A typo might have cost Clinton the election

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published 13 December 2016

A series of painfully preventable errors committed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's staff led to Russian hackers gaining access to the Democrats' private accounts, possibly costing them the election, The New York Times reports. "What started as an information-gathering operation, intelligence officials believe, ultimately morphed into an effort to harm one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and tip the election to her opponent, Donald J. Trump," the Times writes.

The FBI was aware as early as September 2015 that at least one computer system belonging to the DNC had been compromised. But when FBI agent Adrian Hawkins called the committee's tech-support contractor, Yared Tamene, to inform him of the situation, Tamene did not return Hawkins' calls because "I had no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call," he wrote in a memo.

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Given how many emails Mr. Podesta received through this personal email account, several aides also had access to it, and one of them noticed the warning email, sending it to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the "change password" button."This is a legitimate email," Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta's aides, who had noticed the alert. "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. Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an "illegitimate" email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since. [The New York Times]

Read more about how the Russians gained access to the DNC's emails — and possibly put their thumb on the scales of the American election — at The New York Times.

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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.