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Hackers Came, But the French Were Prepared (nytimes.com) 286

Posted by msmash from the nope,-not-today dept.
Adam Nossiter, David E. Sanger, and Nicole Perlroth, reporting for the New York Times: Everyone saw the hackers coming. The National Security Agency in Washington picked up the signs. So did Emmanuel Macron's bare-bones technology team. And mindful of what happened in the American presidential campaign, the team created dozens of false email accounts, complete with phony documents, to confuse the attackers (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). The Russians, for their part, were rushed and a bit sloppy, leaving a trail of evidence that was not enough to prove for certain they were working for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin but which strongly suggested they were part of his broader "information warfare" campaign. The story told by American officials, cyberexperts and Mr. Macron's own campaign aides of how a hacking attack intended to disrupt the most consequential election in France in decades ended up a dud was a useful reminder that as effective as cyberattacks can be in disabling Iranian nuclear plants, or Ukrainian power grids, they are no silver bullet. The kind of information warfare favored by Russia can be defeated by early warning and rapid exposure.
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Hackers Came, But the French Were Prepared More

Hackers Came, But the French Were Prepared

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  • Nice France (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @01:24PM (#54394395)

    It's great that between two traditional corrupted shits (not to mention Lepen), the French elected a "3rd party" centrist president.

    That's what we need in the US but failed to accomplish when having to choose between Clinton and Trump. I guess the alternative parties were pretty crappy, though. That's where we need to work, building a centrist party especially since the democrats have vacated this position in favor of identity politics.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )

      This is possible in France due to the primary and runoff elections.

      The US system with exactly one election means there are only going to be two candidates, always, no matter what. The only way your new centrist party could win is if either the Democrats or Republicans actually dropped out of the race.

  • Linux. Prepared or not, we'd all be safer using it. Gamers and IT...go ahead and say something. I know you want to.
  • Had nothing to do with the government threatening French media that covered it with charges. Freedom can be messy.

  • Selective hacks require dumb populace to influence (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @01:42PM (#54394539)
    Which explains the varied outcomes of the two most recent elections.

  • What this tell us is that Macron's cybersecurity team was less incompetent than Hillary's. Good for the French to have elected someone who understands technology a bit better than Hillary. Other than that, I don't see what relevance this has to the US election or Hillary's poor performance.

  • I knew those cheese eating surrender monkeys were to to no good. This is nothing short of UnAmerican. Why, as an American I won't stand for it. I need to sit awhile to catch breath anyway...

  • The Russians, for their part, were rushed and a bit sloppy, leaving a trail of evidence that was not enough to prove for certain they were working for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin but which strongly suggested they were part of his broader "information warfare" campaign.

    From TFA:

    the eventual dump of documents by the attackers included metadata showing Russian versions of Microsoft Office were used to edit some documents, and the name of an employee of a company providing information securit

  • The only presente "evidence" is a Russian username (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you wonder why this attack was linked to Russia, here's what the article says (caps mine):

    "Other documents had last been modified by Russian usernames, including one person that researchers identified as a 32-year-old employee of Eureka CJSC, based in Moscow, a Russian technology company"

    That is, the whole accusation is based on the fact that an attacker used the same username ("IvanPetrov"?) as someone working for a Russian goverment contractor. Of course, the username itself is not released. Slashdot

  • Right, foreign hackers miss their target, but french banking establishment managed to get its candidate elected. This is foreign operation beaten by local influence.
  • What did they show as proof that Russian hackers were involved? If ever there was a good target for a false attack, it was the French election. RF openly (as in without hiding or backchannels) lent money to Le Pen's campaign. So if anyone wanted to throw shade on Russia to make them seem nefarious, planting evidence of Russian hacking of Macron's campaign would be an obvious move. What's the definitive evidence that it was RF? And if France has it, can they, for f's sake give it to the FBI? I am tired

  • The establishment wasn't prepared, they're just making more hay to feed their precious narrative.

  • "not enough to prove for certain they were working for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin" So we have no evidence but we want to blame Russia anyway because we do not like them.

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