10 ms·

Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid

328 points by platinumrad 10y ago

betrothed 10y ago
I'm inclined to say, however small, or peripheral, or target cognizant, this is still an infrastructure hack. It's not a SCADA attack on systems that deliver services, but surely an attack that lands close enough to "The Electric Grid" to pay attention. Pay attention now, not later.
JudasGoat 10y ago
God. Once politics is involved, objectivity and truth are the first casualties.
striking 10y ago
It's funny how much flak Facebook (and almost no one else) got for "fake news" when the vast majority of today's journalism is so saccharine. Is there a way contemporary journalism can be fixed?
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > Is there a way contemporary journalism can be fixed? The Post is being called out by The Intercept, a publication launched in 2014 [1]. That looks an awful lot like a system reacting to itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  Journalism has never been as impartial as people like to believe, bias and opinion always infects every piece. This in itself isn't necessarily a problem, except when society and the media becomes an echo chamber, and difference of opinion is marginalized. Edit - should add, journalism is being fixed. The MSM is becoming increasingly irrelevant, social media and independent journalists who are on Twitter and various blogs are becoming more relevant.
  - vectorpush 10y ago
    > The MSM is becoming increasingly irrelevant, social media and independent journalists who are on Twitter and various blogs are becoming more relevant. I would hardly call this a fix. The MSM is certainly unreliable, but "twitter and various blogs" are even less so.
    - Mikeb85 10y ago
      As a medium, Twitter is unreliable. When you take the entirety of social media, the fact pictures and video can be taken in real time, you can then come to a conclusion that is close to the truth.
      - darpa_escapee 10y ago
        On the other hand, Sunil Tripathi and Pizzagate.
        Mikeb85 10y ago
        Twitter has also been instrumental in coverage of various conflicts around the world. And even though Pizzagate is firmly in conspiracy theory territory, you've got to admit - some of Podesta's emails were fucking weird.
        vectorpush 10y ago
        > some of Podesta's emails were fucking weird I don't think that necessarily qualifies as newsworthy. A "real journalist" would have read those e-mails, found them to be pretty weird, then did an investigation to determine if anything of merit could be uncovered before printing a story. If there were any journalists involved, the pizzagate story would have been a perfect example of "irresponsible journalism", i.e. projecting unfounded claims based on rabid speculation and "gut instincts", yet being unable to prove anything definitively.
      - vectorpush 10y ago
- zuminator 10y ago
  Part of the problem is intrinsic to the velocity of news in a hyperconnected world. If a breaking story comes out and your paper delays in covering it, it will lose out to another paper that is quicker to publish. If no other paper has the information yet, then your paper will be inevitably accused of deliberately sitting on the story. It's a no win situation. Even here we see that errors in just one or two stories has led to commenters accusing WaPo of being a worthless propaganda arm. Furthermore, decreasing ad revenue and increasing competition means that newsrooms are financially strapped compared with earlier days. Back then, even big newspapers published just a few print editions a day. But now there's a constant 24-hour news cycle. It's impossible to check every story 100%; nothing would ever get published. So the editor has to settle for a sub-certain level of confirmation, with fewer fact checkers on staff to boot. To a certain extent, it's better to issue the retraction later. You get eyeballs on your page for the initial story, then more attention for the fallout and retraction. I've now clicked on that WaPo article thrice instead of just once -- cha-ching. Obviously too much of that damages the reputation, but there are a number of tremendously successful organizations that unapologetically and routinely dispense fake news and still prosper as a result. People have been successfully conditioned to care less about accuracy and more about "tell me good stuff about my team and bad stuff about the other team."
Mikeb85 10y ago
WaPo, Nytimes, CNN, all part of the US propaganda machine. The anti-Russia hysteria is getting ridiculous, and the more the media drum it up, the less people believe it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0ArMMGXcAIo8oL.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0ArMMGXcAIo8oL.jpg
- IBM 10y ago
  Ironically the Russians have broken into the homes of US diplomats in Moscow and have pooped in them (among other things like killing one of their dogs). >At a recent meeting of U.S. ambassadors from Russia and Europe in Washington, U.S. ambassadors to several European countries complained that Russian intelligence officials were constantly perpetrating acts of harassment against their diplomatic staff that ranged from the weird to the downright scary. Some of the intimidation has been routine: following diplomats or their family members, showing up at their social events uninvited or paying reporters to write negative stories about them. But many of the recent acts of intimidation by Russian security services have crossed the line into apparent criminality. In a series of secret memos sent back to Washington, described to me by several current and former U.S. officials who have written or read them, diplomats reported that Russian intruders had broken into their homes late at night, only to rearrange the furniture or turn on all the lights and televisions, and then leave. One diplomat reported that an intruder had defecated on his living room carpet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russia-is-harassing-us-diplomats-all-over-europe/2016/06/26/968d1a5a-3bdf-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russ...
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    Forgive me for being sceptical, considering this entire thread is about WaPo publishing false stories, and you linking to one of their publications...
    - pja 10y ago
      This kind of behaviour by the Russian security services has been well documented for decades. It’s hardly out of keeping with their past.
draw_down 10y ago
The really shameful part of this is the xenophobic garbage spewed by Democrats who are upset their candidate lost the election. They can't handle the thought that they simply lost, so now anyone who disagrees with them is an agent planted by Putin.
- untog 10y ago
  But don't you see that you're doing the same from the opposite side? Any criticism of Putin is attributed to bitter Democrats, so there can be no valid criticism of Putin any more.
  - draw_down 10y ago
    There's plenty to criticize Putin for- Democrats just don't want to look at how badly they bungled this election and others. (Ask yourself why since 2010 they've lost over 1000 governorships, state legislature seats, and Congressional seats. It ain't Russia!) And at the same time some of them are saying crap like "Who cares about Russia, their only contribution to the world was the gulag". I'm paraphrasing here, but this is what I was referring to in my post above. In their zeal to denounce a man they see as a racist bigot, they turn to bigotry themselves. Shameful is the word for it. I mean, look at this: https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/809188697002409988 https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/809188697002409988 All in all it's just a startling 180- 4 years ago, Democrats were (correctly) lambasting Romney for BS tough-talk about Russia.
  - tomca32 10y ago
    To be fair: "The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta." so really WP already put this in the context of the election.
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    The problem is that there isn't any real criticism. Much like their failed election campaign - they focused so much on character assassination, that any valid criticism of Trump could simply be dismissed. If I had to argue a point in a university essay, and argued in the fashion the media has for the last year, any of my profs would have failed me. You'd think educated professionals, in a supposedly intellectual, free society would do better. But nope, just "Putin is a dictator", or "Trump is a racist". It's these journalists' fault no one listens any more.
divbit 10y ago
What is the boundary between what we consider "fake news" and news with a tiny kernel of truth somewhere in it (in this story it sounds like a semi-related laptop was infected with some malware) that is sensationalized to claim something much broader? I think that there are some pieces of news (e.g. meme-news that people post on social media sites, that would be similar to what one might read in a tabloid) that get automatically rejected by my BS filter a lot easier than something like the piece mentioned in the article, which was posted by a respectable journal.
