Clinton's help desk told John Podesta that the phishing attempt that resulted in WikiLeaks was a 'legitimate email'

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 28 October 2016

The hack and leak of campaign chairman John Podesta's emails has resulted in a major headache for the team behind Hillary Clinton. But as it turns out in newly released WikiLeaks emails, Clinton's own IT help desk might be accidentally responsible for the emails getting out.

Last week, Motherboard reported that the hack resulted from Podesta falling for a phishing attempt that was disguised as Google alerting him that his account had been compromised. "The phishing email that Podesta received on March 19 contained a URL, created with the popular Bitly shortening service, pointing to a longer URL that, to an untrained eye, looked like a Google link," Motherboard wrote. "Inside that long URL, there's a 30-character string that looks like gibberish but is actually the encoded Gmail address of John Podesta. ... That's the link that opened Podesta's account to the hackers."

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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.

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