Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility | Hacker News Reader

Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility

washingtonpost.com

147 pointsstablemap129 comments

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

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?

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).

When exceptional signals become normalized from too many false positives, people start ignoring alarms.

I wonder if there are exceptions to this rule in war zones where one's life is at stake.

Anecdote: Yes, errant gun fire and far off explosions stopped making the hair on the back of our neck stand up during deployment, but we always waited for the controlled detonation signal or confirmation if the area where small arms fire was happening. It's possible that my perspective didn't match the general sentiment of the unit. It still seemed like there wasn't much complacency.

And one of the times where the explosions weren't controlled detonations, the reaction force was mounted and moving to location in the standard allotted time.

In Israel when we hear the color red alarm some people run outside to watch iron dome shoot down the missile.

How well does the iron dome work? I assume it works pretty well if it's a spectacle.

Note these siren went off because they "detected" chemical weapons in the air. Why aren't they still be going off today - because they weren't detectors, it was someone pressing a button at random times for PSYOPS

We know for a fact that there were old chemical weapons munitions. The US military disposed of thousands of them. They were all pre Gulf War. What wasn't found were active chemical weapons labs.

"In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleea...

---

"According to the 10,000-word, eight-part interactive report ("The Secret Casualties of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons" [by the NY Times]) by C.J. Chivers published on the paper's website late Tuesday, at least 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers were exposed to nerve or mustard agents in Iraq after 2003."

"'Nothing of significance’ is what I was ordered to say,” Jarrod Lampier, a retired Army major, said of the 2006 discovery of 2,400 nerve-agent rockets at a former Republican Guard compound, the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chemical-weapons-found-in-iraq-ny...

In short, it was propaganda that got us into that war, but it was also propaganda that got us out. The current common mythology around the Iraq war isn't any more accurate than the mythology that got us into it.

False alarms, sure.

But a steady stream of elected officials have come out and declared that this is clearly and unquestionably an attack by the Russian government. Most of the news stories went out of their way to connect the attack to Grizzly Steppe, strongly implying that it wasn't just raising alert levels but exactly matched the discovered malware.

Your summary is a good one on how these things happen naturally, but I'm seeing a healthy dose of direct provocation in this panic.

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.

.. 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.

>.. 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.

> 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.

> 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".

> 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.

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?

More like Jeff Bezos maybe realized a newspaper is only effective as a propaganda tool if people don't regularly ridicule what you publish.

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-b...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...

> 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

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...

> 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.

> in the UK (my country)

Yeah, maybe you being in a different country might be the issue here. I'm not going to comment on news in your country, I'm not entirely knowledgeable.

If there's one thing I've learned in the past few years is how terrible the major news outlets are, ranging from obvious mouthpieces for various political causes to how little fact checking they do. Hell, there was a fairly prominent mistrial in Charleston last month and a major news outlet took a picture of a several year old protest from a completely different state and posted it talking about protests and riots after the mistrial. There wasn't a damned thing. At this point I really cannot trust much of anything that is reported by these organizations. It's a joke.

I'm also a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, and I read (bits of) the US papers most days; I'm not just randomly speculating.

There are lots of things wrong with the US media. Institutional groupthink is definitively a thing. He-said-she-said reporting is also problematic and deeply embedded in US journalistic culture. Sub editing and before-publication fact checking of breaking news stories varies between fine and woeful.

Look. The New York Times and Washington Post have a liberal culture. They're written by well-paid mainly white guys, who live in Democratic cities. Their worldview is mainly establishment-progressive, notwithstanding their attempts to provide balance on the op-ed pages.

But given that, you should understand that they are fundamentally honest organisations. They try hard to get their stories right, they argue internally about the right thing to do, and they're prepared to take expensive and difficult stands on principle - e.g. protection of sources in court or publishing stories like the Pentagon Papers. Other news organizations with different cultural biases but high standards also exist - the WSJ and the Financial Times being two.

There is a massive difference between the NY Posts, Breitbarts, Daily Mails, and other people who are actively trying to sell you a pup, and news organisations which are flawed but honest. You do yourself and the world a disservice by lumping them in together.

The difference is only selection of stories to print. NYT/Post/Breitbart won't publish stories that go against their worldview and select stories that do. You aren't allowed to just make up stories in any of those orgs you mentioned but you can select what not to publish and what to sensationalize, and play political newspeak with copy such as rebels VS insurgents VS terrorists ect.

