| ▲ | fmajid 21 hours ago |
| GMail, like Apple, has specific enhanced security programs available for Politically Exposed Persons: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/ The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this just reiterates how incompetent he is, in addition to being corrupt as heck. |
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| ▲ | billfor 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Read the article he wasn't the director of the FBI: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022" |
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| ▲ | GeorgeRichard 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration. | | | |
| ▲ | hughw 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | He's had over a year to enable it. | | |
| ▲ | sysguest 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | woah but even I haven't heard about that gmail feature...? maybe google doesn't advertise about this much? | | |
| ▲ | thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They absolutely advertised it when it was released and every journalist knows about it. Kashmir Patel went out of his way to bypass security protocols for onboarding his political hires (for the US’s premiere domestic intelligence service!). If he wanted to be secure, all he had to do was not get in the way of the FBI’s natural processes. Also, this wouldn’t have happened if POTUS had hired someone with relevant FBI experience instead of a political hack. | | |
| ▲ | sysguest 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > POTUS had hired someone with relevant FBI experience instead of a political hack. well what percentage of highly-rated FBI people have actually enabled that feature? did FBI had some internal recommendation to enable that feature? FBI isn't NSA people... | | |
| ▲ | dessimus 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | What are you talking about? There's literally a Cyber Crimes[0] division of the FBI, and they run the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). They probably know a thing or two about cyber security for high-ranked governmental officials. [0] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber | | |
| ▲ | sysguest 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | well by that logic, you can argue every top gov officials who didn't sign up for https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/ is incompetent, BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ? dude at least you should have brought an internal recommendation memo targeted all fbi people, not "but fbi has this and this division..." lets say your college have astrophysics and other big departments. Are you really expert on those areas? Can you expect all highly-regarded professors to know most things from other departments? Do all 'competent' art professors know about astrophysics? | | |
| ▲ | dessimus 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >well by that logic, you can argue every top gov officials who didn't sign up for https://landing.google.com/intl/en_in/advancedprotection/ is incompetent I would, yes. Maybe a director in the Small Business Administration is lower on the target list of gov officials that would need to be concerned, but certainly anyone in the Departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, State, Transportation, Treasury, and probably Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for sure. > BECAUSE NSA IS part of the government ? I don't know why multiple times in this comment section you allude to the NSA as being the only Federal agency tasked with any sort of cyber security responsibility, that is just plain wrong. >you should have brought an internal recommendation memo targeted all fbi people Yes, because I have access to any and all internal memos provided by the FBI to their employees. Internal memos are by their very nature are internal, so are generally not available for public consumption. Also, your higher ed example is terrible, because as someone with a work history at a flagship state university's IT department, I can assure you that we provide all sorts of "memos", trainings, and tools to combat cybercrime, including special onboarding sessions to ensure new hires are protecting themselves and the university. We don't depend on the Art and Physics departments to make sure they keep their faculty 'in-line' following best practices in cyber security. | | |
| ▲ | sysguest an hour ago | parent [-] | | wow... how dense are you? do you even know what your soap your janitor uses? do you even understand why I ask whether "internal recommendation memo for that product" exists? what differences it makes? "as someone with a work history at a flagship state university's IT department, I can assure you..."