- mtgx 10y ago
  If we can't create a common sense and universally accepted definition of fake news that's also specific enough, then no attempts to ban "fake news" should even be made. In my book, manufacturing 90% of the story based on a "small kernel of truth" still counts as fake news, but perhaps others disagree. This stuff can lead to war (McCain actually called this an act of war from Russia, after reading the original WashPost article), and in fact it has. Unsurprisingly WashPost was a big part of pushing the U.S. into the Iraq war as well. https://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/13/washington_post_admits_it_buried_anti https://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/13/washington_post_admit... No lessons learned, it seems.
  - cloakandswagger 10y ago
    In many ways it is worse in my opinion. Blatantly false stories (like the one claiming Trump won the popular vote) are easily and quickly debunked. WaPo's brand of exaggerated stories based on a small kernel of truth is a lot more insidious and persistent.
    - ternaryoperator 10y ago
      > Blatantly false stories (like the one claiming Trump won the popular vote) are easily and quickly debunked. If only. How long has the claim that Clinton runs a child abuse ring through a Washington DC pizzeria been going on? The Obama birther controversy? These things are very difficult to debunk even in the presence of clear contrary information.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
These events have a reaction time, a response time, and a validation time. It is critical that legitimate news outlets keep their validation time small so that they can accurately report events. The danger is pretty clear, if response time is shorter than validation time, people or systems will respond, perhaps irreversibly, before validation can be achieved. That is how you do real damage in a system. Hopefully a very public critical response to the Washington Post here will help extend their response time again past the validation time.
- athenot 10y ago
  The Washington Post corrected their story. This is a key differentiator for higher quality publications. They try to get it right but if they don't, they must prompty correct their article. The article from The Intercept comes across as more alarmist than the original one from the Post. The second paragraph reads: > While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid. There's a nuance that seems to be lost in Greenwald's interpretation of the article.
  - tootie 10y ago
    Greenwald is like Assange in that regard. He's more interested in scoring points against the bad guys than doing a public service. Any public service he has provided in the past is purely coincidental.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    > There's a nuance that seems to be lost in Greenwald's interpretation of the article. It's not lost, it is deliberate Make no mistake, GG has no interest in the truth, he is only interested in furthering his agenda. Which, in this case, of pushing mistrust in mainstream media, is shared in common with alt-right sites
almostApatriot1 10y ago
Glenn Greenwald can't be trusted with his men Assange and Snowden propped up by Putin.
- draw_down 10y ago
  See, this is exactly the kind of crap I was talking about.
ehaskins 10y ago
For your reference the fourth paragraph from WashPost story: >Burlington Electric said in a statement that the company detected a malware code used in the Grizzly Steppe operation in a laptop that was not connected to the organization’s grid systems. The firm said it took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alert federal authorities
- platinumrad 10y ago
  Yes, they added that eventually, but long after the story had gone viral. Here's an earlier cached version: http://web.archive.org/web/20161231011622/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-hackers-penetrated-us-electricity-grid-through-a-utility-in-vermont/2016/12/30/8fc90cc4-ceec-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html http://web.archive.org/web/20161231011622/https://www.washin...
a3n 10y ago
> What’s the problem here? It did not happen. > There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all their computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid. "and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid." So, the first step in penetrating a system was accomplished, getting the code onto a device that could potentially (or so they attacker may have hoped) be connected to the target network. Until I hear that the code was put on the laptop by its owners intentionally and for legitimate reasons, this sounds like an attack. The headlines and responses are arguably alarmist and not fully informed, but it's still an attack. The dismissal of alarmism seems intended to obscure the likelihood that there was, in fact, the start of an attack. If a spear phishing attack fails, was it not still an attack? That it was an attack in the direction of the power grid is, by definition, alarming. [EDIT: The first sentence in this paragraph confuses my point, and can profitably be ignored.] The intercept's article could have been less sensationalist itself, and I wonder what the motivation for the overdramatization of the Post's failure would be. Competition? Schadenfreude? Sensationalist link baiting? Regardless, I had hoped for a more sober and professional style from the intercept from its early days, and I've long ago stopped reading it, modulo the odd HN post.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Last time I was present for a pen test, the testers compromised a laptop, then moved laterally to compromise a other devices, which got them to a host that mattered.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > Until I hear that the code was put on the laptop by its owners intentionally and for legitimate reasons, this sounds like an attack Nobody is disputing that. But "electric company employee's laptop gets a computer virus" is a far cry from "the Russian government is attacking our infrastructure".
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mavdi 10y ago
I find this article as misleading as the original WP article. Truth is out the window, get used to it. If one side can come up with utter nonsense, then why can't the other?
IBM 10y ago
When it comes to Glenn Greenwald, @noahpinion said it best [1]: Is there a catch-all term for middle-aged white lefty dudes who are pro-Russia because their political outlook was defined by the Iraq War? [1] https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/815104514046902273 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/815104514046902273
- maglavaitss 10y ago
  It's not a matter of GG being white or black (not racially), it's a matter of taking his opinions/writings with a bit of salt, but taking them nevertheless. As much as Noahpinion is entitled to his opinion, so is GG.
- mladenkovacevic 10y ago
  Yeah that's just simplistic enough for lazy centrists who would rather not put into question their absolute support for the status quo and the official "truth". Iraq aftermath already caused enough turmoil for their precious minds, wouldn't wanna rack up the therapist bills by rocking the boat even further.
- divbit 10y ago
  Idk, sounds sort of agist, racist, and sexist to me.
- mikeash 10y ago
  What's the supposed link there? Much of my political outlook comes from the disaster of Iraq, but I'm not pro-Russia and I don't see how they would be related.
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293198 and marked it off-topic.
  - mSparks 10y ago
    how do we report moderators? you seem intent on forcing your particular world view on hn than providing moderation of explosive or unpleasant reading. i find reading all the posts you like to detach often more interesting reading than any of the hn comments that get left over.
disordinary 10y ago
Fake news isn't a new phenomenon, in the 1870s a satrical/comedic article in a New Zealand newspaper about an impending Russian invasion led to such wide spread hysteria that the colonial government almost bankrupted itself. To sate the public it had to invest heavily in naval vessels and build 17 forts to fight off the (non existent) Russian menace. It's a wee bit hypocritical for the US to get so upset about these things though, considering all the elections that the CIA have been involved in, not to mention the stuff that Snowden revealed (like tapping the German Chancellors phone). Everyone knows that whatever espionage Russia is doing to the US the US is doing back in kind. All the powers will be hacking each other.
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  It makes us look hypocritical. We are hypocritical. Who is the current administration trying to fool? The world or its citizens? The petty finger pointing needs to stop. The low sophistication of the DNC hack just reinforces this. Besides, if you don't want to be embarrassed then don't do embarrassing things and then sulk when you're exposed.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - fixermark 10y ago
