Clinton’s ‘Please Hack Me’ Server

[Commentary] There’s good reason to assume that foreign intelligence agencies were able to read Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Government servers are not hackproof, but they offer basic defenses and alerts. An Associated Press investigation found that the Clinton setup didn’t use a virtual private network, a common corporate safeguard. This meant her e-mail server could be accessed over an open Internet connection. The AP reported attempted hacks on Clinton servers from China and Russia. It identified a hacker using a computer in Serbia who scanned the server in the basement of her Chappaqua (NY) home multiple times in 2012. This was at a time when Homeland Security had issued a general warning against the software Clinton was using because even “an attacker with a low skill-level would be able to exploit this vulnerability.”

The same year, the State Department banned any remote connections to servers with classified information. Cyberwar against the US began before the Obama Administration, but it has grown in intensity -- including the Chinese hack of the personnel records of more than 20 million federal employees. President Barack Obama’s successor will have to decide how best to defend the country from cyberattacks, surveillance and crimes. It shouldn’t be too much to ask that the next president be someone who appreciates the risks and hasn’t contributed to them.