<story><title>NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent</title><url>http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/02/that-nbc-story-100-fraudulent.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>osipov</author><text>A bit offtopic but the recent &amp;quot;Russian anti-gay law&amp;quot; media coverage is as credible as this hacking story: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Olympics_of_Hate_in_a_Nation_of_Anti-Gay_Laws%3F_/32494/0/38/38/Y/M.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blacklistednews.com&amp;#x2F;The_Olympics_of_Hate_in_a_Nat...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>NathanKP</author><text>The longer version of the report shows more details:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news-web-extra/honeypot-tests-likelihood-of-hackings-in-russia-137595971642&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&amp;#x2F;watch&amp;#x2F;nbc-news-web-extra&amp;#x2F;honeypot-tes...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the phone they went to a website and ignored warnings in order to download and execute a malicious APK. On the PC they followed a link in a scammy looking phishing email to download and open a malicious Office document. On the Mac they visited a website that had an ad suggesting that they needed an &amp;quot;antivirus program&amp;quot; so they downloaded and installed it.&lt;p&gt;So the devices were hacked not because Sochi is especially dangerous, but because of pure stupidity. Nothing can help you if you deliberately ignore warnings, and deliberately install Trojan horse malware. The exact same thing would have happened in the US.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fiddlediddle</author><text>Hey man I actually went and read that paper you posted the other day: bullshit-alarm went off louder at every page. It&amp;#x27;s all ad-hominems, &amp;quot;look, America is also bad,&amp;quot; unverifiable facts and hearsay.&lt;p&gt;If it is actually true (the anti-&amp;quot;Russian anti-gay laws&amp;quot; movement is overblown in Western media), and if you believe that it is true, then you would do better to stop posting this. You are only doing that cause a disservice by looking untrustworthy.&lt;p&gt;Everything about your posts and the thing you linked to smells of astroturf.&lt;p&gt;Been lurking on HN for half a year now, I guess this is what finally gets me to sign up.</text></comment>
<story><title>NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent</title><url>http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/02/that-nbc-story-100-fraudulent.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>osipov</author><text>A bit offtopic but the recent &amp;quot;Russian anti-gay law&amp;quot; media coverage is as credible as this hacking story: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Olympics_of_Hate_in_a_Nation_of_Anti-Gay_Laws%3F_/32494/0/38/38/Y/M.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.blacklistednews.com&amp;#x2F;The_Olympics_of_Hate_in_a_Nat...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>NathanKP</author><text>The longer version of the report shows more details:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nbc-news-web-extra/honeypot-tests-likelihood-of-hackings-in-russia-137595971642&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&amp;#x2F;watch&amp;#x2F;nbc-news-web-extra&amp;#x2F;honeypot-tes...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the phone they went to a website and ignored warnings in order to download and execute a malicious APK. On the PC they followed a link in a scammy looking phishing email to download and open a malicious Office document. On the Mac they visited a website that had an ad suggesting that they needed an &amp;quot;antivirus program&amp;quot; so they downloaded and installed it.&lt;p&gt;So the devices were hacked not because Sochi is especially dangerous, but because of pure stupidity. Nothing can help you if you deliberately ignore warnings, and deliberately install Trojan horse malware. The exact same thing would have happened in the US.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chimeracoder</author><text>That analysis isn&amp;#x27;t entirely accurate either. For example:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Since 1993 gay sex was made legal in Russia, in 12 US States gay sex is a crime.&lt;p&gt;The law is still on the books, but ever since &lt;i&gt;Lawrence v. Texas&lt;/i&gt;[0], gay sex is legal in all 50 states (and all US territories). They&amp;#x27;re on the books simply because of inertia - there&amp;#x27;s no impetus to pass a new law repealing a law that&amp;#x27;s already been invalidated.&lt;p&gt;Others include:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In Russia you cannot be fired from your job for being an LGBT individual, in the United States you can&lt;p&gt;This depends highly on the state. Some states even protect transgender individuals.&lt;p&gt;Also, comparing Russia&amp;#x27;s laws to the US&amp;#x27;s laws is inherently flawed. For example, I could mention that Iran conducts more sex reassignment operations than any other country in the entire world, except Thailand![1]&lt;p&gt;But before we go ahead and praise Iran for being progressive with regard to transgender rights, let&amp;#x27;s understand that they do this because they assume that homosexuality and being trans are the same thing, and the government pays for forced gender reassignment of gay people[2].&lt;p&gt;So it&amp;#x27;s very easy to make the US look bad in comparison to other countries, especially since the US is more federated than many other countries (ie, states have more leeway), &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the US is larger (so it&amp;#x27;s easier to cherry-pick examples). But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean the US is actually worse.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v_texas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Lawrence_v_texas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexuality_in_Iran&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Transsexuality_in_Iran&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] There&amp;#x27;s some subtlety to this (we could debate the exact nature of the word &amp;quot;forced&amp;quot;), but that&amp;#x27;s basically how it works.</text></comment>