Ethical Hacker Says DNC Breach Was Easily Preventable

One cybersecurity expert says the hack attack that exposed emails and other vital information belonging to the Democratic National Convention could have easily been prevented.

“This is like very simple hacking,” said Tim Summers, an ethical hacker. “This is stuff that a 13-year-old could do from their basement.”

Summers said this type of breach stands out among prior breaches due to the subjects involved in the hack.

“We’re talking about the first time in American history where we’re actually seeing hackers, malicious hackers, play a role in trying to sway a presidential election,” he said.

He explained why he believes the DNC missed the “writing on the wall.”

“In the intelligence community everyone knows that there’s a 24/7, 365 cyber operations going back and forth between the U.S. and Russia and China and all the other adversaries we have out there. The DNC really needed to pay attention to this.”

He added: “Interestingly enough, the type of hack that we hear and that we have evidence of—the evidence is showing that it was a social engineering attack or phishing attacks, emails for example, that really allowed the hackers to get into the DNC. Look, 95% of all successful cyberattacks happen through social engineering like phishing.”

As the presidential election gets closer, Summers said the DNC and the Clinton campaign “should be concerned.”

“We say that the people that you trust the most are the ones that are planning your next major cyber breach. That’s exactly what happened here. We saw emails of officials within the DNC, executives, from Gmail (NASDAQ:GOOGL) accounts and personal accounts. This really was just a total mess up on the DNC’s part,” he stated.