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Confirmed: CBS News Reporter's Computer Compromised

Posted by timothy on from the all-the-cool-kids-have-their-lines-tapped dept.

New submitter RoccamOccam writes "Shortly after the news broke that the Department of Justice had been secretly monitoring the phones and email accounts of Associated Press and Fox News reporters (and the parents of Fox News Correspondent James Rosen), CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson said her computer seemed like it had been compromised. Turns out, it was. 'A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson's computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson's accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.'"

7 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Better security might help by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A good example why reporters (and others) need to care about IT security.

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    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Better security might help by masdog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not sure better security would help in this case. It's not like the government has compromised the major OS vendors/projects. In fact, I think there's no such agency dedicated to that task.

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      My Sysadmin Blog
    2. Re:Better security might help by gweihir · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While it is known that MS has given vulnerabilities to the NSA before patching them, it is highly doubtful the same is going on with Linux or the free BSDs. The risk of being discovered would just be too big.

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      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Welcome to the Botnet by checkitout · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Occam's razor would suggest that she got pwned by a drive-by exploit on some site she visits. In the same way anyone else might. She just happened to be of some level of importance.

  3. Re:Oddly specific denial by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When you have an Attorney General who will, under oath in front of Congress, commit perjury, why are any of their other statements considered credible?

    Not posting anonymously because the DOJ and NSA are tracking us either way.

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    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  4. Re:Yawn... by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spy on basically everyone on the planet, no one bats an eye. Spy on a public person, everything is crazy now.

  5. Re:Oddly specific denial by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    well that would explain why they say that Justice Department hasn't done it.

    That is NOT what they said. Read the quote carefully. It simply says that the speaker has no knowledge of the justice dept doing it, not that they didn't do it. This is a classic example of a bureaucratic waffle. It sounds like they are actually saying something meaningful, but if you parse the sentence, it is basically vacuous.