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'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.
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.
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."
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?
Hmm. This requires 30 seconds of thought.
The US loves the idea of using drones inside its own borders.
The US loves the idea of equipping drones with very fast, explosive missiles.
The US will, in time, find a way to patrol the interior with drones equipped with very fast, explosive missiles.
The US will come under a terrorist attack from its own weapon systems.
Reasoning -> I am fairly certain that a swarm of drones can have its firmware corrupted to follow orders from a non-legitimate source. I am also fairly certain that Hellfire missiles or some other ordinance likely to be equipped on said drones has enough destructive capacity to take out civilian aircraft, train bridges, or even make it inside the defensive perimeter of the White House.
One need only think what a dozen drones, equipped with air-to-air, could achieve if someone compromised them, and flew them to a nearby major airport, with programming to lock onto various targets. Assuming 2 missiles per drone, and 100% accuracy of unique targets, that comes out to 12 747s (which are not equipped with EM counter-measures) dropping out of the sky.
Assuming air-to-land ordinance, any bridge (train or otherwise) would make a fair target. Take out enough structural supports, and the deaths could be in the hundreds. This is, of course, assuming classical thinking. If we move off of that, than any skyscraper, chemical plant, etc. could become a target. This is, of course, assuming we are going for the most visibly destructive targets.
Assuming air-to-sea ordinance, any large tanker or cruise ship becomes a target.
As I recommended before, immediate termination of the drone programs would be in the best interest of the sane.
I am John Hurt.
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.
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.
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.
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 would absolutely love to hear your qualifications for this statement." -> Seriously, this, on /.? It's a flying computer built by a bunch of military contractors.
Bring one to the next major computer trade show, and leave it inside over night. If it isn't outright stolen, it'll be sporting a Tux sticker on its side as a handful of attendants will stay up all night to get Linux running on the damn thing. "Dude, I've got the kernel up and running, but I can't decide: KDE or Gnome?"
I am John Hurt.
Well, I guess we are down to semantics, of course, this is /.
Can you corrupt a drone firmware - sure. Can you physically acquire the swarm of drones, then deploy them into US airspace? Or if you make your own drones, can you get the hellfire missles? I just seems far fetched. But granted, not impossible.
I'm more interesting in hearing the qualifications for this statement:
"I am also fairly certain that Hellfire missiles or some other ordinance likely to be equipped on said drones has enough destructive capacity to take out civilian aircraft, train bridges, or even make it inside the defensive perimeter of the White House."
There's not a whole lot of need or justification for equipping drones with weapons internally. The need for weaponized drones is in areas where there's a significant risk for loss of life from a human operator. Furthermore, there are, in fact, laws against using the military (which may or may not include weaponized drones in spirit or letter of the law) on US soil. I really don't see it very likely that we'll have this sort of problem any time soon.
Insightful? More like conspiracy/doomsday theory.
Ah come on it's not like the spare parts being used for American weapons systems are often Chinese made counterfeits...oh...wait...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
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.
I needed less than a second to think: Stuxnet rhymes with Skynet. Don't these guys ever watch or read dystopian science-fiction?
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?
Ever heard of remote access? Internet? Networks?
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Replace military with police.
Those drones could have tasers, shooting rubber bullets, maybe radio interference etc.
Tho by itself can do quite a bit of havoc on small scale, but maybe if you crash the drones intentionally on something larger?
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
"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.
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.........
I believe they have, and think it's a 'how to' guide.
I am John Hurt.
Take a look at the old /. articles, you'll see lots of news about US police (and imigration) forces wanting to use those things.
A terrorist attack using civilian armed drones looks inevitable.
Rethinking email
There's so much wrong with what you've postulated, I honestly don't even know where to begin. Fortunately, I've signed papers that say I can't begin, so I'll just enjoy a good laugh and move along. Your time would have been more productively spent reading a good book. At the rate you're going, you're surely not going to make it as an author, though.
Write failed: Broken pipe
"I would absolutely love to hear your qualifications for this statement." -> Seriously, this, on /.? It's a flying computer built by a bunch of military contractors.
Bring one to the next major computer trade show, and leave it inside over night. If it isn't outright stolen, it'll be sporting a Tux sticker on its side as a handful of attendants will stay up all night to get Linux running on the damn thing. "Dude, I've got the kernel up and running, but I can't decide: KDE or Gnome?"
And then mouse wil click you.
Iran appears to have brought down one of these drones by faking GPS signals. It seems possible the same trick could be used to get these things to land or crash anywhere. Assuming we are talking about unarmed drones they still look like big heavy things that would do some damage to a solid building.
I assume the GPS faking equipment would also mess up satellite navigation for a few thousand cars, that could well do more economic damage than putting a dent in one government office.
They know what happens, it's just that they also know what would happen if governments weren't run by greedy tools.
"Solidarity is the tenderness of the peoples."
Because if real people have better things to do with their own little lives, how much more so on larger scales. And people pay for this stuff -- so they have a right to be "shocked". And it's not like they're not being deceived in small and big ways 24/7, too. Way to be ironic, being shocked that the public is shocked and all that. How do you DO think that public affairs, shady criminal organizations and citizens, the souvereign king, are connected? Is it just hurr-di-durr, or also a bit of lalala? The trash always acts so shocked when it's taken out. My my.
Lol. Actually, I can see the repurposing of various parts of the drone for the interface.
Spinning the rotor is the equivalent of moving the wheel on the mouse, and the horizontal & verticals stabilizers act as the left & right mouse buttons, respectively.
I am John Hurt.
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.
I'd be more interested in the prospect of getting some of the chips, slicing them, and looking at them under an electron microscope. From there, it would be possible to reverse engineer the various control systems. Even doing it blindly (ripping out the chips, and playing with things 'manually' to see what various thing do), it may be possible to build a chip, albeit with completely different internals, that could command the drone.
While it would be consider somewhat a fantasy right now, it would be entertaining to rebuild / mod a drone to crack any drones nearby. One drone converts a swarm, or at least jams / redirects them one at a time to a predesignated landing spot, where they can be converted by hand.
I am John Hurt.
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.
We say SF, they say howto. :-p
Also, Stux/Skynet are only a half-rhyme. (I think. I know it's not a proper rhyme, but I never was good at poetic terms.)
Apathy Sucks, Nobody for President!
It's 'Gerrymander', not 'jerrymander'. Named after the Mass. Governor Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814).