Donald Trump's hotels, businesses have extremely insecure email servers

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: TASOS KATOPODIS/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump drew ridicule after the first presidential debate for his rambling response on cybersecurity. "The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing," Trump said. "But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them."

Trump might be the pot calling the kettle black, according to security architect Kevin Beaumont, who told Motherboard "that a number of email servers linked to Donald Trump's hotel and others businesses are running horribly out of date software which receive no security patches, and are lacking other precautions for keeping hackers out."

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"Running outdated software and operating systems for your publicly facing email infrastructure is problematic, especially when you're a high profile organization," Beaumont explained. Trump has previously been dinged for failing to encrypt customers' credit card details when purchases were made through his online store, and another researcher recently found that his website left intern applications easily accessible on the internet.

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Beaumont admitted he hasn't run advanced scans, but that on the surface, Trump doesn't look like he should be lecturing anyone about online security. "During an election where cybersecurity is such a big issue, I was a little amazed at what I saw," he said. Read the entire breakdown of the holes in Trump's security at Motherboard, here.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.