You absolutely can publish stuff which is known to be false in the Daily Mail, which is one reason it's a tendentious rag. I don't know enough about the NYP's attitudes to known falsehoods to know if that's true for them or not. I would be astonished if a politically useful and commercially popular story were spiked by Breitbart because the editors weren't sure it stood up. This is common even with papers like the Guardian, who are way less fastidious than the NYT and WP.

But sure, story selection is for sure a product of what a given outlet considers 'newsworthy', which has political bias (conscious or otherwise) baked in.

> But given that, you should understand that they are fundamentally honest organisations.

An honest organization would not have printed the original article, it was far beyond an honest mistake.

OK, that's our point of departure. If the Post gets two officials telling them something then they're going to print that as 'officials say ...'. I agree that this often leads to bad journalism, but not that it's dishonest. You can of course have your own standards.

Yes indeed it is difficult when officials "tell" you something untrue, like two news releases that are very clearly about the same general topic but are not explicitly associated. In other words, it appears the 3 letter agencies were trying to imply something here, but not state it outright. It used to be (I think?) the job of the media to shine a light on government propaganda, not carry the ball for them.

I'm sorry, but I simply do not believe these organizations are, overall, honest and caring about journalism. This is not to say there are not honest journalists involved, but overall these organizations fall to political interests or fighting for eyeballs and ad dollars.

During the summer of 2015 we had a bit of a "national tradgedy" shooting in my city of Charleston, the kind that consumes major news outlets for a week or two. Switching between the local paper and CNN (or Fox, or other national papers) was amazing to me, the difference so stark. It was clear the local journalists (I suppose disclaimer: I know a good number of them) were doing their absolute best to report the news, not sell papers. Those national, credible outlets were just trying to stir shit, ramp up the controversy. Anything to appear relevant and knowledgeable without actually being so.

It is not the "money side" that directs propaganda. That meme itself is propaganda to soften minds.

Directing propaganda is the job of intelligence agencies.

The main geopolitical divide between power/intelligence factions in US in past few decades has been, and remains, the question of China-Russia relationship.

One camp believed the Sino-Soviet break was real and bet the Western farm on integrating China into the Western order. The other camp did not believe and used this very same publication, The Washington Post, to set into motion the removal of Nixon (who initiated the openning of China).

Given Washington Post's over the top anti-Russian stance these days, and the incoming clique's equally over the top statements viz a viz China ("bad") and Russia ("good"), what we're seeing here is either a real or theatrical conflict between factions that has spilled over to the propaganda organs of powerful Americans.

> what we're seeing here is either a real or theatrical conflict between factions that has spilled over

I agree, and the difference in tone between the original article and this would seem to agree...to me the difference seemed extremely odd, as if something else is happening to cause it.

He doesn't need to directly do anything.

"I wonder what Jeff will think of this?"

Reflect on Orwell's "Freedom of the Press"

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go

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.

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.

not the White House. the Clinton-aligned faction of the state department and intelligence community.

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-disgrace...

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."

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.

Serious question: How can software arrive onto critical infrastructure?

For example, if it's possible to update the software on the infrastructure, there's going to be a delivery mechanism, right? One could imagine that coming from some process that is further up the chain until, eventually, you arrive at infrastructure that would be attached to the laptop.

For example, what if some build server got compromised (assuming that was the state of the art)? Some software backups, along with some phishing/false alarm to trigger a rollback?

Having rules like what you're saying is extremely helpful, but I imagine it's very likely for there to be a path between many devices to the infrastructure, even if its several jumps away. The chain of trust is probably very long.

IIRC, uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran were infected by Stuxnet because someone brought an infected USB stick, found in the parking lot, into the facility.

Social engineering is the best way to infiltrate the airgapped infrastructure.

I don't think you should be able to plugin a thumb drive to critical infrastructure. I don't disagree that this happened, but modern well designed systems shouldn't allow it.

I was under the impression that SHODAN could find you quite a lot of these.

"PHP web app prone to SQL injection running inside a docker image, as a rube goldberg facade wrapping a galaxy of SCADA controllers"

LOL - I'm sure you wouldn't find anything as modern as PHP or... is this confession? I 'might' be 'aware' of some really er.. nifty solutions at a reasonable rate... connected to some sort of critical RTUs?

Do you remember when security was not even for tinfoil hats and Y2K was gonna make us all rich, rich, rich? Aah!

