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Google Sends State-Sponsored Hack Warnings To Journalists and Professors (ibtimes.co.uk)
An anonymous reader shares an IBTimes report: Numerous journalists and professors are taking to social media to report that they have received an alarming message regarding state-sponsored hacking when accessing their Gmail or other sites that use their Google account. Journalists who received the warning include Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, Politico's Julia Ioffe, GQ's special correspondent Keith Olbermann, Vox's Ezra Klein, Yahoo News' Garance Franke-Ruta, and one of President Barack Obama's former speechwriters, Jon Lovett. The warning says, "Google may have detected government-backed attackers trying to steal your password." These warnings are being sent by Google since 2012 but Twitter has erupted with a flurry of people in the media and academic community receiving this in the past 24 hours.
So Google actually knows who is paying for the attacks? How do they know this for sure? Maybe they should share this extremely important information with the public, instead of with Liberal journalists? And what does Russia care about Paul Krugman? He's the idiot that predicted the stock market would tank and never recover after Trump was elected. There's nothing of strategic national value in his email account. Hackers from foreign nations want nuclear codes, bank info, corporate secrets, and technical plans. They don't need propaganda from the MSM.
Their names all sound Jewish. I wonder if this means something.
Now go fuck yourselves
"Numerous journalists and professors are taking to social media"
No they are posting to social networks!
or subscribe online if you can't get out of Mommy's basement any more.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Really? Why? Do you think Google or Facebook are any more credible than Exxon or Monsanto? These are big corporations; they will say whatever furthers their agenda. As long as it's legal, that's their right, but that doesn't mean that you need to turn into a gullible fool.
There is almost no cost associated with them for blaming "state-sponsored actors" wrongly: it's not a claim that they can be held legally responsible for, there is no possibility of libel charges, and it doesn't even hurt them in terms of public opinion or trust. At most they'll look a bit overly cautious.
But there is a lot of benefit associated with making such a claim regardless of evidence: both companies are heavily in bed with the Democrats, and this kind of notice ingratiates them to the Democratic party establishment.
People in sensitive positions should use randomly generated passwords such as Diceware.com suggests. Anything less secure is irresponsible.
I can't imagine why anybody would bother to hack Krugman's or Olbermann's accounts. It's not like you could expose them to be Democratic party hacks, we already know that they are. And if they actually knew much about politics or economics or had significant insider information, they wouldn't be constantly wrong. Trump and the Republicans don't consider these "liberals" adversaries, they consider them a gift from heaven: they couldn't hope for better caricatures of the Democrats and progressives.
After hacking the DNC and hacking voting machines to win Putin buddy Trump the election, they are now moving against the people who might have the interest or power to report on the background on what is happening in the USA in these very troubled times.
I guess they are trying to dig up dirt to blackmail people.
Don't underestimate the power of Russian Intelligence Services. Numerous reports cite Russian hackers are the best in the world and their very president is a former KGB agent.
This sounds like something based on a heuristic on Google's side, so they may have pushed a bad binary yesterday and left for the holiday. Programmers love to pull that garbage.
Meanwhile everyone should be getting U2F tokens regardless. They are excellent.
Most of the time, they could care less about the journalists. They are already an open book.
They want their sources of information, and methods of receiving and verifying said information.
2 reasons:
1) Stop leaks
2) Inject incorrect information into the stream, having it republished as authoritative.
This may not be Russia. The people most likely to benefit from this are the various US/UK TLAs.
"Besides the NSA, CIA, FBI, and confederate agent operatives embedded in same for both major parties, that is."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
no need to inform them.
"These warnings are being sent by Google since 2012 . . . "
No, it should be:
These warnings have been being sent by Google since 2012 . . .
Please learn to write or don't call yourself a writer.
The election showed that blaming "super-advanced" Russia (which by the way in reality does not produce a single PC or a smartphone) for hacking about everyone and everything does not work. People do not believe it. Move on, think of something else.
Besides, I do not get how Trump could be beneficial for Russia. Trump is smart, while the USA and RF remain natural competitors.
to make these prominent writers, who people naturally listen to and whose words are granted as truth, start writing about how Russia is attacking the free world, undermining security for billions of people etc. etc.
Those email addresses could have been scraped off any hack. If I got something like that I would look at the header. It's like "You're in danger of being hacked! Quick, click here!"
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
1. Two factor authentication, ALWAYS
2. People should stop using email for anything sensitive that you don't want read by your worst enemy. Use some P2P encrypted chat program or something. One would think Americans, at least, could see the value in something other than damned emails for sensitive communication.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?