24 ms·

Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility

147 points by stablemap 10y ago

ekianjo 10y ago
This is several days after the WP shamelessly said that Russian hackers had attacked a fundamental part of the US's infrastructure, without doing any research work before publishing their article. The WP is becoming the voice of the White House.
- myowncrapulence 10y ago
  .. isn't "the voice of the white house" the voice of the nation? You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart. Don't forget to remain just as critical when the next president takes office.
  - trhway 10y ago
    >.. isn't "the voice of the white house" the voice of the nation? >You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart. your statement sounds just like the propaganda from my childhood in USSR. Substituting the voice of the governing body for the voice of the nation has been a kingpin of any totalitarian state known to date.
  - tristanj 10y ago
    > isn't "the voice of the white house" the voice of the nation? Hardly. Only two of the ~4000 people who work for the White House are actually elected. A further dozen or so need to be approved by congress. The rest are chosen without the consent of the people.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    > You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart. Voted in power by a bit more than 50% of voters, of which only 60~70% amongst the registered ones bothered to vote. That's a minority no matter how you look at it. And on top of that, people under a certain age are not considered able to vote - and in certain times women and people of different races were removed from voting either. Add to this that a president can do the total opposite of what he was elected for, and there is no guarantee at all that you get what you voted for even if you were in the lucky minority who "won".
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    > somehow does not have America's best interest at heart Not at all. You only have to believe that the White House isn't guaranteed to have America's best interest at heart. We don't emphasize a strong and independent press because the President is always evil, or un-American. We emphasize it because we elected Nixon, and we could elect someone far worse than him. (We may well have just done so.) Like maintaining a military in times of peace, we benefit from maintaining a free press as long as there is the possibility of a White House working against our best interests.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    and yet there is much disagreement about what actions are in America's best interest. and even then, why are you so confident that politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by "America's best interest"? Even supposing they are, and do not have complicated and conflicting motivations (as most human beings tend to), why are you so confident that they know which actions ought to be taken to advance those interests?
- mistermann 10y ago
  More like Jeff Bezos maybe realized a newspaper is only effective as a propaganda tool if people don't regularly ridicule what you publish.
  - pg314 10y ago
    Do you have any indication that Bezos is exercising editorial control? According to a Poynter interview [1], Marty Baron, editor at the Washington Post, says "Bezos doesn't try to influence editors". The Washington Post doesn't seem to avoid putting Amazon into a negative daylight either. E.g. the article [2] mentioning Amazon using cobalt from dubious sources. Pushing the narrative that traditional newspapers like the Washington Post are propaganda tools without supporting evidence, looks suspiciously like propaganda in itself. [1] https://www.poynter.org/2016/marty-baron-on-spotlight-jeff-bezos-donald-trump-and-the-slow-death-of-printed-news/442691/ https://www.poynter.org/2016/marty-baron-on-spotlight-jeff-b... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...
    - puranjay 10y ago
      > According to a Poynter interview [1], Marty Baron, editor at the Washington Post, says "Bezos doesn't try to influence editors". Gee, I wonder why the editor won't publicly admit that the man who pays his salary maybe sometimes try to influence him
      - pmyteh 10y ago
        I think you underestimate the importance of culture in organisations, and particularly the fierce independence maintained by the 'news' side of the major American press from the 'money' side. They care a lot about editorial independence and I'm quite sure they would shout if it happened rather than lie about it. The same strictures don't apply, for example, in the UK (my country) which has much more fluid boundaries between journalists and proprietors. Were I to read something similar about the Sun, for example, I would be pretty sceptical...
- mSparks 10y ago
