Google Sends State-Sponsored Hack Warnings To Journalists and Professors (ibtimes.co.uk) 69
An anonymous reader shares an IBTimes report: Numerous journalists and professors are taking to social media to report that they have received an alarming message regarding state-sponsored hacking when accessing their Gmail or other sites that use their Google account. Journalists who received the warning include Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, Politico's Julia Ioffe, GQ's special correspondent Keith Olbermann, Vox's Ezra Klein, Yahoo News' Garance Franke-Ruta, and one of President Barack Obama's former speechwriters, Jon Lovett. The warning says, "Google may have detected government-backed attackers trying to steal your password." These warnings are being sent by Google since 2012 but Twitter has erupted with a flurry of people in the media and academic community receiving this in the past 24 hours.
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cost / benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Why? Do you think Google or Facebook are any more credible than Exxon or Monsanto? These are big corporations; they will say whatever furthers their agenda. As long as it's legal, that's their right, but that doesn't mean that you need to turn into a gullible fool.
There is almost no cost associated with them for blaming "state-sponsored actors" wrongly: it's not a claim that they can
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You have an interesting style of argument and a fresh uid. Rather than argue by providing a reason for why Google would do this in poor faith you simply smear them and insinuate some form of collusion. Whose sockpuppet are you?
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Same tactic from an AC immediately after the sockpuppet is criticised for it. Do you guys follow a flowchat? It must be a lot like working in a callcentre, no?
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Ah ha. Yup. So don't actually argue against what I've written - just throw mud to try to discredit my views. Hmmm, bit similar to the previous two messages, eh? Maybe the "secret evil conspiracy" is actually just a common form of retardation?
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Actually, we're all part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy! You should see the kinds of monthly checks we receive from the Koch Brothers!
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Literally receiving the Kock?
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Awww, how cute! Your little homophobic mind thinks that that amounts to some kind of clever response!
Actually, the Koch brothers are straight. But they were pretty nice looking in their youth, and as smart, socially liberal, MIT-educated engineers they would have been a good catch.
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Did you infer some sort of negativity and assume that I had implied it? Gosh, I think that is a demonstration of your homophobia rather than mine.
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I didn't "insinuate" anything. It's an established fact that Facebook and Google, as well as their owners, are strong supporters of the Democrats, and I'm pointing out that these "notices" are consistent with their political biases and economic self-interest. I'm also pointing out that it should be clear that Google has no objective basis on which to determine whethe
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You have not made an argument that sending out these notification is consistent with their political biases or their economic self-interest.
Please do so, it would be interesting to read.
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Really? You don't understand how "liberal journalists have their accounts hacked by 'state actors'" plays into Clinton's confabulation of "the DNC got hacked by 'state actors' in order to hand Trump the election"? I suggest you just reflect on that a bit more.
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Oh no - I think you misunderstand. I follow your logic as a suggestion that it could be interpreted that way. But I don't see any evidence that you have presented that forms an argument that is what has happened. Could you reflect on the difference, perhaps?
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I think you misunderstand: I'm saying that the reason that you "don't see any evidence" is entirely a problem with you. I can't fix your mental problems for you.
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So you have presented no evidence, and you claim that because I don't see the evidence that you have not presented it is a mental issue? Must be one of the bad ones like "logic", or "reason". Be thankful that you do not suffer from them.
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Correct. I presented an argument, not evidence:
I leave it to you to verify the facts that I
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Do you believe that Google has the data and competence to analyse that data to identify patterns that can distinguish (with high confidence) the difference between a state actor and a hacking/private group?
If so, then Google has either deliberately lied or ... what?
Your argument then seems to be that Google has lied to some users (either about an attack existing at all, or about the source of an attack) to ingratiate themselves with the Democrats. I'm not from the US, so I might be missing something, but th
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No, they do not have the data to distinguish between the two.
hey, foreign spooks... just buy a paper, OK? (Score:2)
or subscribe online if you can't get out of Mommy's basement any more.
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They bump into the agents coming in and out of the data rooms.
Re:Government Sponsored? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more reasonable than you think.
Do you think that Google has a completely ignorant security team? That they don't have access to internal experts in global routing and traffic analysis? They wouldn't have an internal databases of known hacking sources, methodologies and heuristics and means of tracking command and control?
They may not have a signed invoice for the person paying for the attacks, but they likely can make really, really informed estimates.
Krugman's value isn't the accuracy of his economic predictions, its his public status as the economist to the liberal elite. He's a major opinion leader whose academic status gives him significant public credibility. And they may not even care about that primarily, what if you hacked his account and found evidence of collusion with Democratic politicians? Even if it wasn't active political collision but only non-partisan advice being solicited and given, how hard would that be to turn into click-bait propaganda?
