Slashdot Mirror
The One Sided Cyber War
Curseyoukhan writes with a skeptical perspective on the U.S. Cyberwar posturing. From the article: "The first shot was probably the release of Stuxnet sometime during or before 2009. Even though no one has officially claimed responsibility everyone knows who was behind it. Stuxnet hit with a bang and did a whole lot of damage to Iran's uranium-enrichment capabilities. We followed up Stuxnet with Flame — the Ebola virus of spyware. What did the Iranians fire back with? A series of massive, on-going and ineffective DDoS attacks on American banks. This is a disproportionate response but not in the way military experts usually mean that phrase. It's the equivalent of someone stealing your car and you throwing an ever-increasing number of eggs at his house in response. It's fascinating that Iran continues to do nothing more despite the fact that U.S. critical infrastructure currently has the defensive posture of a dog waiting for a belly rub. Keep that in mind the next time you hear that a 'cyber Pearl Harbor' is imminent."
It's fascinating that Iran continues to do nothing more despite the fact that U.S. critical infrastructure currently has the defensive posture of a dog waiting for a belly rub.
It's not surprising actually.....because attacking that infrastructure is not as easy as it sounds. It's not like any script-kiddie can pick up the stuxnet script and modify it to attack their local cell-phone tower.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
...is the equivalent of the biggest kid on the block pushing everyone on the playground over in the mud, then claiming to be the victim if they throw a clod of mud back at him. Wait, that was in the summary...
In the real Pearl Harbor, people died. Unless and until the people talking about "cyberwar" demonstrate that they're defending us against the same kind of lethal threats, there isn't a legitimate comparison.
At worst, there may be property damage. But the simple fact is that the threats presented by enemies of the United States today are not even close to being the same level of threat presented by the Germans and Japanese and Russians of the past, where if we screwed up it was quite possible that the United States wouldn't exist anymore.
So why do they continue to invoke this stuff? To scare people into putting their organization on the US DoD gravy train.
I am officially gone from
"everyone knows who was behind it"
That word you keep using "knows", does not mean what you think it does.
They should threaten to make available copies of movies and music online for free.
So why do they continue to invoke this stuff? To scare people into putting their organization on the US DoD gravy train.
Or maybe because the professianls who do this for a living know something you don't. Imagine for a second that someone shuts down our power grid, something that is easy to do and has been demonstrated in Project Aurora. Without power, the internet is down. Without the internet, the economy grinds to a halt. No ships coming into port, no planes flying, no gasoline being delivered, no power in hospitals, no 911 calls, no critical infratructure working at all. This is the cyber 9/11 people like us (I work in the intelligence community) are worrying about.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
All the sources and analysis on Stuxnet said it entered through a weakness in Windows (written by Microsoft, an American company) and targeted specific elements of control software written by Siemens (a German company, and thus an American ally). Stuxnet was highly sophisticated and highly targeted, and likely because those writing it had access to the design flaws and knew what to target.
None of the US or Israeli infrastructure is on software written by Iran, so the access they would have to the design of software that runs things they can target is extremely limited. I would imagine in cyber-warfare it's much like normal warfare; intelligence is key when targeting your weapon. Iran likely does not have the intelligence (meaning information, not mental capability) to target us, so they're using DDoS attacks which are somewhat untargeted. So, to expand on the car analogy, this is like someone stealing your car, and since you don't know how to pick a lock, don't know how to break the alarm, and don't know how to hot wire the ignition, all you know is where they live, so you protest by throwing eggs at them.
Actually, depending on what kind of damage they can do to utilities and SCADA systems, people could very well die.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I don't think they want the Media Industry Controlled States of America to nuke them. I don't blame them on that count.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Nope, that's not how cyber attacks work, do you think there was an armada of servers powering stuxnet? No... it was a self-contained program that ran on Iran's resources.
This much ought to be painfully clear, yet government-and-industry keeps drumming the "imminent grave danger" drum like they were sitting on Iraqian WMDs or something.
Which ought to give rise to the next question: Why?
