By Johnny Daniels
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

While President Obama is going around thinking that his sparkling, very expensive new smart phone is secure and hacker-proof, convicted hacker Kevin Mitnick has some bad news for him – it’s not secure at all.

Mitnick, who spent nearly 5 years in prison for hacking offences, told Fox News that the way into Obama’s device would be to target the people he is emailing – because their computers will be much less guarded than Obama’s will be.

If a hacker can get into the computer of one of Obama’s email correspondents, the next step would be to discover the closely guarded email address of the president.  They could then use the friend’s email address to impersonate that person and send Obama an email trying to entice him to open a virus-infected attachment or lure him to a virus-infected website.

The theory is sound enough, but to be honest, I don’t see it happening.  I’d like to credit the president with some intelligence that a) he has a virus scanner installed on his Blackberry (there’s almost no viruses made for mobile devices anyways) and b) he can spot when someone else is impersonating his friends.  For example, I know how my friends write.  I know their “style” and I know their “voice”.   If someone else tried to pretend they were them, my sixth sense would kick in and I would know right away that they were imposters.

Plus as President of the United States, I would like to think that even if his best friend sent him an attachment, he would err on the side of caution and would think twice before opening anything.

But I accept the gist of what Mitnick is saying and I hope that Obama’s email friends get some help from the NSA with their computer security.   It’s in everyone’s best interests after all.