Channel 4 News reports: Passwords used by Donald Trump’s incoming cyber security advisor Rudy Giuliani and 13 other top staff members have been leaked in mass hacks, a Channel 4 News investigation can reveal.

Passwords are publicly available for key members of Trump’s cabinet, White House policy directors and aides and some of his most senior advisors, this programme has discovered.

Digital security issues – including allegations of Russian hacking to try to influence the outcome of the US presidential elections – have dominated the headlines as Trump’s team prepares to take command of the world’s most powerful country.

Cyber security analyst Troy Hunt, who runs the online service HaveIBeenPwned.com to notify users of data breaches, told Channel 4 News that the leaks could be problematic.

Hunt said: “How many passwords have we got that have been reused in different places and are the same as they were five years ago – even a decade ago. We’ve got a long tail of info that we’ve left on the web now.

“The problem here is that a little bit like all of us, we have this propensity to reuse our passwords.

“And let’s say someone from Trump’s team has data leaked and it appears on a totally unrelated forum somewhere and someone takes those credentials and accesses the individual’s Gmail.

“If this is an individual in a position of power or influence they may well have discussions in their personal mail that could be compromising.

“And if they don’t then the attacker who gains access to that Gmail may then use that account to begin conversation with other people in the contact list, impersonate them, elicit information from other individuals.

“It then just opens up a door to a raft of much bigger problems.” [Continue reading…]