UK Parliament Cyberattack attributed to Russia - Because isn't it always Russia?

From the Guardian:

The Russian government is suspected of being behind a cyber-attack on parliament that breached dozens of email accounts belonging to MPs and peers.

Although the investigation is at an early stage and the identity of those responsible may prove impossible to establish with absolute certainty, Moscow is deemed the most likely culprit.

Why? Just because. They even add in a few misleading lies to help convince you it must be Russia, despite the acknowledgment it could have been anyone:

In May, Russia was linked to the hacking of France’s computer systems during the presidential campaign, taking data from Emmanuel Macron’s campaign and leaking it to the public.

US officials have previously said they were seeking to share their experience of the 2016 presidential election, where US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia hacked and leaked Democratic party communications and disseminated fake news with the aim of getting Donald Trump elected.

Except the French Intelligence Services shot down this particular lie a long time ago:

The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack.

In an interview in his office Thursday with The Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard said the Macron campaign hack “was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone.”

He said they found no trace that the Russian hacking group known as APT28, blamed for other attacks including on the U.S. presidential campaign, was responsible.

Poupard is director general of the government cyber-defense agency known in France by its acronym, ANSSI. Its experts were immediately dispatched when documents stolen from the Macron campaign leaked online on May 5 in the closing hours of the presidential race.

Poupard says the attack’s simplicity “means that we can imagine that it was a person who did this alone. They could be in any country.”

So what was hacked from the MPs in the British Parliament? Not much:

Fewer than 90 email accounts belonging to parliamentarians are believed to have been hacked, a parliamentary spokesman said. [...]

Amid fears that the breach could lead to blackmail attempts, officials were forced to lock MPs out of their own email accounts as they scrambled to minimise the damage from the incident. {...]

The number of states who might mount such an attack on the UK is limited, and, in addition to Russia, includes North Korea, China and Iran.

A security source said: “It was a brute force attack. It appears to have been state-sponsored.” [...]

A parliamentary spokesman said those whose emails were compromised had used weak passwords despite advice to the contrary. “Investigations are ongoing, but it has become clear that significantly fewer than 1% of the 9,000 accounts on the parliamentary network have been compromised, as a result of the use of weak passwords that did not conform to guidance issued by the Parliamentary Digital Service.

This doesn't sound like a very sophisticated cyber attack to to me, and at least one source thinks so, too:

Henry Smith, the Tory MP, said: “Sorry no parliamentary email access today – we’re under cyber-attack from Kim Jong Un, Putin or a kid in his mom’s basement or something.”

My money is on the kid in the basement. Or something.

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

My money is on the kid in the basement too.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

"The number of states who might mount such an attack on the UK is limited, and, in addition to Russia, includes North Korea, China and Iran."

No, those are the ones you choose to blame, not the only ones with the capability.

up
0 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

edg's picture

And there's close to 0% probability it was "state sponsored". What this reveals is laziness or incompetence on the part of Parliament's system administrators, as brute force attack countermeasures are simple and effective and cheap. Per Wikipedia:

Database and directory administrators can take countermeasures against online attacks, for example by limiting the number of attempts that a password can be tried, by introducing time delays between successive attempts, increasing the answer's complexity (e.g. requiring a CAPTCHA answer or verification code sent via cellphone), and/or locking accounts out after unsuccessful logon attempts. Website administrators may prevent a particular IP address from trying more than a predetermined number of password attempts against any account on the site.

up
0 users have voted.

@edg And these techniques have been around for awhile,

up
0 users have voted.
edg's picture

@MrWebster @MrWebster

WOPR using a brute force attack on nuclear launch codes in the movie War Games, circa 1983:

[video:https://youtu.be/557XsPFsYms]

up
0 users have voted.

Who else would even think about doing harm to the UK Parliament except for the Russians.

up
0 users have voted.
Bollox Ref's picture

without doubt.

Another Zinoviev Letter, and the game will be up for Red Jez.

up
0 users have voted.

Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

CB's picture

Secret picture of Corbyn's spin doctor, Seumas Milne shaking hands with the devil himself. I understand Seumas was treated with a golden shower afterwards.

Seumas Milne.jpg

up
0 users have voted.
dervish's picture

@CB is giving us a golden shower here, rather than Putin's hookers.

up
0 users have voted.

"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Somebody running the Corporate Party has clearly read Animal Farm...

Of course, so have many of the rest of us.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

...
Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness. Never to have any dealings with human beings, never to engage in trade, never to make use of money— had not these been among the earliest resolutions passed at the first triumphant Meeting when Jones was expelled? All the animals remembered passing such resolutions: or at least they thought that they remembered it.

Afterwards Squealer made a round of the farm and set the animals' minds at rest. He assured them that the resolution against engaging in trade and using money had never been passed, or even suggested. It was pure imagination, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few animals still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, "Are you certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades? Have you any record of such a resolution? Is it written down anywhere?" And since it was certainly true that nothing of the kind existed in writing, the animals were satisfied that they had been mistaken.

Comrades, do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!
Napoleon

Chapter 7

Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal.

"Ah, that is different!" said Boxer. "If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right."

And so the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones.

When it was all over, the remaining animals, except for the pigs and dogs, crept away in a body. They were shaken and miserable. They did not know which was more shocking--the treachery of the animals who had leagued themselves with Snowball, or the cruel retribution they had just witnessed. In the old days there had often been scenes of bloodshed equally terrible, but it seemed to all of them that it was far worse now that it was happening among themselves. Since Jones had left the farm, until today, no animal had killed another animal.