Even if access only gave you the ability to predict his columns, it may be enough evidence to create timely counter-propaganda via a competing analysis, discrediting his sources or other means. This could be used against the Democrats generally or against candidates specifically to influence internal debate or power struggles inside a party.
Re:Government Sponsored? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is one nation-state with the most incentive to influence our elections and hack its "prominent" people, and it isnt Russia. Its America.
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FWIW, I'm not even sure I believe that "state sponsored" is even meaningful anymore. It implies a sense of sanctioning, cohesion and coordination involving government political leadership and sanctioned organizational implementation.
I think we have something closer to a free for all where those with the abilities and resources are taking their own initiative and even if they are operating under the cover of legitimate authority are executing self-authorized and perhaps even personal agendas. I won't even
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There is a lot of evidence that it is encouraged at the very least by the Russian government even if it not directly controlled by the Kremlin. There are a lot of Putin followers hoping to make their leader happy by hacking his enemies. Whether it be Estonia, Ukraine, or America, there's a pro-Putin hacking community that springs into action to defend Putin's stances. And they're not just a dictator oriented variant of Anonymous doing DDoS attacks, some of them are quite skilled.
The snag is proving a dir
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Most likely this is a large scale attack on thousands of e-mail accounts and there is some sort of threshold where Google no longer considers it likely that it was an individual person. However as we've seen with the DynDNS attacks, it doesn't take much to get major infrastructure on it's knees.
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And what does Russia care about Paul Krugman? He's the idiot that predicted the stock market would tank and never recover after Trump was elected.
Give him a chance to be inaugurated and state his plans, the magic 8-ball in Trump's head is still settling.
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Now that other a lot of other nations or groups seen in networks, everything is much more secret.
Strange how some methods get to the media so quickly yet security holds so well when its other nations or groups...
So what other nations, groups, people have been traversing some US networks for a while and why cant contractors talk about methods so quickly?
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No they are posting to social networks!
You mean web-based bulletin board systems?
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Don't worry. It doesn't matter, when you have the CEO of a company -- in this case reddit turning around and changing posts because he threw a hissy fit. [bbc.co.uk] I'm now waiting for the same to happen with Facebook. Twitter is already burning themselves out, so no need to worry on that front.
Re:why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
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As I was saying "[if they had] significant insider information, they wouldn't be constantly wrong".
What have Krugman or Olbermann ever written that suggests that Podesta, Clinton, or anybody else has shared anything more substantial than vegan cookie recipes with these guys?
Phase 3. (Score:2, Interesting)
After hacking the DNC and hacking voting machines to win Putin buddy Trump the election, they are now moving against the people who might have the interest or power to report on the background on what is happening in the USA in these very troubled times.
I guess they are trying to dig up dirt to blackmail people.
Don't underestimate the power of Russian Intelligence Services. Numerous reports cite Russian hackers are the best in the world and their very president is a former KGB agent.
Turkey (Score:3)
"Besides the NSA, CIA, FBI, and confederate agent operatives embedded in same for both major parties, that is."
Comment removed (Score:3)
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You think people who re-post news on a social news site refer to themselves as "writers" I think you might be confusing us with professional journalists... also if you want to get pedantic "have been being" is fucking terrible, it should be "Google have been sending these warnings since 2012".
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These warnings are being sent by Google since 2012
This form of grammatical error is common among people whose native language is not English, in particular I see it a lot from Germans.
Odds are that the author writes their native language far better than you do.
Please learn to write or don't call yourself a writer.
Where does it say that the anonymous poster called himself a writer? You were clearly able to understand the intent, so your post is just snobbery.
Now, had you pointed out that a competent English-speaking editor could and should have corrected the error before posting it, well, then you'd have h
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Your "correction" may be pedantically proper, but results in a very awkward sentence (read it out loud a few times). Active voice reads much more naturally:
Google has been sending these warnings since 2012 . . .
It does not work, people... (Score:2)
Besides, I do not get how Trump could be beneficial for Russia. Trump is smart, while the USA and RF remain natural competitors.
Are we sure it's from Google? (Score:2)
two things (Score:2)
1. Two factor authentication, ALWAYS
2. People should stop using email for anything sensitive that you don't want read by your worst enemy. Use some P2P encrypted chat program or something. One would think Americans, at least, could see the value in something other than damned emails for sensitive communication.
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"Google warns journalists and professors: Your account is under attack" (11/24/2016)
http://arstechnica.com/securit... [arstechnica.com]
"Some of the people who received the warning reported their accounts were protected by two-factor authentication... "