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Russia Is Behind Cyberattack On Saudi Petrochemical Plant, Researchers Say (zdnet.com)

U.S. researchers from FireEye have linked a Russian research lab to a cyberattack on a Saudi petrochemical plant. The malware strain called Triton -- or Trisis -- "was designed to either shut down a production process or allow SIS-controlled machinery to work in an unsafe state," reports ZDNet, citing technical reports from FireEye, Dragos, and Symantec. From the report: The group behind the malware, which FireEye has been tracking under the codename of TEMP.Veles, nearly succeeded last year, when it almost caused an explosion at a Saudi petrochemical plant owned by Tasnee, a privately owned Saudi company, according to a New York Times report. The malware's origins were a mystery when FireEye first discovered Triton in 2017 and remained a mystery even after the New York Times report in March 2018.

But in a report published today, FireEye says that following further research into incidents where the Triton malware was deployed, it can now assess with "high confidence" that the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (CNIIHM), a government-owned technical research institution located in Moscow, was involved in these attacks. FireEye's report does not link the Triton malware itself to CNIIHM, but the secondary malware strains used by TEMP.Veles and deployed during the incidents where Triton was deployed. Clues in these secondary malware strains used to aid the deployment of the main Triton payloads contained enough artifacts that allowed researchers to identify their source.

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  1. Selector change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They don't. They're really not more gullible than everyone else.

    I saw yesterday on Reddit, somebody doing a 'look at the hypocrisy of Republicans' claim. He'd measured them on key issues back in 2016, he measured them on key issues now, and concluded Republicans had massively shifted to the extreme right. Which he called 'hypocrisy'. Suddenly Republicans are all pro-Russian, black-hating, want healthcare taken away, and toddlers prisons at the border, out in the hate extremes of politics.

    *But* all that's happened is the *subset* of people who identify as 'Republican' has shifted to the right. The middle ground Republicans have been driven away. In the 2016 sample, he was sampling a mixture of middle ground and extreme Republicans, in the 2018 one, he's sample only among the nazi fringe.

    In the individual people, their views only shifted a little.

    The Democrats gained some Republicans, so the overall sample views of Democrats shifted a little to the right, and the Republicans lost the middle ground shifting them to the extreme right.

    Fox News still does it's attempted manipulations, but the audience wises up, and they have to replace the tainted presenter. That's why they line up new ones, so Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, is lined up to replace Hannity. Just as Glenn Beck was overshadowed and replaced by Bill O'Reilly.