The two following news stories illustrate how incapable our government has become in pulling off a technological advancement and also how capable (and feared!) the Russians have become.

On July 30, 2016, the Social Security Administration began requiring new and current Social Security account holders to sign into their account using a one-time code text message as an extra measure on online security. Merely, two-weeks later, the agency reversed itself. The SSA’s stepped-up security measure encountered technical problems from the start. “Our aggressive implementation inconvenienced or restricted access to some of our account holders (so it was dropped),” Social Security press office.

After Russian 800-meter runner Yulia Stepanova and her husband exposed the systematic state-sponsored doping regimen pervasive in Russian athletics, the couple and their young son fled to the United States, fearing for their safety. Now it seems that their fears were well founded. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced Aug. 13 that hackers had illegally accessed Stepanova’s account in an agency database, which contains, among other personal information, her family’s address in the United States. (Athletes are required to maintain current address information in the WADA system to facilitate unscheduled, off-competition drug testing.) WADA also noted that no other accounts had been accessed in the data breach, suggesting that Stepanova, who has since moved again with her family, was the specific target of the hack.

That someone’s personal information was compromised by a data intrusion is hardly surprising in this age of widespread hacking. It is unusual, however, for hackers to home in on a single person in the course of an attack. The Kremlin’s track record in dealing with those who cross it — even people who seek refuge in the West — proves that the Russia’s government has a long reach, made all the longer by the country’s prodigious hacking capabilities.

(Source: Stratfor)