Washington Post Admits Its ‘Russians Hacked A US Utility’ Story Was ‘Fake News’
Over the weekend we noted that the Washington Post was caught spreading “fake news” about an alleged attempt by “Russian hackers” to take over a Vermont Utility (see “Washington Post Caught Spreading More Fake News About ‘Russian Hackers’“). Within hours of reporting that the “Russian hackers” had gained access to the electrical grid, the Burlington Electric Department in Vermont had to issue a statement confirming that the provocative Wapo story simply wasn’t true and that a laptop found to be infected with malware was never actually connected to the grid. An embarrassed Wapo was subsequently forced to change it’s sensationalized headline and publish a retraction.
Now, as they often do, it appears this Wapo “fake news” rabbit holes gets even deeper. Not only are “federal officials” now confirming that “Russian hackers” never targeted the Vermont electrical grid, but the whole mishap was derived from an employee’s attempt to check his Yahoo email account which, as Wapo reports, resulted in his computer connecting to a “suspicious IP address” that is “found elsewhere in the country suggesting the company wasn’t being targeted by Russians.”
The Post now reports that the Vermont utility hack was just an employee connecting to a flagged IP address… 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 …
