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UK Plans Cyber Weapons Program
An anonymous reader writes "The Ministry of Defence says they are working on a range of offensive cyber weapons to increase the country's defensive capabilities. The armed forces minister, Nick Harvey, says, 'The consequences of a well planned, well executed attack against our digital infrastructure could be catastrophic With nuclear or biological weapons, the technical threshold is high. With cyber the finger hovering over the button could be anyone from a state to a student.'"
"With nuclear or biological weapons, the technical threshold is high. With cyber the finger hovering over the button could be anyone from a state to a student"
What a crock. Any engineering student who couldn't design a fission based nuclear bomb is going to be a terrible engineer. Hell, the guy who has literally "written the book" on the Manhattan Project bombs is a freaking truck driver*. And you have the same with biological weapons. Contrary to what movies show most research into biological weapons wasn't about genetic modification it was simply on how to make the bugs easy to disperse and store. And most of it was done in the 50's and 60's. To combat misuse of both the answer has been to control the key ingredients of isotopes and germs.
With "cyber" weapons it is the opposite. It is impossible to control the key ingredient, and the 'state of the art' has moved far past the stage where individuals are dominant. Even in the criminal world malware is built by teams. The technical threshold is very high and no individual is going to pull off well planned and well executed attack against a nations infrastructure. The "cyber wars" we see now are all done by large teams of hackers. When nations start actively deploying "cyber warfare" units and the like it will further raise the technical bar.
P.S. The fingers actually "hovering over the buttons" of NBC weapons were mostly 18-20 year old kids. The systems you see in movies where the president needs to give a code so nukes can be launched is mostly a crock. The US Strategic Air Command famously set the "permissive action locks" on its nukes to the equivalent of "1111" because it believed the system was too complicated to be relied upon.
*http://www.amazon.com/Atom-Bombs-Secret-Inside-Little/dp/B0006S2AJ0
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Nick Harvey, says, 'The consequences of a well planned, well executed attack against our digital infrastructure could be catastrophic With nuclear or biological weapons, the technical threshold is high. With cyber the finger hovering over the button could be anyone from a state to a student.'"
Shuuure; The missile is just gonna arm itself, and intangible cyber villains are going to bypass the physical electrical & mechanical safety mechanisms.
Sounds like someone's been watching too much Lawnmower Man. If a team of cyber villains is all it takes to launch/detonate warheads, We'd all be dead by now. Yeah, theoretically you would need a hacker on your nuclear terrorist infiltration team.
I suggest you take a break from the Fear-mongering... Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
HEY DUMB-ASSES -- Here's a fucking idea -- Instead of running in fear, wasting tax payer dollars on protecting us from cyber triggered nuclear war -- Why don't we just say: "Fuck it! Everyone's got hackers now! -- Game over, we have to disarm all nuclear bombs in case an angsty 4chan goer decides to an hero via nukes."
..military grade LOIC or what??...
I believe he's using "the button" to draw a parallel between an attack over the internet and somebody launching nuclear attack.
I didn’t take it to mean that hackers can easily control the systems capable of launching a nuclear attack.
Nick Harvey is a wanker
Its the same line they use for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down ... if s/he can dial in, so can other people.
If the UK wants to master its NBC suit production they "thought experiment" with the best offensive weapons they can dream up.
1. If the UK wants to master digital infrastructure they roll out very expensive Microsoft and watch everybody have a go at hacking it.
2. ?
3. Cyber victory
Its cost saving to have 1 expensive engineer watching a few counties critical infrastructure from a cheap Windows laptop after 5 pm but
They only thing the Ministry of Defence can do now is to make sure its www.secret-bases.co.uk/ are safe and wait for the next generation of UK politicians to finally understand that critical UK infrastructure has been wonderful for US shareholders.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The idea of "Cyber Weapons" is a deliberately wrong paradigm whose only purpose is to wring money out of national defense agencies. A cyber attack is nothing more than an idea. If you know something about computer security which the other guy doesn't, you can attack him with it. But as soon as he (or his operating system or antivirus vendor) knows it too, you've got nothing.
This is completely unlike a weapon. An AK-47 is still deadly even if your opponent knows what an assault rifle is, but an unpatched SQL injection vulnerability is useless the moment your opponent learns about it.
... they already have a surgical assassination team trained in both WoW and Farmville.
I8-D