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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.
I will not believe this is true until Trump says it isn't a big deal.
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.
Nobody can't be sure about the intentions of the fur hat hackers.
Some organizations started to inject fake phishing emails into their communication systems. All employees who clicked get their heads bashed with a rock.
One laptop not on the network had malware.
Fuck the washington post.
http://boingboing.net/2016/12/31/no-russia-didnt-hack-vermon.html
Journalists wonder why people don't trust them, and this story is a good example. Turns out the crap was found on one laptop in the company's possession, which was not connected to their power grid.
(And when will companies/CIOs stop buying computers that contain so many exploitable vulnerabilities? I guess the answer is "Not until there's financial and legal consequence for their failure.")
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.
Somebody should have warned us that something like this was possible.
I mean, clearly if it had been known this was even a possibility, management would have taken effective action to prevent it.
Because people are rational beings who make logical decisions. I learned that in Economics class and if that's not true then the very principles our society is founded upon would be nothing more than wishful thinking.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I receive almost daily scam emails asking me to click on a link. Sometimes it is as if from FedEx, sometimes as if from a bank, etc. Could it be stopped too?
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/
NSA has failed us again. Instead protecting America, they are wasting their and our time by mass collecting data on citizens. Instead of making sure exploits are fixed to keep our systems secure, they hold onto them so they can use them against us and other countries.
If am I to believe this Russian hacking our systems like the Government is pushing, then the blame goes straight on the NSA and those who backed them.
Be seeing you...
I work for an information security company. All of us should really know better, and yet we do occasionally click the phish bait sent out by corporate security. After being caught once, we start being more careful - at least for six months to a year. I think it's a good idea. Corpsec doesn't need to really scold us or anything, just informing us "you clicked on a fake email" is enough to raise our awareness.
The Washington Post has become a Joke. Another Joke: blaming Russia for our election results. We blame everybody but ourselves. Blame blame blame. Look like 12yo children.
if (usa.spies)
usa.get_leverage();
china.spies = true;
russia.spies = true;
For non-programmers, Russia, and especially China, will do this regardless of whether the US does it. In theory, it could be reduced by treating an electronic attack the same as a physical attack; China isn't going to bomb the USA. However in practice it's very difficult to know whether a cyber attack is state-sponsored or not. An attack by Russian people isn't necessarily an attack by Russia.
So what we're left with is the very difficult job of strengthening defenses. Fortunately, this has a great side-effect - systems that don't fail even when being attacked are systems that don't fail when not under attack. Secure systems are reliable systems.
Apparently, the operators of the US power grid are using cheaper-than-possible security, i.e. they were basically asking for it. Stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Trump thinks Putin is his buddy. Either that or his entire family are a bunch of Russian sleeper agents. In any event Trump thinks he's smart, but he's not -- Putin would love nothing more than to either have the U.S. in his back pocket, or destroy it -- either way he gets his wish, the resurrection of the Soviet Union and everything that implies. Putin, at best, is going to use Trump and his gullibility/greed/lust for power/whatever it is that goes through the head under that bad wig of his, and America is going to pay the price.
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).
Don't mix them up. NSA is just an intelligence agency.
A code? I suppose we should be grateful there weren't several.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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'
That didn't work for Iran's centrifuges.
Have gnu, will travel.
"... 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.
Electricity grid penentrates you!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it.
The headline is complete bullshit. Can the author not even read? The grid was not penetrated, hacked, or comprimised. No report says it was. This is totally a fabrication from the reporters.
"We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization’s grid systems."
And what can we do? Hope it doesn't degrade into WW3?
When does the movie come out?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Amazon's Jeff Bezos Explains Why He Bought The Washington Post.
In my opinion, a good indication of Jeff Bezos's management ability is any Amazon web page. Amazon web pages distract you from buying something by trying to sell other things.
I'd bet small amounts of money:
Some agency (FBI, CIA, DOE, etc) has known about it for over a year.
It was just revealed by order of outgoing administration.
Some numb-nuts had a VNC or RDP firewall rule added so he could monitor/work/help from home.
I had a sucky sig.
Hey I'm like my buddy Bill, I tasted the vodka, but I didn't swallow
With respect to the electrical grid, we deserve what we get. Our entire civilization rests on electricity. If ever there was cause for an air gap or private network, this is it. It goes beyond irresponsible to have hooked our power stations up to the Internet. It is simply moronic.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
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.
