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Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin
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Note the line from Pagliano:

"That may explain the DNS issue we had earlier. Might have been an injection attack [NOTE: most common and successful attacks on the internet due to their numerous types, large attack surface, and the complexity required to protect against them]. We use their servers to resolve external websites for both the sbs and blackberry server so we’d be susceptible to such an attack."

This points out the fact they knew their use of a private server was insecure, and that they had little power to fix it. Why they took this to the Secret Service instead of the FBI is very suspect too. The Secret Service has nothing to do with cyber defense or cyber crimes (unless they have something to do with finance.
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SFC James Asbill
SFC James Asbill
8 y
Absolutely .... of course .. they were trying to obscure the fact of her private server ..
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Sgt Wayne Wood
Sgt Wayne Wood
8 y
injection attacks are usually brought against database servers or database-based applications. no reason to believe that on a DNS server. to the best of my knowledge the only OS that get's DNS from anything resembling a database is Windows Servers. and that's integrated into the registry. you can flood a DNS server with requests, or even spoof a secondary (slave) server to force repeated zone transfers. most modern DNS servers maintain a "safe list" of ipaddresses that are allowed zone transfers. unless DYNs DNS was misconfigured, this would not seem feasible.
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Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin
Maj Kevin "Mac" McLaughlin
8 y
There are a few types of injection attacks which can go against other types of servers. They include web injection, code injection, and even cross-site scripting. Many are very easy to detect and even prevent. What's telling is Pagliano apparently doesn't know how and passes it off as "we’d be susceptible to such an attack".

In the case of a DNS server, you need to understand that some org use their server for multiple services. This of course is not recommended but it certainly does happen. At the same time, trying to infer what Pagliano was saying in the email, it appears what he was saying is the DNS server might have been compromised and directed to attack Clinton's server with a brute force attack on accounts. Without the information of the type of server, and other services running on it, it's hard to make a complete assessment of the problem.

Another scenario, as you alluded to, could include a zone transfer attack on the DNS server which compromised it's records (thus giving up the fact Clinton's servers used it as a primary DNS provider), and then used it to launch attacks against the known users in the records while spoofing the DNS server. The question leads to, why would you use a DNS server which is not under your control to provide services to your network when it has some pretty sensitive and critical information? Even if it was just DNC command and control related, security is still important.

This just goes to show that Pagliano should have known better and should have advised Clinton not to use an infrastructure which lacks defense in depth capabilities (Firewall, IDS/IPS, ACLs, DMZz, etc...). The State Department had all these capabilities and in using them, Clinton would have been absolved of any wrong doing (at least from an IT perspective).
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MCPO Roger Collins
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If anyone wants to see a list of the most damaging Wikileaks items, here they are. (Remove the asterisks and change the word dot with a period).

***http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/***
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8 y
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MCPO Roger Collins Unfortunately many of the faithful followers will argue that this is all made up, lies perpetrated by the Republicans.
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COL Lee Flemming
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Edited 8 y ago
I use my email...both personal and professional as if it has already been hacked! It is simply a sign of the times, only a fool or novice user would think otherwise!! I guess her coms guys may have been both!
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MCPO Roger Collins
MCPO Roger Collins
8 y
For such intelligent people (read devious) with law degrees, this is telling as to their Chutzpah.
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8 y
COL Lee Flemming Sir, we have had this beat into us for so long. OPSEC etc should be second nature to most military personnel.
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