Slashdot Mirror
'Legitimized' Cyberwar Opens Pandora's Box of Dirty Tricks
DillyTonto writes "U.S. officials have acknowledged playing a role in the development and deployment of Stuxnet, Duqu and other cyberweapons against Iran. The acknowledgement makes cyberattacks more legitimate as a tool of not-quite-lethal international diplomacy. It also legitimizes them as more-combative tools for political conflict over social issues, in the same way Tasers gave police less-than-lethal alternatives to shooting suspects and gave those who abuse their power something other than a club to hit a suspect with. Political parties and single-issue political organizations already use 'opposition research' to name-and-shame their opponents with real or exaggerated revelations from a checkered past, jerrymander districts to ensure their candidates a victory and vote-suppression or get-out-the-vote efforts to skew vote tallies. Imagine what they'll do with custom malware, the ability to DDOS an opponent's web site or redirect donations from an opponent's site to their own. Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
" They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
As if they didn't have them before?
Where exactly has this been officially acknowledged? The only thing we have is a story in the NYT with an anonymous source. I would not call that "acknowledged." I would call that rumor.
Probably, the consequences are yet to be understood
Lest we forget http://www.stolly.org.uk/ETO
Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
Your sense of 'military and collateral' damage is very skewed, there, article submitter. So 2-3% of military troops on the ground won't die, or any other native county civilians along the way, but you're ok with the vulnerability of a digital US infrastructure that has MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of US federal, contractor, civilian and citizen 'at risk.
This isn't a new pandora's box. What makes it shock value is that it's one thing to admit being behind Stuxnet, it's another to admit you're the United State Goverment and you're behind Stuxnet.
I grew up believing in the US as a beacon for freedom and fairness. Okay, so it was the 60's and 70's and given what was going down in South America it was probably all a lie then.
Thing is, just recently the US stated that they view a cyber attack as an act of war. Given how targeted Stuxnet was, by this admission they have clearly stated that it is okay for the US to commit an act of war on Iran, a country that has no history of aggression (although plenty of rhetoric, but that is not uncommon for the region).
How would you US citizens feel if you were on the receiving end of Predator drones, cyber attacks and Shock and Awe?
Hypocrisy. The very worst of human traits.
U.S. officials have acknowledged playing a role in the development and deployment of Stuxnet, Duqu and other cyberweapons against Iran.
This sentence is just plain bullshit and the submitter has made it up in his head. Where is the evidence of this assertion? The US has not acknowledged any role in this.
Just don't forget to declare it on the other country. On Facebook, of course.
Ezekiel 23:20
Don't slashdot me, bro!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well I have to say I doubt the article, because it references New York Times, who in turn references a book from David Sanger, who in turn quotes anonymous sources so it's like 3rd or 4th hand anonymous claims. When I dig into Sanger, he in turn seems to be part of this group :
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/aspen-strategy-group
Which in turn seems to have a cyber war agenda.
However, its convincing enough to ditch US made kit. Sorry and all, but after finding Cisco kit had back doors in its routers, I've had enough.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/03/hackers-networking-equipment-technology-security-cisco.html
If a hacker gets caught causing damage to a company's infrastructure it's hard to imagine him not going to jail and/or having to pay for the damages he/she caused. Given that Stuxnet spread around the world, do the victims get to send their cleanup bills to Uncle Sam?
A covert war of dirty tricks is better then a overt shooting war and occupation.
I'll vote to re-elect a president who would deal with Iran by sending in the CIA over a candidate would would likely send in the Marines.
The USA has started poking Iran with a formally black op move, now they have opened up for reprisals. Just because you can does not mean you should. This can and will be interpreted as an act of war.
If someone did the same thing to my systems in a government country, I would be looking for ways to both counter attack and counter defense with lobbying and changes of laws.
Nicely done USA, you dumb fucks. Iran now has political and legal recourse.
The only shock is just how naive the general public is about what happens between governments. What exactly DO people think happens between governments?
