The hack of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta's Gmail account—which introduced us to his risotto recipe, among other things—was reportedly triggered by a typo.
After breaching the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Russian cybercriminals turned their attention to other major party players—including Podesta.
According to The New York Times, Podesta in March received an email claiming someone in Ukraine unsuccessfully attempted to sign into his Google Account. "Google stopped this sign-in attempt," the form message said, as reported by the Times. "You should change your password immediately."
Given the volume of emails Podesta receives, a number of campaign aides had access to his account. One spotted the Gmail warning, and forwarded it to a computer technician.
"This is a legitimate email," a Clinton aide wrote in response. "John needs to change his password immediately, and ensure that two-factor authentication is turned on [for] his account."
Another campaign aide then clicked the link, and changed Podesta's password. The email, of course, was a phishing scam, so doing so gave the hackers access to Podesta's Gmail account, the contents of which were later posted online in full.
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Unfortunately, that "illegitimate" was reportedly supposed to read "legitimate"—meaning, don't click the link and change the password via the usual channels in case the account had already been compromised—"an error that he said has plagued him ever since," the Times said.
The campaign did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment, but it has generally avoided commenting directly on the hacked emails. They place the blame on Russian hackers, who officials said earlier this year were actively trying to "interfere with the US election process."
More recently, the Washington Post reports that the CIA thinks the Russians were actively trying to get Donald Trump elected rather than simply wreak havoc generally during the election. That has prompted a firestorm on Capitol Hill among Democrats and some Republicans, but the President-elect and his team have brushed off the report, with Trump erroneously suggesting this is the first time this issue has even been discussed. During his last public press conference, however, he called on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton and find emails that were deleted off her private server.
Unless you catch "hackers" in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016