US Says Russia Hacked Energy Grid, Punishes 19 for Meddling (apnews.com)

Associated Press: Pushing back harder on Russia, the Trump administration accused Moscow on Thursday of a concerted hacking operation targeting the U.S. energy grid, aviation systems and other infrastructure, and also imposed sanctions on Russians for alleged interference in the 2016 election. It was the strongest action to date against Russia by the administration, which has long been accused of being too soft on the Kremlin, and the first punishments for election meddling since President Donald Trump took office. The sanctions list included the 13 Russians indicted last month by special counsel Robert Mueller, whose Russia investigation the president has repeatedly sought to discredit. U.S. national security officials said the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies had determined that Russian intelligence and others were behind a broad range of cyberattacks beginning a year ago that have infiltrated the energy, nuclear, commercial, water, aviation and manufacturing sectors. Further reading: Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors (US-Cert); U.S. blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid, other sectors (Reuters); U.S. says Russian hackers targeted American energy grid (Politico); Trump administration finally announces Russia sanctions over election meddling (CNN); U.S. sanctions on Russia cite 2016 election interference -- but remain largely symbolic (USA Today); U.S. Sanctions Russians Charged by Mueller for Election Meddling (Bloomberg); and Trump Administration Sanctions Russians for Election Meddling and Cyberattacks (The New York Times).

Comments

Picking safe targets

[93 Escort Wagon]

Seems like they've chosen to sanction people already identified and charged by Mueller, but not anyone close to Putin.

Re:Picking safe targets

[ClickOnThis]

Seems like they've chosen to sanction people already identified and charged by Mueller, but not anyone close to Putin.

Correct, Mueller's 13 are among the 19 individuals sanctioned. Five organizations also were targeted in the sanctions.

But note that the administration is acting on an authority granted by Congress last summer, with a congressionally-mandated deadline to act by early February, a month and a half ago. Mueller's indictments occurred after that deadline passed.

And now Trump acts. To say he was reluctant is putting it mildly.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/15...

Re:Picking safe targets

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

If you believe the collusion conspiracy, those people are some of Putin's closest aides.

The Russians indicted by Mueller are allegedly the ones behind the fake social media posts, not anyone suspected of colluding with the Trump campaign. AFAIK no one believes Putin sent his "closest aides" to work with the Trump campaign but rather the opposite .

Re:Picking safe targets

[CaptainDork]

The sanctions just enacted are a response to an event that the administration said did not happen.

Mixed messages.

Putin hiding behind nuclear weapons

[Oswald McWeany]

Unfortunately with Putin you have a man who likes to hide behind his nuclear weapons sticking his tongue out breaking all the rules and niceties of international agreements and doing whatever the hell he wants knowing no-one will do anything too bad because he has nukes.

Obviously, I'm not going to say western countries are perfect, they're far from it; but Putin is dangerous because he doesn't play by the rules and he actively yearns for the good old days when Russia was subjugating many different nations and there was a cold war. Putin, to use a technical term is an immature jackass.

Re:Putin hiding behind nuclear weapons

[mrclevesque]

"Russia has far more to do with arming jihadists in Syria. Seriously, while the U.S. has been no saint in the matter, Russia has been far worse. Supplying chemical weapons is just one example."

I think Russia is supporting Bashar and the jihadists are fighting Bashar, so I can't see how Russia could be supporting jihadists. And if by chemical weapons you mean the supposed sarin incident, again why would Bashar or Russians do something so counter productive, and useless as trying to kill a couple dozen people with gaz.

Totally agree with the rest of your comment.

Re:Putin hiding behind nuclear weapons

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of nonsense.

GWB withdrew the US from the ABM treaty, following the procedure specified in the treaty to do so. He didn't "break" it.

The key violation of the INF treaty is the Russian Iskander missile. The US does not have intermediate range ballistic missile. At all. That Russia keeps complaining that the treaty does not suit them because China is not part of it (while placing their missiles in Kaliningrad, clearly where the Chinese are going to attack) is neither here nor there.

The top 3 meddlers in Syria are Iran, Russia and Turkey, all directly involved. Followed by the Gulf states giving money to various factions. The west, including the US, has largely stood by.

The Libya campaign was executed in accordance with a UN resolution that neither Russia nor China opposed, even though they had a veto.

The only point you're making that's worthy of consideration is the US invasion of Iraq.

