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Stuxnet/Cyberwar Documentary Reviewer: 'The U.S. Has Pwned Iran' (networkworld.com)
Slashdot reader alphadogg quotes an article from Network World:
The new documentary about Stuxnet, "Zero Days", says the U.S. had a far larger cyber operation against Iran called Nitro Zeus that has compromised the country's infrastructure and could be used as a weapon in any future war. Quoting unnamed sources from inside the NSA and CIA, the movie says the Nitro Zeus program has infiltrated the systems controlling communications, power grids, transportation and financial systems, and is still ready to "disrupt, degrade and destroy" that infrastructure if a war should break out with Iran...
For the more technically inclined, the film contains some riveting interviews with researchers at Symantec who devoted their lives to unraveling the code line by line to figure out what it did, how it did it, who created it and what the target was. It was also a bit chilling in that after they figured out that governments were behind the worm they worried that the researchers themselves might be targeted to keep them silent. One Friday night, says Symantec researcher Eric Chien, he said to his research partner Liam O Murchu, "I'm not suicidal. If I should show up dead on Monday, it wasn't me."
In the film former NSA and CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden says "This stuff is hideously over classified."
For the more technically inclined, the film contains some riveting interviews with researchers at Symantec who devoted their lives to unraveling the code line by line to figure out what it did, how it did it, who created it and what the target was. It was also a bit chilling in that after they figured out that governments were behind the worm they worried that the researchers themselves might be targeted to keep them silent. One Friday night, says Symantec researcher Eric Chien, he said to his research partner Liam O Murchu, "I'm not suicidal. If I should show up dead on Monday, it wasn't me."
In the film former NSA and CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden says "This stuff is hideously over classified."
Note that much of the most "incriminating" stuff in the film comes from an actress playing a "composite character" but they don't tell you that until the end, which is a bit of an ethical lapse, in my book.
TFA does not list one either. Is it bad form to link to IMBD? Here it is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/
Not only that, but they also seem to have ripped a lot of it off "Countdown to Zero Day", an even bigger ethical lapse.
vulnerable MANUFACTURERS and DESIGNERS?
Seriously, anyone who is not extremely concerned by Intel/AMD/ARM ring 0 management processors should really read up on what they are capable of, how little they have been independently audited, and the full ramifications if a nation-state actor had that level of access to your computer system. This isn't just a rootkit you *MIGHT* get online, this is the rootkit you buy and pay for with no way to remove, short of replacing it with an older system that hopefully is simple enough to not contain similiar capabilities, and bug free enough to not allow other easier and perhaps just as well documented compromises of your system.
We are at a point in the Information age where it will either liberate, or enslave us. And unlike the pendulum swinging, this is more like a dam in drought season flowing away your rights, never to be returned.