US officials are reporting that the FBI is conducting an investigation into the possibility that reporters for the New York Times were hacked, and that it is conceivable that the hackers behind the potential incident were from Russian intelligence.
There was little, indeed virtually nothing, known about the putative hack, but it was said that the New York Times’ entire network was not believed to be targeted, but rather an unknown number of email addresses affiliated with an unknown number of reporters.
The possibility of blaming Russia seems to be centered purely on the fact that officials were quick to blame Russia for other recent hacks in the US, including the hack against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Neither the FBI nor the New York Times is commenting on what happened, however, and even though at this point we don’t know if this amounts to anything more than a trivial amateur hack, many are lining up the possibility of blaming Russia for it, seemingly just because blaming Russia is a thing to do.
