The Podesta emails were acquired by someone who downloaded them from gmail after Podesta voluntarily gave his password in response to a standard mass phishing email that many other people got as well. I don't think this is reasonably called hacking, it's more social engineering or scamming. It also doesn't seem to be spear phishing (a targetted attack) given that large numbers of people got the same emails.
Wikileaks says the DNC leaks were given to them personally by an insider. This is not a hack either.
Did foreign state intelligence services hack or try to hack servers of political operations in the US? Undoubtedly. That's their job and we've seen that there's not a lot of sense or security awareness by a lot of politicians, so it's likely a lot gets through.
Did foreign states give the info to Wikileaks? There's no evidence of that, and there's evidence from those who are in a position to know, such as Wikileaks, to the contrary.
> I don't think this is reasonably called hacking, it's more social engineering or scamming.
The vector doesn't matter.
The mark of sophistication is not that they use highly technical vectors, but that they know how to use their toolbox, and social engineering remains one of the most powerful tools in there.
Data was still exfiltrated without consent. That's hacking.
Is there hard proof though that the Podesta leak was just a mass fishing by-catch and it was nothing else? It would be trivial for a hacker to place false emails as a red herring.
What I find more interesting than the origin of the leaks is that almost nobody is talking about their content. Little in the US, almost not at all internationally. The only reporting about the Podesta leaks I noticed was that they occurred, and that some people described as cranks were discussing them on reddit - but at least in Germany no discussion of the contents, and in US media not much more. Same for the DNC leaks. The "pied piper" memo, where Democrats were hoping Trump would win the primaries... And how they tried to undermine Sanders - how did that not cause more outrage?
I understand why Wikileaks refuses to announce their sources, but I really wish they would in this case. I would love to see the shake-up if they were to show proof that the DNC leaks were provided by the late Seth Rich[1], for instance.
Wikileaks says the DNC leaks were given to them personally by an insider. This is not a hack either.
Did foreign state intelligence services hack or try to hack servers of political operations in the US? Undoubtedly. That's their job and we've seen that there's not a lot of sense or security awareness by a lot of politicians, so it's likely a lot gets through.
Did foreign states give the info to Wikileaks? There's no evidence of that, and there's evidence from those who are in a position to know, such as Wikileaks, to the contrary.