{"id":22422,"date":"2017-01-03T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-03T17:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22422"},"modified":"2017-01-03T12:48:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-03T17:48:55","slug":"washington-post-admits-its-russians-hacked-a-us-utility-story-was-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22422","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post Admits Its ‘Russians Hacked A US Utility’ Story Was ‘Fake News’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington Post Admits Its ‘Russians Hacked A US Utility’ Story Was ‘Fake News’<\/a><\/h3>\n
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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’<\/a>“).\u00a0\u00a0Within 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<\/strong>\u00a0and that a laptop found to be infected with malware was never actually connected to the grid.\u00a0 An embarrassed Wapo was subsequently forced to change it’s sensationalized headline and publish a retraction.<\/p>\n

Now, as they often do, it appears this Wapo “fake news” rabbit holes gets even deeper.\u00a0\u00a0Not only are “federal officials” now confirming that “Russian hackers” never targeted the Vermont electrical grid<\/strong>, but the whole mishap was derived from an employee’s attempt to check his Yahoo email account which, as\u00a0Wapo reports<\/a>, resulted in his\u00a0computer connecting to a “suspicious IP address” that is “found elsewhere in the country\u00a0suggesting the company wasn’t being targeted by Russians.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/span>Eric Geller<\/span>\u00a0<\/a>\u2714<\/span><\/span>@ericgeller<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Post now reports that the Vermont utility hack was just an employee connecting\u00a0to a flagged IP address…\u00a0https:\/\/www.<\/span>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\u00a0<\/span>\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

10:37 PM – 2 Jan 2017<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Moreover, not only was the malware not linked to a specific attempt of “Russian hackers” to penetrate the U.S. electrical grid,\u00a0the software in question isn’t even linked to the “Grizzly Steppe” group<\/strong>\u00a0that the Obama administration says is behind the DNC and John Podesta email hacks.\u00a0\u00a0Of course, this is a direct contradiction to the opening paragraph of Wapo’s original story which directly connected the Vermont “hack” back to “Grizzly Steppe”…apparently with no evidence whatsoever.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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’“).\u00a0\u00a0Within hours of reporting that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[14651,4884,2779,2148,694,14652,14584,5228],"class_list":["post-22422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-burlington-electric","tag-cyberwarfare","tag-fake-news","tag-hacking","tag-russia","tag-russian-hackers","tag-russian-hacking","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22423,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22422\/revisions\/22423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}