Well, we already know the answer for that, and we coulda seen it coming decades away. Back when it was coined the "military-industrial complex", these days it has a large sideshow in transport security, and the next wave of innovation is in cyber.
There's a few problems with this, of course. The American[tm] image elsewhere, though no American[tm] can be arsed to care about that, for there's nuttin' but yokels in them rest of the world, amirite or amirite? Nevermind that it regularly backfires (contras, and, oh hey, taliban, to name just a few); moving on, what else?
Well, this security thing is a large driver of big data and invasive tracking and whatnot, and starting with the civilian version is great because having to separately "militarise" the tech means a bigger market and fatter margins. Yum, fat margins. Ah, yes there's a cost but facebook, end of privacy discussion, and if not just say "terrorists" or "paedophiles" until detractors shut up, in fact use anytime to keep the pressure on. So, moving on, what else?
Well, it's overhead. As in, while fat government contracts lead to paychecks, they don't create wealth; they're overhead and slowly suck the economy dry. Ah, what the hell, the fed will QE us out.
Alright, no problems there. Carry on.
I probably should be in this business too, eh?
This is so incredibly wrong that it's astounding to me. A whole series of declarative statements that show a total lack of knowledge, and a total lack of understanding of the background material as well. Let's count them:
"The first shot was probably the release of Stuxnet sometime during or before 2009."
No. Cyber warfare did not start with Stuxnet...and common sense bears that out. Nobody can mount a successful and incredibly complex offensive the first time they field troops on the battlefield. Chinese thought leadership on cyber warfare goes back to the early 90s, when they seized upon it as an avenue to even the odds after witnessing our performance during Desert Storm...which, quite simply, made them wet themselves with shock at how effective we were at kinetic warfare.
"Even though no one has officially claimed responsibility everyone knows who was behind it."
Um, Obama took responsibility for it. At least read the headlines of what you're talking about? He was even called out for doing so, by others.
"Stuxnet hit with a bang and did a whole lot of damage to Iran's uranium-enrichment capabilities."
AWESOME! You FINALLY said something that was factually accurate! Too bad it took three sentences to get there.
"We followed up Stuxnet with Flame — the Ebola virus of spyware."
Uh, nope. Flame/Duqu, by all assessments, was actually a predecessor to Stuxnet, and I don't get the "Ebola" reference, since it's a data stealer and not designed to brick systems.
"What did the Iranians fire back with? A series of massive, on-going and ineffective DDoS attacks on American banks."
Okay, so first off, this is not the first thing...or the only thing...the Iranians have done. They've been in the cyber business a long, long time and are viewed as one of the big three actors in offensive cyber operations. Second of all, the attacks were not at all "ineffective"; ask any Bank of America customer who uses online banking. The site was down for weeks nonstop. And the banks have gone to the NSA asking for help in fending off the attacks as well.
"It's fascinating that Iran continues to do nothing more despite the fact that U.S. critical infrastructure currently has the defensive posture of a dog waiting for a belly rub."
See again, under Iranian cyber operations and how the banks fared during the DDoS attacks. Also keep in mind that the financial industry is at the top of industry sectors, when ranked in terms of cyber security maturity.
NOW, let me add the total way in which the OP ignores anything related to Russia or China, using only his incredibly faulty understanding of one country to justify his assessment of an entire form of warfare. Forget Red October (Russia, still in play but being shut down), forget Ghost Net (China), forget Aurora (also China), right? Forget what the Russians did in Georgia and Estonia. Forget North Korean actions against South Korea. Yeah...wow, good analysis dude. I bet Fox News would love you.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
My brother works for a very large electricity plant and he says that the only computer controlled anything is the monitoring systems. The action of turing on/off turbines is manual. I know this isn't true of the whole electrical grid but I'm sure there are considerations made when hooking up computers to critical systems like those ones.
Oh not you again! Does your fallacious "intelligence" position grant you highlevel access to sources such as the telegraph and wall street journal?
Look, if you've hooked up your command/control infrastructure to the Internet, all the DHS in the world is not going to save you. Stuxnet like viruses? Sure. Maybe. Unpreventable, by anything beyond quality engaged PHYSICAL security.
