https://www.rt.com/usa/461980-trump-nyt-russia-hackers-treason/
‘Treason!’ Trump slams NYT claim of US cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid as harmful fake news
Published time: 16 Jun, 2019 02:29 Edited time: 16 Jun, 2019 03:54
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© Reuters / Larry Downing
Following a bombastic report that US government hackers are targeting Russia’s power grid, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to accuse the NY Times of spreading fake news detrimental to US credibility and national security.
“This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country…” Trump tweeted on Saturday evening, before realizing that he forgot to actually dismiss the report of Washington increasingly targeting Moscow in cyber-warfare campaign as “fake news.”
“.....ALSO, NOT TRUE!” he added in a follow-up tweet, without specifying whether the report was untrue in its entirety – or just the specifics like the targets of US cyber offenses or their intensity.
An in-depth yet frustratingly empty on details report on Saturday, the New York Times treated its readers to a carousel of security officials talking up their “aggressive” posture, including one faceless intelligence spook who bragged “we are doing things at a scale we never contemplated a few years ago.” Now just imagine the media hysteria if it were the other way around...
Also on rt.com Hack away! NYT says US planted CYBER KILL SWITCH into Russian power grid… media shrugs
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https://www.rt.com/usa/461975-america-cyber-attacks-russia-power/
Hack away! NYT says US planted CYBER KILL SWITCH into Russian power grid… media shrugs
Published time: 15 Jun, 2019 21:25 Edited time: 16 Jun, 2019 02:51
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FILE PHOTO: The control room of a hydroelectric power station in Krasnoyarsk, Russia © Reuters / Ilya Naymushin
The best defense is a good offense: the US seems to have taken this maxim to its logical conclusion, and has “aggressively” hacked Russia’s power grid, according to a new report. God forbid the shoe were on the other foot.
An in-depth report in the New York Times on Saturday lays out an alleged ongoing US operation to penetrate and implant malware in Russia’s power grid, partly as “a warning” to Moscow, and partly to stake out the high ground should competition between the two powers one day spill over into outright cyber warfare.
Also on rt.com ‘Treason!’ Trump slams NYT claim of US cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid as harmful fake news
Due to the clandestine nature of the subject, the article is light on specifics. All we know is that the authority to carry out offensive cyber operations is enshrined in the National Defense Authorization Act since last summer, and that President Donald Trump delegated approval for such attacks to Cyber Command – set up by the Obama administration in 2008 to counter alleged similar efforts from Moscow – around the same time.
But imagine for a second that the shoe were on the other foot? How would the Times cover a sophisticated Russian effort to infiltrate the US grid? How massive would the media uproar be?
Also on rt.com ‘Vast number of attacks staged from US soil’ – Kremlin about cyber op on Russia
It would be naive to think that both nations haven’t probed each other’s cyber defenses for weaknesses. However, the Times struck a different tone when “Russian hackers” were accused of penetrating the American utilities grid last summer.
The article then mentioned “hundreds of victims” were Russia to launch a cyberattack. (No potential Russian victims were mentioned in Saturday’s article). “It is hard to fully understand why they have put so much effort” into planting malware in the grid, the Times pondered back then. This week, the American efforts were explained as a simple matter of national security.
As for what response a cyberattack could warrant, the Times painted a picture of the US firing a “digital shot across the bow” while carefully avoiding open war. A Russian attack, meanwhile, would “almost certainly result in a military response,” a general quoted in both articles said.
Also on rt.com Russiagate is #1 threat to US national security – Stephen Cohen
Of course, last year’s article was written at a time when panic over “Russian meddling,”“Russian interference,” and “Russian hackers” was at fever pitch. The hysteria then was not confined to the pages of the New York Times, and US outlets competed with each other to deliver the most terrifying Russian conspiracy theories they could.
The heavyweight champion of fearmongering and conspiracies was undoubtedly MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Night after night, Maddow detailed new and sinister Russian ploys to interfere in elections, undermine democracy, and even freeze Americans to death in their homes.
Also on rt.com Russia could ‘flip the off switch’ on US electricity at any time, warns Maddow in new conspiracy
That’s right, Maddow warned viewers earlier this year that Russian hackers may have infiltrated the US power grid and could literally “flip the off switch” at any time.