The difference between cyberattacks on Iran and on anybody else is that the new government of Iran went to war against the United States immediately after the revolution and has been unresponsive to the attempts of every American president to negotiate peace. A state of war already exists between the US and Iran, and the US is alleged to have committed an act of war against Iran. So what?
Lets all hope that when the shit hits the fan we can close that box of tricks. Too much power in the wrong hands is a very dangerous thing and where does it stop. Also, who has oversight of our dirty little cyber (I hate that word) war. The last thing we need is unchecked use of this technology.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
So true. Here in my country (Philipppines), an accounting error was used to remove the chief justice of our Supreme Court. To cut a long story short, the guy made some decisions that appeared to derail or delay the political plans of the incumbent president. When direct evidence of corruption proved wanting, the justice's bank records were dug up and used as the basis for convicting him.
Don't trust opinion articles saying what's "almost certain" to happen, since their predictions never happen. This is liberal political propaganda disguised as news.
This is an arena where a few motivated civilians can play, too.
At the moment, I'll put Anonymous or a group of Eastern European boys I met a few years ago against the best that a political party's "opposition team" can put together.
Playing War in a distributed worldwide network is not the same as throwing a bunch of hardware onto a battlefield.
So far, the best armies on the Internet are not the ones affiliated with a government or establishment political party. Hell, despite the Octopus doing its best, Pirate Bay and wikileaks are still up and running. If they go down, I'll be more worried.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is the most incoherent summary I've seen on slashdot yet. Maybe because it's so far in tinfoil hat territory, but still, wow.
Just like stun guns, it will bee used and abused until people have a new way to kill people.
First of all, industrial warfare as we know it is going to start fading quickly.
You just do not need to spend lavishly if your opponent depends on computer technology to order, work-flow and conduct a military action anymore. War is going to get cheap!
So forget about so many tanks, aircraft and soldiers. All you need to do is confuse the enemy, keep their soldiers from getting paid, food, water and old style ammunition - bullets or new style ammunition - packet flow.
Overspending on Internet technology is what maybe in tens of millions of dollars compared to tens of billions in military industrial complex goods?
Leon Panetta should with his former CIA chief background be aware that the Pentagon budget is in some serious deep price decline mode like Walmart's falling ones.
Really, do you think any military or asymmetrical war from those idiotic militants in foreign lands get far if their packet flow is adulterated or commands now sent to their gear reverse the intent of the action?
But as to the statement that no one gets killed?
Bull is the word there, because war is still dirty lousy business in the body politics. Commands for centrifuges as in what it is with STUXNET can just as easily be reformulated for medical gear used for generals of an army or to cut off so much logicistical capacity of a combatant group to inflict death. It is just a matter of scale or opportunity.
Face it, if the bogey man of the day is being secretly treated for kidney ailments do you think the President of the United States is going to say hands off that medical equipment?
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
From Wikipedia.
I am a bit worried if Stuxnet is state of the art and the U.S. military has now taught the world including its enemies what it thinks is quality coding for cyber weapons. Seems Obama was swayed by the relative lack of expense but it certainly is not low profile or containable. I don't know much about Stux at all but one would imagine that centrifuges are not the only industrial infrastructure that could be targeted by such a weapon. Now you know what every black hat is working on these days, when they are not stealing bitcoins. Unfortunately the posts about drones being the next cyberwar vector are probably true, whether in 1 year or 20 it seems inevitable. The question next is active defense by buildings, airports, aircraft, highway interchanges, bridges, power plants, etc. If the U.S. saw a window in time when such a cyber attack would be little understood and so not be defended against, then how long is the current window in time regarding rogue drone attacks? I don't see much difference between home use R/C and industrial drones either.
This article is slightly disingenuous at best...at no point and time has the US admitted to being behind these cyber attacks. The NYTimes article that it links to sites unnamed sources, claiming that they are current and former government officials, yet does not release any names or actual proof. It looks to me like it's a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors trying to be spread as fact to generate news.
