Obama Fought For the Right to Do Something That George W. Bush Simply Wouldn't Do As President. Now It's Another Security Problem.

As president, George W. Bush didn't send emails.

When he took the reins in 2009, President Barack Obama fought to keep his Blackberry and the ability to email.

Now Russian hackers have accessed those emails.

Equipped with his iPad and a Blackberry on his belt, President Barack Obama departs the Oval Office of the White House in Washington for an afternoon of golf Saturday, May 21, 2011. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Russian hackers were able to access and read presidential emails in a breach last year of the White House's unclassified computer system.

Classified systems remained safe, White House officials told the Times, and the actual servers hosting Obama's emails were not compromised.

But in accessing the unclassified White House system — as well as the State Department's unclassified system — hackers were able to read emails from the president.

“This has been one of the most sophisticated actors we’ve seen,” one senior official who had been briefed on the investigation told the Times.

What exactly did the hackers read?

Officials wouldn't say how many presidential emails were read, or how sensitive their contents were.

But the breach was significant enough that officials said they met on a nearly daily basis for weeks following the attack

“It’s the Russian angle to this that’s particularly worrisome,” another senior official told the Times.

—

Follow Zach Noble (@thezachnoble) on Twitter