“What would you do if you lost heat, indefinitely, as the act of a foreign power?,” she asked her viewers. “What would you and your family DO?” As Maddow rang every alarm bell she could, much of the United States was going through a record-breaking freeze, with temperatures in North Dakota down to -33 degrees Fahrenheit (-36 Celsius).
However, it gets cold in Russia too. Like, very cold. For all its talk of “warning shots” at Putin, the New York Times never considered the fact that an attack on Russia’s utility grid could leave ordinary citizens without heating, in a country where winter temperatures regularly drop below -33, and where at one point last year, one village recorded a temperature lower than that of the planet Mars.
Also on rt.com Coldest village on Earth: Residents of Siberian settlement unfazed by -62C temperatures (VIDEO)
But when the cyberwar is waged by Washington, geopolitical victory trumps human lives, and supercedes the danger of open war, and the harshest measures are necessary just to prove a point.
As one former Obama administration told the newspaper: “We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response, just to show the world we’re not lying down and taking it.”
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https://www.rt.com/news/452606-us-russia-cyber-assault-report/
‘Vast number of attacks staged from US soil’ – Kremlin about cyber op on Russia
Published time: 27 Feb, 2019 23:29 Edited time: 28 Feb, 2019 07:38
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© Sputnik / Kirill Kalinnikov
Russia regularly faces a “vast number” of attacks staged by US hackers, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said while questioning a recent report about an alleged US cyber assault on a St. Petersburg-based company.
“Various Russian entities … and individuals are constantly subjected to a vast number of cyber-attacks staged from the US soil,” Peskov told Russian journalists, answering a question about a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, which delved into one such assault reportedly staged by the US military against a Russian firm.
At the same time, the president’s spokesman casted a doubt on the report itself, which stated that the US Cyber Command successfully “shut down” what Washington calls a “Russian troll factory” behind the perceived interference into the US elections. The article is based almost entirely on unnamed sources and is thus difficult to verify, the spokesman noted. “One has to treat this data with caution,” he said.
The company in question is the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) – a firm, which Washington say allegedly has some links to the Kremlin and is supposedly responsible for almost every Western woe ranging from the perceived Russian meddling into the 2016 US presidential elections to “eroding public consensus on vaccinations,” which was partially responsible for a recent measles outbreak in Europe.
Some unnamed US officials quoted by the WSJ boasted that "they basically took the IRA offline” and “shut them down.” The US analysts, however, were less prone to praise the US military effort as they said that the operation was eventually “more annoying than deterring in the long run.” The operation, which required cooperation between the US Cyber Command and the notorious NSA intelligence agency, known for its insatiable appetite for mass surveillance, eventually resulted in the Russian company being deprived of internet access for a couple of days.
Also on rt.com Internet ‘part of western establishment now’: London ex-mayor on Facebook blocking RT-linked pages
Anyway, no one seems to have heard about it on the Russian side. Instead, Peskov said that Russian government websites, including the official page of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, “are permanently subjected to an enormous number of cyber-attacks … from Europe and North America.”
Also on rt.com ‘Who knows what they have in mind?’ Putin says Russia could be cut off from global internet
The new legislation would allow Russia to create a special mechanism that would prevent any foreign power from depriving it of access to the World Wide Web. It would particularly require operators of the basic infrastructure of the internet to prepare for a possible switch to operating independently from other nations.
Earlier, similar concerns were voiced by Putin himself. “The more sovereignty we have, including in the digital sphere, the better,” he said at that time.
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‘Treason!’ Trump slams NYT claim of US cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid as harmful fake news
Published time: 16 Jun, 2019 02:29 Edited time: 16 Jun, 2019 03:54
Get short URL
© Reuters / Larry Downing
Following a bombastic report that US government hackers are targeting Russia’s power grid, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to accuse the NY Times of spreading fake news detrimental to US credibility and national security.
“This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country…” Trump tweeted on Saturday evening, before realizing that he forgot to actually dismiss the report of Washington increasingly targeting Moscow in cyber-warfare campaign as “fake news.”
“.....ALSO, NOT TRUE!” he added in a follow-up tweet, without specifying whether the report was untrue in its entirety – or just the specifics like the targets of US cyber offenses or their intensity.