This is the kind of journalism you get if your goal is to compete with Drudgereport

Strange thought, the Drudge Report is mostly just links to news sites. WaPo should be competing with other news sites to get linked on Drudge Report.

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.

Wouldn't journalistic ethics have been to not be so sensationalist to begin with?

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.

The last wrong path would have been not to milk a sensationalist story without any research whatsoever.

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.

Regardless of whether the WaPo operated with a story in mind, they did operate with sources:

> The investigation by officials began Friday, when the Vermont utility reported its alert to federal authorities, some of whom told The Washington Post that code associated with the Russian hackers had been discovered within the system of an unnamed Vermont utility.

> A senior DHS official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter, defended the report.

> “We know the Russians are a highly capable adversary who conduct technical operations in a manner intended to blend into legitimate traffic,” the official said. The indicators of compromise contained in the report, he said, “are indicative of that. That’s why it’s so important for net defenders to leverage the recommended mitigations contained in the [report], implement best practices, and analyze their logs for traffic emanating from those IPs, because the Russians are going to try and hide evidence of their intrusion and presence in the network.”

You may not like the quality or the presentation of the sources as more weighty than they turned out to be, but they are sources.

Sources that are "anonymous" for no good reason might as well be fictional. The only reason for the source to be anonymous is because they were blatantly lying, which they were.

I'm assuming you've never held classification before. Talking to the press without being expressly permitted to is a one-way ticket to a dismissal, at the very least. Anonymous sources are a cornerstone of the free press.

It's a political talking point soundbite (a PROVEN FALSE one, at that), not classified material.

We don't know whether or not it's classified, but I think it's safe to assume that it either is or is being handled by people with classifications. That puts it firmly in the domain of "off the record or without my name, please."

I don't think it's been "proven" false. I don't think it's very likely, but that is a different question.

I think we are mixing things up too much there. Are you implying leaking classified material to the press as an anonymous source is somehow routine or OK? Might want to have a friendly talk with the security officer about that.

If not why even bring classication into it?

I'm not making any normative claim about leaking. That would be irresponsible.

I brought classification up because it's one of the most common reasons for sources being anonymous. Whether or not you think they should be talking to the press, they do, and the press affords them certain protections doing so.

and strategic "leaks" and press plants are a cornerstone of media engineering by the state

Yeah, but when the sources are government officials peddling the government line, in an environment where they have every motive to exaggerate, why would you assign them any credibility at all?

How has the WaPo not got this message yet? Government officials talking about Russia are probably lying

What's the basis that officials have a "blame Russia" policy? Why does this seem to be official policy only since this year?

It's not like anti-Russian saber rattling was a thing even 12 months ago, despite the Ukraine situation.

The DNC hacks are a thing that happened, and a lot of people outside the government seem to agree that evidence points to it happening from Russia, by actors who seem to have worked with the Russian government.

If you accept the DNC hack analysis, it's not absurd to imagine that closer scrutiny reveals more infrastructure that Russian state actors have penetrated. Especially given that we know infrastructure is more vulnerable that we might like.

Considering that Republicans are not peddling the anti-Russia line, what's the angle here? in the last 6 months of an 8 year term, Obama decides to activate the anti-Russian propaganda machine? Only for it to be dismantled in 2 weeks anyways with the new administration? What sequence of events causes that?

These attacks were classic script kiddie attacks.

Hillary losing elections triggered that. Warlord as Putin is, you can't blindly blame everyone else for your faults.

Threatconnect did a decent amount of research into the attacks[0] for trying to figure out who did the attacks. There are other security researchers out there who come to similar conclusions.

So either the government is bribing a bunch of security researchers (who doesn't want the scoop that the consensus is wrong?), the government executed a perfect false flag to blame Russia on something (why do this? It's not like having Russia as an enemy is useful for us), the analyses by these researchers are right, or something else.

My money is on a decent amount of smart people all arriving somewhere near the truth.

[0]: https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/guccifer-2-0-dnc-breach/

I think we're now seeing what the real limits of just reporting sources is. The paper becomes a mouthpiece for the sources, who have learned enough media management to know how to manipulate it. Especially the difficulty of using anonymous sources, which are often necessary but difficult to hold accountable for accuracy.

It's like hitting someone very hard on the head and then apologizing. The damage is already done - 90% of the people who read the headlines won't notice the retraction.

So preventing false headlines should have far greater priority than apologies/retractions - which are 90% useless. No, it is not all good now! Even the very continued mentioning of "Russian hackers" achieves a goal, very subtly. Just having that term out is enough.