  Dont think there is any doubt Russian (and Chinese) hackers completely own most US infrastructure. Only need visit a few Russian hacking forums to see that. It "was easy" because the NSA put so much effort into making systems insecure. (Have the US government replaced those Juniper routers yet?) The only "doubt" is whether or not they are working for their state or just condoned by their state. Plus a big chunk of playing to public opinion because it's heresy to imply let alone state as fact that Russian or Chinese offensive comp sci is better than US defensive comp sci. Even though, in your hearts, you all know it to be true.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  The WP story, and the BBC story derived from it, were very explicit about this being a Russian government attack. They didn't hedge, they didn't talk about possibilities and Russian actions increasing scrutiny. They quoted a stream of (also irresponsible) politicians who personally blamed Putin, and talked about how this was discovered as part of a hunt for Grizzly Steppe (true, but falsely written like the malware was Grizzly Steppe). This one has been a pretty impressive round of narrative-fitting, and it's just going to be an embarrassment that makes it hard to convince anyone when foreign governments do get up to something.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  not the White House. the Clinton-aligned faction of the state department and intelligence community.
shitgoose 10y ago
WP is slipping. as we all know - lie should be big and repeated often enough, so people will believe it. going back and forth destroys the narrative.
woodruffw 10y ago
I said this when the first article was posted here, and I'll say it again: This is journalistic ethics in action. Greenwald spoke, you spoke, and The WaPo listened. They've done exactly what they should do in this situation, and a certain contingent will find fault regardless.
- john_butts 10y ago
  There is a huge difference between "evidence shows that there is no link" and "we were mistaken, there actually was never any evidence of a link"
- beaner 10y ago
  Wouldn't journalistic ethics have been to not be so sensationalist to begin with?
  - woodruffw 10y ago
    Yes. In the absence of the most right path, they've taken the least wrong path by amending their article, appending an editor's note, and now apologizing in a subsequent article.
    - john_butts 10y ago
      No way Jose, they are absolving themselves of jumping the gun by invoking "officials" that deny the dumbass thing they said in the first place.
    - temp 10y ago
      The last wrong path would have been not to milk a sensationalist story without any research whatsoever.
- belovedeagle 10y ago
  And wouldn't journalistic ethics have not littered this very article with dozens of references to "Russian hackers" — evidence of whose existence is still completely absent? Twenty-four hours from now, essentially no one who has read this article will remember anything but the incessantly repeated notion that there are dangerous Russian hackers out to compromise US national security in some way, and that we need to be vigilant.
smitherfield 10y ago
Note that other media outlets still are running with this story, e.g. an uncorrected version remains in the BBC News US/Canada "top headlines:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38479179 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38479179
dang 10y ago
Discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13292607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13292607, but this article appears to add new information, so probably doesn't count as a dupe.
badcede 10y ago
This is a pretty good critique of how the 'story' developed: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-news-and-how-the-washington-post-rewrote-its-story-on-russian-hacking-of-the-power-grid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-new.... It's forbes, though, so expect annoyance and don't dare read it with an adblocker.
EJTH 10y ago
But the media told me it was the russians! Surely well established media cannot be sending out fake news deliberately!?
- _fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
  It's also the established media that tells you that it wasn't Russian hackers now. So, what's your point?
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    That all media is bullshit and the whole fake news fiasco is hypocritical. No one fact checks or does real investigative journalism. WaPo might as well call themselves into wars or whatever that crap is called. At least the latter, delusional as they might be, believe they make world better place instead knowingly working for the great propaganda machine.
    - pmyteh 10y ago
      Obviously false. There is an explosion of fact checkers and still plenty of investigative journalism teams. If you mean 'not every story is fully fact-checked and the product of investigative journalism', then sure. But then, they never have been. That's the nature of a news industry that tries to fill a paper by print time every day (or, in modern terms, to get their stories out a minute before the competition online).
      - jerf 10y ago
        Then those "fact checkers" and "investigative journalism teams" obviously aren't doing much good, if they weren't deployed for what was obviously going to be an explosive article. If the fact checkers couldn't be deployed for this story, they obviously are stretched to near-nonexistence. I really don't envy you right now, trying so vigorously to defend something that has long since become so obviously indefensible. Sure, it could be the case that the media is really, really careful all the time, exercising their nigh-superhuman judgment with fairness and care, but this one story just happened to slip through. But it is a far more parsimonious explanation that the story flattered their biases and they shipped it without so much as a tenth of the examination they'd give a story that doesn't favor flatter their biases. The "this was an exception to their otherwise phenomenal care!" excuse wears quite thin when you have to deploy it several times every day. This story isn't an exception. The exceptional thing about it is that they got nailed so hard on it they were forced to retract, not that they had stuff to be retracted.