As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she could have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race. These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion. If she herself had had any picture of the future, it had been of a society of animals set free from hunger and the whip, all equal, each working according to his capacity, the strong protecting the weak, as she had protected the lost brood of ducklings with her foreleg on the night of Major's speech. Instead--she did not know why--they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes. There was no thought of rebellion or disobedience in her mind. She knew that, even as things were, they were far better off than they had been in the days of Jones, and that before all else it was needful to prevent the return of the human beings. Whatever happened she would remain faithful, work hard, carry out the orders that were given to her, and accept the leadership of Napoleon. But still, it was not for this that she and all the other animals had hoped and toiled.

Animal Farm, Animal Farm,
Never through me shalt thou come to harm!

Chapter 8
Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer — except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.

A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some of the animals remembered--or thought they remembered--that the Sixth Commandment decreed "No animal shall kill any other animal." And though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. Clover asked Benjamin to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when Benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, she fetched Muriel. Muriel read the Commandment for her. It ran: "No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE." Somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out of the animals' memory. But they saw now that the Commandment had not been violated; for clearly there was good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves with Snowball. ...

...
For the time being, certainly, it had been found necessary to make a readjustment of rations (Squealer always spoke of it as a "readjustment," never as a "reduction"), but in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvement was enormous. Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice, he proved to them in detail that they had more oats, more hay, more turnips than they had had in Jones's day, that they worked shorter hours, that their drinking water was of better quality, that they lived longer, that a larger proportion of their young ones survived infancy, and that they had more straw in their stalls and suffered less from fleas. The animals believed every word of it. Truth to tell, Jones and all he stood for had almost faded out of their memories. They knew that life nowadays was harsh and bare, that they were often hungry and often cold, and that they were usually working when they were not asleep. But doubtless it had been worse in the old days. They were glad to believe so. Besides, in those days they had been slaves and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer did not fail to point out.

Chapter 10

Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer — except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.

Four legs good, two legs better!

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL,
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Quotes about Animal Farm

In Animal Farm, though Napoleon and the pigs may not "own" the means to production in the technical sense of possessing a legal piece of paper that says they do … the pigs behave as if they own the farm and have a canine police force to back up their claim.
Peter Edgerly Firchow, in Modern Utopian Fictions from H.G. Wells to Iris Murdoch (2007), p. 106

This last also being much like too many transient public servants selling off/despoiling public property.

And we, too much like the Animals described as being dispossessed and slaughtered above because we don't know what to do...

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

CB's picture


How the Internet Turned Me Into a 'Russia Apologist'

I finally realized the United States hates Russia because Russia refuses to be a client state

It started in 2008. Before that I did not pay attention to what was happening in Russia. I saw a few headlines: Chechnya, default, wheat shipments in aid. They were the sort of thing you see on the crawl at the bottom of the screen on CNN. That was enough; I had other things to worry about.

But then my cousin said, check out this picture of a meeting between Putin and Bush in Beijing. They were in the bleachers talking about something bad – Putin looked fierce and Bush looked flummoxed. Whoa, there was a war starting? What war? Where?

Well, one thing led to another. I was curious. TV was awful and the CNN website had few facts so I started searching. European news sites were much better. The video of all those Russian tanks snaking through the Caucasus Mountains and out of the Roki tunnel to Georgia was quite impressive. Oh, crap, I thought, here we go: Armageddon. Then over the weekend all the US news outlets – when they mentioned the war during breaks from football games and the Olympics – increasingly gasped about Russian aggression and no provocation and look out, Eastern Europe, you are next.
...
So with the Georgia war I became somewhat skeptical of US-based news and very interested in Russia and its leadership. And I have learned since then that the Georgia war was not a fluke, that our media consistently gets the story wrong or only tells half of it, and that the United States government is still in the business of starting proxy wars against Russia. Forget that we “won” the Cold War according to President Reagan. We were still fighting it in 2008, only with sneak attacks and by trying to ‘ring fence’ Russia with military bases.

So why did we fear Russia so much we had to wrap NATO around it? It took me a while to reach a conclusion – meanwhile I watched what Medvedev and Putin were doing, read all the Russian scandals discussed at length back home, scoured all the foreign news outlets that had English language websites, and subscribed to Google news searches.
...
I finally decided the United States hates Russia because Russia refuses to be a client state. And especially we hate Putin because he makes Russians uncooperative and he is so popular at home we cannot overthrow him with a color revolution. He is the pebble in our shoe, one that we keep trying to find and remove but we somehow fail to dislodge. So we look to the rest of the world as if we are performing a funny little dance while we complain about Putin.

Meanwhile our news outlets keep beating the drums about how Putin is a dictator and Russia is about to collapse, any day now, and how we should be very afraid of them because they hate us for our democracy. I wonder why our media really want us to be afraid of Russia.

Are they planning a war any time soon? Another one? That we are supposed to join and support? Don’t they know we can get real news outside of the US?
...

up
0 users have voted.

@CB @CB

Lol, what projection, that all of those countries and people that the US PTB wish to subjugate are said by them to hate Americans for a democracy which the PTB seek to globally eradicate... rather (edit: than rejecting) the military/corporate destruction wrought by these fascist Psychopaths That Be... pull the plug or flush, whichever works.

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.