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Washington Post Retracts Story About Russian Hackers Penetrating US Electricity Grid (washingtonpost.com)
Those anonymous U.S. officials who reported Russian hacking code had been found "within the system" of a Vermont power utility must've been surprised to learn the code was on a laptop that wasn't actually connected to the grid. The Washington Post has updated their original story, which now reports that "authorities" say there's no indication that Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. electric grid.
The Post's newly-edited version now appears below (with their original and now-deleted text preseved inside brackets). A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials. While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation's electrical grid... [Was "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."]
American officials, including one senior administration official, said they are not yet sure what the intentions of the Russians might have been. The incursion [was "penetration"] may have been designed to disrupt the utility's operations or as a test by the Russians to see whether they could penetrate a portion of the grid... According to the report by the FBI and DHS, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords.
The Vermont utility does report that they'd "detected suspicious Internet traffic" on the laptop, but they believe subsequent news coverage got the story wrong. "It's unfortunate that an official or officials improperly shared inaccurate information with one media outlet, leading to multiple inaccurate reports around the country."
The Post's newly-edited version now appears below (with their original and now-deleted text preseved inside brackets). A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials. While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation's electrical grid... [Was "the penetration of the nation's electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability."]
American officials, including one senior administration official, said they are not yet sure what the intentions of the Russians might have been. The incursion [was "penetration"] may have been designed to disrupt the utility's operations or as a test by the Russians to see whether they could penetrate a portion of the grid... According to the report by the FBI and DHS, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords.
The Vermont utility does report that they'd "detected suspicious Internet traffic" on the laptop, but they believe subsequent news coverage got the story wrong. "It's unfortunate that an official or officials improperly shared inaccurate information with one media outlet, leading to multiple inaccurate reports around the country."
Here we go again. This reminds me of a boy, a boy who loved to cry wolf.
You can't use your NSA to break in, spy, and sabotage industries, utilities, and governments, around the world. If you conduct malicious and damaging operations like you have for decades, expect that the world will respond.
Why is infrastructure on the public Internet ? It is not like the internet existed when most of the US electric grid was 'designed' and built. It worked quite well for 70 or so years without the internet. And I will say I have experienced more blackouts over the past 10 years than I did in total before 1990.
1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back
"Gov. Romney, I'm glad you recognize al-Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical group facing America, you said Russia — not al-Qaeda. And the 1980's are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back — because the Cold War has been over for 20 years.
So, which is it?
Security experts have been warning of possible foreign hacking for decades. But why this sudden spate of "Russia hacked X" stories now? Why not back when our Secretary of State was running an illegal, private, unsecured email server through which she transmitted classified information?
Simple: The Washington Post wanted Hillary to win the Presidential election, and reminding people how her action made it easier for Russian hackers to gain access to classified information wouldn't have helped her. But publishing it now helps support the false narrative that the Russians were behind the DNC leaks, not disgruntled Democratic Party staffers, and thus supposedly harms President-elect Donald Trump, whom the Washington Post and it's employees almost universally loath. That's the entire reason the story is being written and published now.
Further reading here and here.
What do you think the under/over is for MSM "Russian Hacking" stories between now and January 20?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I don't think they're an arm of the government, they're just creating stories that will sell/get clicks. Clever government officials have figured out how to release information that will cause the story they want out to be the one written.
Russia is still not an existential threat to anyone but her former client states. This isn't a problem that Romney's larger Navy would have solved (and I'm surprised that Russian nationals and domestic rightists are so offended by this throwaway zinger 4 years later). But in retrospect, Obama underestimated Russia's guile. Rather than do catastrophic harm to the United States, Russia (like Al Queda) has done minor harm that led the United States do major harm to itself (the Iraq war, Trump).
Internal propaganda for the Democrats. Trying to prevent cynicism from setting in, but only working for the very dumbest most indoctrinated of them.
Seriously this was one laptop with some malware, found by a routine virus scan. It's the Washington Post, no credibility left except with the poor snowflakes that need to be constantly fed a reassuring yet terrifying narrative.
The worst thing about these kinds of efforts, it leaves the Democrats with their army of chanting morons, but those with two working brain cells still fall away. It will serve as its own punishment.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"... the US's general posture in the world is wildly preferable..."
The U.S. government has many secret and semi-secret agencies. No one, literally no one, knows all of them, or which are badly managed. As we've seen, the secret and semi-secret U.S. government agencies often hire outside consulting companies that often have areas of sloppy management.
The U.S. government is, by some measures, such as money spent, the most violent in the world.
The U.S. government has killed, or caused the death of, an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war.
War is extremely profitable for some corporations. See the book, House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war that was profitable for them.
The U.S. has the largest percentage of its citizens in prison, of any country, in any century. The prison system is hugely profitable for prison corporations. Two of the many articles:
ACLU: With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has 25% of the world's prison population.
ThinkProgress: The United States Has The Largest Prison Population In The World -- And It's Growing.