    The "Eric Schmidt Position."
  - _audakel 10y ago
    > don't do embarrassing things and then sulk when you're exposed. Thissss. I'm so sick and tired of the hypocrisy. If there was a "Chinese snowden" who leaked that China was doing the same stuff we where it would start a war. If Russia or China started building military bases through out the world for "democracy" we would loose our shit. Why are we surprised when other world powers follow our example and try to hack the shit out anything they can get their hands on. Can't we be grown ups about this? It's a total double stAndard. We mess with so many elections around the world, and cry foul when someone does it to us. Don't get me wrong, I understand why we do it, and sometimes agree with it. I feel like it stems from almost a prehistoric primitive tribal instinct - I live if my tribe lives, and to do that we have to control the other tribes. By all means continue to dominate other countries, but PLEASE STOP USING THE MORAL SUPERIORITY CARD.
dimino 10y ago
Glenn Greenwald is being really weird about this Russia hacking thing. Why?
- mSparks 10y ago
  snowden lives in moscow now. And the US government did enough to annoy both of them that they decided to defect.
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  He's practicing journalism. Demanding verification from sources, particularly historically untrustworthy ones, is basic journalism.
  - dimino 10y ago
    Journalism isn't about "demanding verification" it's about getting it for yourself, and waiting until you have it before writing an article. Also, him saying "false story" is, itself false, because the the facts are objectively true. Officials did say what they were quoted as saying, and the NYT changed the headline shortly after publishing the story, which is (like it or not) common practice in the industry. Glenn was party to it himself while at The Guardian. It's just "weird" to me that there's a faction of people out there who don't believe that Russia infiltrated the DNC, and I think it's because they're politically motivated to not believe this to be the case. There's never been such an ignorance driving security news before. It's alarming and completely out of left field.
    - cloakandswagger 10y ago
      It's equally unfathomable to me that there are people who take the Russia/DNC story as fact, even when no concrete evidence has been presented. That WaPo tries to throw fuel on the fire with by exaggerating a small morsel of truth (see: "RUSSIA HACKS U.S. POWER GRID") is even more concerning.
      - dimino 10y ago
mtgx 10y ago
This is why every time there was a post about "banning fake news" on HN, I specifically gave WashPost as an example (knowing they've written pure propaganda/false stories in the past) and questioned "whether a site like WashPost would have its fake news articles blocked on Facebook, too", when they are caught manufacturing stories (which they arguably did here). Because if such articles from the big media companies wouldn't be blocked, then the system would be biased and unworkable, and Facebook or Google will just find a lot of backlash against them over it.
Spooky23 10y ago
Sorry, Glenn, that's not fake news. The intercept has plenty of "all hat" articles where the picture painted by the headlines doesn't necessarily match the content.
sergiotapia 10y ago
At this point there is -zero- evidence Russia hacked anything. Anyone saying that is cringeworthy.
tmuir 10y ago
The Washington Post, is a national media institution who has had their press credentials revoked by Trump. Therefore the organization, by definition, at a disadvantage, when it comes to gaining CONTEXT about the subject of their reporting. Thus, The Washington Post is mired in CONTROVERSY. This is only natural. People misinterpret each other's text messages and internet comments, often with CONTROVERSIAL outcomes, because the initiator of the message has failed to provide sufficient CONTEXT. This is only natural. The entire aviation industry vilified Captain Sullenberger, even though he had just saved 155 peoples lives, because everyone investigating the incident lacked sufficient CONTEXT to explain to themselves, and each other how Sully was able to accomplish something that had never happened in the history of aviation. Captain Sullenberger did, in fact, possess sufficient CONTEXT, which he gained over a long career of landing other failing airplaines. This CONTEXT possessed by Sullenberger, at least as portrayed in the movie, is written all over Tom Hanks face in the form of a stiff upper lip. That guy was as cool as the other side of the pillow the whole time, before, during, and after his water landing. Once sufficient CONTEXT was provided, the CONTROVERSY immediately subsided. This is only natural. The United States of America is at a fairly CONTROVERSIAL point in its history. I wonder, if American's sought out the true CONTEXT of the people they find the most CONTROVERSIAL, their political opponents, if said CONTROVERSY would naturally subside. Find someone you disagree with, and see how long you can keep talking to them. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=controversy http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=controversy http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=context http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=context
czep 10y ago
There's more than enough real news to be upset about. With all the focus on email hacking, why no furor over the stolen $100mn? In the meantime we hear sob stories about the consulate chef being deported. Poor guy! Hard to feel bad when he's got 9 digits stashed in a Swiss account.
zzzcpan 10y ago
Isn't malware on some worker's laptop a common way of penetrating disconnected networks? Not that it matters, as it serves the agenda equally well being either a "false" or a "true" story. Seems like calling Russia out on covert operations was too scary for them, so they chose hacking as a more acceptable thing.
fixxer 10y ago
I once thought fake news meant Breitbart and Alex Jones...
woodruffw 10y ago
From the referenced article: > Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid. This is journalistic ethics in action. WaPo has publicly admitted a mistake and revised their article as a result. Greenwald can (and deserves to) give himself a pat on the back. That being said, I am disappointed in his bad faith equivocation of the (occasionally sloppy and partisan) news media with "news" that is patently false and engineered to maximize advertising revenue. Calling this "fake news" just gives the GOP more (dishonest) ammunition in its 40 year war with the Post.
- ternaryoperator 10y ago
  That's exactly right. This wasn't fake news, but rather a poorly researched story. And a correction was published. With fake news, the story is never retracted or corrected, but continues to be elaborated. Compare this to the "Clinton runs a network of child sexual abuse through a pizzeria in DC."
  - stefantalpalaru 10y ago
    > And a correction was published. Too late. I already saw a news segment about Russia hacking US power plants on mainstream Italian TV. There will be no retraction here and the disinformation is already in the public consciousness.
- dimino 10y ago
  It's pretty clear he sees himself as an ally to Julian Assange, and is jumping to his defense. It's sad that this is what it's come to, and that we can't separate WikiLeak's role in this from the Russians. Good journalism would be explaining to the people how WikiLeaks works, and how the source of the information isn't relevant to WikiLeaks.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    Right, so it's not WaPo/The Guardian who are spreading fake news to push a narrative, but rather the person who asks for actual evidence before jumping to conclussions who is the sad one?
esalman 10y ago
WashPost now has Editors Note acknowledging its key claim was false (source: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/815291333942411264 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/815291333942411264 )
johnb777 10y ago
Every headline I see from the Washington Post is framed dramatically in the favor of left wing opinions. They obviously only hire/print journalists that will drink the kool-aid spewed from the powers that be (Jeff Bezos??). If you don't see that, I challenge you to expand your mind by putting yourself in the shoes of someone who may see things differently or who comes from a different background. My questions at this point in regards to WaPo are: Do their journalists actually have their heads so far up their asses that they believe their opinions are unquestionably correct? Or is the for-profit newspaper pushing this crap out as part of a hidden agenda that happens to benefit from left wingers being in power? OR are they just fear mongering and stirring the pot just to keep the sheeple distracted from something bigger???
mSparks 10y ago
