After the U.S. unveiled charges against six members of the Sandworm unit in Russia’s military intelligence agency, Wired re-visited “a secret experiment in 2007 proved that hackers could devastate power grid equipment beyond repair — with a file no bigger than a gif.” It’s an excerpt from the new book SANDWORM: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the…
Tag: Kremlin
The FBI Botches Its DNC Hack Warning In 2016 — But Says It Won’t Next Time
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: On April 28, 2016, an IT tech staffer for the Democratic National Committee named Yared Tamene made a sickening discovery: A notorious Russian hacker group known as Fancy Bear had penetrated a DNC server “at the heart of the network,” as he would later tell the US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence. By…
Larry King Duped Into ‘Disinfomercial’ on Social Media By China (and Possibly Russia)
For 25 years, until 2010, Larry King had a live interview show on CNN. But now ProPublica reports “In the twilight of a remarkable radio and television career spanning more than six decades, battling health problems but determined to stay in the public eye, King was ensnared in an international disinformation scheme.” It involved filming Larry King asking questions, and then…
What’s the August birthstone?
Happy birthday, August babies! Your month has 2 birthstones, peridot and sardonyx. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/august-birthstone-sardonyx-peridot…
Russian Elite Given Experimental COVID-19 Vaccine Since April
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Scores of Russia’s business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation. Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons…
Inside the Plot To Kill the Open Technology Fund
An anonymous reader quotes a report from VICE News: [The Open Technology Fund is a U.S. government-funded nonprofit, which is part of the umbrella group called the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which also controls Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.] OTF’s goal is to help oppressed communities across the globe by building the digital tools they need and…
Super Secretive Russian Disinfo Operation Discovered Dating Back To 2014
Social media research group Graphika published today a 120-page report unmasking a new Russian information operation of which very little has been known so far. ZDNet reports: Codenamed Secondary Infektion, the group is different from the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Sankt Petersburg company (troll farm) that has interfered in the US 2016 presidential election. Graphika says this new and separate…
The Atlantic Warns About 2020 Election Security Holes and Possible Russian Interference
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: A staff writer at The Atlantic published a 7,800-word warning about election security considering the possibility of everything from ransomware to meddling with voter-registration databases — and of course, online disinformation. But it starts with Jack Cable, a Stanford student who discovered security holes in Chicago’s Board of Elections website — then spent months trying to find…
Russia Accused of Deploying Coronavirus Disinformation to Sow Distrust
AmiMoJo quotes Reuters: Russian media have deployed a “significant disinformation campaign” against the West to worsen the impact of the coronavirus, generate panic and sow distrust, according to a European Union document seen by Reuters… The EU document said the Russian campaign, pushing fake news online in English, Spanish, Italian, German and French, uses contradictory, confusing and malicious reports to make…
Happy birthday, Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin was a Russian pilot who became the first human to travel to space, in 1961. His story … plus links to a Yuri’s Night celebration near you. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/this-date-in-science-yuri-gagarins-birthday…