A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.
... but ...
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.
Generally speaking, anonymously sourced stories in western news outlets about Russian hacking have a very high propensity to collapse or get quietly retracted days later. The DHS is particularly notorious for this: they also claimed Russia hacked various election related systems in multiple states, but the states themselves investigated and said the DHS was wrong.
Glenn Greenwald also wrote extensively about this problem.
So now we have an "unprecedented" story sourced to anonymous officials in the DHS, making the entirely false claim that this is the first time US officials have accused Russia of hacking the electrical grid. The cited evidence is a Symantec report that didn't name anyone in particular.
Is it possible Russia is doing this? Of course. I would be, if I were Putin. But I'd also be doing it if I were the leader of Iran or North Korea or China. Perhaps all of them are doing it.
Regardless of the truth, this sort of story should have no credibility with anyone by now. There have been far too many false stories about Russian hacking published for them to carry weight.
No, this is a first. It's the first time the US has publicly blamed Russia through official channels, as opposed to leaks to the press. The original alert was published by US-CERT:
It's true that both this and previously reports technically involved "anonymous officials in the DHS", in the sense that alert doesn't name any specific officials, but the phrase "anonymous officials" is usually associated with leaks, not official announcements...
They've been watching this in Ukraine for a few years now.
Russia has been using the Ukraine as a cyberwar testing ground attacking utility systems on a seasonal basis.
US utilities and US officials have been in Ukraine for a while working with these utilities on the assumption that what happens in Ukraine will eventually happen on their home turf.
This is actually a thing and it's an important move that officials are calling people out now.
> This is not a first. The USA made a nearly identical claim in this retracted story in 2016
Er, no. The story was retracted because what the original version said that authorities claimed was not what authorities actually claimed. It was a journalistic backtrack (WaPo retracted their original reporting), not a government backtrack.
An erroneous media report of the government making an accusation is not an example of the government making the accusation that would, then, invalidate a description of the government later actually making a similar accusation as being unprecedented.
but who is doing all this "jumping on a tree's branch" ?? We are worse now than in Cold War times! These unspecified retracted stories' authors are traitors! I won't blame Putin for WW3, I will blame them!
I feel like we're playing a dangerous game, escalating towards war. We've interfered with each other's elections dating back to the cold war. I'm not saying it's moral, but we should maybe reexamine our own actions and what we're willing to sacrifice before asking for things [extraditions] for things we're also guilty of.
This is somewhat simplistic, but I cannot help but feel that at least a part of this current drama is about giving a Boris Yeltsin variant back to the west.
First, can you back up the claims in this comment? Also, Russia has had very few actual elections, especially when you include the Cold War era. Finally, there is no moral equivalency between totalitarian dictatorships which murder tens of millions and oppress nations from Germany to the Pacific (and elsewhere), and free democracies, with all their flaws.
The false equivalencies appear on every issue that casts the Chinese or Russian governments in a bad light. Speaking of the Cold War, IIRC my history, the KGB liked to use them in their propaganda.
I've just finished watching the Stuxnet documentary. State funded attacks on critical infrastructure are going to be a world-wide norm. No matter how good your security, you will be vulnerable eventually. We'll have to go back to analogue style systems to be protected.
As with virtually every other accusation of "Russian hacking", there is actually nothing presented suggesting that it was Russians that performed these hacks, let alone conclusively proving that. The line of "reasoning" used to accuse Russia of being responsible is, yet again, the same bit of tired tripe. It boils down to, "this attack uses methods that we suspect Russians have used in the past, and we assert that Russians would have liked to do this hack, therefore we have proof that it was Russians".
>Malicious email campaigns dating back to late 2015 were used to gain entry into organizations in the United States, Turkey and Switzerland, and likely other countries, Symantec said at the time, though it did not name Russia as the culprit.
In other words, these were generic fishing attacks that could have been performed by anyone. Since anyone and everyone uses these fishing attacks, we had no idea who it was in 2015. However, now that everyone is blaming everything on Russia, we can safely do so without even casual scrutiny of our claims.
While HN has a liberal bias, it is worth reading and understanding the opposite side's motivation for their opinion. Instead of voting him down, it would be more academic to understand and engage in civil discussions.
It's a knee-jerk reaction to totalitarian domestic propaganda.
Has a tendency to breed confused, alarmist, emotional and untechnical conversation.
Here's the truth: Russia isn't evil. Neither is the United States. But they are enemies. The people are getting caught in a propaganda war, which has shifted conversation from the venue of technical to ideological. (Propaganda, in practice, breeds ideological self-affirming thinking.)
The breakdown of conversation isn't the fault of the "traitors who support the evil Russians" or the fault of the "domestic saboteurs who support the US mass propaganda apparatus" but the fact that the two countries can't get their shit straight and work toward a post-Cold War without throwing acid at each other.
(I'm rewriting the last sentence of this over and over because I realize its going to attract ever-yet more comments of the form "but Russia's evil and they started it and you can't really compare the US and Russia - can you?". Screw it.)
