It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The private email server running in Hillary Rodham Clinton's home basement when she was secretary of state was connected to the Internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers, according to data and documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Clinton's server, which handled her personal and State Department correspondence, appeared to allow users to connect openly over the Internet to control it remotely, according to detailed records compiled in 2012. Experts said the Microsoft remote desktop service wasn't intended for such use without additional protective measures, and was the subject of U.S. government and industry warnings at the time over attacks from even low-skilled intruders.
Records show that Clinton additionally operated two more devices on her home network in Chappaqua, New York, that also were directly accessible from the Internet. One contained similar remote-control software that also has suffered from security vulnerabilities, known as Virtual Network Computing, and the other appeared to be configured to run websites.
originally posted by: Evil_Santa
As someone with multiple years of IT under my belt, i'm going to go ahead and laugh at this article. This is just a slow news-day article that's designed to ruffle the feathers of people who are not in the industry.
Basically it's saying that the server was exposed to the internet through a misconfigured firewall. Yes, Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol isn't designed for direct internet access, but a lot (and I mean an awful lot) of companies configure their systems in this manner already - and - there are some safeguards that can be put in place that block access to the internal network before a person can use RDP.
Remote desktop, does not equal, remote control. If you're on a windows computer you have the RDP client already installed.
- Click start
- type "mstsc" without the quotes
You also have the RDP server (the boogieman that the article says that allows people to connect to her server) installed but how to enable it, isn't something that i'm going to cover as it's different for each version of windows. Just google "enable remote desktop" and include your version of windows in the search.
It's standard operating procedure to setup RDP for administrators to be able to connect remotely to servers and troubleshoot / maintain / configure them. Saves a lot of time and road rage to be able to work remotely.
The "Another server running a website" claim is also incredibly laughable. 99% of email systems (and i'll guess that she was running Exchange) have a webmail component to them. Those require a webserver to operate.
Seriously, this is just someone tossing more wood onto a fire so the uneducated can start drooling.
It really just sounds like it was set up by someone who didn't know exactly what they were doing.
The White House on Tuesday backtracked on President Barack Obama's blanket assertion earlier this week that Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as secretary of state didn't pose a national security threat.
Asked outright in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes," Obama said, "I don't think it posed a national security problem."
But asked how the President was able to make such a definitive statement even as the FBI is looking into the server's security, White House press secretary Josh Earnest clarified that Obama's statement was made "based on what we publicly know now."
originally posted by: roadgravel
I'm impressed that people are still so concerned over a mail server given all the trouble our citizens face.