You hit the nail on the head with that one, I know about 5 people that were liberals a year ago, now cringe at the words "clinton, cnn, and dnc" And thats actually saying alot as im a true nerd and spend any time im not at work, infront of my computer.. so i dont get a whole lot of social interaction outside of work.
No pun intended but this comes as no surprise because the software being developed was outsourced to India or H1B Indians whom just aren't good software engineers. This fiasco could have been avoided if these energy companies had employed the highly skilled and qualified people in the United States. I personally have been tasked with cleaning up garbage code full of memory leaks that was churned out by WiPro.
Please go upvote this article: https://slashdot.org/submissio...
https://theintercept.com/2016/...
Russian Hackers Penetrated The US Electricity Grid
Well I sure hope for their sakes they were wearing a rubber!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Compared to how many deaths by the Russians? By the Germans? At this point, I don't think any country with any sort of history measured in centuries can claim the high ground on violent acts.
Then you follow with non-sequitur alarmist speak. How are you different than Alex Jones again?
Russian hackers could have at least bought the US electric grid dinner first before penetrating it. What is wrong with people today?
Beyond the obvious fact that you are overlooking Russia's nuclear stockpile, your analysis of US-Russian Naval warfare seems delusional at best. A larger surface fleet was never the answer to the Russians that never focused on that to begin with. It's not our super carriers that matter as much as our ASW capacity.
Like many things... it's not how big it is but how you use it.
Furthermore, our current crop of Destroyers aren't a threat to anyone. Not even Cuba.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Having biggest population of people on earth in prison does not sound like alarming to you? :)
You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.
Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems
The title of the WP article is not the Slashdot title. The title of the WP article. is "Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say". Slashdot is becoming Reddit.
I said his statements were alarmist and non-sequitur relative to the discussion. I did not say anything else on the subject of american prisons.
I think you are reading an awful lot into my statement that a larger Navy would not have prevented the Russian meddling. I don't see anything bringing us close to a MAD trigger--unless the Donald really thinks tactical nukes are OK. Also, you are being pessimistic about Cuba (once we scrape together bullet money).
You're deliberately inciting World War III by spreading this bullshit.
Watching the video "Why We Fight" explains a lot of this.
Eisenhower warned us about the Military Industrial Complex.
Now both parties are dependent upon war for a successful economy.
Notice we're still in Afghanistan.
Why?
I don't know what beef Bezos has with Russia, but this rag has really gone downhill since he bought himself a newspaper.
Yep. Any time the media starts pushing a narrative this hard, one should immediately be skeptical.
Fact is Trump made a deal with Putin. Win me the election and will sanctions. Trump will definitely lift sanctions in Russia within his first 100 days. That is why Trump is denying that Putin hacked US elections.
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
Now both parties are dependent upon war for a successful economy.
Nonsense. Peacetime military spending has never been an issue for us.
Notice we're still in Afghanistan.
Because the Taliban were stronger than the "moderate" forces in Afghan society, and still are. We can't fix Afghanistan without resorting to draconian cultural imperialism (*real* cultural imperialism, not the SJW buzzword); we can only play for time and hope it somehow fixes itself.
This is largely due to the influence of conservative Islam and Islamism, but there are also some complex intersecting issues with the war on drugs, warlordism and interactions with Pakistan, itself an extremely fucked-up country with fucked-up rulers whom we prop up because we don't want nukes to fall into the hands of people who would actually use them.
Native americans were stone age, pre agriculture. N and S america just can't support 40 million people at stone age technology. By reference estimates for Europe's population at similar technology was about 100k.
Wherever you got the 40 million number, treat them as a disinformation source.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
" Peacetime military spending has never been an issue for us."
That's a strawman. When's the last time the US was at peace for longer than a presidential term (4 years)?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yep.
Going down hill like a warp-drive assisted sledder.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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
Oh yes, Somebody made deals with Putin, but you're thinking of the wrong guy.
sig: sauer
Malware isn't hacking. Malware unlocks the doors to hacking by creating opportunity. It exploits security holes wherever it can find them, then once a security hole is established THEN when needed, it can be used for hacking purposes.
If hacking was an army, malware would be the scout.
are not normally connected to the internet. Utilities have administrative networks that certainly are though.
Ideally those two networks don't ever touch each other, in practice though there are often some paths from one to the other, even if it is only sneakernet (Stuxnet apparently got onto the Iran nuclear program SCADA system via a USB drive used for transferring updates).
