Fake News: Sen Maggie Hassan asks Gen Kelley about debunked power grid hacking story

Democrat senators did their best to smear Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing to be our next Attorney General, painting the future AG as a racist or sexist. No surprise, a similar tactic was used in other hearings as Senator Maggie Hassan asked Gen. Kelley about a situation where the Russians allegedly hacked into one of our power grids.

Marine Gen. John Kelley has been picked by Donald Trump to head Homeland Security, but the problem with the question: it’s a FAKE NEWS STORY.

“Two weeks ago The Washington Post reported that a hacking group connected with the Russian government managed to infiltrate the Burlington Electric power company in Vermont,” Hassan said to Kelley during his confirmation hearing.

The Post reported that Russian hackers had found their way into Burlington Electric’s computer systems and its power system controls.

photo/ Gerd Altmann via pixabay

The power company issued a statement saying that it had not been compromised. The company flagged suspicious activity on its computer systems after running a search based on a list of IP addresses provided by the federal government.

Daily Caller summarized: “When Burlington Electric ran the check, it found that a computer that was not hooked up to power supply controls had accessed one of the flagged IP addresses. And while the IP address was sometimes used during cyber attacks, that was not always the case. Burlington Electric shared the information with federal authorities out of an abundance of caution. One of the federal authorities then appeared to leak the information to The Post without the proper context.”

Hassan took office after serving as governor of New Hampshire and never showed any indication during the questioning that she was aware that The Post’s story has been found to be “fake news.”

I think we all agree that foreign infiltration into our utility infrastructure, into any of our infrastructure, is unacceptable,” she told Kelly.

“With DHS being responsible for securing critical infrastructure from both physical and cyber attack I’m just curious about what steps DHS needs to be taking to prevent cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and confronting foreign nations’ espionage efforts.”

Kelly did not correct Hassan in his response to the Democrat.