zigzigzag 10y ago
So is Facebook going to retroactively mark the original article as 'fake news' now?
snksnk 10y ago
This saga started with "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say". Then we got "Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say" In summary, (i) the U.S. electricity grid was not penetrated, (ii) the malware can be purchased online by anyone. The WaPo seems to be more concerned lately with pursuing a certain agenda instead of quality journalism. Another example is a recent article in which they give credibility and rely on an organisation called PropOrNot; this article even became "one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media". [1] And organisations such as the WaPo are supposed to shield us from fake news and "fact-check" Trump. [1] For a good discussion, see: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgrace...
- non_repro_blue 10y ago
  A utility worker's laptop suffering an intrusion is something that should be investigated earlier, rather than later. I'd rather hear about false alarms, early and often, since I'm not convinced that critical infrastructure is actually insulated from attack at all. Electricity and water infrastructure is almost certainly in terrible shape, based on what we've learned about lead in Flint, Michigan and what's remembered about the 2003 blackout, and Enron. Knowing this, and hearing not very much about what's being done to modernize essential utilities, I'd hate to find out that a massive accident was caused by someone's idea of modernization being a PHP web app prone to SQL injection running inside a docker image, as a rube goldberg facade wrapping a galaxy of SCADA controllers. This is the kind of thing people should get noisy about, since there's been pretty much only silence and very little "disruption."
  - throwaway7645 10y ago
    A laptop shouldn't be connected in any way to critical infrastructure like SCADA/EMS/DMS. Only trusted software runs there that is tightly controlled. At least that is the right design. I'm aware of no utilities that violate this.
Animats 10y ago
What seems to have happened is that some laptop at the utility was compromised by some basic malware, but that's as far as the attacker got. Apparently the malware connects to some IP address in Russia. That's all we know for sure. We can't be sure who the attacker was, or their ultimate goal. It could be a random event, some piece of automatically distributed malware, or part of a targeted attack. This sort of false alarm is normal after an attack. Attention levels go up, events that look like possible threats are detected and have to be investigated. Go back and look at the aftermath of 9/11. There were false alarms for months. Further back, see the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942.[1] Remain watchful; do not panic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles
- alfiedotwtf 10y ago
  Or you know, just plain propaganda. During the first days of during Operation Iraqi Liberation once embedded "journalists" were on the ground, chemical weapon sirens would go off daily. Broadcast around the world were reporters stopping live feeds and quickly changing into hazmat-like suits... We now know there were zero chemical weapons, so why so many alarms?
  - rtpg 10y ago
    Because it's safer to have a chemical weapons early-warning system that goes off too often rather than too little? The cost of a false negative when lives are at stake are worth noisy alarms (smoke detectors).
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pdkl95 10y ago
      When exceptional signals become normalized from too many false positives, people start ignoring alarms.
      - 10y ago
dovdovdov 10y ago
But, but that Fallout screenshot on CNN was so convincing. :/
- workerIbe 10y ago
  Careful using text-mode in public! http://kotaku.com/cnn-shows-fallout-hacking-terminal-in-a-video-about-rus-1790693451 http://kotaku.com/cnn-shows-fallout-hacking-terminal-in-a-vi...
jister 10y ago
Trump won that's why the media and the Liberals keep pointing their fingers to Russia. It's mind conditioning and they will continue to do so until people in the US will believe all the lies. It's a tactic out of desparation. We are currently experiencing that too in the Philippines. We know how the media and paid journalists are twisting the truth to mind-conditioned people. We experience this everyday.
- tunap 10y ago
  And despite their capitulation(after being caught, everyone's sorry when caught) a significant % of people will cling to the scary commie narrative and the WaPo, et al achieved their objective, partially. While I didn't vote for either of the two evils, I do appreciate the marked 180° difference in future-casting in the MSM from when Obama won the first election. Obama received a Nobel for nothing, so following that logic, Trump should be happy he's not in Guantanamo. Edit: Let's not forget the current administration is getting their hats handed to them by Russia in the ongoing Syrian war-by-proxie.
