美国国家公共电台 NPR Report: Russia Launched Cyberattack On Voting Vendor Ahead Of Election

 

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

A Russian intelligence agency launched a cyberattack last year against a company that helps run American voting systems. That detail appeared today in a top secret National Security Agency document that was posted by the news website The Intercept¹. And on the same day, the Justice Department announced it's charging a young woman who works for an intelligence agency contractor² with sending secret information to a news organization. NPR has confirmed these two threads are connected.

And to tell us more about this breaking story, we are joined by national security editor Phil Ewing. Hi there, Phil.

PHIL EWING, BYLINE³: Hi, Kelly.

MCEVERS: OK, so there's a lot of stuff here. Let's start with this cyberattack first. What does this NSA report say happened?

EWING: What it says happened is in the last months of the presidential campaign last year, the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU began a spearfishing attack against a company in the United States that provides election services and election systems to eight U.S. states. And what appears to have taken place is these Russian cyber hackers⁴ sent spearfishing emails to people in this company that said, we need your login credentials⁵ so that you can do something with these messages that they got.

And what the NSA report doesn't say is whether or not these officials, these U.S. officials, know whether that was successful, whether these guys got in, what kind of information they were able to take out or what kind of control they were able to get over these election computing⁶ systems.

MCEVERS: Is there any sense of - that the Russians could have used what they did here to change the outcome of the election?

EWING: The short answer is no, there's nothing in this that indicates that was a danger. But at the same time, once you get control of a computer system, you can do all kinds of things. You can see what people in that network are doing. You can install your own software to create false data. You could create chaos⁷ and send everybody in the company an email saying they've been laid off, and maybe they won't show up to work on a key day when you want there to be chaos. So the indications are that this stopped short of changing the outcome of any election, but it's still very serious potentially for these vendors⁸ to have had their systems compromised in this way.

MCEVERS: And usually we don't know where a lot of these national security stories come from. There was some indication today that the government might have already identified the source.

EWING: That's right, yeah. Not long after the story posted on The Intercept, the Justice Department announced that it has filed charges down in Georgia against a woman named Reality Leigh Winner, who's 25 years old. She works for an NSA contractor, and she may have been connected with the leak of this material.

According to court documents the Justice Department unveiled today, she was one of the people at this NSA facility in Augusta, Ga., who had access to these documents. The FBI says she was in email contact with the correspondents for this website The Intercept that broke the story. And she may have printed out copies of this PDF and mailed them by snail⁹ mail - kind of old fashioned - to The Intercept to be able to share this information with them.

Now, this story is still unreeling, and we don't know much more. But we do know from national security officials who are familiar with these matters that she is connected with this case and The Intercept.

MCEVERS: Certainly not the first time the U.S. intelligence community has had a contractor release secret information, right?

EWING: Yeah, that's right. And one of the things this story - one of the many things this story raises is, this is not the first time, as you say, a contractor who's not a U.S. government employee but kind of on the outer perimeter¹⁰ has compromised some secrets. We remember Chelsea Manning, who was in the Army at the time and released information about U.S. military conduct overseas - Edward Snowden, the most famous example. And this right now appears to be something very much similar to those two.

MCEVERS: NPR's national security editor Phil Ewing, thank you.

EWING: Thank you.

1 intercept   

vt.拦截，截住，截击

参考例句：

• His letter was intercepted by the Secret Service.他的信被特工处截获了。
• Gunmen intercepted him on his way to the airport.持枪歹徒在他去机场的路上截击了他。

2 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 hackers   

n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 )；私自存取或篡改电脑资料者，电脑“黑客”

参考例句：

• They think of viruses that infect an organization from the outside.They envision hackers breaking into their information vaults. 他们考虑来自外部的感染公司的病毒，他们设想黑客侵入到信息宝库中。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Arranging a meeting with the hackers took weeks againoff-again email exchanges. 通过几星期电子邮件往来安排见面，他们最终同意了。 来自互联网

5 credentials   

n.证明，资格，证明书，证件

参考例句：

• He has long credentials of diplomatic service.他的外交工作资历很深。
• Both candidates for the job have excellent credentials.此项工作的两个求职者都非常符合资格。

6 computing   

n.计算

参考例句：

• to work in computing 从事信息处理
• Back in the dark ages of computing, in about 1980, they started a software company. 早在计算机尚未普及的时代（约1980年），他们就创办了软件公司。

7 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

8 vendors   

n.摊贩( vendor的名词复数 )；小贩；（房屋等的）卖主；卖方

参考例句：

• The vendors were gazundered at the last minute. 卖主在最后一刻被要求降低房价。
• At the same time, interface standards also benefIt'software vendors. 同时，界面标准也有利于软件开发商。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

9 snail   

n.蜗牛

参考例句：

• Snail is a small plant-eating creature with a soft body.蜗牛是一种软体草食动物。
• Time moved at a snail's pace before the holidays.放假前的时间过得很慢。

10 perimeter   

n.周边，周长，周界

参考例句：

• The river marks the eastern perimeter of our land.这条河标示我们的土地东面的边界。
• Drinks in hands,they wandered around the perimeter of the ball field.他们手里拿着饮料在球场周围漫不经心地遛跶。