almost comedy. is it the good AIDs or bad AIDs (Mary Whitehouse experience reference) It was clearly the good computer virus designed to penetrate state infrastructure. because Glenn Greenwald said so.
- dang 10y ago
  Please stop posting unsubstantive comments here, and please also stop posting inflammatory comments about divisive topics. We've asked you this several times before. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293235 and marked it off-topic.
  - mSparks 10y ago
    keep hn, i quit, ill go to lurking as you please. please can you delete my account and all my comments. also, you need to reconsider your life, or just take it, easy either way. that "we" thing, those voices in your head are not real people. oh, and tell your mum i want my belt back.
zxcvvcxz 10y ago
The most ironic part of the whole "fake news" debacle is that those pushing it are just as guilty. It's OK though, fear not, because Facebook will tell you what's real and what's not.
vonnik 10y ago
The Wikileaks-Greenwald-Russia axis stands firm.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mmaunder 10y ago
We reverse engineered the IOC's included in Thursday's report from the FBI that released malware data that is supposedly associated with the 'Russian' election hack. Turns out it's a hacking group in Ukraine, anyone can get it for free (but if you're nice you'll donate to their BTC account) and the DHS and FBI sample was several versions behind. https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/ https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hac... The trouble is that the report was released at the same time as the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the whole context around it, including some of the language used in the report, implies it's proof of a Russian election hack. We also analyzed the IP's they shared and they're just a mish-mash of known attack IP's around the world - probably hacked hosts being used as an attack platform by everyone. ISP's include Linode and Digital Ocean. I'm having serious Colin Powell UN flashbacks here: IC releases questionable data as justification for military policy decisions. I've done two interviews this morning about this story and I'm told by one very well known journalist that publications both on the left and right think this whole thing stinks. Here's RS's take. www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439
- DominoTree 10y ago
  I was curious about a couple of things that weren't clear in the article. 1) Did you actually verify that the IPs provided were part of the Tor network, or did you just see that their rDNS records currently have the string "tor" in them, as you described in the article? 2) Did you identify the malware you reversed by file hash, or did you find something that hit on the provided Yara sig? I think adding these details to the article might give technical readers some more insight into and more confidence in the methods used.
  - codedokode 10y ago
    The file that yara signature refers to is probably a Ukranian "web shell" (a backdoor written in PHP that contains a file manager and simple SQL client) that is distributed freely at http://profexer.name/pas/ http://profexer.name/pas/. Anyone can download it and check. There is also a forum thread at https://rdot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1567 https://rdot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1567 started by this software developer in 2011. He answers the questions from the users of his software and asks them to donate to continue development. So it is a publicly available software, not a private tool made by some hacker group for themselves. That is why other people could find it in their systems.
StanislavPetrov 10y ago
This (deliberately cultivated) Russian hysteria is a withering indictment of the intelligence (or lack thereof) of the American people. Not only should Americans demand proof for these wild claims, they should demand the transparency that a Democracy demands. Instead they blithely accept whatever propaganda the government (and their media outlets) spew, and willingly accept the excuse that the evidence "must be kept secret". The ignorance of the masses is perhaps the one true constant in human history. The attacks leveled at (the few) intelligent people who demand proof (from professional, paid misinformation experts like those at the CIA) before accepting these serious allegations bring to mind a famous interview. >Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. >Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. >Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. > In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)
- dang 10y ago
  Beginning with a national slur then heading straight for the Nazis makes for an unsubstantive comment. Please don't post like this here.
  - mSparks 10y ago
    please take your life somewhere else.
  - StanislavPetrov 10y ago
dimino 10y ago
Your second sentence is false, and your own article says that. The web shell is made by a Ukranian group but there is absolutely no reason to believe the people who used the web shell are Ukranian, nor is there any reason to believe whoever hacked the DNC uses the newer version. It's alarming to me that you, someone who knows a lot more than the average bear about this topic, continues to spread the FUD that this was anything other than what the 19 departments who are members of the Intelligence Community have said. Honestly, I believe you're using this to spread your own brand, and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself.
- mmaunder 10y ago
  I am utterly ashamed of myself - because I just ate a bit too much pie after lunch. I'm definitely not ashamed of myself for this amazing bit of research. I already replied to someone else on this thread and mentioned they 'claim' they're Ukrainian. Sure, it could be a false flag op. Isn't that self evident?
  - dimino 10y ago
    Are you kidding me? The Ukranians may have wrote the web shell, but there is no evidence to suggest they're also the ones who used it. Nothing "false flag" about it. Which reporters did you speak to? It might be worth forwarding them this exchange to give them a better idea of who they were talking with.
    - waterphone 10y ago
      You seem to be misunderstanding each other. The original post is simply phrased a little poorly in the spot you're arguing about, when it's clear to me that the author is only suggesting the malware is Ukrainian, but the users cannot be inferred from where the malware originated, because it is freely available online for anyone to use.
      - dimino 10y ago
        The article is clearer, but the author of the article seems to not understand his own article. It's a little baffling, really.
disposablezero 10y ago
This is what happens when the majority of journalists both have a profit motive and cozy up to the establishment: they'll say anything and a low/no-information populace gobbles it up without a grain of salt. The Intercept, Democracy Now, Thom Hartmann, TYT, et. al. are in a precarious position because they often speak the truth, which is inconvenient to those in power. Whether they can mostly survive and measurably supplant establishment media by demographics isn't certain. Whether Trump will target investigative journalists and net neutrality (likely) Erdogan-style is anyone's guess. PS: Another interesting CIA operation which taints media and fuels conspiracy theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
- internaut 10y ago
  I would not associate The Young Turks with Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman.
exabrial 10y ago
Remember news agencies only make money if people are panicking...
Jerry2 10y ago
WaPo is now a blatant propaganda outlet. They don't seem to care about the truth anymore and they've become what they accuse others of: a fake news source.
canjobear 10y ago
On a related note, what was the outcome of the claim that North Korea hacked Sony? I was never convinced by the evidence presented but it seems to be something people generally believe was true.
astaroth360 10y ago
I'd like to see better evidence of the US election being hacked, but I understand they wouldn't want to release anything that could cut off their ways into Russian systems. I don't know how anyone expects to get real proof of it without us deciding to give away strategically important gaps in Russian infosec.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
astaroth360 10y ago
https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/815227058334892032 https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/815227058334892032 "Hope everyone remembers just before Trump took office @ggreenwald was praising Breitbart & @jeremyscahill was joking about working for Putin" ^ This
- astaroth360 10y ago
  Also this: https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/815251935666327556 https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/815251935666327556 "Did Russia hack the DNC? Yes. Is the DHS/FBI report good? No. Does either have anything to do with the electric utility in Vermont? Nope."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