So yes, the hackers probably never got to exploit any such path before they were discovered, but that is almost certainly what they were looking for. It is still a hostile act.
That's not what she said.
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.
That's about the most lame "retraction" I've seen to a fake news story. The entire central premise has been destroyed, but 98% of the article remains unchanged. That's not a retraction. Also of note:
Original Slashdot headline:
Russian Hackers Penetrated The US Electricity Grid, Say Officials (washingtonpost.com)
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday December 31, 2016 @10:34AM from the power-play dept.
blah, blah, fake story
Conveniently, now Slashdot now doesn't have that lingering headline showing they fell for this idiocy as well. I thought I'd just post it for posterity here.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
except Israel's. Not saying that's a reason to throw 'em under a bus, but it's also no reason to support their interests over anybody else's.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
is what you just did. Seriously, the shit we did in Central America is terrifying. We didn't invade Iraq for peace love and kittens. We wanted oil. Period. As for Iran, they were on their way to a secular government until we meddled and put those crazy religious bastards in power. The rest of the world hates us because we've actively campaigned against the advancement of human civilization. Electing Trump is just the latest in a long line of it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
America is an Empire. We extract tribute through monetary policy and cheap goods made with borderline slave labor. When you go to the grocery store and Bananas are .49 cents/lb congratulations, you've just benefited from our Empire. When you buy your wife a blood diamond (or your husband gives you one), congratulations, you've just benefited from our Empire.
If they're gonna share the "load" they'll share the spoils too. Get ready to give up your personal automobile. With gas at $5/liter you won't be able to afford it
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How dare you actually expect Editor David to do a competent job? That's not in the job definition of a Slashdot editor. You need to lower your expectations immediately. You should expect and accept duplicate posts, grammatical errors and sentences that just don't make any sense, incomplete thoughts, and completely irrelevant and non-technical posts on fluff piece "celebrity news" articles.
Don't pick on Editor David. He had no qualifications to actually edit Slashdot and is doing as good of a job as he feels like doing without any supervision or guidance.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"That's why he's taking office in 20 days"
Yup, Trump won the election but lost the popular vote, hence he lost too, just not the election.
That said, I'm sorry for my comment. It was my sad attempt at trolling and it took nearly 24hrs to get a response and have my comment down voted, and if it wasn't for the update I'd probably never have gotten any attention.
You write as eloquently as I expect you are capable of writing.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
...to Slashdot's ear.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Our forces split the Shia, Kurd, and Sunni into separate militias and armed each of them. I won't use the word 'deliberately' because it's irrelevant. Whatever influence you think we're having in the world, you're wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...with an altered headline and act like they never fucked up in the first place? Fake news reporting fake news.
Given the intelligence of the typical Washington Pest reporter, this really shouldn't be a surprise:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
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.
http://cybersquirrel1.com/
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Not sure where you get your information, but the Kurds split themselves off and were mostly autonomous long before Iraq part 2, and we attempted to unite all three in a federation. We would have probably done better to split them up and sent them to separate corners, as draconian and disruptive as that would've been, but the fact is we did the opposite of what you're saying. We didn't split up anything. They split themselves up. You're tragically misinformed if you think this conflict dates back to only 2003.
I was against Iraq from the start, but mindless self-flagellation (assuming you're American) doesn't accomplish much except disqualifying yourself from the conversation at the grown-up table, and when large sections of the left do this it ends up empowering the reactionary warhawk right.
When's the last time the US was at peace for longer than a presidential term (4 years)?
The claim was about economics, not how long we've gone without military action. My response is that we spend on our military like mad even in peacetime, so this makes little sense.
Prior to September 11, our R&D, logistical investments, and other standing-army costs far outstripped our operational expenses in the minor conflicts we were involved in. The last quarter of the twentieth century did not feature any major wars for us, yet we mysteriously managed to avoid slipping into an economic depression.
That's a strawman.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
"The claim was about economics, not how long we've gone without military action."
Fuck you and your attempt at revisionist arguments. The GP exactly said "Peacetime military spending has never been an issue for us."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Now both parties are dependent upon war for a successful economy.
This is bullshit. That's my point. Argue about the lobbyists and warhawks all you want, but war is not and has not been propping up our economy.
Were you thinking your response contradicted, rather than amplified, the statement you were responding to?
Yes. Let me remind you what that argument was:
Now both parties are dependent upon war for a successful economy.
