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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."
That's what they all say.
... why all those officals keep on derping about "cyber threats". They've scared themselves silly.
So, knowing we too could be "pwned" at any time, why do we insist on running vulnerable systems everywhere? Why do we keep buying software from vendors who for the longest time explicitly didn't care about security anything, and now sit on a completely unfixably insecure software stack?
Came here and the story was up with only one comment. Weird.
Put all NSA in jail please for committing digital terrorism
If we consider the date speculated to be Stuxnet's first appearance by some that makes 2005.
Let's assume most humans only become mildly useful to the coding society around 18 so these researchers that dedicated their lives are 29 years old!?
That's still less years than they've lived without this so called "dedication".
Islam is an infection. Nuclear weapons are the cure. Let's not mess around with cyberwarfare. Nuke Iran and all other Islamic countries. It's the only way for the rest of the world to live in peace.
The fear of being knocked off by spooks looks more than a little bit ridiculous unless you understand that Mossad was in the mix. The "supergun" guy was assassinated by them but it's still a bit of a stretch that they would go after antivirus people that are only threatening exposure instead of being a threat themselves.
That's what they all say.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
As I read it, all the "digital bombers" are already over the country. The US have already attacked. If any country would do this to the US, the US would certainly see it that way.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
On Tuesday, the law enforcement agency issued an alert that "all Symantec and Norton branded antivirus products" could allow hackers "to take control" of a computer. link
If all countries had such viruses inserted into their critical infrastructure, then none could afford to disrupt the world's peace...
I THINK I'm joking!
One of the stranger failures of Islamic terrorism is their not attacking infrastructure assets in the West. Some trivial damage to certain items could do amazing amounts of economic damage. Let's hope they remain unimaginative.
researchers at Symantec who devoted their lives to unraveling the code line by line
You know, when you "devote your life" to something it's usually for longer than a season of Game of Thrones. Mayhaps the claim is a bit hyperbolic?
just sayin'.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
But surely the entire point of such a system is that it's unknown until it's needed.
"Please don't look for it Iran"
Interesting point about their need for it to be terrorism. And there is a strange yearning after visibility; the murders of Lee Rigby in London hung around after the attack waiting to be caught. Let's be grateful.
TFA does not list one either. Is it bad form to link to IMBD? Here it is http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/
Starring? If not, who could ever believe it? That man is ageless, timeless, and witless.
they worried that the researchers themselves might be targeted to keep them silent.
No. It's more than a bit stupid, in the same way that anti-Bush whiners always claimed that they were going to "wind up in Gitmo", yet somehow never did.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This is the same guy that formed a cybersecurity consultancy to help companies secure themselves against state-sponsored hackers and speaks freely in public on commuter trains. https://www.theguardian.com/wo... I sincerly doubt this guy knows what should be classified and what shouldn't be. He's probably got Russian, Chinese, and Iranian spies following him non-stop just to see what he'll say next.
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.
Problem is, industrial systems are weakly protected. And stuxnet proved how easy it is to attack them, now everyone knows it. It even proved that targeted attack like this can spread all over the world very very easily... I think its only matter of time before we see terrorist use this sort of stuff instead of suicide bombs. Why kill docent people when you can poison thousands by messing water purification systems.... Whats even more worrying is people dont realise those industry systems need protection...
Ring LESS THAN 0. If only slashdot defaulted to no-HTML by default.
As an unrelated thread, since these submission waits are annoying:
If the U.S. has Pwned Iran with a bunch of infrastructure hacks, what does that say about Iran bringing down that US drone a while back with the GPS spoof/hack?
The US has already declared that it would interpret similar actions against them as an act of war and react accordingly. The American president really is the biggest war lord there is, isn't he.
I've been trying for 30 minutes now to watch this legally. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g... Europe does not have any money, or whatever... according to: - Amazon - google play - youtube - 30+ minutes in... I quit. I will start my bittorrent client now... Thank you, international movie-business, for saving me money!
Given how US has given themselves the right to hack others on the planet, I already have USA in the state terrorism category.
If that's been so effective, why should USA deploy it just in Iran? I'd bet there are many instances sleeping everywhere waiting for the alarm clock to wake them up!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
How many fools really believe the US has everything and knows everything, especially stories like this ?
and then 9/11 happened, strange how this could happen when the NSA knows all...
or how it took them 10 years to get Bin Laden....
What this incident shows is that persians (iranian) are clever people, despite being muslims. They try to do work by computers and tele-communications and purse high tech in electronics and biotech. That is not a given!