328 points by platinumrad 10y ago

I'm inclined to say, however small, or peripheral, or target cognizant, this is still an infrastructure hack. It's not a SCADA attack on systems that deliver services, but surely an attack that lands close enough to "The Electric Grid" to pay attention. Pay attention now, not later.

JudasGoat 10y ago

God. Once politics is involved, objectivity and truth are the first casualties.

striking 10y ago

It's funny how much flak Facebook (and almost no one else) got for "fake news" when the vast majority of today's journalism is so saccharine. Is there a way contemporary journalism can be fixed?

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> Is there a way contemporary journalism can be fixed? The Post is being called out by The Intercept, a publication launched in 2014 [1]. That looks an awful lot like a system reacting to itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept
Mikeb85 10y ago
Journalism has never been as impartial as people like to believe, bias and opinion always infects every piece. This in itself isn't necessarily a problem, except when society and the media becomes an echo chamber, and difference of opinion is marginalized. Edit - should add, journalism is being fixed. The MSM is becoming increasingly irrelevant, social media and independent journalists who are on Twitter and various blogs are becoming more relevant.
- vectorpush 10y ago
  > The MSM is becoming increasingly irrelevant, social media and independent journalists who are on Twitter and various blogs are becoming more relevant. I would hardly call this a fix. The MSM is certainly unreliable, but "twitter and various blogs" are even less so.
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    As a medium, Twitter is unreliable. When you take the entirety of social media, the fact pictures and video can be taken in real time, you can then come to a conclusion that is close to the truth.
    - darpa_escapee 10y ago
      On the other hand, Sunil Tripathi and Pizzagate.
      - Mikeb85 10y ago
        Twitter has also been instrumental in coverage of various conflicts around the world. And even though Pizzagate is firmly in conspiracy theory territory, you've got to admit - some of Podesta's emails were fucking weird.
        vectorpush 10y ago
        > some of Podesta's emails were fucking weird I don't think that necessarily qualifies as newsworthy. A "real journalist" would have read those e-mails, found them to be pretty weird, then did an investigation to determine if anything of merit could be uncovered before printing a story. If there were any journalists involved, the pizzagate story would have been a perfect example of "irresponsible journalism", i.e. projecting unfounded claims based on rabid speculation and "gut instincts", yet being unable to prove anything definitively.
    - vectorpush 10y ago
zuminator 10y ago
Part of the problem is intrinsic to the velocity of news in a hyperconnected world. If a breaking story comes out and your paper delays in covering it, it will lose out to another paper that is quicker to publish. If no other paper has the information yet, then your paper will be inevitably accused of deliberately sitting on the story. It's a no win situation. Even here we see that errors in just one or two stories has led to commenters accusing WaPo of being a worthless propaganda arm. Furthermore, decreasing ad revenue and increasing competition means that newsrooms are financially strapped compared with earlier days. Back then, even big newspapers published just a few print editions a day. But now there's a constant 24-hour news cycle. It's impossible to check every story 100%; nothing would ever get published. So the editor has to settle for a sub-certain level of confirmation, with fewer fact checkers on staff to boot. To a certain extent, it's better to issue the retraction later. You get eyeballs on your page for the initial story, then more attention for the fallout and retraction. I've now clicked on that WaPo article thrice instead of just once -- cha-ching. Obviously too much of that damages the reputation, but there are a number of tremendously successful organizations that unapologetically and routinely dispense fake news and still prosper as a result. People have been successfully conditioned to care less about accuracy and more about "tell me good stuff about my team and bad stuff about the other team."

Mikeb85 10y ago

WaPo, Nytimes, CNN, all part of the US propaganda machine. The anti-Russia hysteria is getting ridiculous, and the more the media drum it up, the less people believe it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0ArMMGXcAIo8oL.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0ArMMGXcAIo8oL.jpg

IBM 10y ago
Ironically the Russians have broken into the homes of US diplomats in Moscow and have pooped in them (among other things like killing one of their dogs). >At a recent meeting of U.S. ambassadors from Russia and Europe in Washington, U.S. ambassadors to several European countries complained that Russian intelligence officials were constantly perpetrating acts of harassment against their diplomatic staff that ranged from the weird to the downright scary. Some of the intimidation has been routine: following diplomats or their family members, showing up at their social events uninvited or paying reporters to write negative stories about them. But many of the recent acts of intimidation by Russian security services have crossed the line into apparent criminality. In a series of secret memos sent back to Washington, described to me by several current and former U.S. officials who have written or read them, diplomats reported that Russian intruders had broken into their homes late at night, only to rearrange the furniture or turn on all the lights and televisions, and then leave. One diplomat reported that an intruder had defecated on his living room carpet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russia-is-harassing-us-diplomats-all-over-europe/2016/06/26/968d1a5a-3bdf-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/russ...
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  Forgive me for being sceptical, considering this entire thread is about WaPo publishing false stories, and you linking to one of their publications...
  - pja 10y ago
    This kind of behaviour by the Russian security services has been well documented for decades. It’s hardly out of keeping with their past.

draw_down 10y ago

The really shameful part of this is the xenophobic garbage spewed by Democrats who are upset their candidate lost the election. They can't handle the thought that they simply lost, so now anyone who disagrees with them is an agent planted by Putin.

untog 10y ago
But don't you see that you're doing the same from the opposite side? Any criticism of Putin is attributed to bitter Democrats, so there can be no valid criticism of Putin any more.
- draw_down 10y ago
  There's plenty to criticize Putin for- Democrats just don't want to look at how badly they bungled this election and others. (Ask yourself why since 2010 they've lost over 1000 governorships, state legislature seats, and Congressional seats. It ain't Russia!) And at the same time some of them are saying crap like "Who cares about Russia, their only contribution to the world was the gulag". I'm paraphrasing here, but this is what I was referring to in my post above. In their zeal to denounce a man they see as a racist bigot, they turn to bigotry themselves. Shameful is the word for it. I mean, look at this: https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/809188697002409988 https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/809188697002409988 All in all it's just a startling 180- 4 years ago, Democrats were (correctly) lambasting Romney for BS tough-talk about Russia.
- tomca32 10y ago
  To be fair: "The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta." so really WP already put this in the context of the election.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  The problem is that there isn't any real criticism. Much like their failed election campaign - they focused so much on character assassination, that any valid criticism of Trump could simply be dismissed. If I had to argue a point in a university essay, and argued in the fashion the media has for the last year, any of my profs would have failed me. You'd think educated professionals, in a supposedly intellectual, free society would do better. But nope, just "Putin is a dictator", or "Trump is a racist". It's these journalists' fault no one listens any more.

divbit 10y ago

What is the boundary between what we consider "fake news" and news with a tiny kernel of truth somewhere in it (in this story it sounds like a semi-related laptop was infected with some malware) that is sensationalized to claim something much broader? I think that there are some pieces of news (e.g. meme-news that people post on social media sites, that would be similar to what one might read in a tabloid) that get automatically rejected by my BS filter a lot easier than something like the piece mentioned in the article, which was posted by a respectable journal.