If I leave my door unlocked can I really blame <bad person> for opening my door and robbing me? Why dont I invest in door locks? The US should really look into a more security focused infrastructure. This year the bad guy is Russia, but last year it was China and next year maybe it will be Iranian hackers. I understand that security is constant game of cat and mouse but when I see and hear of companies running Wimdows XP in 2018... it's like we're not even trying. Might as well leave the doors unlocked.
Sure you can blame them and blame yourself. It doesn't have to be either or.
Depending if you think internet is a safe small town neighborhood or a hostile place full of bad actors constantly trying to gain entry into your systems. In the first case, nobody would say you're irresponsible because well it is unprecedented for burglary to happen there, in the second case the perpetrator would be guilty, but you'd be laughed at and ridiculed for being irresponsible as well.
If you happen to hold someone else info (cough Equifax cough) you might even be sued, though ... you probably also have friends in the government and tons of lawyers to not really be bothered by it.
Yes, burglary is not only wrong, it's against the law.
I agree that companies should do more about securing or disconnecting their networks, but I don't get to shoot someone just because they're so silly as not to be wearing a bullet proof vest.
Yes, you can and you should blame them. Crime isn't morally okay just because the victim hasn't protected themselves well enough. It doesn't matter whether it's hacking a poorly secured network, robbing a poorly secured house, or raping a provocatively dressed woman.
> If I leave my door unlocked can I really blame <bad person> for opening my door and robbing me?
Sure you can! Robbing is not something that happens by accident, and neither is hacking. I agree that the US should invest heavily in improving security, but taking the view that "pfff, who cares who did it!" is a terrible idea.
That Russia is acting like a spoiled country is not much in doubt. What I hope doesn't happen is a needless tit-for-tat escalation. I think much of this goes back to the ill-conceived and ill fated "Reset" with Clinton (at the behest of Obama). For whatever reason Putin and Obama didn't get along.
I'm hopeful that cold-war warriors don't dominate the policies to come. If we (they and us) take that tack, we're in for a bad stretch. I'm hoping the current administration is capable of bucking the Russophobia the Dems are so attached to and committed to, mostly for internal political reasons.
Let's get real, deal with Russia as the adversary it is, but in a level-headed manner. Let's face it, they do not care about sanctions. One Bit. They will survive with or without the rest of the world but we get to deal with their blow back.
Obama granted N Korea's Kim more respect than he did Putin. I think that was a grave mistake on his part and we're now paying for this slight with these passive-aggressive moves.
Russian-American relations have worsened not because of russophobia, but rather because of several high profile and geopolitically relevant events. The first of these was the invasion of Crimea and the funneling of arms to Ukrainian Separatists engaging in a civil war. These actions are a direct violation of the Budapest Memorandum signed by Russia and the US. Essentially, Ukraine agreed to destroy the nuclear weapons leftover from the USSR in exchange for total respect in regards to territorial integrity.[1] Furthermore, a Russian BUK system, staffed by these separatists downed the civilian airliner Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 innocent people.[2]. Furthermore, Russian hackers hacked the emails of both major political parties, and has, literally, a 3 story office complex staffed with internet trolls intent on misleading the American public via social media for the last several years[4]. Finally, you have the most recent incident where Russia attempted to murder not only a former spy in the U.K., but also his daughter, and about twenty other bar patrons, neighbors and first responders. The poisoned used was a nerve gas developed in Russia and exclusively available in Russia.[5]
Clearly, these are meaningful events in the context of American-Russia relations as well as NATO-Russia relations, you can't just handwave them away by saying it's one parties political problem.
[+] [-] mike_hearn|8 years ago|reply
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russi...
A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.
... but ...
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.
Generally speaking, anonymously sourced stories in western news outlets about Russian hacking have a very high propensity to collapse or get quietly retracted days later. The DHS is particularly notorious for this: they also claimed Russia hacked various election related systems in multiple states, but the states themselves investigated and said the DHS was wrong.
I cite some more examples in this blog post:
https://blog.plan99.net/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B4%D0%B0...
Glenn Greenwald also wrote extensively about this problem.
So now we have an "unprecedented" story sourced to anonymous officials in the DHS, making the entirely false claim that this is the first time US officials have accused Russia of hacking the electrical grid. The cited evidence is a Symantec report that didn't name anyone in particular.
Is it possible Russia is doing this? Of course. I would be, if I were Putin. But I'd also be doing it if I were the leader of Iran or North Korea or China. Perhaps all of them are doing it.
Regardless of the truth, this sort of story should have no credibility with anyone by now. There have been far too many false stories about Russian hacking published for them to carry weight.
[+] [-] comex|8 years ago|reply
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A
and has more interesting technical details.
It's true that both this and previously reports technically involved "anonymous officials in the DHS", in the sense that alert doesn't name any specific officials, but the phrase "anonymous officials" is usually associated with leaks, not official announcements...
[+] [-] spitfire|8 years ago|reply
US utilities and US officials have been in Ukraine for a while working with these utilities on the assumption that what happens in Ukraine will eventually happen on their home turf.
This is actually a thing and it's an important move that officials are calling people out now.
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-h...
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/everything-we-know-about-ukrai...