As for Russia, how about we begin with Russia signing a treaty with Ukraine by which it guaranteed the integrity of its territory, not only not to invade it, but actually to defend it, in exchange for Ukraine abandoning its nukes, and then taking over part of it. Putin made a very clear statement that Russia's word wasn't worth wiping your ass with.

Re:Putin hiding behind nuclear weapons

[GrimSavant]

Really. Really? You think that America went out of its way to avoid ISIS in Syria? You taint the rest of your post by starting off with that, makes it hard to take you at all seriously.

America was reluctant to get involved in Syria in general, because the factions that it wanted to back, the so called "moderate rebels", were basically nonexistent as actual fighting forces on the ground, which was revealed particularly embarrassingly a couple years ago. Not because the US wanted to stay out of the way of ISIS, America only majorly got involved in the war itself at all because of ISIS and its rapid early expansion, particularly into Iraq. The only other faction in Syria that America really has anything close to a good relationship at all with is the Kurds, which itself is a very complicated relationship, given that some of the Kurdish groups are basically old school communists and the Turks, ostensible NATO allies of the US, have been waging their own war against the Kurds on the Turkey-Syria border.

The US clearly wanted Assad to lose, if for no other reason than he's allied with Russia and Iran and has been a thorn in Israel's side due to the Syrian relationship with Hezbollah. But the US spinned its wheels for so long under Obama, not even getting started about Trump, because it didn't know anyone around who it actually wanted to win that had a remote chance of doing so. The typical US allies of the region, Sunni led countries like Turkey, have been less restrained their support for Assad's enemies.

It is sort of curious how hard you are arguing for the Assad side, is it support for him in particular or is it because the Russians or Iranians are fighting on his side? Assuming for the sake of argument that he didn't use sarin gas, its hard to argue that the Syrian government hasn't engaged in plenty of other war crimes. Take your pick of what you would find acceptable from Amnesty International's 2017/2018 report if you don't believe me or think I have an unacceptable US bias, since that doesn't let the US allied side of the war off the hook.

The thing about chemical weapons in general is that they are not particularly effective as weapons of war, they are too uncontrollable and tend to go where the wind takes them, regular explosives are better for destroying military targets. Chemical weapons are weapons of terror, and their use should be viewed through that lens. See the Russian poisoning of the ex-spy in Britain with a Soviet era nerve agent in the past couple of weeks if you want an example of that. Or is that too sore of a topic, as well?

Re:Misplaced priorities

[SirSlud]

It's a pretty lousy country where you only have one person who can do one thing at a time.

Russians have been covertly meddling for decades

[mi]

USSR/Russia have been meddling with foreign politics for decades. The entire "peace" movement was financed by the evil empire, financing everything "anti-war" in the West (while themselves invading neighbors like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan).

Similarly, they also funded "Black liberation".

There is even good evidence of Senator Edward Kennedy offering future cooperation in exchange for Soviet help in getting himself elected... Certainly more evidence of (attempted) collusion, than there ever was against Trump...

But none of it was important, until Trump won the elections — and it became crucially important for the swamp to, if not impeach, keep him occupied and thus less dangerous to the crocodiles.

Re:Misplaced priorities

[Mr D from 63]

"Targeting" and "attacking" the grid and grid systems is not 'hacking' the grid. It is attempted hacking. The articles talk about targeting , not successful hacks. The headline is misleading, as intended I suppose.

Re:Russians have been covertly meddling for decade

[guacamole]

US has meddled in the elections and politics of other countries for decades, including 1996 Russian presidential elections, the Georgian politics during and after the Rose Revolution of 2003, Ukrainian politics and elections of 2003 and during and after the 2013-14 constitutional crisis. Not to mention the open aggression against the governments of Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Syria (2011 through now).

Better question

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this imply that the energy grid is on a network that could be accessed via the Internet? If that's the case, why, and why is it necessary?

If society wants everything connected online and there's going to be prices to pay. I guess the prospect of mass surveillance and control over the population is too big of a payoff for them. What a fucked up world we live in.

Whataboutism at it's best

[Comboman]

You want someone arrested for a natural disaster? There's a big difference between losing power in a storm and someone INTENTIONALLY trying to disable the power system.

And for your second "point", if someone robs your house, that's illegal and they should be arrested. It doesn't matter if you had the latest security system, or no security system. Blaming the victim is what criminals do to excuse their own horrible behavior.