mtgx 10y ago
If we can't create a common sense and universally accepted definition of fake news that's also specific enough, then no attempts to ban "fake news" should even be made. In my book, manufacturing 90% of the story based on a "small kernel of truth" still counts as fake news, but perhaps others disagree. This stuff can lead to war (McCain actually called this an act of war from Russia, after reading the original WashPost article), and in fact it has. Unsurprisingly WashPost was a big part of pushing the U.S. into the Iraq war as well. https://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/13/washington_post_admits_it_buried_anti https://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/13/washington_post_admit... No lessons learned, it seems.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  In many ways it is worse in my opinion. Blatantly false stories (like the one claiming Trump won the popular vote) are easily and quickly debunked. WaPo's brand of exaggerated stories based on a small kernel of truth is a lot more insidious and persistent.
  - ternaryoperator 10y ago
    > Blatantly false stories (like the one claiming Trump won the popular vote) are easily and quickly debunked. If only. How long has the claim that Clinton runs a child abuse ring through a Washington DC pizzeria been going on? The Obama birther controversy? These things are very difficult to debunk even in the presence of clear contrary information.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

These events have a reaction time, a response time, and a validation time. It is critical that legitimate news outlets keep their validation time small so that they can accurately report events. The danger is pretty clear, if response time is shorter than validation time, people or systems will respond, perhaps irreversibly, before validation can be achieved. That is how you do real damage in a system. Hopefully a very public critical response to the Washington Post here will help extend their response time again past the validation time.

athenot 10y ago
The Washington Post corrected their story. This is a key differentiator for higher quality publications. They try to get it right but if they don't, they must prompty correct their article. The article from The Intercept comes across as more alarmist than the original one from the Post. The second paragraph reads: > While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid. There's a nuance that seems to be lost in Greenwald's interpretation of the article.
- tootie 10y ago
  Greenwald is like Assange in that regard. He's more interested in scoring points against the bad guys than doing a public service. Any public service he has provided in the past is purely coincidental.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- raverbashing 10y ago
  > There's a nuance that seems to be lost in Greenwald's interpretation of the article. It's not lost, it is deliberate Make no mistake, GG has no interest in the truth, he is only interested in furthering his agenda. Which, in this case, of pushing mistrust in mainstream media, is shared in common with alt-right sites

almostApatriot1 10y ago

Glenn Greenwald can't be trusted with his men Assange and Snowden propped up by Putin.

draw_down 10y ago
See, this is exactly the kind of crap I was talking about.

ehaskins 10y ago

For your reference the fourth paragraph from WashPost story: >Burlington Electric said in a statement that the company detected a malware code used in the Grizzly Steppe operation in a laptop that was not connected to the organization’s grid systems. The firm said it took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alert federal authorities

platinumrad 10y ago
Yes, they added that eventually, but long after the story had gone viral. Here's an earlier cached version: http://web.archive.org/web/20161231011622/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-hackers-penetrated-us-electricity-grid-through-a-utility-in-vermont/2016/12/30/8fc90cc4-ceec-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html http://web.archive.org/web/20161231011622/https://www.washin...

a3n 10y ago

> What’s the problem here? It did not happen. > There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all their computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid. "and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid." So, the first step in penetrating a system was accomplished, getting the code onto a device that could potentially (or so they attacker may have hoped) be connected to the target network. Until I hear that the code was put on the laptop by its owners intentionally and for legitimate reasons, this sounds like an attack. The headlines and responses are arguably alarmist and not fully informed, but it's still an attack. The dismissal of alarmism seems intended to obscure the likelihood that there was, in fact, the start of an attack. If a spear phishing attack fails, was it not still an attack? That it was an attack in the direction of the power grid is, by definition, alarming. [EDIT: The first sentence in this paragraph confuses my point, and can profitably be ignored.] The intercept's article could have been less sensationalist itself, and I wonder what the motivation for the overdramatization of the Post's failure would be. Competition? Schadenfreude? Sensationalist link baiting? Regardless, I had hoped for a more sober and professional style from the intercept from its early days, and I've long ago stopped reading it, modulo the odd HN post.

Spooky23 10y ago
Last time I was present for a pen test, the testers compromised a laptop, then moved laterally to compromise a other devices, which got them to a host that mattered.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> Until I hear that the code was put on the laptop by its owners intentionally and for legitimate reasons, this sounds like an attack Nobody is disputing that. But "electric company employee's laptop gets a computer virus" is a far cry from "the Russian government is attacking our infrastructure".
- darpa_escapee 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mavdi 10y ago

I find this article as misleading as the original WP article. Truth is out the window, get used to it. If one side can come up with utter nonsense, then why can't the other?

IBM 10y ago

When it comes to Glenn Greenwald, @noahpinion said it best [1]: Is there a catch-all term for middle-aged white lefty dudes who are pro-Russia because their political outlook was defined by the Iraq War? [1] https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/815104514046902273 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/815104514046902273

maglavaitss 10y ago
It's not a matter of GG being white or black (not racially), it's a matter of taking his opinions/writings with a bit of salt, but taking them nevertheless. As much as Noahpinion is entitled to his opinion, so is GG.
mladenkovacevic 10y ago
Yeah that's just simplistic enough for lazy centrists who would rather not put into question their absolute support for the status quo and the official "truth". Iraq aftermath already caused enough turmoil for their precious minds, wouldn't wanna rack up the therapist bills by rocking the boat even further.
divbit 10y ago
Idk, sounds sort of agist, racist, and sexist to me.
mikeash 10y ago
What's the supposed link there? Much of my political outlook comes from the disaster of Iraq, but I'm not pro-Russia and I don't see how they would be related.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293198 and marked it off-topic.
- mSparks 10y ago
  how do we report moderators? you seem intent on forcing your particular world view on hn than providing moderation of explosive or unpleasant reading. i find reading all the posts you like to detach often more interesting reading than any of the hn comments that get left over.

disordinary 10y ago

Fake news isn't a new phenomenon, in the 1870s a satrical/comedic article in a New Zealand newspaper about an impending Russian invasion led to such wide spread hysteria that the colonial government almost bankrupted itself. To sate the public it had to invest heavily in naval vessels and build 17 forts to fight off the (non existent) Russian menace. It's a wee bit hypocritical for the US to get so upset about these things though, considering all the elections that the CIA have been involved in, not to mention the stuff that Snowden revealed (like tapping the German Chancellors phone). Everyone knows that whatever espionage Russia is doing to the US the US is doing back in kind. All the powers will be hacking each other.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago
It makes us look hypocritical. We are hypocritical. Who is the current administration trying to fool? The world or its citizens? The petty finger pointing needs to stop. The low sophistication of the DNC hack just reinforces this. Besides, if you don't want to be embarrassed then don't do embarrassing things and then sulk when you're exposed.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- fixermark 10y ago
  The "Eric Schmidt Position."
- _audakel 10y ago
  > don't do embarrassing things and then sulk when you're exposed. Thissss. I'm so sick and tired of the hypocrisy. If there was a "Chinese snowden" who leaked that China was doing the same stuff we where it would start a war. If Russia or China started building military bases through out the world for "democracy" we would loose our shit. Why are we surprised when other world powers follow our example and try to hack the shit out anything they can get their hands on. Can't we be grown ups about this? It's a total double stAndard. We mess with so many elections around the world, and cry foul when someone does it to us. Don't get me wrong, I understand why we do it, and sometimes agree with it. I feel like it stems from almost a prehistoric primitive tribal instinct - I live if my tribe lives, and to do that we have to control the other tribes. By all means continue to dominate other countries, but PLEASE STOP USING THE MORAL SUPERIORITY CARD.

