Podesta Got Hacked Because Clinton IT Team Was Fooled

It appears we now know how John Podesta's email account got hacked, and it seems Russia was behind it. CNN reports a new batch of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman released Friday includes one from March with the subject line "Someone has your password." The email appeared to be from Google and claimed that someone in the Ukraine had tried to sign into Podesta's email account. Despite coming from a highly suspicious "googlemail.com" address, a Clinton IT staffer declared the phishing email "legitimate" and told Podesta to "change his password immediately," according to CBS News.

The IT staffer included a link to Google's actual password-changing page. Instead, it appears Podesta or someone else clicked on a Bitly link labeled "CHANGE PASSWORD" provided in the phishing email. "We can confirm that in the leaked email, the Bitly link listed is one of the links we saw created by the Fancy Bear group to target Podesta,” a cyber security company's spokesperson tells Fox News. Fancy Bear is a Russian government hacking group already linked to the hack of the DNC. The same phishing technique was used to gain access to both the email accounts of the DNC and Colin Powell. As of Friday, WikiLeaks has released more than 35,500 emails from Podesta's account. (More John Podesta stories.)