- heartbreak 10y ago
  I'm having a hard time researching the concept of "mind conditioning." Is this a real thing or conspiracy nonsense?
  - dmichulke 10y ago
    This is to distinguish it from the somewhat higher hair conditioning (just a few centimeters though). Jokes aside, I believe GP is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
sschueller 10y ago
Regardless if this was propaganda or just bad journalism, Reuters should remove the Washington Post from their list of trusted sources. Hundreds of papers around the world printed this and the correction will not be.
- grzm 10y ago
  Reuters should remove the Washington Post from their list of trusted sources. Can you elaborate on this? I understand that Reuters (like other news agencies) use their own journalists. Am I misunderstanding what you mean?
  - sschueller 10y ago
    From what I understand, The Washington Post is a third party content provider for Reuters. The articles that are submitted to Reuters most likely do not get verified a second time by Reuters Journalist as they trust that WaPo already did that.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Interesting. Do you have a reference for this? I did an admittedly cursorily search before posting my initial comment, and didn't find any.
      - sschueller 10y ago
        The Washington post is listed here as a 3rd party source [1] [1] http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/documents/pdf/financial/thomson-reuters-news-and-third-party-news.pdf http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/docu...
        grzm 10y ago
        Thanks for the extra legwork! I wonder if this extends beyond the their financial wire service, though I don't see why it wouldn't necessarily. I'd also like to know more about how third-party sources are vetted.
andrewclunn 10y ago
Yet the retraction made earlier was flagged. Moderation on hacker news, gotta love it. Now quick down vote me!
- grzm 10y ago
  The mods are pretty open and comment when they take action. Flagging is nearly always user action. Was it otherwise for the submission you refer to? Do you mean something otherwise by "Moderation on hacker news"?
  - andrewclunn 10y ago
    Thanks for the information. I guess my complaints are regarding the users rather than the moderation then. I did not realize that users had that much power.
droithomme 10y ago
The current title of this article is just as absurd as the original. Why have an article saying that something else with no evidence "did not appear" to have happened. Why not title it "Mole people do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility" or "Reptilian overlords do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility".
openasocket 10y ago
People seem to be very upset at both WaPo and the US government, more than a few calling this "propaganda." However, it should be noted that it wasn't the government that said this was Grizzly Steppe, it was the utility company (Burlington Electric). It wasn't the government making exaggerated statements to the press, it was this private company. I think this is more likely a case of someone handling security for this company over-reacting after hearing about the Russian hacks of the DNC than overt propaganda.
- cnnsucks 10y ago
  >> after hearing about the Russian hacks of the DNC Fictions built upon fictions. Assange has stated again in another interview, airing tonight, that it wasn't Russia. It wasn't any 'state' actor. "Yes. We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party." The same people that took the fantastic and easily debunked claims of a power company and amplified it into a diplomatic dispute with Russia will not emphasize this; if they can't somehow discredit it then they'll bury it.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    He's stated that, but why should we believe him and not believe all the various people who have said the opposite? Russian intelligence are presumably quite capable of laundering it through an intermediary, which would make his statement literally true but misleading.
    - alyx 10y ago
      Because unlike the US government, WikiLeaks has a more accurate/transparent track record?
      - skybrian 10y ago
        That argument only works if you trust WikiLeaks and a lot of people don't.
mladenkovacevic 10y ago
Has mainstream media devoted so much attention to analyzing and reporting on fake news that they were unwittingly seduced into producing their own? Those dastardly Russians, this must've been their evil scheme all along to besmirch the reputation of our fine journalistic institutions.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wyclif 10y ago
WaPo peddles fake news, and this is how the sausage is made and "fact checked": publish first based on "trusted" gov't sources, then re-write the story bit by bit instead of developing and publishing real news http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/02/how-the-washington-posts-defense-of-its-russian-hacking-story-unraveled-through-web-archiving/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/02/how-the-...

