In a first, U.S. blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid

…I was writing a rather long comment that tried to defend the Post story as, in retrospect, probably true, in light of the current report and other more recent showing a pattern. (In particular, the current report actually shows a VNC connection to some kind of generator system, though presumably not Burlington Electric's.) However, the Post's own followup report [1] suggested that (contrary to the company's original statement) the government had not found any indicators on the Burlington Electric laptop that were uniquely linked to Grizzly Steppe:

    U.S. officials are continuing to investigate the laptop. In the
    course of their investigation, though, they have found on the device
    a package of software tools commonly used by online criminals to
    deliver malware. The package, known as Neutrino, does not appear
    to be connected with Grizzly Steppe, which U.S. officials have
    identified as the Russian hacking operation. The FBI, which declined
    to comment, is continuing to investigate how the malware got onto
    the laptop.
    
    Initially, company officials publicly said they had detected code
    that had been linked by the Department of Homeland Security to
    Grizzly Steppe.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russi...

> So no, it wasn't a simply journalistic error.

Yes, it was.

I suppose it's monetarily/mechanically true, but it's almost like saying you can afford a new car when your life insurance pays out.

This is way off. The USN is about 4x the size of the Russian navy and about 5x that of China.

That's clearly not true, as recent history shows, unless one has a fairly broad definition of what Russia’s “own territory” is.

Pride in this myth is one of the reasons often given for why the New Chronology and the associated conspiracy theory of how all of what is held to be history prior to the middle ages is a fabrication (and much of that of the middle ages, too), since that allows the idea that the Mongol invasion never happened.

> Anyway if China does join in, their navy is comparable to the US's, and together with Russia's, it'd be bigger.

Numerically, maybe, but numerical comparisons aren't comparisons of capability. (Ditto with the comment on Russia’s Navy.)

Except the Mongols.

It's very easy. Putin is a dictator and the Russians have no democracy, undermine others, poison people, etc. The U.S. doesn't have clean hands, but there is no comparison.

> If you want to get into the head of Russian paranoia towards the US and the anglosphere in general, look at the US for what its ruling elites have historically demonstrated itself to do, to dominate everything that exists by any means necessary which includes wiping out inconvenient peoples both culturally and literally.

That's quite a statement. The Americas are generally free, independent democracies, including U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico. The places conquered by the US in WWII soon became, free, prosperous and completely independent allies, Germany and Japan being the leading examples.

In fact, at the end of the war the US was the only nuclear armed power, had half the world's GDP (!) with a fully functioning economy while competitors were physically and economically devastated, and had a massive military spread around the globe. They could have chosen to become dictators to the world; instead they withdrew and helped form international institutions, such as the UN, World Bank, IMF, GATT/WTO, and others, to promote international peace and prosperity.

Yes, the US also did bad things, but the parent's statement is false and, of course, Russia does not compare.

Wouldn't it be more productive to say "Here is why this is probably the Russians, or check out this report that captured source IP addresses and patterns and it matches up with the Russian hacking groups attack behavior".

But Putin is a hostile who's popularity, having ruined the economy, depends on endless conflict and so will never be appeased. Even the extremely pro Putin White House is repeatedly embarrassed by the one sided-ness of the relationship.

But that's a side issue here. If one wanted to save a free discussion site from de-facto censorship and vandalism by totalitarian shills, one would need to apply the ban-hammer with ruthless zeal. Possibly viewing threads like this one as a honeypot to locate them.

One would not, for example, cater to that censorship by penalizing news of cyber attacks off the front page. Which, among other things, eliminates discussion of mitigation strategies.

For all intents and purposes, that thief may as well be a crocodile who slips in during the night and eats your children. We can put it on trial or negotiate with it about as effectively.

Was Equifax blameless in the events leading up to their breach? They could have prevented it, but they didn't. Or do we only expect responsibility from criminals and corporations?

Maybe a wall that is ten feet higher. Certainly not an armed invasion.

That would be strange, especially if they were able to get weapons issued only to Russian military at Ukrainian depots.

>It'd be like expecting us (the US) to give up San Diego as a strategic harbor and let it silt up. It is not gonna happen.

Are you claiming San Diego is a part of another country? Because if it were a part of Mexico and it was annexed tomorrow I'd have very similar concerns.