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State-sponsored Hackers Targeting Prominent Journalists, Google Warns (politico.com)
State-sponsored hackers are attempting to steal email passwords of a number of prominent journalists, Google has warned. The hackers are suspected to be Russians, reports POLITICO. Some of the journalists who have received such warnings from Google as recent as two-to-three weeks ago include Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, Julia Ioffe, who recently started at The Atlantic, Ezra Klein of Vox, and CNN's Brian Stelter. From the report: "The fact that all this started right after the election suggests to me that journalists are the next wave to be targeted by state-sponsored hackers in the way that Democrats were during it," said one journalist who got the warning. "I worry that the outcome is going to be the same: Someone, somewhere, is going to get hacked, and then the contents of their Gmail will be weaponized against them -- and by extension all media."
Wow, I wish I had Russian genetics. They seem to be able to do all the really big scary computer stuff that us non-russians are not capable of doing. I am not trying to denegrate Russians here, but the media is so incredibly naive. It is as if putting "Russian" in front of it, no matter the evidence, turns the so called hack into something mysterious, huge, and scary.
Most of the so called hacks, are simply social engineering and phishing scams. The Podesta thing could have been done by any old graphic designer that just made a nice looking "official" password reset email. I am really quite disappointed at what passes for a hack these days. In fact, if a Russian spat on someones shoe, the headline would probably be "Russians hack shoes".
Yes, Russia does have many brilliant developers. But they also are a historic safe haven for VPN services. Of course most attacks "originate" from such areas. Anybody with half a brain knows you don't do something nefarious online without redirecting your trail through territories that are not friendly to your home's prosecutors.
I think the media owes it to every self respecting programmer to start narrowing the definition of "hack". Did they use a man in the middle to fraudulently update a software package? That might be a hack... Did they cause the buffer to overflow in some C program, exposing information contained in parts of the memory? Ok, that is a hack too. I can think of lots of scenarios where hacks could take place.
But... if they simply sent an email asking someone to put in their existing password and tricked some tech-illiterate into doing something stupid, that is not a hack.
You're really just a tool.