...ok so wtf was that advertisement? I did NOT ask what you do, but whether your 'customers' actually care and know the stuff. ...do you have an intelligence of a parrot? or are you some llm? | | |
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| ▲ | dessimus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If only the Director of the FBI had access to some sort of investigative team, maybe more than one, maybe even enough that they use a collective term for it, something like, I don't know: bureau? | |
| ▲ | saulapremium 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | "Even you"? Are you someone who would be inclined to look into something like that? | | |
| ▲ | sysguest 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | no but I've been interested in cryptography/anonimity stuff, so I see a lot of suggestions/advertisements related to those: signal, telegram, proton-mail, etc |
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| ▲ | DaSHacka 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why would he, when he wasn't director of the FBI then? | | |
| ▲ | thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You’re right. He was merely [checks notes]: - Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of Defense (2020-2021)
- Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence (2020)
Not a big deal. No need for OpSec in those positions. | |
| ▲ | hughw 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agree only a smart person would the sense in it. | | |
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| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's possible it was breached in 2022 and they've held on to it until now. |
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| ▲ | thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | He held very important positions in the US government before 2022, including in the SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020-2021. This is just a sad story of a partisan hack who failed upwards into one of the most sensitive and powerful offices in the nation, simply for being a loyal sycophant, not merit. | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | From the article, he wasn't the director of the FBI for the time period the emails are from: "The stolen emails appear to date from around 2011 to 2022" | |
| ▲ | leereeves 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's also possible that he maintained security by not putting anything worth hacking on gmail. | | |
| ▲ | stickfigure 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It is also possible he is an idiot. There are few valuable sentences that begin with "it is possible..." | | |
| ▲ | leptons 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | To be fair, he probably never once in his wildest dreams ever thought he would be head of the FBI. So he probably didn't think he needed the extra security, because what idiot would put him in charge of the world's largest spy network. | | |
| ▲ | thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The same idiot who pushed him into SecDef’s office and DNI in 2020. He shouldn’t be FBI Director and he shouldn’t have been in the DNI or Secretary of Staff for SecDef either. All of those are high positions of responsibility and require tremendous OpsSec. This guy’s first act as FBI Director was to waive most of the investigations into his staff to bypass security clearance checks. Sorry if I’m not disagreeing with you. Sarcasm is a bit hard to identify these days. | |
| ▲ | nkrisc 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | World’s largest spy network? The FBI wouldn’t even be the largest spy network within the US. | |
| ▲ | eps 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The FBI is not a spy network. | | |
| ▲ | thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You are being pedantic. I have 2 family members who are/were special agents for the FBI. Much of their job is harvesting evidence to build cases by spying, which frequently comes more in the form of “spying” in the way we saw in The Sopranos. The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage organization within the US, so it is tasked with spying on suspected foreign / turned spies. It is much more than a spy network, but it is exactly that as well. | | |
| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life. You don't have to be a suspect to fall within their panopticon. | | |
| ▲ | leereeves 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life. That claim deserves a source. |
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| ▲ | ArnoVW 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | While I understand why you would say that, I think the way "spy network" was meant, was in the way that their job is to spy within the US. And given the resources at their disposition, and the size of the US, "worlds biggest spy network" is not wrong. Also, they do head up the main counterintelligence effort of the US. How the mighty have fallen. |
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| ▲ | pdpi 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Security in depth. Even if you think you don't have anything particularly valuable in there, you still protect it as if you did. | | |
| ▲ | leereeves 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'd rather he worry about securing government secrets, not spend one second worrying about "personal photographs of Patel sniffing and smoking cigars, riding in an antique convertible, and making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a large bottle of rum". | | |
| ▲ | ndsipa_pomu 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Obviously government secrets need to be properly secured, but the personal info/photos of a top official can often be used for blackmail or for determining close friends that could be used to compromise Patel. | | |
| ▲ | leereeves 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | There's so much speculation about how this hack could conceivably be damaging, but so little evidence that it actually contained anything damaging. | | |
