China isn’t going to want to miss out on the fun.
I commented earlier that I think that perhaps the government should provide IT services to secure presidential political campaigns. That isn’t a full counter to espionage; poking around in someone’s stuff before they have actually kicked off a campaign might well itself be interesting. But it seems like kind of low-hanging fruit, given that candidates on the campaign trail are clearly being actively, repeatedly, and successfully targeted by foreign intelligence agencies. And those are only the cases that we know about – it’s probably a safe bet that penetrations have occurred that we haven’t been able to pick up on.
And I’m skeptical that political campaigns have the resources and expertise to secure themselves against national intelligence agencies.
I think that this is probably a general issue for democracies. Governments will typically have counterintelligence agencies and policy in place to protect incumbent leaders against espionage. They may or may not be successful, but at least they put the best tools they have on the job. But…in democracies, power can change, candidates are not protected in the same way, and targeting candidates may be a potent way for a foreign intelligence agency to either swing elections or obtain information and leverage useful for down the line, when a candidate has become a new leader.
that only if you trust the incumbent team to play fair
Yeah, that’s true – that’s a risk. You’d have to structure the system in such a way to minimize that. But…you gotta also remember that the existing government also has access to a lot of things like wiretapping capabilities and such; this isn’t our first rodeo with potential for an incumbent to try to abuse government powers.
I can think of legal and oversight structures that can help mitigate risk of an incumbent trying to abuse the US government being responsible for providing that sort of service…but it’s hard to do much about state-level foreign intelligence services otherwise.