dimino 10y ago

Glenn Greenwald is being really weird about this Russia hacking thing. Why?

mSparks 10y ago
snowden lives in moscow now. And the US government did enough to annoy both of them that they decided to defect.
AlexCoventry 10y ago
He's practicing journalism. Demanding verification from sources, particularly historically untrustworthy ones, is basic journalism.
- dimino 10y ago
  Journalism isn't about "demanding verification" it's about getting it for yourself, and waiting until you have it before writing an article. Also, him saying "false story" is, itself false, because the the facts are objectively true. Officials did say what they were quoted as saying, and the NYT changed the headline shortly after publishing the story, which is (like it or not) common practice in the industry. Glenn was party to it himself while at The Guardian. It's just "weird" to me that there's a faction of people out there who don't believe that Russia infiltrated the DNC, and I think it's because they're politically motivated to not believe this to be the case. There's never been such an ignorance driving security news before. It's alarming and completely out of left field.
  - cloakandswagger 10y ago
    It's equally unfathomable to me that there are people who take the Russia/DNC story as fact, even when no concrete evidence has been presented. That WaPo tries to throw fuel on the fire with by exaggerating a small morsel of truth (see: "RUSSIA HACKS U.S. POWER GRID") is even more concerning.
    - dimino 10y ago

mtgx 10y ago

This is why every time there was a post about "banning fake news" on HN, I specifically gave WashPost as an example (knowing they've written pure propaganda/false stories in the past) and questioned "whether a site like WashPost would have its fake news articles blocked on Facebook, too", when they are caught manufacturing stories (which they arguably did here). Because if such articles from the big media companies wouldn't be blocked, then the system would be biased and unworkable, and Facebook or Google will just find a lot of backlash against them over it.

Spooky23 10y ago

Sorry, Glenn, that's not fake news. The intercept has plenty of "all hat" articles where the picture painted by the headlines doesn't necessarily match the content.

sergiotapia 10y ago

At this point there is -zero- evidence Russia hacked anything. Anyone saying that is cringeworthy.

tmuir 10y ago

The Washington Post, is a national media institution who has had their press credentials revoked by Trump. Therefore the organization, by definition, at a disadvantage, when it comes to gaining CONTEXT about the subject of their reporting. Thus, The Washington Post is mired in CONTROVERSY. This is only natural. People misinterpret each other's text messages and internet comments, often with CONTROVERSIAL outcomes, because the initiator of the message has failed to provide sufficient CONTEXT. This is only natural. The entire aviation industry vilified Captain Sullenberger, even though he had just saved 155 peoples lives, because everyone investigating the incident lacked sufficient CONTEXT to explain to themselves, and each other how Sully was able to accomplish something that had never happened in the history of aviation. Captain Sullenberger did, in fact, possess sufficient CONTEXT, which he gained over a long career of landing other failing airplaines. This CONTEXT possessed by Sullenberger, at least as portrayed in the movie, is written all over Tom Hanks face in the form of a stiff upper lip. That guy was as cool as the other side of the pillow the whole time, before, during, and after his water landing. Once sufficient CONTEXT was provided, the CONTROVERSY immediately subsided. This is only natural. The United States of America is at a fairly CONTROVERSIAL point in its history. I wonder, if American's sought out the true CONTEXT of the people they find the most CONTROVERSIAL, their political opponents, if said CONTROVERSY would naturally subside. Find someone you disagree with, and see how long you can keep talking to them. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=controversy http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=controversy http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=context http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=context

czep 10y ago

There's more than enough real news to be upset about. With all the focus on email hacking, why no furor over the stolen $100mn? In the meantime we hear sob stories about the consulate chef being deported. Poor guy! Hard to feel bad when he's got 9 digits stashed in a Swiss account.

zzzcpan 10y ago

Isn't malware on some worker's laptop a common way of penetrating disconnected networks? Not that it matters, as it serves the agenda equally well being either a "false" or a "true" story. Seems like calling Russia out on covert operations was too scary for them, so they chose hacking as a more acceptable thing.

fixxer 10y ago

I once thought fake news meant Breitbart and Alex Jones...

woodruffw 10y ago

From the referenced article: > Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid. This is journalistic ethics in action. WaPo has publicly admitted a mistake and revised their article as a result. Greenwald can (and deserves to) give himself a pat on the back. That being said, I am disappointed in his bad faith equivocation of the (occasionally sloppy and partisan) news media with "news" that is patently false and engineered to maximize advertising revenue. Calling this "fake news" just gives the GOP more (dishonest) ammunition in its 40 year war with the Post.

ternaryoperator 10y ago
That's exactly right. This wasn't fake news, but rather a poorly researched story. And a correction was published. With fake news, the story is never retracted or corrected, but continues to be elaborated. Compare this to the "Clinton runs a network of child sexual abuse through a pizzeria in DC."
- stefantalpalaru 10y ago
  > And a correction was published. Too late. I already saw a news segment about Russia hacking US power plants on mainstream Italian TV. There will be no retraction here and the disinformation is already in the public consciousness.
dimino 10y ago
It's pretty clear he sees himself as an ally to Julian Assange, and is jumping to his defense. It's sad that this is what it's come to, and that we can't separate WikiLeak's role in this from the Russians. Good journalism would be explaining to the people how WikiLeaks works, and how the source of the information isn't relevant to WikiLeaks.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  Right, so it's not WaPo/The Guardian who are spreading fake news to push a narrative, but rather the person who asks for actual evidence before jumping to conclussions who is the sad one?

esalman 10y ago

WashPost now has Editors Note acknowledging its key claim was false (source: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/815291333942411264 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/815291333942411264 )

johnb777 10y ago

Every headline I see from the Washington Post is framed dramatically in the favor of left wing opinions. They obviously only hire/print journalists that will drink the kool-aid spewed from the powers that be (Jeff Bezos??). If you don't see that, I challenge you to expand your mind by putting yourself in the shoes of someone who may see things differently or who comes from a different background. My questions at this point in regards to WaPo are: Do their journalists actually have their heads so far up their asses that they believe their opinions are unquestionably correct? Or is the for-profit newspaper pushing this crap out as part of a hidden agenda that happens to benefit from left wingers being in power? OR are they just fear mongering and stirring the pot just to keep the sheeple distracted from something bigger???