| ▲ | thephyber 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | “The enemy broke into our nuke silo, killed our Air Force manned crew, stole the nuke codes, launched the missile. Not a big deal because we shot it down before it hit its target.” Most of the time, actual harm is the most important issue. In this case because that office holds so much centralized power and authority over many aspects of American life (domestic law enforcement, some foreign law enforcement, domestic counterterrorism / counterintelligence / counterespionage, and security clearance background checks for all VIPs), the means are equally as important as the ends. And I would throw in a wrinkle: what evidence is there that the dumps were not stripped of the most useful blackmail material? If I were in charge of a hack operation, I would dump the low impact stuff to show the world how much of a joke this guy’s security is, but only after I already used the best stuff to blackmail him months ago. | | |
| ▲ | leereeves 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The scenario you're proposing is more like "They broke into our silo and launched a nuke, then they shot it down themselves." A successful blackmailer doesn't want the security breach exposed or investigated, they want to continue to use the victim. |
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| ▲ | ndsipa_pomu 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Security through luck? The reality is that officials are targetted by various states looking to get some leverage, so not properly securing an email account is a serious failing unless it's part of a wider honeypot scheme. Personally, I'm not convinced that the current U.S. administration is competent enough to plan ahead and implement honeypots. | | |
| ▲ | leereeves 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | No point in going round and round with personal opinions and general speculation. The debate is easily settled: just point to some actual harm done by this hack. | | |
| ▲ | ndsipa_pomu 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think you really understand how blackmail works. If the information is public, then that's a failed blackmail attempt. Also, the U.S. administration is unlikely to provide public information on how top officials have been compromised. It's not really much of a debate as it's widely acknowledged that letting enemy states get access to the email accounts of officials is a really bad idea. |
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| ▲ | thephyber 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Bad take. Patel specifically bypassed security clearance protocols for Bongino and other staff he hired. His top priority isn’t protecting government secrets — it’s to take down what he thinks is the part of the US government that resists bending to Trump’s will. And you are wrong that the FBI shouldn’t care about securing the Director’s private life information. Anything and everything can and will be used to blackmail him by foreign governments, criminals, political actors. I highly doubt the first public dump of messages would include the most compromising content — that’s like handing away a maximum severity zero day for the most common OS in the federal government. There’s no logical reason to do that for free, so I suspect the really incriminating/ salacious stuff was withheld for private use. And if the FBI didn’t enable the high security setting on the FBI Director’s private email account, they might not have known what, if any, compromising materials were in there. | | |
| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Trump bypassed clearance protocols for unclearable Jared. Nobody cares with an unaccountable executive. |
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| ▲ | sysguest 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > The fact the Director of the FBI did not avail himself of this well even I haven't seen/heard about this... maybe google should advertise more? (or... maybe I don't look important to google :( ?) |
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| ▲ | 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | ab_testing 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Was that landing page written by Google India team ! |
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| ▲ | bedatadriven 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Uh yeah, the locale in the link is specifically an Indian locale. If you find it it disorienting you can change en_in to en_us: https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/ | | |
| ▲ | FreePalestine1 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | The confusing thing is that googling "google advanced protection program" takes you to the en_in locale, even if you are in the US. An American has no clue what a crore is, so it is just an SEO failure on Google's part, which is funny. I didn't know there was an en_us equivalent to the page when I googled the topic. | | |
| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > An American has no clue what a crore is Really? It's ten million of something, or (currently) about $11,000 US dollars in money. You might also see "lakh" which is one hundred thousand of something, or about $1100 when it's used to describe money. Now you know. | | |
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| ▲ | connorgurney 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not sure what difference the nationality of the copywriters makes… | | |
| ▲ | echoangle 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It doesn’t really tell you where the copywriters were from but you notice that the locale of the page is Indian because the numbers are given in crore. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway290 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | if this was a few years ago I would even say here on "hacker" news we could probably notice the indian locale in the damn URL and save an entire subthread of racial offtopic |
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| ▲ | bobsmooth 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "Gmail blocks over 10 crore phishing attempts every day." | |
| ▲ | SanjayMehta 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Petty racism, probably linked to the FBI director's ethnicity. | | |
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| ▲ | thaumasiotes 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well, it was written to target Indian English. You can find the American version of the page at https://landing.google.com/intl/en_us/advancedprotection/ . | |
| ▲ | 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Betelbuddy 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It would be poetic justice to get the unredacted Epstein files via Iran... |