As for impact, if you recall, 10 years ago, power was down for up to 3 days across the NE. This was caused by something far less insidious and delibrate than a cyber attack. It's impact beyond the first grid affected was also completely mitigable and took several MANUAL command/control failures to become as pervasive as it did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Muhammad said young men might use them to look at women's ankles. So their hackers are a little behind the curve compared to the non-Muslim-nutball world.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Why does everything lead to an attack? Perhaps the Iranians feel that they are above such playground level ideas. Iran hasn't attacked anyone for hundreds of years. Maybe they are a bunch of annoying pacifists...
That's all made up scaremongering to gather $$ and enforce central authority. I work on the "other side" no, not the black hat side, I mean the infrastructure provider side. Seriously claiming that our main site backup generator which doesn't have a networked SCADA interface will magically fail? And all our POPs which have gens that barely have electronic engine computers on the diesels will be magically reprogrammed? My cousin maintains large fixed diesel gens for hospitals, you're going to reprogram his ratchet set so he can't turn bolts? Without the internet no planes fly? LOL
A grid hit would look EXACTLY like the great NYC power outage about a decade ago. In fact, seeing as no newsies really looked into it to the depth necessary, it could very well have been an external hit to send a message.
A REAL hit wouldn't look like Jericho or a survivalist fanfic, it would look like an economic hit. If every centrifugal pump VFD at the local plant instantly reversed so they get to buy new ones, that doesn't mean we're going back to worldwide feudalism, it merely means bankruptcy for one plant. Actually it would look a heck of a lot like a major aerospace jetliner manufacturer having to ground an entire worldwide fleet leading to all kinds of economic effects.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
What are you talking about? What exactly are you imagining? A war on the scale of WW2? Total war? Please.
To quote von Clausewitz, "War is diplomacy by other means." By that definition, we're already at war. Iran and the US have different interests. Iran wants to become the regional hegemon of the Middle East, and the US does not want anyone being the regional hegemon. Iran has made it clear their intent to press ahead, and talking about it won't help either side come to a conclusion. So Iran has chosen to discuss the issue with the US through destablizing Iraq by supporting various factions, destabilizing the Levant by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, developing a nuclear program which is a hair's breadth away from being a weapons program, and periodically threatening to mine the Strait of Hormuz and choke off half of the world's oil. The US has responded in kind with Stuxnet, the Green Revolution, an (likely) supporting a Mossad assassination campaign against key members of the Iranian Republican Guard. Sounds like a war to me.
Just because it's not declared does not make it a war; Vietnam was never declared as a war despite 10 years of fighting. War does not mean big armies rolling through the countryside destroying everything in their path, that's just one type of war, but there are many ways to fight a war.
Don't be naive. Right now this minute, in some top secret Iranian bunker, they are drafting elaborate plans to hit us where it will irrecoverably cripple us. They will break down the social structures upon which our civilization rests. Yes my friends, they mean to take down Facebook.
+1 Disagree
Really? Someone shuts down the power grid and the entire world grinds to a halt? Maybe we should train someone who knows how to, well, turn the power grid back on?
I understand that the grid is a complex legacy systerm that isn't well understood. It's not clear, for example, how to cold-start the nationwide power grid if some catastrophe shut it all down, nor is it clear how long it would take to do so. But assuming that the economy comes to a catastrophic halt is simply fear-mongering. Every few years, winter storms shut down the Eastern seaboard for days with no lasting effects. The World Trade Center attacks shut down most of the financial industry for a week, and had severe repercussions on it for weeks thereafter; but we survived. The Sept 11, 2001 attacks shut down air traffic completely for a week - and yet, the world didn't stop.
Taking down the electrical grid would be more comprehensively catastrophic than the Sept 11 attacks, but it would still be no more than a minor blip on the Human History chart. A week later, it would be back up and running and those cunningly flexible and adaptable human beings would still be infesting this planet.
Please, for the sake of the United States and the world, get out of government service and take your paranoia with you.
And the worms ate into his brain.