147 points by stablemap 10y ago

This is several days after the WP shamelessly said that Russian hackers had attacked a fundamental part of the US's infrastructure, without doing any research work before publishing their article. The WP is becoming the voice of the White House.

myowncrapulence 10y ago
.. isn't "the voice of the white house" the voice of the nation? You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart. Don't forget to remain just as critical when the next president takes office.
- trhway 10y ago
  >.. isn't "the voice of the white house" the voice of the nation? >You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart. your statement sounds just like the propaganda from my childhood in USSR. Substituting the voice of the governing body for the voice of the nation has been a kingpin of any totalitarian state known to date.
- tristanj 10y ago
  > isn't "the voice of the white house" the voice of the nation? Hardly. Only two of the ~4000 people who work for the White House are actually elected. A further dozen or so need to be approved by congress. The rest are chosen without the consent of the people.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart. Voted in power by a bit more than 50% of voters, of which only 60~70% amongst the registered ones bothered to vote. That's a minority no matter how you look at it. And on top of that, people under a certain age are not considered able to vote - and in certain times women and people of different races were removed from voting either. Add to this that a president can do the total opposite of what he was elected for, and there is no guarantee at all that you get what you voted for even if you were in the lucky minority who "won".
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  > somehow does not have America's best interest at heart Not at all. You only have to believe that the White House isn't guaranteed to have America's best interest at heart. We don't emphasize a strong and independent press because the President is always evil, or un-American. We emphasize it because we elected Nixon, and we could elect someone far worse than him. (We may well have just done so.) Like maintaining a military in times of peace, we benefit from maintaining a free press as long as there is the possibility of a White House working against our best interests.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  and yet there is much disagreement about what actions are in America's best interest. and even then, why are you so confident that politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by "America's best interest"? Even supposing they are, and do not have complicated and conflicting motivations (as most human beings tend to), why are you so confident that they know which actions ought to be taken to advance those interests?
mistermann 10y ago
More like Jeff Bezos maybe realized a newspaper is only effective as a propaganda tool if people don't regularly ridicule what you publish.
- pg314 10y ago
  Do you have any indication that Bezos is exercising editorial control? According to a Poynter interview [1], Marty Baron, editor at the Washington Post, says "Bezos doesn't try to influence editors". The Washington Post doesn't seem to avoid putting Amazon into a negative daylight either. E.g. the article [2] mentioning Amazon using cobalt from dubious sources. Pushing the narrative that traditional newspapers like the Washington Post are propaganda tools without supporting evidence, looks suspiciously like propaganda in itself. [1] https://www.poynter.org/2016/marty-baron-on-spotlight-jeff-bezos-donald-trump-and-the-slow-death-of-printed-news/442691/ https://www.poynter.org/2016/marty-baron-on-spotlight-jeff-b... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...
  - puranjay 10y ago
    > According to a Poynter interview [1], Marty Baron, editor at the Washington Post, says "Bezos doesn't try to influence editors". Gee, I wonder why the editor won't publicly admit that the man who pays his salary maybe sometimes try to influence him
    - pmyteh 10y ago
      I think you underestimate the importance of culture in organisations, and particularly the fierce independence maintained by the 'news' side of the major American press from the 'money' side. They care a lot about editorial independence and I'm quite sure they would shout if it happened rather than lie about it. The same strictures don't apply, for example, in the UK (my country) which has much more fluid boundaries between journalists and proprietors. Were I to read something similar about the Sun, for example, I would be pretty sceptical...
mSparks 10y ago
Dont think there is any doubt Russian (and Chinese) hackers completely own most US infrastructure. Only need visit a few Russian hacking forums to see that. It "was easy" because the NSA put so much effort into making systems insecure. (Have the US government replaced those Juniper routers yet?) The only "doubt" is whether or not they are working for their state or just condoned by their state. Plus a big chunk of playing to public opinion because it's heresy to imply let alone state as fact that Russian or Chinese offensive comp sci is better than US defensive comp sci. Even though, in your hearts, you all know it to be true.
Bartweiss 10y ago
The WP story, and the BBC story derived from it, were very explicit about this being a Russian government attack. They didn't hedge, they didn't talk about possibilities and Russian actions increasing scrutiny. They quoted a stream of (also irresponsible) politicians who personally blamed Putin, and talked about how this was discovered as part of a hunt for Grizzly Steppe (true, but falsely written like the malware was Grizzly Steppe). This one has been a pretty impressive round of narrative-fitting, and it's just going to be an embarrassment that makes it hard to convince anyone when foreign governments do get up to something.
metaphorm 10y ago
not the White House. the Clinton-aligned faction of the state department and intelligence community.

