NSA Says It Foiled Plot To Destroy US Economy Through Malware

mrspoonsi writes "Business Insider Reports: The National Security Agency described for the first time a cataclysmic cyber threat it claims to have stopped On Sunday's '60 Minutes.' Called a BIOS attack, the exploit would have ruined, or 'bricked,' computers across the country, causing untold damage to the national and even global economy. Even more shocking, CBS goes as far as to point a finger directly at China for the plot — 'While the NSA would not name the country behind it, cyber security experts briefed on the operation told us it was China.' The NSA says it closed this vulnerability by working with computer manufacturers. Debora Plunkett, director of cyber defense for the NSA: One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver — to actually use this capability — to destroy computers."

Comments

house of cards?

[AntEater]

Does this strike anyone else as being utterly ridiculous? "Cataclysmic"?? I mean, if a bunch of bricked computers could bring down our economy (and possibly the global economy) then isn't the whole thing in need of some serious attention? Maybe we've built an unreasonable amount of dependence on something that is entirely too frail to warrant such trust? - both the computer systems and our current economic system.

We've been there, done that; CIH virus

[freax]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus)

ps. It didn't destroy the US economy.

Which is really irrelevant to the debate

[davidannis]

because I can't imagine the scenario in which they uncovered that plot by looking at the metadata from American cellphones.

Re:Guys seriously please dont hate us!

[danceswithtrees]

Includes those that are set not to automatically upgrade BIOS, of course

Two words: BIOS backdoor!

More importantly, they need to show that the massive dragnet of surveillance of all Americans was essential to find out about this.

Another thing, ironic that the US worries about other people doing things that it has already done. For example, the US created Stuxnet and is worried someone else will follow our lead. The US dropped a nuclear bomb on civilians and we are worried someone else will follow our lead.

Re:NSA failed to halt subprime lending, though.

[Phreakiture]

It is entirely possible that they did, indeed, halt a plot, just as they said they did. It is also possible they did not. It's very difficult to tell at this point, because the one thing of which I am sure of, and I speculate most Americans are as well, is that they lie and they do it without hesitation. My confidence in anything they say is near enough to zero that the difference can be written off as rounding error.

As a consequence, it really does not matter what they say.