'Fake News' Cries Follow Discovery of Russian Malware

>Journalist Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept picked apart the Post piece, raising fair and important criticisms about the larger story; while the malware is known to be a Russian hacking tool, there's been no evidence released in the Vermont incident to suggest that Russian hackers were the ones who actually installed the malware on the laptop in question. However, that point is subsumed by Greenwald's recently acquired reputation as a Russian hacking skeptic, with the Intercept publishing numerous articles that doubt the U.S. intelligence agencies' findings (as well as private security firms') that Russia deliberately interfered with our election by hacking and releasing documents designed to be embarrassing to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

>Skepticism is a cardinal virtue among journalists, and Greenwald, who published stories culled from Edward Snowden's purloined security documents at the Guardian before launching the Intercept, cautions against blind belief in governmental authorities. He warns against journalists succumbing to the kind of "group think" that characterized much reporting in the run-up to George W. Bush's Iraq war, writing that the phenomenon ensures that "any denunciation or accusation toward Trump or Russia, no matter how divorced from reason or devoid of facts, generates instant praise, while any questioning of it prompts instant peer-group denunciation, or worse." But regular readers of The Intercept could be excused if they've already concluded that claims of Russian hacking are inflated or outright lies; it seems the staff would need videotape of the actual hackers at work before believing the conclusions of the intelligence establishment.

...

>Plus Greenwald's arguments are lost on the many who just see a chance to bash the "mainstream media" and the Post, which distinguished itself this election season with aggressive reporting on Trump's businesses and background. The right-wing blogosphere was united in its take on the Post's initial, inflated reporting, with the Daily Caller's headline reading, "Washington Post Publishes False News Story About Russians Hacking Electrical Grid;" RedState ran "Washington Post Runs Fake News Story on Power Grid Hacking." The Post did irresponsibly overstate the issue by first reporting that "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid," but the underlying story is true: Malware used by Russian hackers has been found on a U.S. utility computer, which should be a matter of grave concern. No matter—the right-wing army mobilized on Twitter, gleefully throwing around the "fake news" label that was initially applied to blogs that wrote demonstrably untrue stories surrounding the election but has been appropriated as a cudgel against any reporting that doesn't fit their preferred narrative.

>Trump, of course, has mobilized his supporters' anger and directed it at the media, which he routinely discredits and outright mocks as he trades on his inexplicable "everyman," populist image. It's far less amusing when he's discrediting the assessments of the CIA and the rest of the intelligence establishment, as he's routinely done since allegations of Russian hacking surfaced. Trump and his team seem to see any effort to probe the extent of Russia's intrusions as merely political attempts to discredit his victory and has dismissed Obama's sanctions while Russia openly pines for Trump to take office. He's urged the rest of America to move past it, despite the sanctions and likely Congressional hearings.
...

>Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway summed up the team's stance this week on CNN, where she said that the president-elect is “not in favor of foreign governments interfering in our elections or interfering in our intelligence," but seems to think that nothing of the sort has occurred, as they're "also not in favor of our intelligence interfering with elections after the fact.”

>The existence of foreign policy-focused Republicans will help ensure that the Russians' attempts to interfere in the U.S. election won't be swept aside without a fair accounting. The current media environment makes it less certain that cries of "fake news" and snide apologists for Russia will retreat any time soon.

>>96077
>not in favor of our intelligence interfering with elections after the fact
what does that even mean?
interfere with our elections after the election?
leaked data from one candidate was fair game during the election, so why can't our citizens handle knowing intelligence community consensus after the fact?

>>96074
>Russian Malware

A Vermont utility sounded the alarm after finding malware code on a laptop that the FBI and DHS had touted as associated with Russian hackers. However, cybersecurity specialists say the code came from an outdated Ukrainian hacking tool.

http://kstp.com/politics/klobuchar-mccain-graham-ukraine-marines-russian-new-years-eve-petro-poroshenko-eastern-europe/4358186/

>Russian hacking code

this is the new WMD, and instead of seeing the establishment's bullshit libtards are unironically eating it all up. The modern left are literally useful idiots for warmongering establishment poliitcs

>OMG POOOTIN WANTS TO HACK VERMONT'S ELECTRICITY GRID

this is why leftards are the laughing stock of world politics right now

>>96103
See this is the worst part. Fucking dumbshit liberals are politicizing INFORMATION FUCKING SECURITY

>>96103

A single software bug at a single plant in Nowheresville Ohio caused the Northeast blackout of 2003, which hit over 50 million people in the US and Canada.

