That Other Hacking Accusation

Journalist Glenn Greenwald reports on the accusation by the Washington Post that Russians tried to hack an American utility in Vermont. Greenwald has a different take on the situation. He explains:

"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."

A far different explanation than I've been reading in the news. It was supposedly a Russian malware code, but that's not definitive proof:

The fact that malware is “Russian-made” does not mean that only Russians can use it; indeed, like a lot of malware, it can be purchased (as Jeffrey Carr has pointed out in the DNC hacking context, assuming that Russian-made malware must have been used by Russians is as irrational as finding a Russian-made Kalishnikov AKM rifle at a crime scene and assuming the killer must be Russian)

 "This matters not only because one of the nation’s major newspapers once again published a wildly misleading, fearmongering story about Russia. It matters even more because it reflects the deeply irrational and ever-spiraling fever that is being cultivated in U.S. political discourse and culture about the threat posed by Moscow."

Yep. We'll likely be seeing more of the same. I've written here before that I believe we've been getting the same sort of thing from media for some time, although the source is often government. This time it doesn't seem to be. Sadly, I don't see an end to it in sight.