
In a first, U.S. blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid - onewhonknocks
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-energygrid/in-a-first-u-s-blames-russia-for-cyber-attacks-on-energy-grid-idUSKCN1GR2G3
======
mike_hearn
This is not a first. The USA made a nearly identical claim in this retracted
story in 2016:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/russi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/russian-hackers-penetrated-us-electricity-grid-through-a-utility-in-
vermont/2016/12/30/8fc90cc4-ceec-11e6-b8a2-8c2a61b0436f_story.html)

 _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._

... but ...

 _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._

Generally speaking, anonymously sourced stories in western news outlets about
Russian hacking have a very high propensity to collapse or get quietly
retracted days later. The DHS is particularly notorious for this: they also
claimed Russia hacked various election related systems in multiple states, but
the states themselves investigated and said the DHS was wrong.

I cite some more examples in this blog post:

[https://blog.plan99.net/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B4%D0%B0...](https://blog.plan99.net/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B4%D0%B0-6e24757a67ba)

Glenn Greenwald also wrote extensively about this problem.

So now we have an "unprecedented" story sourced to anonymous officials in the
DHS, making the entirely false claim that this is the first time US officials
have accused Russia of hacking the electrical grid. The cited evidence is a
Symantec report that didn't name anyone in particular.

Is it possible Russia is doing this? Of course. I would be, if I were Putin.
But I'd also be doing it if I were the leader of Iran or North Korea or China.
Perhaps all of them are doing it.

Regardless of the truth, this sort of story should have no credibility with
anyone by now. There have been far too many false stories about Russian
hacking published for them to carry weight.

~~~
comex
No, this is a first. It's the first time the US has publicly blamed Russia
through official channels, as opposed to leaks to the press. The original
alert was published by US-CERT:

[https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A](https://www.us-
cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A)

and has more interesting technical details.

It's true that both this and previously reports technically involved
"anonymous officials in the DHS", in the sense that alert doesn't name any
specific officials, but the phrase "anonymous officials" is usually associated
with leaks, not official announcements...

~~~
mike_hearn
The story I linked to has statements from multiple elected representatives
stating point blank that Russia had hacked the electricity grid. Official
statements by representatives is the same thing as "The US Says" as far as the
world is concerned.

~~~
comex
I'd say they're not the same as far as the world is concerned, because the
legislative branch is not responsible for diplomacy, and they're also mainly
'downstream' from the agencies actually producing the information.

…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.
    

I still don't think this does much of anything to invalidate the current
story. It seems like that was mainly a mistake on the company's part, as they
incorrectly treated indicators that were _non-_ uniquely linked to a hacking
campaign as evidence it was targeted by that campaign. They then reported this
to various authorities, and the information apparently found its way via the
state police to one of the state's US senators - probably without the details
being vetted by anyone with relevant experience. But both the the US-CERT
report and the Symantec report provide evidence of an ongoing, targeted
campaign against energy facilities (which, for that matter, was active at the
time of the Post report). And one would expect that both reports originate
from people that do basically know what they're talking about.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/russi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/russian-government-hackers-do-not-appear-to-have-targeted-vermont-
utility-say-people-close-to-
investigation/2017/01/02/70c25956-d12c-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html)

------
exabrial
I feel like we're playing a dangerous game, escalating towards war. We've
interfered with each other's elections dating back to the cold war. I'm not
saying it's moral, but we should maybe reexamine our own actions and what
we're willing to sacrifice before asking for things [extraditions] for things
we're also guilty of.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Russia cannot afford a war. It simply doesn't have the money or military to go
against USA and Europe. And, no, China is not going to help them out

~~~
rdiddly
Russia is absolutely prepared to win a land war in their own territory. It
kind of appears to be all they're interested in. Which would tend to make one
draw some crazy wacky conclusions like maybe it's a defensive force held by a
nation of peace-loving people who just want to cooperate and be respected, or
at least left alone?