It's a moronic one for multiple reasons, but as an obvious point there's never been a strong effort (to my knowledge) to downsize the military even in times of peace, and spending during peacetime thus remains as strong as ever, so even if one were to concede the fairly outlandish claim that military spending were vital to the success of our economy, it by no means follows that war is.
Now let's see how long it takes for some AC to babble some bullshit about the petrodollar.
The damage had been done. The retraction will get FAR less views than the original and the "Russia == Evil" neurons will be reinforced.
The OP's point was solid, yours makes no sense.
Nuclear "stockpiles" are totally useless in any foreign policy other than reduction, as both countries can annihilate each other regardless of who struck first.
Similarly, naval warfare analysis is also useless. See above, if it gets to the point of taking out carrier fleets the world is already completely fucked.
And, you clearly have no idea about the capability of US destroyers. The whole term "destroyer" has almost nothing to do with the ships in WW2. The current ships of that class carry enough missiles to effectively take out a small coastal city.
You mean it should have been Russian Hackers Failed to Penetrate The US Electricity Grid, Say Officials? No retraction needed then and the scarefactor is still good.
Why can't you guys (=people with a political agenda in every post) not even get the simplest distinctions right? This wasn't a fake news story.
false/wrong news != erroneous/incorrect news != fake news
The first to are created with the intention of writing news and informing readers but something goes wrong - the source turns out to be incorrect, withdraws previous statements or the fact checking was wrong. Journalists make mistakes like every other human being. Fake news is something completely different, it's not news at all and not intended as such, just like a fake policeman isn't a policeman and never intended to be one. The writer of fake news has evil intentions and you cannot trust this person at all, just like you wouldn't trust a fake policeman.
If you can't see the difference between these fake news and journalistic mistakes, then you're bound to get serious problems with perceiving reality as it is.
"I have no idea""
We can agree on that.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I understand the difference but still contend this was an instance of fake news. I believe that WaPo's intent *was* to deceive in this case.
yeah that was a bad troll. i mean. we werent playing a game where popular vote matters, thats like saying the winning world series team lost too, because the losing team actually had more runs (or hits, or fans in the stands or any other irrelevant point that has nothing to do with the actual rules)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Just more crap from the crap factory. And they call alternative media "fake news."
Did anyone bother to notice that this entire thread is based on an inaccurate assertion? The story was NOT retracted. It was CORRECTED - meaning that a piece of inaccurate information in the original story (about the laptop being connected to the ICS/SCADA system) was rewritten to clarify that the computer was not connected to that part of Burlington Electric's network. A retraction would mean WAPO removed the story from its website and disavowed its contents. No such thing happened. In fact, you can still read the story using the link provided in the Slashdot post - a sure sign that it HASN'T BEEN RETRACTED!!! Slashdot should probably RETRACT the incorrect story about the Washington Post's (non-existent) retraction.
Perhaps while WaPo is discussing a "possible" intrusion into the US electrical grid, they should mention a confirmed penetration of the Belgian national telephone company Belgacom (now called Proximus) by the NSA and GCHQ in 2012. The code that was found on Belgacom's network had some commonality with the StuxNet virus and was introduced in order to listen on on Europe-wide GSM communication. http://www.infosecurity-magazi...
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.
Sure. Who's surprised that the WSJ editorial team has double standards? Hardly shocking - in fact it's how newspapers everywhere have always operated. It's pretty much how language has always operated, particularly if you accept some of the less naively instrumental theories of language like Toulmin's or Davidson's.
And I think Trump's a loathesome narcissist, bully, and con man.
But as far as I'm aware, there's no compelling, or even mildly persuasive, evidence that he "made a deal with Putin" to "win ... the election". For that matter, I don't think Putin was capable of delivering the election, or that Trump needed his support. Trump won because he carried the states everyone expected him to carry; he won Florida[1]; and he won the "defector" states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan[2], and Wisconsin.
Why he won all those also seems pretty clear: populist demogoguery that appealed to antiestablishmentarianism, contrarianism, xenophobia, and general disconnection; a smaller but vocal cadre of middlebrow right-wingers who either believed his vague promises of business liberalization and social conservativism or anticipated that he'd delegate everything to right-winger lieutenants;[3] an even smaller bunch of Powers That Be who bet that he'd reward them;[4] some demographic factors; and gerrymandering, though that's an easy target that attracts more blame than it deserves (and blaming it doesn't do much good anyway).