Given how much more advanced other countries are, I can't believe all the stuff the Russians suddenly are supposed to be capable of. To me it seems that the real "hackers" (of public opinion) are located in places very different from Moscow or Leningrad, much farther West.

See my response to belovedeagle.

>This is journalistic ethics in action.

No, the term you're looking for is damage control.

One and the same.

If damage control is your standard operating procedure, we're not talking ethics, but lack of it. Doing evil until caught, and then apologizing, can be excused once, but not when it's a strategy.

I was taking a dig at the ambiguity of the word "damage."

"Damage control" can either mean "controlling the damage done to the organization" or "controlling the damage done to the public by the organization."

Anyways, I think it's wrong to characterize the WaPo as "evil" in this situation for following an editorial rulebook. There's no evidence that they published the first article with intent to apologize later - if there was, this case would be complicated significantly.

The apology never gets as much press as the accusation.

Journalistic ethics would be to never make the assertion without evidence in the first place.

An apology is the last thing a newspaper should run

See my response to belovedeagle.

There was evidence, but it was evidence that you or I would call insufficient to meet the weight of the accusation. You can find fault with that as shoddy journalism, but I don't think it meets the standard of unethical journalism.

> An apology is the last thing a newspaper should run

An apology is the first thing a newspaper should run, once it knows that its original story is faulty.

journalistic ethics would have been to diligently research the story before going to press. what they should have done in this situation is make sure they had the facts in order before making statements of the gravity they made.

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

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

It's also the established media that tells you that it wasn't Russian hackers now. So, what's your point?

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.

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).

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.

I'm not defending the story at all. It ran on the word of two insiders, one of them anonymous. It turned out to be wrong. No shock there. And news production is in no way associated with exceptional care - and never has been. It's associated with rushing copy out for tight deadlines.

There are lots of problems with the way news is made. But in this case, what was actually reported ('officials say Russia implicated') is true. What seems to be false is that the officials' claims had any merit. Newsroom incentives are to get breaking news out. That's one reason a lot of stuff in the papers is wrong.

Incidentally, investigative journalists don't do breaking news - they run long term investigations, which are usually published as such. They're massively important, but not a panacea for poor news coverage.

My point is that this "fake news" trend is pretty ironic - since it comes from some of the most prolific propaganda outlets, that despite being caught in the act of promoting a certain agenda over truth, continues to attempt to bullshit what is left of their readership.

The pure desperation of using "fake news" as a mantra for weeks suggests that the conglomerate hold is finally dwindling away in the american media sphere.

>it was the russians!

it is very easy to confirm. If there are fingerprints left with visible traces of canned pork fat ("tushonka") then it was really russians. (For whom remember - "The 18th moment of Spring or How do hedgehogs procreate.")

You can buy tushonka in any voentorg, so it's not reliable any longer.

Visit card or passport left in place is much better than tushonka. It's long way for CIA.

"Fake news" is a brilliantly positioned term that is meant to imply that somehow mainstream media is not mostly fake.

Using the term "mainstream media" makes me wince, but I agree with you. It's their ham-handed attempt to recover from being exposed as puppets of the Democratic Party; doubling down on the big lie that anything that runs counter to their narrative is "fake news" and that social media is to blame, not lack of journalistic integrity in previously (somewhat) trusted organizations.

Unfortunately, they'll be around for a long time, and definitely long enough to get away with the current popular trick: publishing lies, waiting for other organizations to reprint those lies, then issuing corrections quietly so that rubes talk about how that's proof of integrity.

"puppets of the Democratic Party"

Please that is the problem here. Constant looking for sides and making false statements while pretending to be the "one" that knows the truth in comments.

> Constant looking for sides and making false statements while pretending to be the "one" that knows the truth in comments.

The list of campaign donors to the DNC showed that media organizations as affiliated with the Democratic Party. They picked their sides; post-hoc documentation did not do this.

Further, recognizing corruption and lack of journalistic integrity doesn't mean that I'm pretending to be some sort of political prophet -- if anything, it's a bigger problem that those who criticize misinformation are expected to provide a equal counterbalance.

past edit window, but:

s/showed that media organizations as/showed that media organizations are/

not sure what happened to my english there

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".

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.

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.

I'm having a hard time researching the concept of "mind conditioning." Is this a real thing or conspiracy nonsense?

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/Operant_conditioning

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.

>> 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.

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.