CNN ceased being a credible news organization after the wikileaks revolutions
Your CNN link consistently describes the infection as affecting only a single laptop that was not connected to the systems that control the electric grid. Did CNN change the story since you linked to it?
Fact is Trump made a deal with Putin. Win me the election and will sanctions.
No, that's not a fact. It's pure conjecture.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Fact is Trump made a deal with Putin. Win me the election and will sanctions.
No, that's not a fact. It's pure conjecture.
Don't we now live in a post-fact world? WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker says that stories will *not* call Trump a liar as this is "too partisan" but will merely investigate his claims and post those stories separately for readers to make up their own minds.
However, the WSJ has had no qualms in labeling Edward Snowden a liar in several stories.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Hey Editor David, instead of covering up your ignorant original posting of this article by changing the headline with no explanation, how about just posting a new article. Now people are confused at comments below pointing out the erroneous headline which should have never been put here to begin with if you'd just tried a little to validate it.
If you were out to cripple the US electric grid, would you really start with an office computer in small municipal power company (fewer than 20000 customers) in the middle of nowhere?
Why not? You have to start somewhere, and the best place to start is often where people assume is not a good place to start. When Israeli and US intelligence decided to take down Iran's air-gapped uranium centrifuges, they started with the least likely entry point imaginable: they infected the whole damned world, hoping that eventually Stuxnet would get to a machine used to program the PLCs in Iran's centrifuge controllers. And it worked.
In comparison office machines in a minor utility are practically a surgical strike on US electricity infrastructure. Or possibly the start of one.
The path to success in attacking a hard target is full of dead ends. But that wouldn't deter a national intelligence agency. This was a case of sloppy reporting -- jumping to conclusions. But if the malicious code was put on an electric utility machine by Russian intelligence you have to assume that the grid is at least one of their ultimate targets. Intelligence agencies are willing to spend years infiltrating and undermining organizations if the payoff is large enough.
So while this was not the hair-on-fire situation it was portrayed as, it's not a "meh" situation either. This is something people should take seriously.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When will the Government start shutting down Fake News sites like the Washington Post?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You're not. It's become so blatantly Republican/Russian (Republissian?) that I come to this site to see what the Trump-camp talking points are for any given situation.
Just like leftist media, you are attempting to slander people because you can't win the argument. Democrats ran a horrible candidate, much worse than the Republican. Russia did not make the Democratic party push Hillary into the mix, behave questionably (at best) even with their own party members, to prop her up as the candidate. The Democratic party did this all on their own, and it failed. Pick a better candidate, a better platform, and try again next election.
Republicans, even Trump, is not for Russia, and your conflation makes you just as bad as CNN or any other crap media outlet spreading BS because their "chosen" candidate lost. Republicans like America, and just like Democrats of a couple decades ago, push for Americanism. The ideology being pushed by Trump matches much of Kennedy and other Democrats and Republicans. Peace through Strength is not a Trump thing. Negotiating with countries we are not necessarily friendly with is also not a Trump thing (Look at President Obama for pity sake). Populism and Nationalism are centuries old ideologies.
Now, as to why so many people here are now "Republican", at least in leanings, has much to do with age. The older people get, the more they tend to be conservative in their political views. The Democratic candidate, and the media handling of her, probably accelerated countless people into the Republican camp. That, and the fear most Republicans have of posting in public has been largely diminshed.
It's really a shame that instead of having dialogue and being accountable, the Democratic party and media simply slander everyone who disagrees with them. You AC, are included in that shameful act.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Fine, we can call it what it really was, which was political propaganda. How else do you explain that a single laptop getting infected with malware gets elevated to the level of national news?
And no, this wasn't a simple mistake. A simple mistake is getting a name or peripheral fact incorrect, and we can forgive that so long as corrections are made, because we're all human, and all make mistakes. Rather, the entire premise to the original story was shown to be false, but the story still remains in almost its entirety. Not a single call to Burlington Electric was made prior to publishing... the simplest, most basic fact checking you'd expect of a professional journalist or organization. Quite simply, this was journalistic malpractice. Only one of two possibilities seem likely - either the WaPo organization is simply incompetent and doesn't understand how to do proper journalism, or they rushed the story out because they had their eye on a political narrative they wanted to push, and facts be damned, this couldn't wait. This is not the first time they've been caught doing this either, when they promoted an absurd "fake news blacklist" with questionable sources a bit over a month ago.
Even some thoughtful left-leaning journalists are having a hard time swallowing these latest reports about Russian hacking, as they're all too aware of how governments are perfectly willing to lie when it suits their purpose (on both sides, mind you). All I ask is that you look at these reports through the lens of a skeptic, and ask why these stories are getting pushed to the front of the newsfeed. And what has changed so that so many people are willing to believe our three letter agencies without question, when they've been caught in lie after lie after lie these past many years? Why the change in heart when it comes to these Russian hacking reports, and subsequent stories that seem to neatly dovetail into that line?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.