It's not clear whether phishing attacks against scientists were successful:
Russian hackers have reportedly targeted three nuclear research laboratories in the US. A group called Cold River carried out a phishing campaign against scientists at the Brookhaven, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories last summer in an attempt to obtain passwords, Reuters reports.
The efforts are believed to have taken place in August and September, around the time UN experts visited a nuclear power plant in Russia-controlled Ukrainian territory to help prevent a potential disaster following heavy shelling in the area. Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has alluded to a readiness to defend Russia-claimed territory with nuclear weapons.
It's not clear whether the phishing attempts were successful or why the hackers were trying to gain access to the labs' systems. However, Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told Reuters that Cold River is "involved in directly supporting Kremlin information operations."
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08, @02:44PM (2 children)
US Hackers Definitely Targeted Three Iranian Nuclear Research Labs
Our brave good hackers are valiantly defending Freedom against their sneaky bad hackers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08, @04:15PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Hospital_(Blackadder) [wikipedia.org] contains a good re-enactment
(Score: 2) by corey on Monday January 09, @10:09PM
I thought that was the Israelis.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Opportunist on Sunday January 08, @05:05PM
I mean, seriously, it would also take care of a lot of spam and misinformation campaigns.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 08, @05:50PM (1 child)
Lawrence Livermore - that place with the cool fusion lasers. I met one of the physicists tasked with devising alignment systems for the main laser system. I mean, they say it's for fusion energy research but of course it's all about building a better fusion stage for nuclear weapons.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday January 08, @05:54PM
Probably more for evaluating designs. That thing isn't portable at all, so it's not going into a weapon. And I'm sure that the results will be used for evaluating fusion energy designs too.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.