Snippet: Welcome to Russia, You’re Hacked…What? ☍

Shared on February 6, 2014

Dave Mark takes NBC News to task on The Loop:

Again, I’d really like to know more. Did they leave both computers in their default state? Did they enable any firewall or take any steps to protect the computers? Were the computers purposely made easy to penetrate?

I watched the video that was embedded at the end and also wanted to know more of the why and how of the Five Ws of journalism. More importantly, if devices are that vulnerable over there, why not in other countries?

Update: Iain Thomson of The Register explains a bit more on the story:

But, as [Trend Micro’s senior researcher Kyle] Wilhoit later admitted on Twitter, there was more than a little intentional fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) added to the report – or as he described it “part of the ‘tv magic'”.

For a start, the coffee-break hacking of the smartphone wasn’t uninitiated, he said, meaning the user had to actively download unknown software. Wilhoit said the attack was an .apk dropped from browsing to a .RU Sochi-themed website that the user had to agree to install.

As for the computers, Wilhoit recounts that they were fresh out of the box and appear to have been put online with no attempt to download the latest OS updates, no security software of any kind, and unpatched versions of Java, Flash, Adobe PDF Reader, and Microsoft Office 2007.

Snippets are posts that share a linked item with a bit of commentary.