>A software bug known as a race condition existed in General Electric Energy's Unix-based XA/21 energy management system. Once triggered the bug stalled FirstEnergy's control room alarm system for over an hour.
>The report states that a generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio, went offline amid high electrical demand, putting a strain on high-voltage power lines (located in a distant rural setting) which later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of more than 100 power plants.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

I'm not saying the Gov. of Vermont didn't jump the gun by announcing this was Putin when the company had only just discovered the malware. I'm just saying that some shitstain place in Vermont's grid can still be a valuable target for cyber warfare (as can anywhere in infrastructure, really, since the espionage itself is dirt cheap).

>>96074
>>96109

I'm just so afraid to let my kids go on the internet now. What if the Russians hack them?

>>96158
Your kids are already loyal to the Chinese.

>>96158
Gasp! What if my kids are exposed to the /pol/ eco chamber and develop an unhealthy obsession with pizza-gate and become cucked for Russia despite its sham democratic republican government and human rights abuses? Hell, they might even become hypocrites criticising the attempt to curtail fake-news as an assault on free speech, but praise Russia despite its complete lack of respect for free speech at all!

>IT'S THE RUSSIANS

Did they attach a little line in the code at the end that said "xaxaxaxaxa we hax u t. vladimir vladovich vladovsky" at the end? How do they determine that it was a state sponsored act and not the result of someone catching malware from browsing the internet at work?

>>96211
> being this ignorant
Nation-states code up their own, in-house tools. These tools have a signature and contact specific servers. Russia doesnt dump their best shit on the net for free for all the skiddies to use.

>>96223
>Nation-states code up their own, in-house tools. These tools have a signature and contact specific servers. Russia doesnt dump their best shit on the net for free for all the skiddies to use.

It was an outdated piece of malware code from the Ukraine called PAS that's freely available on the internet.

This continues to be an exercise in propaganda and too many people absolutely love it because it's more a comfortable reality than one in which they have to acknowledge that Trump won the presidency via legitimate election. Screaming about fake news and lobbying for controls on speech while you disseminate false reports about Russian state agent hackers that were neither Russian or state agents.

The only question is- how many more times are we going to have to suffer mindless idiots constantly posting news updates about it as if it were a legitimate topic, and not a narrative fabricated by warhawks and a bitter & childish outgoing President

>>96225
"we all know that the universal truth apples > oranges is infallible

so punishing you for hacking my apples because I shit on your oranges is just a matter of course

you all should also accept that my tastes > your tastes and you can't do anything about it. if you do, you're sexist, racist, islamophobe, anti-immigration, ableist, shitlord and you're hurting my feelings."

... that sounds very true now, yes?

>>96102
They were useful idiots for corporatists as long as said corporatists were spouting progressive platitudes and announcing rules to make being a conservative harder with their services and they were useful idiots when their collective brain trust decided to completely regress into the caricatures conservatives used to paint them as. It's not surprising they're still that way now.

This paranoia of Russian hackers is starting to look just like that embarrassing time between 9-11 and the Iraq war when everyone was jumping at the sight of their own shadows and there were terror alerts every other day.

The Washington Post has retracted its story about Russian hackers penetrating the nation’s electricity grid with a virus found in a Burlington, Vt., electric company laptop.

“Authorities say there is no indication of that so far [that Russians had penetrated the US electric grid],” according to an editor’s note attached to a corrected version of the story on the paper’s Web site.

“The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid,” the editor’s note read.

News of the supposed hack had set off a firestorm of recriminations, with Vermont leaders calling Russian President Vladimir Putin “a thug” earlier Saturday, after one of the state’s electric utilities found a virus on a laptop computer.

A utility spokesman has also told the Burlington Free Press the laptop was not hooked into the grid.

http://nypost.com/2017/01/01/washington-post-retracts-story-about-russian-hack-at-vermont-utility/

>>96270
Why don't you post the retraction instead of some sensationalist NY paper's reaction to it?

>>96223
>Russia doesnt dump their best shit
>These tools have a signature and contact specific servers.
then its not their "best shit", its old and outdated