Probably sounds ridiculous to anybody steeped in the current wave of anti-
Russian hysteria in the American media (or the earlier wave in the 80s). Why
somebody might be producing warmongering propaganda against Russia I don't
know, but clearly I'm supposed to take it as an unquestioned first principle
that _of course_ Russia is out to get us (as if we weren't busy "getting"
ourselves) and _of course_ Putin is the bogeyman -- Putin, a guy who has
something like an 80% approval rating among his people and whose every public
speech seems to be about conciliation, cooperation and peacemaking. Something
isn't quite right. (Probably both sides are full of shit.)

Anyway no one has ever invaded Russia and won, including Napoleon and Hitler.
Russians are proud of that. Their navy is about 2/3 as big as the US, but if
what you're defending is most of Asia (an ocean of dirt) maybe that's not the
biggest concern. Anyway if China does join in, _their_ navy is comparable to
the US's, and together with Russia's, it'd be bigger.

The Russian air force is tiny (same for China) but given that all our aircraft
carriers are basically sitting ducks for all the various Russian carrier-
busting missiles they have nowadays, our air superiority might not matter as
much as we'd like to think. Also they tend to stretch money further. Their
jets are fairly cheap, indestructible metal cans with loose tolerances... kind
of like flying AK-47s... while ours are exquisite and expensive (because
they're made out of porkbarrel) and you have to walk the airfield and pick up
every little bitty piece of debris before you take off, otherwise it might
suck something in and choke... so the equivalent of a flying AR-15 that always
jams.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Russia is absolutely prepared to win a land war in their own territory. It
> kind of appears to be all they're interested in.

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

~~~
rdiddly
Ukraine was geographically and culturally part of Russia for centuries, only
becoming independent in 1991 when the USSR collapsed.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Ukraine was geographically and culturally part of Russia for centuries

No, it wasn't, though much of it was politically, through conquest, part of
Russia for a couple centuries (and a bit more of of it for just over one
century) prior to the formation of the USSR, and there was certainly an
intense effort by Russia to colonize Ukraine with Russians to break it's
distinct culture during that period where much of it was under the Russian
imperial rule.

Clearly, you view Russia’s own territory as anything that has ever in the past
been subjugated by Russia independently of where modern nation-states lie, and
in that respect, sure, Russia may be primarily concerned with fighting wars to
re-establish empire in those places.

But that's not a sign of a peace-loving nation, but instead of a warmongering
imperialist one that prioritizes restoring it's “glorious” past.

~~~
lostmsu
IMO it us wrong to equate USSR and Russia here. Russia did claim USSR
heritage, but it is definitely not USSR.

------
leke
I've just finished watching the Stuxnet documentary. State funded attacks on
critical infrastructure are going to be a world-wide norm. No matter how good
your security, you will be vulnerable eventually. We'll have to go back to
analogue style systems to be protected.

------
StanislavPetrov
Anyone interested in seeing the, "proof" that Russia was responsible can see
it here:

[https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A](https://www.us-
cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A)

As with virtually every other accusation of "Russian hacking", there is
actually nothing presented suggesting that it was Russians that performed
these hacks, let alone conclusively proving that. The line of "reasoning" used
to accuse Russia of being responsible is, yet again, the same bit of tired
tripe. It boils down to, "this attack uses methods that we suspect Russians
have used in the past, and we assert that Russians would have liked to do this
hack, therefore we have proof that it was Russians".

>Malicious email campaigns dating back to late 2015 were used to gain entry
into organizations in the United States, Turkey and Switzerland, and likely
other countries, Symantec said at the time, though it did not name Russia as
the culprit.

In other words, these were generic fishing attacks that could have been
performed by anyone. Since anyone and everyone uses these fishing attacks, we
had no idea who it was in 2015. However, now that everyone is blaming
everything on Russia, we can safely do so without even casual scrutiny of our
claims.

~~~
exabrial
While HN has a liberal bias, it is worth reading and understanding the
opposite side's motivation for their opinion. Instead of voting him down, it
would be more academic to understand and engage in civil discussions.

~~~
ComradeTaco
It's infinitely harder to have a reasonable discussion when there's a troll
factory pumping out bad faith arguments in great volume.
[1][https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/some-
russians-see-u-s-investigation-into-russian-election-meddling-as-a-soap-ope)

~~~
chokolad
Are you implying that HN is full of trolls from the said factory ?

