Good day all. And welcome to 2017. Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few weeks, you should be aware that Obama, the Democrats and some of the GOP(e), have been demanding that Russia be “Punished” for “Hacking the DNC’s” email.
The claim by the Democrats that the Russians “Hacked” the recent election is absurd on it’s face. The retaliation by Obama, throwing 30 Russian diplomats out of the United States was countered by the Russian government inviting American diplomats to a new years party. One of the problems with the claim that Russia hacked Podesta’s email was the actual simplicity of the attack. In fact, the entire claim that it was the fault of the #DamnRussianHackers has already begun to fall apart thanks to real computer security professionals. (The MSM refuses to cover this for obvious reasons. It goes against their narrative)
Late last week, the Washington Post published a story that the Russians had hacked the American Power grid. This set off another round of teeth gnashing by the usual idiots on both sides of the aisle. Then the truth came out. The Vermont Utility found some old malware on a laptop that had never actually connected to the power grid servers. This forced the Washington Post to “rewrite” their fake news story. Here’s what they said:
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.
Pesky thing, those facts, aren’t they? Here’s what those “Highly trained journalists with experienced editors and 15 layers of fact checkers” wrote:
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.
And, no it wasn’t. In fact, it was an ancient bit of code that anyone can get and has been detectable by virus checkers for about 3 years now. However, the WaPo continued their cries of “The Sky is falling!! Hillary won! It was those #DamnRussianHackers who stole the election and now want to shut off our power!!!”
While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a security matter, the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid. And it raises fears in the U.S. government that Russian government hackers are actively trying to penetrate the grid to carry out potential attacks.
There is no question that the American power grid needs a lot of work, and not just from a computer security point of view. Our grid is ancient compared to other countries, such as Germany and Japan. Of course, the fact that we blew up their grids in the 1940’s may have something to do with that.
As to security, a major cause for the problems is sheer lazyness and incompetence. I recall, years ago, that news came out on how a certain model of SCADA had a hard coded administrator password and that it had been identified and handed out to the hacker community. That company had to fix the issue very quickly, which involved physically upgrading the firmware on each unit. Oh, I was working in the energy field at the time, and the day that story broke, representatives of the company were in our offices trying to sell us the very same units. They didn’t get the sale.
In any case, someone finally did some actual reporting and contacted Burlington Electric to ask what was going on.
Burlington Electric said in a statement that the company detected a malware code used in the Grizzly Steppe operation in a laptop that was not connected to the organization’s grid systems. The firm said it took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alert federal authorities.
As I mentioned above, the malware in question had no connection to the Russians and was in fact, very old and easily available to anyone over the age of 12. Now the Washington Post is walking back the story big time. In an article they posted yesterday, they said:
As federal officials investigate suspicious Internet activity found last week on a Vermont utility computer, they are finding evidence that the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort to target or hack the utility, according to experts and officials close to the investigation.
An employee at Burlington Electric Department was checking his Yahoo email account Friday and triggered an alert indicating that his computer had connected to a suspicious IP address associated by authorities with the Russian hacking operation that infiltrated the Democratic Party.
So Yahoo Mail, (People still use that?) is now part of the alleged hacking of the Democrat party? Didn’t I read something that Yahoo had been hacked a few years ago and that some 1 billion accounts had been compromised? It must have been those #DamnRussianHackers getting set up.
Officials told the company that traffic with this particular address is found elsewhere in the country and is not unique to Burlington Electric, suggesting the company wasn’t being targeted by the Russians. Indeed, officials say it is possible that the traffic is benign, since this particular IP address is not always connected to malicious activity.
The Post initially reported incorrectly that the country’s electric grid had been penetrated through a Vermont utility. After Burlington Electric released its statement saying that the potentially compromised laptop had not been connected to the grid, The Post immediately corrected its article and later added an editor’s note explaining the change.
What happened with the Washington Post is indicative of most of the so called “Main Stream Media.” They went from so called “Neutral journalists” to outright shills and propagandists for the Democrats and Felonia von Pantsuit. They were stunned when Felonia was defeated by President-Elect Donald Trump.
Stunned might not be the correct word. Poleaxed would be more like it. The WaPo, along with pretty much everyone one on the left has been trying to find the “Real” reason Felonia had her head handed to her. Since all the embarrassing emails from the DNC and John Podesta showed up on Wikileaks, plus Trump’s willingness to talk with Putin instead of start a World War, the MSM has decided that it was the #DamnRussianHackers, on orders of Vladimir Putin, that stole the election from Felonia.
What they refuse to consider was that Felonia von Pantsuit, aka Hillary Rodham Clinton, was an inept, corrupt and utterly incompetent candidate. They also haven’t mentioned that all the email that came out, which showed just how corrupt the Democrats actually are, has never been shown to be false. They also refuse to accept the word of Julian Assange that the data didn’t come from the Russians. Well, it is Assange, and he’s not the most credible of people, but in this case, he’s probably telling the truth. Because there are so many questions regarding the source of the material, President-Elect Trump has been holding off making accusations, and has been asking for this thing called “Evidence.”
The incident comes as President-elect Donald Trump has cast doubt on the findings of intelligence officials that the Russians conducted a hacking operation designed to help him win the White House.
And once again we see why the Washington Post has a crater the size of Texas where their credibility as a newspaper once was. If facts don’t fit their beliefs, the facts are ignored. Trump, on the other hand, wants to know what actually happened, not just make accusations with no proof. He’s not alone in questioning the “facts.”
But a range of cybersecurity experts say that although the intention of the report was good, it lacked specific details that would enable firms to detect Russian government hackers. At least 30 percent of the IP addresses listed were commonly used sites such as public proxy servers used to mask a user’s location, and servers run by Amazon.com and Yahoo.
Amazon? Who is the owner of Amazon again? Oh yeah, Jeff Bezos. I seem to recall he also bought a newspaper recently.
Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.
Oh yeah, he bought the Post. I can see he’s brought a lot of common sense ideas on how to report a story…NOT!!
“No one should be making any attribution conclusions purely from the indicators in the [government] report,” tweeted Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, which investigated the DNC hack and attributed it to the Russian government. “It was all a jumbled mess.’’
Which is exactly the way the “Lets Nuke Russia for old times sake!” crowd wants it.
So, let me summarize. A laptop that has never actually connected to the systems managing the Vermont power grid, (Actually, it’s called the New England ISO), had a piece of malware that is both old and commonly available. The laptop user checked his email on Yahoo and that tripped a network security alert.
No damage was done to the power grid, no information was stolen, (Other than the user’s personal email perhaps), the malware isn’t actually designed to do anything to the grid. So it’s the Russians fault and we need to nuke Moscow now, that about cover it?
Yeah, thought so.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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