Russian Hackers Were Able To Read Barack Obama’s Private Emails When They Breached The White House Last Year

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Man. I want to read President Obama’s email. Don’t you? What’s on the menu for dinner. Who he and Michelle are inviting into their private quarters to spice shit up. Other things. Politics. Don’t you want to know? Every celebrity has had their privacy massively invaded, why not the president? Because he’s important? Fuck that. Who gives a shit if it makes him look un-presidential. He’s on his way out. The American people have a right (technically not) to know.

And we might, soon.

Almost a month ago, it was reported that Russian hackers were able to access unclassified systems within the White House. Now, it turns out the hack included the president’s unclassified emails. From the New York Times:

Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation.

Yea, you had to have figured this would happen. Not that hackers could get in, that’s kinda nuts, but that we would be lied to about the scale of it. Which makes this next detail seem like bullshit to me.

The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly.

Don’t buy that for a second. Even if that denial is true, hackers ran wild through the White House.

But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

That’s pretty fucking serious. Enough to jail any American for decades if they did that. Certainly serious enough to not want the public to how unguarded our nation’s most secure systems are.

Still, the fact that Mr. Obama’s communications were among those hit by the hackers — who are presumed to be linked to the Russian government, if not working for it — has been one of the most closely held findings of the inquiry. Senior White House officials have known for months about the depth of the intrusion.

“This has been one of the most sophisticated actors we’ve seen,” said one senior American official briefed on the investigation.

Others confirmed that the White House intrusion was viewed as so serious that officials met on a nearly daily basis for several weeks after it was discovered. “It’s the Russian angle to this that’s particularly worrisome,” another senior official said.

We’ve yet to actually name the agents though, because of diplomatic sensitivities. Because basically we’d be declaring war on Russia.

One of the curiosities of the White House and State Department attacks is that the administration, which recently has been looking to name and punish state and nonstate hackers in an effort to deter attacks, has refused to reveal its conclusions about who was responsible for this complex and artful intrusion into the government.

[The] White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said the administration had not publicly named who was behind the hack because federal investigators had concluded that “it’s not in our best interests.”

I’ll say so. We’ll see what happens, Bros. I bet this is just getting started.

As infamous computer systems architect Ray Arnold once said, hold on to your butts.