shitgoose 10y ago

WP is slipping. as we all know - lie should be big and repeated often enough, so people will believe it. going back and forth destroys the narrative.

woodruffw 10y ago

I said this when the first article was posted here, and I'll say it again: This is journalistic ethics in action. Greenwald spoke, you spoke, and The WaPo listened. They've done exactly what they should do in this situation, and a certain contingent will find fault regardless.

john_butts 10y ago
There is a huge difference between "evidence shows that there is no link" and "we were mistaken, there actually was never any evidence of a link"
beaner 10y ago
Wouldn't journalistic ethics have been to not be so sensationalist to begin with?
- woodruffw 10y ago
  Yes. In the absence of the most right path, they've taken the least wrong path by amending their article, appending an editor's note, and now apologizing in a subsequent article.
  - john_butts 10y ago
    No way Jose, they are absolving themselves of jumping the gun by invoking "officials" that deny the dumbass thing they said in the first place.
  - temp 10y ago
    The last wrong path would have been not to milk a sensationalist story without any research whatsoever.
belovedeagle 10y ago
And wouldn't journalistic ethics have not littered this very article with dozens of references to "Russian hackers" — evidence of whose existence is still completely absent? Twenty-four hours from now, essentially no one who has read this article will remember anything but the incessantly repeated notion that there are dangerous Russian hackers out to compromise US national security in some way, and that we need to be vigilant.

smitherfield 10y ago

Note that other media outlets still are running with this story, e.g. an uncorrected version remains in the BBC News US/Canada "top headlines:" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38479179 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38479179

dang 10y ago

Discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13292607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13292607, but this article appears to add new information, so probably doesn't count as a dupe.

badcede 10y ago

This is a pretty good critique of how the 'story' developed: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-news-and-how-the-washington-post-rewrote-its-story-on-russian-hacking-of-the-power-grid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-new.... It's forbes, though, so expect annoyance and don't dare read it with an adblocker.

EJTH 10y ago

But the media told me it was the russians! Surely well established media cannot be sending out fake news deliberately!?

_fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
It's also the established media that tells you that it wasn't Russian hackers now. So, what's your point?
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  That all media is bullshit and the whole fake news fiasco is hypocritical. No one fact checks or does real investigative journalism. WaPo might as well call themselves into wars or whatever that crap is called. At least the latter, delusional as they might be, believe they make world better place instead knowingly working for the great propaganda machine.
  - pmyteh 10y ago
    Obviously false. There is an explosion of fact checkers and still plenty of investigative journalism teams. If you mean 'not every story is fully fact-checked and the product of investigative journalism', then sure. But then, they never have been. That's the nature of a news industry that tries to fill a paper by print time every day (or, in modern terms, to get their stories out a minute before the competition online).
    - jerf 10y ago
      Then those "fact checkers" and "investigative journalism teams" obviously aren't doing much good, if they weren't deployed for what was obviously going to be an explosive article. If the fact checkers couldn't be deployed for this story, they obviously are stretched to near-nonexistence. I really don't envy you right now, trying so vigorously to defend something that has long since become so obviously indefensible. Sure, it could be the case that the media is really, really careful all the time, exercising their nigh-superhuman judgment with fairness and care, but this one story just happened to slip through. But it is a far more parsimonious explanation that the story flattered their biases and they shipped it without so much as a tenth of the examination they'd give a story that doesn't favor flatter their biases. The "this was an exception to their otherwise phenomenal care!" excuse wears quite thin when you have to deploy it several times every day. This story isn't an exception. The exceptional thing about it is that they got nailed so hard on it they were forced to retract, not that they had stuff to be retracted.