~~~
ComradeTaco
Trolls from the Internet Research Agency (the troll farm) have handles tumblr,
facebook, reddit, as stated by those who previously worked at the Agency. I do
not think it is unreasonable to assume, given HN's popularity and how
intensive Russian efforts have been in regards to social media, that some
accounts are maintained to manipulate opinions, just like any other social
media site.

~~~
chokolad
Care to point to such "bad faith" arguments by IRA trolls in comments here ?
Or are you using it as an excuse to not have a debate?

~~~
ComradeTaco
All my evidence is anecdotal, and I have no means of confirming it on my own.

When I first looked over this post, there were 3-4 comments, all seemingly
pro-russia. I see some points being made that are remarkably similar to
official Russian positions on issues. Its really similar to when I see a post
about China. A whole bunch of users surface abruptly with lots of comments
favorable to China. Both of these countries have large, well documented
operations to comment extensively on Western media sources. And I'm sure that
many HN users like Russia and like China. But it's hard to shake the feeling
that there is some astroturfing going on.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
>all seemingly pro-russia.

Its extremely unfortunate that skepticism of government and/or media
declarations are being characterized as "Pro-Russian". Exercising basic
critical thinking skills and demanding evidence for accusations is something
that we should all practice, in every case, but especially when serious
accusations are leveled. I welcome you to re-read my post. I'm not pushing a
"Pro-Russia" position. I'm pushing a "pro-intelligent person" position. I
linked directly to the evidence they offered to support their assertions. I
looked at the evidence they offered, did you? No evidence they presented
suggested or concluded that Russians were responsible. Rather than responding
intelligently by pointing to evidence that you think rebuts my assessment, you
resort to questioning my motives.

------
TomMckenny
Rather than discussion about technical aspects, we get a spew of how innocent
Russia is and how America deserves it.

If the west now can't even defend its technical discussion forums from
totalitarian disruption, heaven help it.

~~~
jwtadvice
It's a knee-jerk reaction to totalitarian domestic propaganda.

Has a tendency to breed confused, alarmist, emotional and untechnical
conversation.

Here's the truth: Russia isn't evil. Neither is the United States. But they
are enemies. The people are getting caught in a propaganda war, which has
shifted conversation from the venue of technical to ideological. (Propaganda,
in practice, breeds ideological self-affirming thinking.)

The breakdown of conversation isn't the fault of the "traitors who support the
evil Russians" or the fault of the "domestic saboteurs who support the US mass
propaganda apparatus" but the fact that the two countries can't get their shit
straight and work toward a post-Cold War without throwing acid at each other.

(I'm rewriting the last sentence of this over and over because I realize its
going to attract ever-yet more comments of the form "but Russia's evil and
they started it and you can't really compare the US and Russia - can you?".
Screw it.)

~~~
fbarred
I'm surprised how often people are starting to carelessly refer to Russia as
"enemy". I think "adversary" is a more accurate term, on the same level as
China.

The governments of both sides say they want cooperation but are are annoyed at
each other's behavior and actions. However I don't think the people of either
country treat the other as "enemy", like they did during the cold war. Back
then each side was afraid that the other one may attack them preemptively out
of ideological reasons.

~~~
TomMckenny
Russia by itself is merely a western rival which could normally be worked with
by sane western governments.

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.

------
aninteger
If I leave my door unlocked can I really blame <bad person> for opening my
door and robbing me? Why dont I invest in door locks? The US should really
look into a more security focused infrastructure. This year the bad guy is
Russia, but last year it was China and next year maybe it will be Iranian
hackers. I understand that security is constant game of cat and mouse but when
I see and hear of companies running Wimdows XP in 2018... it's like we're not
even trying. Might as well leave the doors unlocked.

~~~
duck
> If I leave my door unlocked can I really blame <bad person> for opening my
> door and robbing me?

Yes, you can and should.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I'm in full agreement, and I'm shocked that this argument is used so much.
Even when faced with a vulnerability, it is absolutely the thief's
responsibility if they take advantage of the vulnerability for their own gain.

~~~
jstarfish
The adversary in question isn't accountable to our laws. There is no "thief's
responsibility." There's just "you got pwned, you have no recourse, now it's
your problem."

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?

