A Hillary Clinton campaign aide told the New York Times his unwitting typo led to an email hack of campaign chairman John Podesta – and a flood of damaging leaks that dogged the Democratic nominee's final weeks before the election.
In a story posted Tuesday about cybersecurity breaches linked to the Russian government, the Times reported Podesta's private Gmail account was targeted by hackers on March 19 through a phishing message telling Podesta to change his password because a third party had tried to log into his account.
Because Podesta received so much data through the private account, several aides also had access to it – and one of them sent the warning to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the "change password" button, the Times reported.
"This is a legitimate email," Clinton campaign aide Charles Delavan replied to another Podesta aide who'd noticed the alert, the Times reported. "John needs to change his password immediately."
"With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account — a total of about 60,000 — were unlocked for the Russian hackers," the Times reported.
But Delavan told the Times he knew the warning was a phishing attack because the campaign was getting "dozens of them" – and that he'd meant to type that it was an "illegitimate" email.
It was an "error that he said has plagued him ever since," the Times reported.
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