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There's a Stuxnet Copycat, and We Have No Idea Where It Came From (vice.com)
Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: After details emerged of Stuxnet, arguably the world's first digital weapon, there were concerns that other hackers would copy its techniques. Now, researchers have disclosed a piece of industrial control systems (ICS) malware inspired heavily by Stuxnet. Although the copycat malware -- dubbed IRONGATE by cybersecurity company FireEye -- only works in a simulated environment it, like Stuxnet, replaces certain types of files, and was seemingly written to target a specific control system configuration. [...] IRONGATE works within a simulated Siemens environment called PLCSIM, used for testing programs before they are pushed out into the field. Like Stuxnet, IRONGATE replaces a Dynamic Link Library (DLL), a small collection of code that can be used by different programs at the same time, with a malicious one of its own. IRONGATE's DLL records five seconds of traffic from the Siemens' system to the user interface, and replays it over again, potentially tricking whoever is monitoring the system into thinking everything is fine, while the malware might manipulate something else in the background.Dark Reading's coverage on this is also worth a read.
Please read this thread.
https://twitter.com/da_667/status/738463931988094976
Wow... is it 2004 Livejournal all over again?
Do you want to get Skynet? Because that's how you get Skynet.
Stack Overflow?
It came from Israel. Why feign ignorance?
Ok now that is pretty advanced. How exactly is a anti-virus app supposed to detect and remove that in real time? Daym!
L85E
Yes, that's a $20,000+ PLC there, boys
I am pretty sure that there are more advanced/complicated/effective ways to test to see if you are running in a VM but you could always recreate the particular folders and registry keys looked for to appear that your main OS is running within a virtual machine. This would, at a minimum, stop the simpler malware that attempts to block analysis...
Presumably this 'digital weapon' only runs on Microsoft Windows ©
I got to "Stuxnet, arguably the world's first digital weapon" and hit the limit for stupid in the first sentence. No need to read further.
I could also argue that dirt is water, and it'd be just as ridiculous.
How about Buckshot Yankee in 2005, using a modified version of agent.btz that combined compromise with persistence, worm, and staging tool?
How about the automation portion of Titan Rain in 2003, that combined seeking, filtering, persisting, gathering, and moving on?
Or maybe the 2007 Sinowal/Torpig/Mebroot variants that were pretty much fully autonomous self-updating weapons once launched -- do weapons against commercial entities not count as much as weapons from or toward nation-states?
Does none of that count? Stuxnet had more self-contained payload tuned for the target environment, but less self-updating/persistence and other capabilities. So what the hell kind of n00b idiocy is "world's first digital weapon"?
FFS, if you don't know the first thing about history, please don't try to pontificate on the topic.
I think not...(*poof*)
I think I had read that, decades ago, Israel university student projects included writing a virus. Maybe this is just newer coursework?
People probably say these things because Stuxnet was the first worm to successfuly destroy a nuclear centrifuge plant.
The US is more of a threat to the rest of the world than the middle east.
That's only true because we're keeping the Middle East in check. If the war-loving factions in the Middle East were as competent as the US, the world would be fucked. (That's not to say the US isn't also somewhat war-loving. But the huge redeeming quality is that the US appreciates stability on a global scale.)
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
The US is an empire in decline. Military spending is becoming so large it will collapse on itself. Many examples in the past have shown this road, starting with the Roman empire up to the USSR, including it's lunatic emperors, party secretary's or presidents.
Surely Stuxnet mostly just copied the behavior of very early digital viruses (Which copied themselves from computer to computer via floppy disk)
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Oh, i've missed you so much, GNAA-tan!!!
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Lol! We manufacture wars. If it wasn't for all the Republican wars, companies like Haliburton would be bankrupt! These companies need wars to be able to afford those cozy govt contracts.
#KillaryForPrison
The US also flies drones over its own cities:
http://www.startribune.com/nighttime-flight-circles-low-over-twin-cities-for-hours/305398901/