.....ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2019
The US leader also stopped short of explaining what exactly he believes constitutes a treason – the mere fact that the paper unveiled Washington’s presumably top secret operation, or that the revelation might further erode the US image of the world’s moral beacon.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2019
An in-depth yet frustratingly empty on details report on Saturday, the New York Times treated its readers to a carousel of security officials talking up their “aggressive” posture, including one faceless intelligence spook who bragged “we are doing things at a scale we never contemplated a few years ago.” Now just imagine the media hysteria if it were the other way around...
Also on rt.com Hack away! NYT says US planted CYBER KILL SWITCH into Russian power grid… media shrugs
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https://www.rt.com/usa/461975-america-cyber-attacks-russia-power/
Hack away! NYT says US planted CYBER KILL SWITCH into Russian power grid… media shrugs
Published time: 15 Jun, 2019 21:25 Edited time: 16 Jun, 2019 02:51
Get short URL
FILE PHOTO: The control room of a hydroelectric power station in Krasnoyarsk, Russia © Reuters / Ilya Naymushin
The best defense is a good offense: the US seems to have taken this maxim to its logical conclusion, and has “aggressively” hacked Russia’s power grid, according to a new report. God forbid the shoe were on the other foot.
An in-depth report in the New York Times on Saturday lays out an alleged ongoing US operation to penetrate and implant malware in Russia’s power grid, partly as “a warning” to Moscow, and partly to stake out the high ground should competition between the two powers one day spill over into outright cyber warfare.
Also on rt.com ‘Treason!’ Trump slams NYT claim of US cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid as harmful fake news
Due to the clandestine nature of the subject, the article is light on specifics. All we know is that the authority to carry out offensive cyber operations is enshrined in the National Defense Authorization Act since last summer, and that President Donald Trump delegated approval for such attacks to Cyber Command – set up by the Obama administration in 2008 to counter alleged similar efforts from Moscow – around the same time.
“Russia is hacking the American power grid as a demonstration of its capabilities.”
Only, joking! It’s actually the US attacking Russia (reports @nytimes). But just try to imagine the hysteria in US/UK media, if it were the other way around? https://t.co/Y1oRthnoqY
— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) June 15, 2019
In the absence of details, the Times treated its readers to a carousel of security officials talking up their “aggressive” posture, including one faceless intelligence spook who bragged “we are doing things at a scale we never contemplated a few years ago.” A chorus of these same officials also justified the cyberwar efforts, including one who dropped the wonderfully Washingtonian term “defend forward” to describe the incursions.Only, joking! It’s actually the US attacking Russia (reports @nytimes). But just try to imagine the hysteria in US/UK media, if it were the other way around? https://t.co/Y1oRthnoqY
— Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) June 15, 2019
But imagine for a second that the shoe were on the other foot? How would the Times cover a sophisticated Russian effort to infiltrate the US grid? How massive would the media uproar be?
Also on rt.com ‘Vast number of attacks staged from US soil’ – Kremlin about cyber op on Russia
It would be naive to think that both nations haven’t probed each other’s cyber defenses for weaknesses. However, the Times struck a different tone when “Russian hackers” were accused of penetrating the American utilities grid last summer.
The article then mentioned “hundreds of victims” were Russia to launch a cyberattack. (No potential Russian victims were mentioned in Saturday’s article). “It is hard to fully understand why they have put so much effort” into planting malware in the grid, the Times pondered back then. This week, the American efforts were explained as a simple matter of national security.
As for what response a cyberattack could warrant, the Times painted a picture of the US firing a “digital shot across the bow” while carefully avoiding open war. A Russian attack, meanwhile, would “almost certainly result in a military response,” a general quoted in both articles said.
Also on rt.com Russiagate is #1 threat to US national security – Stephen Cohen
Of course, last year’s article was written at a time when panic over “Russian meddling,”“Russian interference,” and “Russian hackers” was at fever pitch. The hysteria then was not confined to the pages of the New York Times, and US outlets competed with each other to deliver the most terrifying Russian conspiracy theories they could.
The heavyweight champion of fearmongering and conspiracies was undoubtedly MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Night after night, Maddow detailed new and sinister Russian ploys to interfere in elections, undermine democracy, and even freeze Americans to death in their homes.