~~~
yborg
So your argument is that Russia or any other nation state that behaves this
way is an amoral entity like a crocodile? This is absurd, nations consist of
human beings that can understand concepts of right or wrong and behave
appropriately. If your argument is correct, and the adversary is amoral and
driven only by the opportunity to take advantage of weakness, the other
nations at risk by this entity should logically band together and destroy it.

~~~
jstarfish
If they behaved appropriately, we wouldn't be debating their capacity to
destroy our infrastructure for the fun of it. We aren't at war with them.
Where is the sense of right and wrong? Why are they trying to harm us? Why
won't they extradite the persons responsible for their alleged damage to date
so we may seek justice?

I'm not advocating a crocodile hunt FFS, only that if they aren't going to
play by our rules then maybe we should take responsibility for our own
security by locking shit down, and stop acting like pointing the finger at the
bad guy of the day somehow shields us from the consequences of mal-intent.

~~~
Farlin
You can play offense and defense... saying it’s either or is a very simplistic
mindset. The international community has the capability to both secure from
bad actors, and punish bad actors. Sometimes force is necessary and it’s
prudent that it be used with Russia.

------
mc32
That Russia is acting like a spoiled country is not much in doubt. What I hope
doesn't happen is a needless tit-for-tat escalation. I think much of this goes
back to the ill-conceived and ill fated "Reset" with Clinton (at the behest of
Obama). For whatever reason Putin and Obama didn't get along.

I'm hopeful that cold-war warriors don't dominate the policies to come. If we
(they and us) take that tack, we're in for a bad stretch. I'm hoping the
current administration is capable of bucking the Russophobia the Dems are so
attached to and committed to, mostly for internal political reasons.

Let's get real, deal with Russia as the adversary it is, but in a level-headed
manner. Let's face it, they do not care about sanctions. One Bit. They will
survive with or without the rest of the world but we get to deal with their
blow back.

Obama granted N Korea's Kim more respect than he did Putin. I think that was a
grave mistake on his part and we're now paying for this slight with these
passive-aggressive moves.

~~~
ComradeTaco
Russian-American relations have worsened not because of russophobia, but
rather because of several high profile and geopolitically relevant events. The
first of these was the invasion of Crimea and the funneling of arms to
Ukrainian Separatists engaging in a civil war. These actions are a direct
violation of the Budapest Memorandum signed by Russia and the US. Essentially,
Ukraine agreed to destroy the nuclear weapons leftover from the USSR in
exchange for total respect in regards to territorial integrity.[1]
Furthermore, a Russian BUK system, staffed by these separatists downed the
civilian airliner Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 innocent
people.[2]. Furthermore, Russian hackers hacked the emails of both major
political parties, and has, literally, a 3 story office complex staffed with
internet trolls intent on misleading the American public via social media for
the last several years[4]. Finally, you have the most recent incident where
Russia attempted to murder not only a former spy in the U.K., but also his
daughter, and about twenty other bar patrons, neighbors and first responders.
The poisoned used was a nerve gas developed in Russia and exclusively
available in Russia.[5]

Clearly, these are meaningful events in the context of American-Russia
relations as well as NATO-Russia relations, you can't just handwave them away
by saying it's one parties political problem.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17)
[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances)
[3][https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-
ha...](https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-hacked-
russia/index.html)
[4][https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/some-
russians-see-u-s-investigation-into-russian-election-meddling-as-a-soap-op)
[5][https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/europe/theresa-may-
reprisals-...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/europe/theresa-may-reprisals-
for-russian-spy-poisoning-intl/index.html)

~~~
stelonix
It did not start with the Ukrainian coup, but rather with the Georgia conflict
back in 2008. Can't really blame the Russians, what do you think it'd happen
if a pro-Moscow government were elected in Mexico? What would be the US'
reaction?

~~~
lern_too_spel
> What would be the US' reaction?

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

~~~
chopin
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_invasion_of_Grenada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_invasion_of_Grenada)

~~~
lern_too_spel
Grenada is not comparable to Ukraine and Mexico.

