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NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

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Re: NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

#14
post #11

At 2:37 in the video, the "special software" that allegedly showed that the computers had been hacked is a tcpdump revealing nothing but pings and DNS PTR queries.

This is like a 60 Minutes report on "hacking" where a guy from Symantec ran Windows Task Manager for a credulous Leslie Stahl and postured about how all that activity could be viruses.

Re: NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

#15
The longer version of the report shows more details:

http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news-web-extra/honeypot-tes...

On the phone they went to a website and ignored warnings in order to download and execute a malicious APK. On the PC they followed a link in a scammy looking phishing email to download and open a malicious Office document. On the Mac they visited a website that had an ad suggesting that they needed an "antivirus program" so they downloaded and installed it.

So the devices were hacked not because Sochi is especially dangerous, but because of pure stupidity. Nothing can help you if you deliberately ignore warnings, and deliberately install Trojan horse malware. The exact same thing would have happened in the US.

Re: NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

#16
post #2

One of the things that I think is going on here is that there is a bias (and for very good reason) towards Russia and other Eastern European countries due to the number of malicious activity encountered from the likes of malware and security attacks. However, one thing that everyone should keep in mind is that Russians do not "shit where they eat". It is not very common for any Russian group to specifically target pe…

That's really interesting. I assumed a lot of this "hacker fear" was due to the fact that a lot of these "professional" hackers happen to exist in Russia and Eastern Europe, there have to be a few who are just not that good and do it for fun or internet points. Wouldn't imagine the professionals to be caught up in this mess, as I'm sure they have more lucrative things to work on, but maybe a younger hacker or hacker group might step up and try to fuck around?

This is, of course, assuming all of this is being perpetrated by regular civilians, not the Russian government. Seems that a "dossier built on reporters and officials" would be more interesting to a government rather than a hacker group, don't you think? Is the Russian government being accused of/watched for this kind of shit?

Re: NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

#17
You can see huffingtonpost and drugereport post completely opposite, manipulative, news as far as American politics go. However, when it comes to international news, stories on both align perfectly, there is never a story that's off of the USA-party line. Russia bad! Putin bad! Olympics bad! I haven't seen a single positive thing, and I very much doubt there isn't a single positive to report. I read plenty in Russian press, even anti-establishment.

Re: NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

#19
So many of the news stories about Russia recently have been fraudulent. Like the uproar about the child protection law that is called an "anti-gay" law, but nobody has found any evidence of the law being enforced. How many silly laws get passed in the USA that never get enforced? That's what democracy is all about. There is no wise all-knowing king who can rule by proclamation; instead we muddle through with a crowd of flawed human beings who got themselves elected by a bigger crowd of citizens who are at least as flawed as the legislators.

And how come the haters of that Russian law, never target any of their venom at the Russian legislators who wrote and passed that law with a large majority?

Investigative journalism is dead. Journalists are now bought and paid for by rich patrons. If you want to find a source of reliable news that you can trust, then sorry, you are out of luck. That era has long since passed.

Re: NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

#20
Can we please get back to discussing how Russia is abusing the US yogurt company Chobani by not letting its yogurt cups into the country.

This is all over the news wire, every outlet is reporting on it, the Obama administration has intervened, and it needs to be on top page of HN like now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/nyregion/russia-blocking-a...

(*sarcasm)

Is there any story about Russia right now that's not actively searching to criticize something?

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