Because unlike the US government, WikiLeaks has a more accurate/transparent track record?

That argument only works if you trust WikiLeaks and a lot of people don't.

Alot of people also do trust wikileaks.

When reasoning with incomplete information, things like history of credibility have to be taken into account. US Intelligence services have been caught in lie after lie. Wikileaks has never been caught lying.

Trust is not binary. You don't have to "trust" WikiLeaks to wonder if there's something sketchy going on.

Since I don't trust anyone on this issue, my only conclusion is that I don't know what's going on here, and I'm not going to pretend to be an instant expert.

(In particular, I don't trust Wikileaks to know whether they are being played or not. Attribution seems difficult.)

It's by design that you don't know what's going on here.

Yes, that's how it works. It's still the right conclusion, particularly when you're not paying close attention.

What track record does Wikileaks have of positively ID'ing their sources? To my knowledge the opposite is true.

I suspect that is precisely the line that WaPo will adopt should they bother to address what Assange has said. They'll scrutinize his ability to know and verify what he is saying and they'll point out all the opposing arguments.

If only WaPo had applied this sort of scrutiny and skepticism to their 'Russians hacked the power system' story; millions of people wouldn't be misled today and perhaps the White House wouldn't be harassing Russian diplomats.

Does that timeline add up? The announcement about the diplomats was made Thursday, and I believe the original WaPo article was published on Saturday. You could blame the WaPo for being hasty, but they certainly aren't the reason Russian diplomats are being expelled.

> why should we believe him and not believe all the various people who have said the opposite?

because he might actually know? it was his organization that received the documents, after all.

is he lying about it? possibly, but what incentive does he have to lie about it?

was he deceived himself? possibly, but if that's the rabbit hole you're going down than what would establish confidence that _any_ claim on this subject is a truthful one?

because the various people claiming the opposite have a clear political agenda that is consistent with the narrative they have been aggressively promulgating through a complicit media? Assange isn't the one trying to start a new cold war. the Clinton faction of the state department and the CIA on the other hand...

> because the various people claiming the opposite have a clear political agenda

What is CrowdStrike's "clear political agenda" and where is evidence of it?

> Assange has stated again in another interview, airing tonight, that it wasn't Russia. It wasn't any 'state' actor.

I'm old enough to remember when a Russian disinformation campaign also said that MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian military...

I'll trust the experts in this case, thanks.

> Assange has stated again in another interview, airing tonight, that it wasn't Russia.

After it came out from a number of sources, starting with CrowdStrike and later including the US intelligence community that the leaks were a Russian intelligence operation, WikiLeaks has proffered a shifting set of explanations, including for a while intimating that there was no hacking involved and that their source was an insider leak.

Obviously, WikiLeaks has an interest in not being seen as a pawn or dupe of Russia's intelligence services; OTOH, there's no shared common interest between the various parties that have attributes the hack to Russia in so doing if it is false.

Assange has no idea where the info came from--that's the whole fucking point of Wikileaks, to create a layer of anonymity so that information can be leaked without endangering whistleblowers.

> It wasn't the government making exaggerated statements to the press, it was this private company.

Can you source this claim? Here is text from the original WaPo article - http://archive.is/8AEHq -

While it is unclear which utility reported the incident, there are just two major utilities in Vermont, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric.

If BE was "making exaggerated statements to the press", then why is it "unclear which utility reported the incident"? The only statement I see from BE is the one they released on their site:

On Thursday night, the Burlington Electric Department was alerted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of a malware code used in Grizzly Steppe, the name DHS has applied to recent malicious cyber activity. We acted quickly to scan all computers in our system for the malware signature. We detected suspicious Internet traffic in a single Burlington Electric Department computer not connected to our organization’s grid systems. We took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding.

There is no indication that either our electric grid or customer information has been compromised. Media reports stating that Burlington Electric was hacked or that the electric grid was breached are false.

EDIT: One of the posters here linked to a much better analysis - http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/01/01/fake-new...

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

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

This is a pretty good critique of how the 'story' developed: 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.

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

Careful using text-mode in public! http://kotaku.com/cnn-shows-fallout-hacking-terminal-in-a-vi...

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.

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-...

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.

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?

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.

Interesting. Do you have a reference for this? I did an admittedly cursorily search before posting my initial comment, and didn't find any.

The Washington post is listed here as a 3rd party source [1]

[1] http://financial.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/docu...

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.

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

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"?

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.

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.

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