We should do the same with US infrastructure,
I suspect that (regardless of this crap) such an effort has been underway for years by so-called "nation-states" and people who want to see the US finally get put in its place.
I don't trust them either to carry nuclear weapon.
What's not to trust about a country at perpetual war with everything (including logic) populated by paranoid nuts that only know war and war-making?
"Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone."
I doubt very much that there was no loss of life involved in Stuxnet's effects. A P2 gas centrifuge that spins so fast that there are only a few metal alloys in the world that are tough enough to hold together. When one of those tubes lets go because it wobbles at one of the unstable speed zones it enters, or because it over-runs (as Stuxnet made happen), it's like a grenade going off. As I recall the estimate was that at least 40% of the centrifuges at Natanz failed in this fashion...and I find it difficult to imagine that nobody was ever standing near any of them when it happened.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
US government creating computer viruses and targeting other technologies to disrupt weapon systems. (stuxnet)
Chinese government executing an advanced, persistent threat APT to gain access to code for cryptography that the US government uses (RSA hack)
Iran government using jamming signals to down a US stealth drone.
Multiple DDOS attacks, hacks, and such by non-state actors.
But what's the deal with the US covert ops community these days?
Do they NOT know how to keep a fucking secret anymore?!?
Whomever leaked this...needs to be found out, and put on trial for treason....or at the very least, be prosecuted for breaking the oath they took/signed to keep said secrets.
I know on rare occasions, there needs to be exceptions for whistle blowers, and that's a tricky fine line to walk....something has to be genuinely bad.
But something like this....a covert ops thing, should never have seen the light of day outside of the CIA.
Maybe its not the covert people that blew it.....likely a politician. No matter who let this out....they need to be found out and be made an example of.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And here people poo-poohed the concept of "Cyberwarfare", calling it mere hype...
Shame that I and others have been right for the better part of a decade now. It's not yet at the level that the actual hype (yes, there was some, but nothing as much as this bunch here or elsewhere claimed it was...) made it out to be- but with the US owning up to Stuxnet and a few others...there SHOULD be a big fat f*cking hint in it for all of you...
It's real.
It can do real damage.
Pick the right target and you can hose up a country- and not just things like those centrifuges.
What if someone figures out something that makes the 2003 East Coast Blackout look like a picnic? It's more than possible, just so you know. What if it's down for months as they try to sort out the mess? How are you going to cope? I'm largely prepared. Are you?
So the US has openly admitted to helping to deploy a (cyber) weapon on foreign soil; I wonder if this will be considered an act of war. I think the US would consider it as such depending on the attacker.
The truth hurts, as demonstrated by the fascist knob-sucking loser that modded it down in an attempt to censor it.
As the post said:
We should do the same with US infrastructure,
I suspect that (regardless of this crap) such an effort has been underway for years by so-called "nation-states" and people who want to see the US finally get put in its place.
I don't trust them either to carry nuclear weapon.
What's not to trust about a country at perpetual war with everything (including logic) populated by paranoid nuts that only know war and war-making?
The NY Times is not a bastion of credibility, having muffed the WMD in Iraq story, and having people like Jason Blair create fake news. No one has officially acknowledged this story, and we have only the word of a news organization with shaky credibility that "anonymous officials say" this is true.
MISTER POTATO HEAD!!!
Back doors ARE NOT secrets!
There were rumors in the former USSR that Chernobyl plant was sabotaged in 1986 by an unknown kind of an cyber-electronic weapon from a satellite.
It would be interesting to learn if there were any leaks on that.
I always dismissed these rumors, but if there was really an attempt to sabotage the Natanz nuclear plant, then well...
It would be sort of a not nice thing to learn if it turns out to be the case. Not nice at all.
...Anonymous Apparatchik for over a decade.(c)
Mass mind-control of nerds, lies that nerds swallow.(c)
I'm not too worried about domestic groups using such tactics. They are largely illegal already. And well enforced treaties between stable nations will take care of cross border private attacks.
