2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Other than Hillary, who do you think should be locked up for violating email protocol? [View all]qdouble
(891 posts)You have to either get in through the front door by inputing code that server evaluates that is dangerous. Or you have to get in through the backdoor by using a trojan or simply having an unethical person with permissions access the server. If you validate all input and block potentially dangerous code from being evaluated, getting in through the front door is impossible without admin privileges. There's several different techniques that you could employ to make brute force hacking of admin password virtually impossible (meaning that the server will shut down or make login attempts so slow that it would take years to hack into). If you disallow the machine from running executable code that is downloaded and make sure no one gets physical access to the computer to hack it, the server is as secure as it can be.
That's how programming works. There is no mystical way to hack a server that can't be taken care of. The simpler a program is, the easier it is to secure as there are less areas which may unchecked.
The relevance of it is simply saying OMG, she used a PRIVATE SERVER is an attempt to fool the ignorant. There's nothing inherently more insecure about using a private server than having a gmail account.