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Well, if we are talking about common sense. I should never make a payment transaction online. Never send personal details to doctors, freinds or family. Never p

Well, if we are talking about common sense. I should never make a payment transaction online. Never send personal details to doctors, freinds or family. Never provide information under nda to parties online. This isnt a problem of common sense, this is a problem of encryption, who has access and how easy it is to force access. Saving emails could also prove things in the courts defensively if necessary

fit2rule 10y ago
Never do it .. unless its encrypted. (Hint: you can do this pretty easily, if you learn how.) Email is not, by default, encrypted. Anyone on any of the networks between the send and the recipient of any of those emails could have seen this data. The security failure happened when the person composing the email typed in the data that should have been protected. People - especially people in power - need to realize that email is NOT private by default - it is by its very nature, an open and public line of transmission, and can be very, very easily intercepted by interested third parties. So, lets stay focused on the real point where the security failure occurred: whoever typed the data in, in the first place, while composing their 'very important' emails ..
- formula1 10y ago
  Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? If anything, this is a problem with their IT staff. Now that being said, the DNC may have not made it obvious that this was necessary and thats where the burden can rest. They knew that everything needed to be secure but either assumed incorrectly that it was encrypted or didnt want to inform IT that there are sensetive materials
  - fit2rule 10y ago
    >Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, indeed, I do expect that level of competence from people who aspire to govern the subject.
  - venomsnake 10y ago
    > Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, yes I do. It takes less than an hour to learn how to use pgp. It takes less than a second to understand why you don't put passwords, credit card details or root passwords in email. Is that so much to ask from the nation's Ivy League elite?
- crummy 10y ago
  Would end-to-end encryption have helped this situation at all? None of the emails were intercepted between parties, to my knowledge.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    It's likely, unless the email dump also included private keys of recipients.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Some of that data was almost certainly sent encrypted. I'd be slightly surprised to find that their internal emails weren't encrypted at the transport layer. If they were using Exchange or even GApps, that'd be the default. It looks like a few individual mailboxes were popped. So even with a secure network, the result would have been the same.

fit2rule 10y ago

Never do it .. unless its encrypted. (Hint: you can do this pretty easily, if you learn how.) Email is not, by default, encrypted. Anyone on any of the networks between the send and the recipient of any of those emails could have seen this data. The security failure happened when the person composing the email typed in the data that should have been protected. People - especially people in power - need to realize that email is NOT private by default - it is by its very nature, an open and public line of transmission, and can be very, very easily intercepted by interested third parties. So, lets stay focused on the real point where the security failure occurred: whoever typed the data in, in the first place, while composing their 'very important' emails ..

formula1 10y ago
Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? If anything, this is a problem with their IT staff. Now that being said, the DNC may have not made it obvious that this was necessary and thats where the burden can rest. They knew that everything needed to be secure but either assumed incorrectly that it was encrypted or didnt want to inform IT that there are sensetive materials
- fit2rule 10y ago
  >Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, indeed, I do expect that level of competence from people who aspire to govern the subject.
- venomsnake 10y ago
  > Your expecting people who have spent their lives climbing the political ladder and understanding / memorizing / interpreting law to then be able to know that their emails are viewable by a man in the middle or anyone able to read the harddrive? Yes, yes I do. It takes less than an hour to learn how to use pgp. It takes less than a second to understand why you don't put passwords, credit card details or root passwords in email. Is that so much to ask from the nation's Ivy League elite?
crummy 10y ago
Would end-to-end encryption have helped this situation at all? None of the emails were intercepted between parties, to my knowledge.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  It's likely, unless the email dump also included private keys of recipients.
MichaelGG 10y ago
Some of that data was almost certainly sent encrypted. I'd be slightly surprised to find that their internal emails weren't encrypted at the transport layer. If they were using Exchange or even GApps, that'd be the default. It looks like a few individual mailboxes were popped. So even with a secure network, the result would have been the same.