I do worry about nations using such tactics as a means of war. Wars escalate and can lead to armed conflict. Since such techniques are available to some of the smallest, weakest nations, they will be attracted to their use. Just to demonstrate some sort of equality with the big players. But the big players don't like little people getting uppity (the USA being a prime example) and could quickly move the conflict into an area where they still hold an advantage. Actual guns and bombs.
Have gnu, will travel.
its spelled Gerrymandering
Just send computers overseas to those who don't have them, along with high speed internet and a Steam subscription. The warring nations can battle it out in virtual games and the rest of the bystanders can live in peace. Genocide and war solved by computers! I've been saying this ever since high school, when Bush was pushing for the invasion of Iraq ! :: ... oh wait... they're going to learn those computers to 'cyberattack our infrastructure'
Yeah right. What ever 'they' and 'our' is.
As an American (I'm looking at you too Russia), I can't help but feel more and more responsible for tragedies in the present day. Most of the places lashing out (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Mexico, and South America) were armed and encouraged to fight by the US. Now the US is trying to put down it's 'dogs' of war.
Why ? This is only bad from an absolutist moral standpoint, and ... well ... an eye for an eye leads to a country of blind men (and women, lest you think I'm sexist). If you judge people against an absolute moral standard, everyone will fail. You, me, everybody.
When it comes to judging by absolutes, I am a thief, a robber and I've beat one person up for no reason. Now let's put things in a bit more context :
I stole a box of crayons when I was 4 years old from the supermarket. I sort-of remember it. My reasoning was, I want this, so I took it and gave it to my mother. She refused, asking me to do something and she'd get me the crayons. I wondered what would happen if I hid them, and so I hid them. Then at home I was discovered playing with them, and told them exactly where they had come from.
I'm a geek, and mostly suffered through high school. I also started martial arts at age 5, so while I had the reputation of being completely incapable of defending myself, I had at least passable fighting skills.
In high school, at one point someone cut up my bike's tires. I had no idea who had done this, and a few bikes next to mine had had the same done to them. One of the big guys in my class found it funny to claim he'd done that. I beat the guy up, clamping his arm, threw him into a ditch, took his keys and drove his bike home. Later the school found the real culprit. My parents really loved me for doing this, although fortunately the school offered to pay for the bike repairs.
In the same year, we were walking to physics class, and for some reason I still don't get someone kicked me in the back. I dropped my bookcase, turned around and in a file of 2, 2 guys were standing behind me. One was laughing. I placed an uppercut straight on his face before he could even raise his hands moved sideways and demonstrated how one really kicks a person, putting my full weight behind it. He flew into the wall, his face was bleeding and he threw up from the shock. The teacher was at the back of the row, and everyone was ofcourse telling her it was me. But everyone always accuses me of everything so she didn't believe I did that and I actually got away with doing that without any consequences. Turns out the guy next to him had actually kicked, and the teacher thought he had done it, and the guy I damaged had merely suggested it (or so this asshole claimed later). I beat up that guy later because at one point I broke my leg and he found it funny to sabotage (remove the pin) from one of my stilts. He stood in front of me asking me, and I still had a broken leg, "what'cha gonna do" after class. I headbutted him and left him unconscious in the school's corridors and walked away. Frankly, I still think he deserved that, as he essentially tortured people merely to alleviate his boredom.
My second vacation job was doing the dishes in the center of a big city. About 30% of my "colleagues" were muslim, a tight clique. Well it's debatable how muslim they were, they didn't pray and drank alcohol, but "being muslim" was what defined the group and they ganged up on everyone else. And that was, shall we say, extremely obvious in day to day interactions. I and most everyone else regularly got into heated arguments about trivialities, mostly involving them trying to make me do their work for them. One day it got so bad one threatened me with a knife. I took the knife from him, cutting his hand open in the process, hit the guy hard enough in the face that he'd be staying put for a while, and he lay there crying on the stair. I immediately took the knife to the manager and told him what had happened. They fired the guy before even calling the ho
It's 'Gerrymander', not 'jerrymander'. Named after the Mass. Governor Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814).