zigzigzag 10y ago

So is Facebook going to retroactively mark the original article as 'fake news' now?

snksnk 10y ago

This saga started with "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say". Then we got "Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say" In summary, (i) the U.S. electricity grid was not penetrated, (ii) the malware can be purchased online by anyone. The WaPo seems to be more concerned lately with pursuing a certain agenda instead of quality journalism. Another example is a recent article in which they give credibility and rely on an organisation called PropOrNot; this article even became "one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media". [1] And organisations such as the WaPo are supposed to shield us from fake news and "fact-check" Trump. [1] For a good discussion, see: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgrace...

non_repro_blue 10y ago
A utility worker's laptop suffering an intrusion is something that should be investigated earlier, rather than later. I'd rather hear about false alarms, early and often, since I'm not convinced that critical infrastructure is actually insulated from attack at all. Electricity and water infrastructure is almost certainly in terrible shape, based on what we've learned about lead in Flint, Michigan and what's remembered about the 2003 blackout, and Enron. Knowing this, and hearing not very much about what's being done to modernize essential utilities, I'd hate to find out that a massive accident was caused by someone's idea of modernization being a PHP web app prone to SQL injection running inside a docker image, as a rube goldberg facade wrapping a galaxy of SCADA controllers. This is the kind of thing people should get noisy about, since there's been pretty much only silence and very little "disruption."
- throwaway7645 10y ago
  A laptop shouldn't be connected in any way to critical infrastructure like SCADA/EMS/DMS. Only trusted software runs there that is tightly controlled. At least that is the right design. I'm aware of no utilities that violate this.

Animats 10y ago

What seems to have happened is that some laptop at the utility was compromised by some basic malware, but that's as far as the attacker got. Apparently the malware connects to some IP address in Russia. That's all we know for sure. We can't be sure who the attacker was, or their ultimate goal. It could be a random event, some piece of automatically distributed malware, or part of a targeted attack. This sort of false alarm is normal after an attack. Attention levels go up, events that look like possible threats are detected and have to be investigated. Go back and look at the aftermath of 9/11. There were false alarms for months. Further back, see the Battle of Los Angeles in 1942.[1] Remain watchful; do not panic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles

alfiedotwtf 10y ago
Or you know, just plain propaganda. During the first days of during Operation Iraqi Liberation once embedded "journalists" were on the ground, chemical weapon sirens would go off daily. Broadcast around the world were reporters stopping live feeds and quickly changing into hazmat-like suits... We now know there were zero chemical weapons, so why so many alarms?
- rtpg 10y ago
  Because it's safer to have a chemical weapons early-warning system that goes off too often rather than too little? The cost of a false negative when lives are at stake are worth noisy alarms (smoke detectors).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    When exceptional signals become normalized from too many false positives, people start ignoring alarms.
    - 10y ago

dovdovdov 10y ago

But, but that Fallout screenshot on CNN was so convincing. :/

workerIbe 10y ago
Careful using text-mode in public! http://kotaku.com/cnn-shows-fallout-hacking-terminal-in-a-video-about-rus-1790693451 http://kotaku.com/cnn-shows-fallout-hacking-terminal-in-a-vi...

jister 10y ago

Trump won that's why the media and the Liberals keep pointing their fingers to Russia. It's mind conditioning and they will continue to do so until people in the US will believe all the lies. It's a tactic out of desparation. We are currently experiencing that too in the Philippines. We know how the media and paid journalists are twisting the truth to mind-conditioned people. We experience this everyday.

