Cyber Attack on U.S. Newspapers

Looks like they're hacking some of the big U.S. newspapers. They say it originated from overseas. I'm sure Russia will get the blame again:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-latimes/cyber-attack-hits-u-s-newspaper-distribution-idUSKCN1OT01O

I am fairly certain it is for sport,
and not a serious threat.

After all, our enemies overseas have
no better ally than our MSM.

Although this is not a cyber attack on newspapers, this is a cyber hack (twitter, uber, apple) of high profile individuals to get money, is this a dry run for something much bigger, maybe.

They don't know if this was an inside job or not, it's being investigated by the feds:


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/15/twitter-elon-musk-joe-biden-hacked-bitcoin

Earlier today some were saying the hack was a Twitter employee who sold email and passwords to a 3rd party who did the hack.

If the FBI is involved, what are the chances the Twitter employee is here on the highly touted H1 B tech visa?

Hacks of internationally known social media agencies, if they have the potential to inflict substantial monetary damage, will always get FBI attention.

While it is possible that an H1B visa tech is involved, the bigger question I have is: why would anyone have those passwords, in the first place? Passwords should be stored in a "non reversible" encrypted format, just for that reason. That has been an industry standard since 1975. It is called the "shadow password" file.

The only way the employee should have been able to gain the passwords is for two things to come together:
1. Employee gained access to "shadow password" file.
(should be protected, but still possible)
2. Users used weak passwords, allowing the employee to run a cracking tool on that file, which would reveal all of the weak passwords.

(Passwords today should be 12 characters, and have no discernible pattern, in any system where you can be damaged by their compromise.)