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posted by on Monday January 02 2017, @10:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the poor-sources-of-information dept.

Glenn Greenwald reports via The Intercept

The Washington Post on Friday [December 30] reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont. The Post headline conveyed the seriousness of the threat:
[Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say]

The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta--what is now routinely referred to as "Russian hacking of our election"--by referencing the code name revealed on Wednesday by the Obama administration when it announced sanctions on Russian officials: "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."

The Post article contained grave statements from Vermont officials of the type politicians love to issue after a terrorist attack to show they are tough and in control.

[...] The article went on and on in that vein, with all the standard tactics used by the U.S. media for such stories: quoting anonymous national security officials, reviewing past acts of Russian treachery, and drawing the scariest possible conclusions ("'The question remains: Are they in other systems and what was the intent?' a U.S. official said").

The media reactions, as Alex Pfeiffer documents, were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations of Putin's menacing evil.

[...] The Post's story also predictably and very rapidly infected other large media outlets. Reuters thus told its readers around the world: "A malware code associated with Russian hackers has reportedly been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility."

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 its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.

Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so Burlington Electric had to issue its own statement to the Burlington Free Press, which debunked the Post's central claim (emphasis in original): "We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization's grid systems."


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  • (Score: 1) by toddestan on Tuesday January 03 2017, @02:42AM

    by toddestan (4982) on Tuesday January 03 2017, @02:42AM (#448748)

    Are you sure that the senior officials actually said any of that, or are their quotes simply fabricated like much of the rest of the story?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @03:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 03 2017, @03:22AM (#448755)

    Do you see any of them threatening to sue for libel?
    They said it on the record dude.
    If you are so disconnected from reality that you can't even accept something as basic as that then you need to do some serious self-reflection.