Also on rt.com Russia could ‘flip the off switch’ on US electricity at any time, warns Maddow in new conspiracy
That’s right, Maddow warned viewers earlier this year that Russian hackers may have infiltrated the US power grid and could literally “flip the off switch” at any time.
“What would you do if you lost heat, indefinitely, as the act of a foreign power?,” she asked her viewers. “What would you and your family DO?” As Maddow rang every alarm bell she could, much of the United States was going through a record-breaking freeze, with temperatures in North Dakota down to -33 degrees Fahrenheit (-36 Celsius).
However, it gets cold in Russia too. Like, very cold. For all its talk of “warning shots” at Putin, the New York Times never considered the fact that an attack on Russia’s utility grid could leave ordinary citizens without heating, in a country where winter temperatures regularly drop below -33, and where at one point last year, one village recorded a temperature lower than that of the planet Mars.
Also on rt.com Coldest village on Earth: Residents of Siberian settlement unfazed by -62C temperatures (VIDEO)
But when the cyberwar is waged by Washington, geopolitical victory trumps human lives, and supercedes the danger of open war, and the harshest measures are necessary just to prove a point.
As one former Obama administration told the newspaper: “We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response, just to show the world we’re not lying down and taking it.”
Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won’t tell you.
https://www.rt.com/news/452606-us-russia-cyber-assault-report/
‘Vast number of attacks staged from US soil’ – Kremlin about cyber op on Russia
Published time: 27 Feb, 2019 23:29 Edited time: 28 Feb, 2019 07:38
Get short URL
© Sputnik / Kirill Kalinnikov
Russia regularly faces a “vast number” of attacks staged by US hackers, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said while questioning a recent report about an alleged US cyber assault on a St. Petersburg-based company.
“Various Russian entities … and individuals are constantly subjected to a vast number of cyber-attacks staged from the US soil,” Peskov told Russian journalists, answering a question about a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, which delved into one such assault reportedly staged by the US military against a Russian firm.
At the same time, the president’s spokesman casted a doubt on the report itself, which stated that the US Cyber Command successfully “shut down” what Washington calls a “Russian troll factory” behind the perceived interference into the US elections. The article is based almost entirely on unnamed sources and is thus difficult to verify, the spokesman noted. “One has to treat this data with caution,” he said.
The company in question is the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) – a firm, which Washington say allegedly has some links to the Kremlin and is supposedly responsible for almost every Western woe ranging from the perceived Russian meddling into the 2016 US presidential elections to “eroding public consensus on vaccinations,” which was partially responsible for a recent measles outbreak in Europe.
Some unnamed US officials quoted by the WSJ boasted that "they basically took the IRA offline” and “shut them down.” The US analysts, however, were less prone to praise the US military effort as they said that the operation was eventually “more annoying than deterring in the long run.” The operation, which required cooperation between the US Cyber Command and the notorious NSA intelligence agency, known for its insatiable appetite for mass surveillance, eventually resulted in the Russian company being deprived of internet access for a couple of days.
Also on rt.com Internet ‘part of western establishment now’: London ex-mayor on Facebook blocking RT-linked pages
Anyway, no one seems to have heard about it on the Russian side. Instead, Peskov said that Russian government websites, including the official page of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, “are permanently subjected to an enormous number of cyber-attacks … from Europe and North America.”
This is the reality we are living in.
The president’s spokesman also expressed his concern over the fact that the US might at some point go further and try and cut Russia off the world wide web as “the framework administration of … the internet is managed by de-facto just several companies.” He also said that Moscow is well aware of such threats and Russian lawmakers are now working on the so-called “sovereign internet bill.”Also on rt.com ‘Who knows what they have in mind?’ Putin says Russia could be cut off from global internet
The new legislation would allow Russia to create a special mechanism that would prevent any foreign power from depriving it of access to the World Wide Web. It would particularly require operators of the basic infrastructure of the internet to prepare for a possible switch to operating independently from other nations.
Earlier, similar concerns were voiced by Putin himself. “The more sovereignty we have, including in the digital sphere, the better,” he said at that time.
If you like this story, share it with a friend!