tunap 10y ago
And despite their capitulation(after being caught, everyone's sorry when caught) a significant % of people will cling to the scary commie narrative and the WaPo, et al achieved their objective, partially. While I didn't vote for either of the two evils, I do appreciate the marked 180° difference in future-casting in the MSM from when Obama won the first election. Obama received a Nobel for nothing, so following that logic, Trump should be happy he's not in Guantanamo. Edit: Let's not forget the current administration is getting their hats handed to them by Russia in the ongoing Syrian war-by-proxie.
heartbreak 10y ago
I'm having a hard time researching the concept of "mind conditioning." Is this a real thing or conspiracy nonsense?
- dmichulke 10y ago
  This is to distinguish it from the somewhat higher hair conditioning (just a few centimeters though). Jokes aside, I believe GP is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

sschueller 10y ago

Regardless if this was propaganda or just bad journalism, Reuters should remove the Washington Post from their list of trusted sources. Hundreds of papers around the world printed this and the correction will not be.

grzm 10y ago
Reuters should remove the Washington Post from their list of trusted sources. Can you elaborate on this? I understand that Reuters (like other news agencies) use their own journalists. Am I misunderstanding what you mean?
- sschueller 10y ago
  From what I understand, The Washington Post is a third party content provider for Reuters. The articles that are submitted to Reuters most likely do not get verified a second time by Reuters Journalist as they trust that WaPo already did that.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Interesting. Do you have a reference for this? I did an admittedly cursorily search before posting my initial comment, and didn't find any.
    - sschueller 10y ago
      The Washington post is listed here as a 3rd party source [1] [1] http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/documents/pdf/financial/thomson-reuters-news-and-third-party-news.pdf http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/docu...
      - grzm 10y ago
        Thanks for the extra legwork! I wonder if this extends beyond the their financial wire service, though I don't see why it wouldn't necessarily. I'd also like to know more about how third-party sources are vetted.

andrewclunn 10y ago

Yet the retraction made earlier was flagged. Moderation on hacker news, gotta love it. Now quick down vote me!

grzm 10y ago
The mods are pretty open and comment when they take action. Flagging is nearly always user action. Was it otherwise for the submission you refer to? Do you mean something otherwise by "Moderation on hacker news"?
- andrewclunn 10y ago
  Thanks for the information. I guess my complaints are regarding the users rather than the moderation then. I did not realize that users had that much power.

droithomme 10y ago

The current title of this article is just as absurd as the original. Why have an article saying that something else with no evidence "did not appear" to have happened. Why not title it "Mole people do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility" or "Reptilian overlords do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility".

openasocket 10y ago

People seem to be very upset at both WaPo and the US government, more than a few calling this "propaganda." However, it should be noted that it wasn't the government that said this was Grizzly Steppe, it was the utility company (Burlington Electric). It wasn't the government making exaggerated statements to the press, it was this private company. I think this is more likely a case of someone handling security for this company over-reacting after hearing about the Russian hacks of the DNC than overt propaganda.

cnnsucks 10y ago
>> after hearing about the Russian hacks of the DNC Fictions built upon fictions. Assange has stated again in another interview, airing tonight, that it wasn't Russia. It wasn't any 'state' actor. "Yes. We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party." The same people that took the fantastic and easily debunked claims of a power company and amplified it into a diplomatic dispute with Russia will not emphasize this; if they can't somehow discredit it then they'll bury it.
- pjc50 10y ago
  He's stated that, but why should we believe him and not believe all the various people who have said the opposite? Russian intelligence are presumably quite capable of laundering it through an intermediary, which would make his statement literally true but misleading.
  - alyx 10y ago
    Because unlike the US government, WikiLeaks has a more accurate/transparent track record?
    - skybrian 10y ago
      That argument only works if you trust WikiLeaks and a lot of people don't.

mladenkovacevic 10y ago

Has mainstream media devoted so much attention to analyzing and reporting on fake news that they were unwittingly seduced into producing their own? Those dastardly Russians, this must've been their evil scheme all along to besmirch the reputation of our fine journalistic institutions.

deleted 10y ago

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wyclif 10y ago

WaPo peddles fake news, and this is how the sausage is made and "fact checked": publish first based on "trusted" gov't sources, then re-write the story bit by bit instead of developing and publishing real news http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/02/how-the-washington-posts-defense-of-its-russian-hacking-story-unraveled-through-web-archiving/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/02/how-the-...