Greenwald: WaPo Story of Russia Hacking U.S. Electric Grid Completely False

Photo dated 13 July 2006 showing power cables in Germany. A sudden weekend surge in demand
JENS-ULRICH KOCH/AFP/Getty

Writing at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald deconstructs the latest fake news story from the mainstream media about Russian hackers attacking the United States:

The Washington Post on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont.

What’s the problem here? It did not happen.

There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.

Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so Burlington Electric had to issue its own statement to the Burlington Free Press, which debunked the Post’s central claim (emphasis in original): “We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop NOT connected to our organization’s grid systems.”

Read the rest of the story at The Intercept.

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