[+] [-] dragonwriter|8 years ago|reply
Er, no. The story was retracted because what the original version said that authorities claimed was not what authorities actually claimed. It was a journalistic backtrack (WaPo retracted their original reporting), not a government backtrack.
An erroneous media report of the government making an accusation is not an example of the government making the accusation that would, then, invalidate a description of the government later actually making a similar accusation as being unprecedented.
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|8 years ago|reply
Not exactly what you said, they hacked a utility computer but not one connected to the grid.
>> story sourced to anonymous officials in the DHS
This is Reuters so odds are that someone @DHS made that claim. Even if Reuters screwed up, DHS would probably call AP and deny the claim.
What should be said is that USA almost certainly does the same, and it makes sense to be able to shut down your adversary once "war" starts.
[+] [-] montyf|8 years ago|reply
They never carried weight for me. The "evil Russians" angle has always been about disinforming and misdirecting the public.
[+] [-] joering2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OrganicMSG|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetimemanytime|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forapurpose|8 years ago|reply
The false equivalencies appear on every issue that casts the Chinese or Russian governments in a bad light. Speaking of the Cold War, IIRC my history, the KGB liked to use them in their propaganda.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] leke|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|8 years ago|reply
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A
As with virtually every other accusation of "Russian hacking", there is actually nothing presented suggesting that it was Russians that performed these hacks, let alone conclusively proving that. The line of "reasoning" used to accuse Russia of being responsible is, yet again, the same bit of tired tripe. It boils down to, "this attack uses methods that we suspect Russians have used in the past, and we assert that Russians would have liked to do this hack, therefore we have proof that it was Russians".
>Malicious email campaigns dating back to late 2015 were used to gain entry into organizations in the United States, Turkey and Switzerland, and likely other countries, Symantec said at the time, though it did not name Russia as the culprit.
In other words, these were generic fishing attacks that could have been performed by anyone. Since anyone and everyone uses these fishing attacks, we had no idea who it was in 2015. However, now that everyone is blaming everything on Russia, we can safely do so without even casual scrutiny of our claims.
[+] [-] exabrial|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arthurcolle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TomMckenny|8 years ago|reply
If the west now can't even defend its technical discussion forums from totalitarian disruption, heaven help it.
[+] [-] jwtadvice|8 years ago|reply
Has a tendency to breed confused, alarmist, emotional and untechnical conversation.
Here's the truth: Russia isn't evil. Neither is the United States. But they are enemies. The people are getting caught in a propaganda war, which has shifted conversation from the venue of technical to ideological. (Propaganda, in practice, breeds ideological self-affirming thinking.)
The breakdown of conversation isn't the fault of the "traitors who support the evil Russians" or the fault of the "domestic saboteurs who support the US mass propaganda apparatus" but the fact that the two countries can't get their shit straight and work toward a post-Cold War without throwing acid at each other.
(I'm rewriting the last sentence of this over and over because I realize its going to attract ever-yet more comments of the form "but Russia's evil and they started it and you can't really compare the US and Russia - can you?". Screw it.)
[+] [-] aninteger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|8 years ago|reply
Sure you can blame them and blame yourself. It doesn't have to be either or.
Depending if you think internet is a safe small town neighborhood or a hostile place full of bad actors constantly trying to gain entry into your systems. In the first case, nobody would say you're irresponsible because well it is unprecedented for burglary to happen there, in the second case the perpetrator would be guilty, but you'd be laughed at and ridiculed for being irresponsible as well.
If you happen to hold someone else info (cough Equifax cough) you might even be sued, though ... you probably also have friends in the government and tons of lawyers to not really be bothered by it.
[+] [-] duck|8 years ago|reply
Yes, you can and should.
[+] [-] kurthr|8 years ago|reply
I agree that companies should do more about securing or disconnecting their networks, but I don't get to shoot someone just because they're so silly as not to be wearing a bullet proof vest.
[+] [-] notatoad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dguaraglia|8 years ago|reply
Sure you can! Robbing is not something that happens by accident, and neither is hacking. I agree that the US should invest heavily in improving security, but taking the view that "pfff, who cares who did it!" is a terrible idea.
[+] [-] djrogers|8 years ago|reply
Yes.
To think otherwise removes the social construct that theft is wrong.
[+] [-] Smoosh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|8 years ago|reply
I'm hopeful that cold-war warriors don't dominate the policies to come. If we (they and us) take that tack, we're in for a bad stretch. I'm hoping the current administration is capable of bucking the Russophobia the Dems are so attached to and committed to, mostly for internal political reasons.
Let's get real, deal with Russia as the adversary it is, but in a level-headed manner. Let's face it, they do not care about sanctions. One Bit. They will survive with or without the rest of the world but we get to deal with their blow back.
Obama granted N Korea's Kim more respect than he did Putin. I think that was a grave mistake on his part and we're now paying for this slight with these passive-aggressive moves.
[+] [-] ComradeTaco|8 years ago|reply
Clearly, these are meaningful events in the context of American-Russia relations as well as NATO-Russia relations, you can't just handwave them away by saying it's one parties political problem.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit... [3]https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-ha... [4]https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/... [5]https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/europe/theresa-may-reprisals-...
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]