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Confirmed: CBS News Reporter's Computer Compromised
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.'"
A good example why reporters (and others) need to care about IT security.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why is the justice department denial so specific:
To our knowledge, the Justice Department has never compromised Ms. Attkisson’s computers, or otherwise sought any information from or concerning any telephone, computer, or other media device she may own or use.
It sounds like a carefully worded statement that leaves open the possibility that they planted an old fashioned bug to listen to her in her home, or a GPS tracker on her car, or secretly searched her house, or one of the other many ways they can secretly keep someone under surveillance.
Why not a simple "We have never had Ms Attkisson under any surveillance or covertly obtained any information about her"?
Besides, if she used a Verizon Business cell phone, or if the same cell phone meta-data order that was leaked to the press was given to all of the carriers, then the government *did* seek information concerning telephones used by her.
Looks like someone didn't renew their Norton Anti-Virus subscription. They warned you!
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.
I love how they fail to mention what data was searched. Im sure that would provide alot of information as to who was doing the searching.
Spy on basically everyone on the planet, no one bats an eye. Spy on a public person, everything is crazy now.
The best thing to do if you want to change people's minds is to find facts and present them reasonably, politely, logically, in a factual manner, and possibly with a reference link. Flames and insults seldom change peoples minds, and rarely snark, but facts sometimes do. Note that I wrote "sometimes." And it is often a long process. Being in the minority on Slashdot often means having to ignore insult, bad moderation, harassment, trolls, the occasional doppelganger trying to discredit you, silly arguments against you being highly moderated while you get mod bombed, the occasional death threat or wish for your injury, and all manner of other nonsense. And you have to live with the fact that vehement statements that are uninformed, silly, completely wrong, and often inflammatory, will be highly moderated as long as they are from the proper politically correct perspective. There are people from all around the world that post here with all manner of ideas, including: liberals, socialists, progressives, libertarians, conservatives, communists, Nazis, Islamists, Christians, atheists, the occasional Jedi, programmers, sys admins, engineers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, students, mathematicians, physicists, and I'm going to stop because the full list is so long, seemingly unbounded. It can be frustrating, but try to be salt, if you care to.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Think back to the 1960s. Many of the complaints the "radicals" had were in fact legitimate. The Vietnam war was poorly managed and ultimately a colossal waste of lives and resources. Agent Orange really was a horrible toxin, causing permanent injuries. Drafting people to send them to a pointless war really was an evil act (and the draft dodgers were making a decision that in retrospect was a smart one)
Marijuana really was a drug with low potential for harm, black people really were being oppressed, and nudism and free love must have been pretty fun.
The point is, what did mainstream culture have to say then? What did all those protests do to affect the decisions made by The Man? Fuck-all, that's what. Doesn't seem any different now.