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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.
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?
They bump into the agents coming in and out of the data rooms.
It's all about motivation. Every time they hack a reporter they get a ration coupon for a bottle of vodka.
It's more reasonable than you think.
Do you think that Google has a completely ignorant security team? That they don't have access to internal experts in global routing and traffic analysis? They wouldn't have an internal databases of known hacking sources, methodologies and heuristics and means of tracking command and control?
They may not have a signed invoice for the person paying for the attacks, but they likely can make really, really informed estimates.
Krugman's value isn't the accuracy of his economic predictions, its his public status as the economist to the liberal elite. He's a major opinion leader whose academic status gives him significant public credibility. And they may not even care about that primarily, what if you hacked his account and found evidence of collusion with Democratic politicians? Even if it wasn't active political collision but only non-partisan advice being solicited and given, how hard would that be to turn into click-bait propaganda?
Even if access only gave you the ability to predict his columns, it may be enough evidence to create timely counter-propaganda via a competing analysis, discrediting his sources or other means. This could be used against the Democrats generally or against candidates specifically to influence internal debate or power struggles inside a party.
No they are posting to social networks!
You mean web-based bulletin board systems?
"His name was James Damore."
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.
Have you not noticed that ever since Trump won the election, the hacks stopped being from "Russia" are started being "State-sponsored" and from a "Nation-state" ?
There is one nation-state with the most incentive to influence our elections and hack its "prominent" people, and it isnt Russia. Its America.
"His name was James Damore."
Most likely this is a large scale attack on thousands of e-mail accounts and there is some sort of threshold where Google no longer considers it likely that it was an individual person. However as we've seen with the DynDNS attacks, it doesn't take much to get major infrastructure on it's knees.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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.
Maybe the purported state-sponsored hackers are not so much interested in what the likes of Krugman or Olbermann write, but in what the people they are corresponding with are writing?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"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.
"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.
As I was saying "[if they had] significant insider information, they wouldn't be constantly wrong".
What have Krugman or Olbermann ever written that suggests that Podesta, Clinton, or anybody else has shared anything more substantial than vegan cookie recipes with these guys?
Don't worry. It doesn't matter, when you have the CEO of a company -- in this case reddit turning around and changing posts because he threw a hissy fit. I'm now waiting for the same to happen with Facebook. Twitter is already burning themselves out, so no need to worry on that front.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
New World order based out of Kazakhstan for sure. It's a very nice.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
FWIW, I'm not even sure I believe that "state sponsored" is even meaningful anymore. It implies a sense of sanctioning, cohesion and coordination involving government political leadership and sanctioned organizational implementation.
I think we have something closer to a free for all where those with the abilities and resources are taking their own initiative and even if they are operating under the cover of legitimate authority are executing self-authorized and perhaps even personal agendas. I won't even exclude independent, non-governmental actors seeking outcomes not aligned with any coherent government policy
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.
Give him a chance to be inaugurated and state his plans, the magic 8-ball in Trump's head is still settling.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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?
Recall how fast the "news" about the BEAR methods spread in the media by security contractors.
Now that other a lot of other nations or groups seen in networks, everything is much more secret.
Strange how some methods get to the media so quickly yet security holds so well when its other nations or groups...
So what other nations, groups, people have been traversing some US networks for a while and why cant contractors talk about methods so quickly?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There is a lot of evidence that it is encouraged at the very least by the Russian government even if it not directly controlled by the Kremlin. There are a lot of Putin followers hoping to make their leader happy by hacking his enemies. Whether it be Estonia, Ukraine, or America, there's a pro-Putin hacking community that springs into action to defend Putin's stances. And they're not just a dictator oriented variant of Anonymous doing DDoS attacks, some of them are quite skilled.
The snag is proving a direct connection. After all we had actual Russian soldiers in good standing invading Ukraine, but apparently they were technically on vacation according to Putin, never mind that they were doing exactly the actions that he wished happened ("who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"), so there was never "proof" even though Crimea ended up being stolen. It is very likely that something similar is happening in cyberspace even if Putin is not giving direct orders.