No, think back a few years to the massive blackout in the Eastern part of the US. That was an accident, but that's the kind of thing a well-run attack on SCADA could do. Then if you want to kill people, as part of the attack, attack hospital utility systems. You know, like the stuff that brings the backup generators online when the mains fail. There are all sorts of regulations about keeping patient data safe, but it wouldn't surprise me if the utility systems are just as secure as a lot of the rest of them. (not very)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Someone has been watching Revolution....
Secret evidence is indistinguishable from fabricated evidence. Maybe the professionals who do this for a living are a bunch of frauds collecting fat paychecks for nothing. I have as much proof of my assertion as you have of yours.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
So why do they continue to invoke this stuff? To scare people into putting their organization on the US DoD gravy train.
Or maybe because the professianls who do this for a living know something you don't. Imagine for a second that someone shuts down our power grid, something that is easy to do and has been demonstrated in Project Aurora. Without power, the internet is down. Without the internet, the economy grinds to a halt. No ships coming into port, no planes flying, no gasoline being delivered, no power in hospitals, no 911 calls, no critical infratructure working at all. This is the cyber 9/11 people like us (I work in the intelligence community) are worrying about.
Or maybe the professionals (security "consultants", sales, and everyone else in line to make a friggin buck) just wants to hammer home that the sky is falling to keep the good times rolling. And yes, that means you too, Mr I work in the intelligence community. Is the state of "cyber" security in the various critical infrastructures weak? Absolutely and they need to be improved upon. I too work "in the field" and am very familiar with the state of security for several organizations in a specific critical infrastructure. It's bad. Really bad. The risks are primarily sensitive data (commercial). The weaknesses in controls systems are organizational. That's right, organizational. When the resources are taxed to just maintain the status quo, things slip when you have to engage in new projects. Security improvements fall under new projects and completion/success is declared at some arbitrary implementation level so everyone can get their check mark and move on to the next issue. The core reason? Profits and specifically O&M numbers. Don't fool yourself, it's a business. And security doesn't show up on profit side, only the cost.
Any nation-state, even a tiny African country, has enough resources to mount a massive attack. A bigger concern for the Libyans or Iranians is that the attack is too effective. The American public is usually lethargic about foreign policy, but when they get provoked into saying "do something, I don't fucking care what", that's when the US government gets to strap your ass to a waterboard without any consequences, or drop a Hellfire on you, your 4 wives, and your dog. And other countries realize that. They saw what happened with 9/11, and don't want a repeat.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Do you know of any way I could get hold of these people? I would really like to assist them in achieving their goal. :)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
The Cyber Pearl Harbor already happened. (Man, I hate that term.)
And to keep up the analogy, this time The U.S. was the aggressors and the Iranians were the ones with their pants down and all their eggs in one basket.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Traffic light and elevators come to mind ...
No way. Both traffic lights and elevators have low level hardware interlocks that prevent them from going into an unsafe mode. Even if you have access to the control systems, the most you could do is stop the elevators, or put the lights into 4-way blinking red mode. To make the lights go into something dangerous, like 4-way green, you would need to conduct physical sabotage with a crowbar and a soldering iron. It would be easier to just buy a gun and shoot people as they drive by.
Or maybe because the professianls who do this for a living know something you don't.
That's not likely. A lot of people on Slashdot do this for a living, too.
I will fully admit there are people who know more about security than I do, but when people say, "trust me, it's going to be scary if you don't give me control, and you can't understand why," well you better explain it to me in clear terms if you want that much control. Remember they were asking for an internet 'kill switch.'
Also, are you talking about Operation Aurora that Google was the center of? That definitely did NOT show it is easy to shut down the power grid. And if you think the economy grinds to a halt without the internet, you've been staying behind a computer too long.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I've written a paper on this nearly a decade back. Let me tell you how to do it:
You attack the water system in rural regions. Twofold
1) you increase fluoride injector pumps to toxic levels. Most systems should have emergency shutdowns to prevent this, but you can. This is just gravy and not relevant, unless the shutdown actually stops water distribution. And even then it probably impacts the 'wrong' region.