Is Trump's win good for Putin? Very likely yes, though to be honest Putin would likely have been pretty pleased with a Clinton win as well, since continuing the current tensions would have served to keep his popularity up. Putin's a deft strongman and the Kremlin is adaptable. Really, sowing FUD about the election is probably all Russia wanted, since it distracts from more important issues and rallies nationalism at home. And they got that - in spades.
The OP's claim that Putin delivered the election to Trump just plays into Putin's hand. Focusing on things we do have evidence of would be much more productive.
[1]The Florida results seem to me pretty likely to be an accurate reflection of the actual popular vote, at least in terms of the overall winner. It wasn't another 2000.
[2]It's really not clear that he actually won Michigan, where the difference in the official count was well within the margin of error and the recount was halted early; but it makes no difference to the overall election. Trump still wins without Michigan's votes.
[3]That bet appears to be pretty safe, judging from Trump's cabinet nominations and the abundant evidence that he doesn't care to do the day job, whatever his day job supposedly is at the moment. If it's not something splashy that feeds his narcissism, he's not interested.
[4]Goldman Sachs executives, for example. Or the folks running Carrier, who just got a big reward from that tool Mike Pence for only eliminating many of the jobs at their Indiana facilities.
And here we have another set of Slashdot posts that are mostly from paid Russian flamebaiters. Great English, BTW, comrades.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Time-line:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Israel gave up Gaza, and got rocket attacks over Sderot. Reason that hasn't stopped is that the Hamas charter calls for the extermination of Jews, taking a verse right out of the Hadiths
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.
It's a fucking newspaper, a bunch of journalists who try to get good stories and where looking for a followup story. The editor in chief was sloppy on this one, that's all. Do I now need to educate you about what "political propaganda" is? Are you really that uneducated or just trolling? Do you really want to pretend you have never seen real propaganda? Here is propaganda and that is propaganda. When a reputable journal like the Washington Post makes a mistake and they immediately correct themselves, that does not even remotely qualify as propaganda for reasons that should be completely obvious to anyone with half a brain . (And, of course, "political propaganda" is redundant. Propaganda is political by definition.)
Get a life!
Read some history about Russian propaganda; Putin is GOOD at this; it's a high-level art in Russia. Don't believe me, Comrade? Here, let this guy deconstruct it for you! http://smallwarsjournal.com/jr...
If you're going to truncating a quote to make a point about my supposed ignorance, you should try not to choose a line that is about how shitty your communication and/or comprehension skills are, Mr. I-don't-know-what-a-strawman-is.
Nah, that would be like saying Trump lost too because he lost some debate with Hillary. Losing the popular vote by over 2 800 000 votes is clearly losing the popular vote.
On top of that, the Washington Post is now saying that the intrusion was "not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility" -- either it wasn't the Russians, or they didn't mean to infect that utility.
Can we all now agree the original story was the kind of Fake News the Washington Post and other establishment media outlets have been warning us about?
Let's face it - Russian hackers deleted the article from Washington Post and now make us feel like Obama is [what he most certainly isn't].
By the way, I think that Russian hackers penetrated my cell phone. There is no other explanation why I didn't hear the alarm this morning. Somebody, stop Putin now!
The WaPo has now completely retracted the story , https://www.washingtonpost.com...
So in principle they acted correctly here. They adhered to their own rulebook. Effectively however they contributed to the hysteria and that's not acknowledged. If you look at it statistically, take 10 stories like that, some pass without complaints, some get partial retractions, some are fully retracted after the fact when the damage is done, but the net effect is a lot of scaremongering even if a paper tries to follow its own rules.
....but that doesnt matter in the slightest.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
he uses facts, whereas Jones does a line of LSD and coke and then turns on his microphone shouting out whatever pops into what passed for his mind.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"....but that doesnt matter in the slightest....."
Of course it matters, it is a fact, and it's a large margin at that. *You* can still choose how or if it matters to you, but that won't change the fact that Trump won the election and lost the popular vote.
The article I r ead was highly nuanced. It didn't say not to call a lie when its clearly a lie, but its more likely that because much of what Trump may say is not in fact intended to be a lie, that saying its a lie is hyperbolic. Better to expose the inaccuracy of something said, rather than attack the messenger.
At least that's what I took from it.
"I don't do nuance" - George W. Bush, and neither does a lot of the rightwing when they're hating on Clinton & Obama. I think the mainstream left is not so partisan but I could be wrong.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body