Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/22/whca-vs-400lb-hackers.html
…
4 Likes
But hey, at least we didn’t end up with a President who once used a private email server, right?
42 Likes
We just call it twitter around these parts.
2 Likes
If I were whoever is responsible for “The Cyber” at the White House, I would make sure that Trump is never more than five feet from a wi-fi base station with a firewall that passes Twitter, plus his choice of news sources (Breitbart, Fox News) and nothing else. No third-party ad servers, no trackers. Nothing in or out that isn’t on a very short pre-approved list. When he goes on the road, someone follows him around with a portable version. For voice, route everything through a similarly locked-down personal cellspot device. His personal phones can then be as insecure as he likes, provided they don’t talk to anything except through these gateways.
Because you just know that if he had free access to the Internet, he’d be clicking on every single “He got elected president with this one weird trick – Democrats hate him!” clickbait headline or dodgy banner ad out there. Getting Trump to download malware would be a case of shooting phish [sic] in a barrel.
Speaking of which, who cares about which ads the Russians bought on Facebook? It’d be far more interesting to take a look at exactly who’s been buying ads on the “Fox & Friends” homepage, and what exactly the Javascript that they’re serving up actually does. If the FSB hasn’t tried to pwn the president at least once that way, I’ll be sorely disappointed.
17 Likes
You make me consider a very good question; why haven’t 45’s phones been hacked yet?
3 Likes
Five bucks says Trump just asked Barron to deal with it.
6 Likes
“Hannity, you up?”
Russia: “What t hell iz he talking about??”
China: “He’s in love with that Fox guy.”
North Korea: “Please, just send me the transcript.” (click)
10 Likes
Dumb question, with paranoia optimized:
a) What if Russia has demanded from him not to use the official hardened cell phones (so they have a way in to the system)?
I know that it is way more likely that he is a dumbass that just wants to exert his own control (shit over his own expert advisors), but given all the other shady stuff about Trump I would actually wonder about that.
7 Likes
The way I see it, if the Russians could get DNC emails through a very basic social hack, then we can expect lots of recordings and pictures of Trump hard at work behind the scenes to eventually leak to the public. Maybe Putin already has them, or maybe some kid in Buffalo is snooping on Trump now.
7 Likes
I can’t imagine what listening to that man’s phone calls must be like. Those poor (potential) spies. Sure, it would start off funny, but it would move to disturbing at great speed.
3 Likes
They almost certainly have, but there’s no way the government would admit that publicly. If the hackers know how to play Trump through social engineering, his refusal to allow security checks may be part of keeping that access open.
7 Likes
How do you know they haven’t been? All that would have to be done is to get him to click on some zero-day spy agency grade exploit linked in some tweet that he’s bound to take the bait on and they’d be in with no one the wiser, particularly if his IT staff can’t audit the phone. This is somewhat complicated by the fact the he uses a Samsung or an iPhone, but not really.
If he hasn’t been hacked, then kudos to Apple and Samsung for making really secure devices.
He’s probably been hacked, though.
8 Likes
Wow. Sounds to me like the white house is just about as secure as the average American law office dealing with HIPAA eligible data.
7 Likes
That’s a great point. He’s probably encouraged by his Russian masters to keep his phones insecure so they can stay in contact.
2 Likes
It’s just so convenient. Putin just shows up on my phone when we need to talk, and he says manafort won’t ever be able to track it.
Even put his private contact info into the address book.
I’m telling you, believe me, the Russians really are the best at the cyber.
2 Likes
Let me rephrase for clarity.
Why hasn’t 45 been hacked by the so-called White Hats for the good of the entire world?
13 Likes
I can easily imagine one of his Russian creditors insisting he download a banking app to one or both phones. Or perhaps he just downloaded an insecure app he heard about on Fox and Friends. Whatever the case, those phones are completely compromised.
The question I have is whether he connects with these phones via a commercial consumer grade data connection (“Ivanka and Jared are on the best family plan ever!”) or whether he has to use Wifi and/or cellular data provided by and presumably monitored and filtered by the White House sysadmins.
2 Likes
My fantasy thought is that his own sysadmins have hacked his phone; all the White House leaks are a result of this.
11 Likes
Between this story and the one about all the cell phone tower spoofers in DC I think we should be getting transcripts of those late-night calls to Hannity pretty soon!
3 Likes
That is a rather comforting idea…
2 Likes