2) You throttle some of the control points on and off as fast as possible to increase stress on the pipes, and open up remote irritation systems full throttle and locked on to deplete line pressure and start knocking. Infrastructure is old, this will almost certainly burst something important.
Now -- your goal is not to get people to die of dehydration. Your goal is to disrupt supply to natural gas compressor stations that use water for cooling. Depending on setup, the compressor may shut down. It may also burn itself entirely out. When the compressors can't run, the natural gas delivery system doesn't work. People can't heat. When people can't heat, water pipes freeze and burst. When there's not enough natural gas, certain types power stations can't produce electricity.
It's harder to disrupt coal or nuclear (although there's some great documentation of people breaking into nuclear plant SCADA systems over wifi) -- but water is your shortcut to heating and electricity for a growing number of regions.
While the gas network itself is nationally robust, it's often locally stressed. It's also susceptible to a variety of business pressures much like the old Enron electricy rate manipulations.
I found this from the article typical; "It's fascinating that Iran continues to do nothing more despite the fact that U.S. critical infrastructure currently has the defensive posture of a dog waiting for a belly rub. Keep that in mind the next time you hear that a 'cyber Pearl Harbor' is imminent."
Rubbish! Will not happen. Thinking... the Iranians aren't stupid? Just a guess but if you are being attacked by the most powerful empire the Earth has ever seen, it's something you just put up with. DOSS attacks in retaliation for the most technical cyberattack yet goes to show they know what they're up against. Everyone in the West seems to think that Iran will bring the 'cyber Pearl Harbour' while AT THE SAME FRICKIN' TIME describing the Stuxnet attack and others which, especially considering these attacks hit a NUCLEAR station, is itself a Pearl Harbour moment. Just not in the US. The fact is US policy is to attack Iran, presumably to trick it into an offensive action and providing a window for the US to attack the oil rich nation (brinkmanship gentlemen). The US has already murdered Iranian scientists, bombed Iranian citizens, and flown spy-drones over Iran. All flat out war-crimes.
Reading US fears of Iranian threats is flippin' hilarious.
or put the lights into 4-way blinking red mode. ... buy a gun and shoot people as they drive by.
Those two events are not mutually exclusive. Cause the lights to go 4-way red, have people waiting at intersection and start teeing off. Since everyone has come to a halt, people will try to race away but can't because everyone else is trying to race away.
Fish in a barrel and all that.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There's a documentary about this you should see called "Live Free or Die Hard." It's even got the guy from the Mac commercials in it, so you know they're computer experts.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
There is a push for putting a power stabilization system* on every electrical generator. You can't do that with analog/manual controls.
*This is a Mitsubishi article, but it does a good job of explaining. I am not affiliated with Mitsubishi.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
...but Iran has had the dick of the west up their ass since 1953. Who has Iran attacked?
You call them "murderous assholes," yet the US is responsible for FAR more murder.
IOW: fuck off you cowardly apologist for the empire.
And other countries realize that. They saw what happened with 9/11, and don't want a repeat.
You mean attacking Iraq for absolutely no relevant reason with the 9/11 attacks? I don't see how that could have set an example to other countries.
If the "nerd" wants to push the Jews into the sea, I'm fine with being the bully. We should bully such murderous assholes more.
Don't the Iranians have a right to the opinion that Israel shouldn't be a state?
I'm not saying we have to agree with them, I'm not saying the US shouldn't help out Israel, if attacked...
But this is preemptive warfare.
Where does it end?
These hacks only postpone their nuclear program, and cause a lot of animosity...
The only option for true peace in the region is negations, all out war could stop a nuclear program, but it certainly wouldn't bring peace.
Aren't you mixing up your history books a bit?
For Reichskristallnacht (or Reichsprogromnacht) the pretense used was the shooting of a member of the German embassy in Paris by a local Jew.
The building you might remember is probably the Reichstag (in Berlin) which wasn't bombed but burned (5 years before Reichsprogromnacht) and the alleged arsonist's connections to left parties were used as pretext to repeal several citicen rights, pursue left parties and thereby ensure the victory of NSDAP at the next election.
In Munich threre was a failed coup by the Hitler and others about 10 years earlier.