Agency didn’t protect emails after hacking
WASHINGTON — Despite a hack two years ago that publicly exposed Hillary Clinton’s emails, the State Department took no action to shore up the security of the former secretary of state’s private computer server.
A State Department official said the department could not dot anything in response to the March 2013 hack of longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal because it occurred on a nongovernmental computer system. The hacked emails, which included Blumenthal’s frequent correspondence with Clinton while she was in office in 2012, were sent by the Romanian hacker to media organizations, which later posted them online.
The disclosure renews questions of when State Department officials first learned that Clinton was doing department business on a private server and what steps they took to safeguard her sensitive diplomatic communications, some of which have been deemed classified.
National security and technology experts say the government should have taken immediate action, including implementing such security precautions as updating software and protecting passwords.
The failure to take any precautions also could have left Clinton’s server vulnerable to hackers, experts said. Just this week, a Senate committee chairman asked FBI Director James Comey whether the bureau was investigating the possibility she was hacked.
“The State Department should have done something,” said Brian Reid, a cybersecurity expert with the company Internet Systems Consortium. “If your house is burgled, you’re going to put alarms on the windows. It’s just basic common sense.”
The department’s inspector general’s office, which on its own initiative could have investigated or assessed the breach at the time, declined to comment and referred questions to the State Department.
Clinton’s exclusive use of a personal email account, routed through a private server for all four years she served as secretary of state, continues to hurt her prospects as the Democratic front-runner for president. With her campaign under siege, her poll numbers are slipping and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an opponent for the Democratic nomination, is gaining ground.
The furor intensified after the intelligence community’s inspector general asked the FBI to scrutinize the security implications of her use of a private server after classified material was found on her server.
Five emails sent to Clinton were recently deemed as classified, including two designated “Top Secret.” State Department officials have challenged the classifications and emphasized that the emails were not marked as classified at the time.
Clinton has maintained that she never sent or received any material marked as classified.