North Korea was also the target of a big US cyber warfare operation, which failed totally because it turned out commies seldom use computers, usually just for propaganda and the dearly beloved leader watching triple-X. Industry and infrastructure is largely run by hand and old analogue controls, with a rigid-planned economy management style, leading to miserable efficiency and high refuse-reject rates.
On the other hand, since America could not e-bomb the DPRK, the north korean commies managed to build a dozen or so semi-working A-bombs, thereby making them invulnerable to invasion threats, since a few kilotons is easily enough to make things very bad in world politics.
Considering all these, one must wonder what problem the USA has with Iran? Who wouldn't need a 70 million strong market made of clever people, who are so much interested in modernizing to 21st century standards and who can pay with huge oil, gold, other minerals and very good exotic agriculture produce?
There are only two problems: CIA and the self-chosen nation. The CIA is still angry their corrupt shah-puppet regime was ousted. The majority of zionists are also afraid of Iran, because the persian shia muslims are not as dumb as the average sunnite arab, thus a threat to their hegemony and a block to plans for a forceful territorial expansion spanning from the rivers of Nile to the Euphrates.
(A minority of zionists think iranians are good stuff and should be made an ally, versus the very uncivilized sunni arab masses, but their voice doesn't cause much effect if any. Supposedly Hillary Clinton got her massive head trauma after a botched landing in a small twin-prop aircraft within Iran, during secret talks aimed at reconciliation. Her bodyguard died protecting her with his body during the crash-landing.)
everyone could be doing it. Cause they do it themselves -.-
It is Israel who is terrified of Iran, not the USA. Iran has never done anything to anyone. Israel, on the other hand, is the most racist country on earth, bar none. They are extremely Islamophobic/xenophobic and have even built a wall of apartheid around themselves to showcase their racism. America's role in this is the one that Israel coaxes (read: blackmails) it into.
The Israeli's are shitting bricks because Iran may get nuclear weapons and Israel would no longer be the big bully on the block. There would be a balance of power in the middle east, and Israel doesn't want that. They would rather be the only big dog on the block.
There is also the possibility that Iran may actually nuke Israel, in retaliation for her war crimes and genocide against Arabic peoples and for continually interfering with their quest for nuclear energy. And it would be deserving.
The USA should cut all ties and aid to Israel ($3 billion anually) and support BDS and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Israrel has caused enough damage to our world.
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It is very confusing that most countries would allow their infrastructure to run on Windows. Windows is a proprietary piece of software controlled by the United States.
Why aren't the individual countries (or blocks of allies) working on their own LInux distros, monitoring source code, etc?
I wonder how much of a chance the government of Iran would have in suing the US gov in a US or in the international courts?
No good deed goes unpunished.
...that these defects are intentional ?
Linux had an exploitable bug in gethostbyname(), which was for some funny (or not so, imo) reason executed inside the kernel.
So opfor inserts a "bad url" containing malware into a website you visit. Boom - machine pwned. And all your funny firewall "defense in depth" is useless.
American computers and software are only safe if you disconnect them from any electronic network.
Ask yourself why.
Do not use any popular U.S. operating system if you want to store a secret.
If all the nutters listened to their intel and security experts, the world would have much less war and conflict. Israeli intelligence heads are on record suggesting talking instead of permanent war in the middle east.
But alas, Nutanjahu and lots of amateurs have not got the memo.
Pokémon Go.... Iran! That should disable just about everything.
We've got good news and bad news.
The good news: Stuxnet crippled Iran's nuclear program and now Israel is safe.
The bad news: Stuxnet escaped into the banking system and now all the Jews' money is gone.
Iran colonized Britain and the USA. America was going to have a democratically elected Prime Minister, but when Britain and America nationalized their oil, Iran had the elected leaders overthrown. Iran was behind the Iraqi invasion of USA and Britain in the 80's. Heck, Iran even supplied Iraq with chemical weapons to be used against USA and Britain during the 8 year war back in the 80's. So we know Iran is dangerous.
*idiot* hahah I backdoored $COUNTRY
* god reincarnates idiot to be $COUNTRY citizen
*idiot* hey!
*god* you're way out of line!
I would not have given this info out because Iran or other hostile nations could use this info. I still feel like Iran will one day send a nuke our way. So, something that prevents this from happening is good in my book. So, I think it was wrong for Symantec and other security researchers to reveal this information just so they could make a name for themselves. Unless, they got permission from the government to do so. Or maybe another idea, what if it wasn't the US but another hostile nation trying to cause the nukes to explode or launch on purpose? Not good. So, