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BigBeerBellyMan t1_je9zqdr wrote

Email phishing is not computer hacking.

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Phriend_of_Phoenix t1_jeanyf4 wrote

It kind of is though? No one really bothers with traditional attacks like man in the middle anymore cause it’s much easier to trick someone into giving you their password. The point of hacking is to get access to information on a computer, social engineering attacks do that.

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Cognomifex t1_jeaskzq wrote

> It kind of is though?

If anything it's person hacking. There are still plenty of ways to go after the tech directly, but as you say generally the weakest point in a system from a security standpoint is the bag of meat operating it.

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BigBeerBellyMan t1_jeapljo wrote

My point is, that anyone can trick a naive person to give up their password. They don't need to be a "Hacker" and they often aren't. The article's title is misleading and sensationalized.

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Phriend_of_Phoenix t1_jeaq4fm wrote

You at right in the technical sense, but I think you are just nitpicking. If someone convinces grandma to give them her Facebook login, grandma says she got hacked, and would probably call that person a hacker. GPT isn’t really an AI, but we call it that anyways because how society uses words doesn’t stick to a single dictionary definition.

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BigBeerBellyMan t1_jeb2tk0 wrote

The title is sensationalized and misleading though:

There's no way to know the culprits were Pro-Russian.

There's no indication they were Hackers.

They didn't only target US government employees.

No mention if other (not pro-Ukraine) politicians were also targeted, or if it was only those who support the war.

It could just be that US officials were caught in a large drag-net operation.

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Phriend_of_Phoenix t1_jebrk9j wrote

You have clearly read at least part of the article since you started this thread by claiming phishing is not hacking. The article also states that the group Proofpoint was tracking was at the very least Russia aligned. The scripts they were using were customized to target NATO and NATO aligned organizations. We know they were targeting pro NATO and pro Ukraine officials because they have attacked multiple countries, and all their targets fit that bill. This is in the first two paragraphs of the article.

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