mSparks 10y ago

almost comedy. is it the good AIDs or bad AIDs (Mary Whitehouse experience reference) It was clearly the good computer virus designed to penetrate state infrastructure. because Glenn Greenwald said so.

dang 10y ago
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments here, and please also stop posting inflammatory comments about divisive topics. We've asked you this several times before. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13293235 and marked it off-topic.
- mSparks 10y ago
  keep hn, i quit, ill go to lurking as you please. please can you delete my account and all my comments. also, you need to reconsider your life, or just take it, easy either way. that "we" thing, those voices in your head are not real people. oh, and tell your mum i want my belt back.

zxcvvcxz 10y ago

The most ironic part of the whole "fake news" debacle is that those pushing it are just as guilty. It's OK though, fear not, because Facebook will tell you what's real and what's not.

vonnik 10y ago

The Wikileaks-Greenwald-Russia axis stands firm.

deleted 10y ago

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mmaunder 10y ago

We reverse engineered the IOC's included in Thursday's report from the FBI that released malware data that is supposedly associated with the 'Russian' election hack. Turns out it's a hacking group in Ukraine, anyone can get it for free (but if you're nice you'll donate to their BTC account) and the DHS and FBI sample was several versions behind. https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/ https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hac... The trouble is that the report was released at the same time as the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the whole context around it, including some of the language used in the report, implies it's proof of a Russian election hack. We also analyzed the IP's they shared and they're just a mish-mash of known attack IP's around the world - probably hacked hosts being used as an attack platform by everyone. ISP's include Linode and Digital Ocean. I'm having serious Colin Powell UN flashbacks here: IC releases questionable data as justification for military policy decisions. I've done two interviews this morning about this story and I'm told by one very well known journalist that publications both on the left and right think this whole thing stinks. Here's RS's take. www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439

DominoTree 10y ago
I was curious about a couple of things that weren't clear in the article. 1) Did you actually verify that the IPs provided were part of the Tor network, or did you just see that their rDNS records currently have the string "tor" in them, as you described in the article? 2) Did you identify the malware you reversed by file hash, or did you find something that hit on the provided Yara sig? I think adding these details to the article might give technical readers some more insight into and more confidence in the methods used.
- codedokode 10y ago
  The file that yara signature refers to is probably a Ukranian "web shell" (a backdoor written in PHP that contains a file manager and simple SQL client) that is distributed freely at http://profexer.name/pas/ http://profexer.name/pas/. Anyone can download it and check. There is also a forum thread at https://rdot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1567 https://rdot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1567 started by this software developer in 2011. He answers the questions from the users of his software and asks them to donate to continue development. So it is a publicly available software, not a private tool made by some hacker group for themselves. That is why other people could find it in their systems.

StanislavPetrov 10y ago

This (deliberately cultivated) Russian hysteria is a withering indictment of the intelligence (or lack thereof) of the American people. Not only should Americans demand proof for these wild claims, they should demand the transparency that a Democracy demands. Instead they blithely accept whatever propaganda the government (and their media outlets) spew, and willingly accept the excuse that the evidence "must be kept secret". The ignorance of the masses is perhaps the one true constant in human history. The attacks leveled at (the few) intelligent people who demand proof (from professional, paid misinformation experts like those at the CIA) before accepting these serious allegations bring to mind a famous interview. >Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. >Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. >Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. > In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)

dang 10y ago
Beginning with a national slur then heading straight for the Nazis makes for an unsubstantive comment. Please don't post like this here.
- mSparks 10y ago
  please take your life somewhere else.
- StanislavPetrov 10y ago

dimino 10y ago

Your second sentence is false, and your own article says that. The web shell is made by a Ukranian group but there is absolutely no reason to believe the people who used the web shell are Ukranian, nor is there any reason to believe whoever hacked the DNC uses the newer version. It's alarming to me that you, someone who knows a lot more than the average bear about this topic, continues to spread the FUD that this was anything other than what the 19 departments who are members of the Intelligence Community have said. Honestly, I believe you're using this to spread your own brand, and you should be utterly ashamed of yourself.

mmaunder 10y ago
I am utterly ashamed of myself - because I just ate a bit too much pie after lunch. I'm definitely not ashamed of myself for this amazing bit of research. I already replied to someone else on this thread and mentioned they 'claim' they're Ukrainian. Sure, it could be a false flag op. Isn't that self evident?
- dimino 10y ago
  Are you kidding me? The Ukranians may have wrote the web shell, but there is no evidence to suggest they're also the ones who used it. Nothing "false flag" about it. Which reporters did you speak to? It might be worth forwarding them this exchange to give them a better idea of who they were talking with.
  - waterphone 10y ago
    You seem to be misunderstanding each other. The original post is simply phrased a little poorly in the spot you're arguing about, when it's clear to me that the author is only suggesting the malware is Ukrainian, but the users cannot be inferred from where the malware originated, because it is freely available online for anyone to use.
    - dimino 10y ago
      The article is clearer, but the author of the article seems to not understand his own article. It's a little baffling, really.

disposablezero 10y ago

This is what happens when the majority of journalists both have a profit motive and cozy up to the establishment: they'll say anything and a low/no-information populace gobbles it up without a grain of salt. The Intercept, Democracy Now, Thom Hartmann, TYT, et. al. are in a precarious position because they often speak the truth, which is inconvenient to those in power. Whether they can mostly survive and measurably supplant establishment media by demographics isn't certain. Whether Trump will target investigative journalists and net neutrality (likely) Erdogan-style is anyone's guess. PS: Another interesting CIA operation which taints media and fuels conspiracy theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

internaut 10y ago
I would not associate The Young Turks with Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman.

exabrial 10y ago

Remember news agencies only make money if people are panicking...

Jerry2 10y ago

WaPo is now a blatant propaganda outlet. They don't seem to care about the truth anymore and they've become what they accuse others of: a fake news source.

canjobear 10y ago

On a related note, what was the outcome of the claim that North Korea hacked Sony? I was never convinced by the evidence presented but it seems to be something people generally believe was true.

astaroth360 10y ago

I'd like to see better evidence of the US election being hacked, but I understand they wouldn't want to release anything that could cut off their ways into Russian systems. I don't know how anyone expects to get real proof of it without us deciding to give away strategically important gaps in Russian infosec.

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astaroth360 10y ago

https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/815227058334892032 https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/815227058334892032 "Hope everyone remembers just before Trump took office @ggreenwald was praising Breitbart & @jeremyscahill was joking about working for Putin" ^ This

astaroth360 10y ago
Also this: https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/815251935666327556 https://twitter.com/RobertMLee/status/815251935666327556 "Did Russia hack the DNC? Yes. Is the DHS/FBI report good? No. Does either have anything to do with the electric utility in Vermont? Nope."

deleted 10y ago

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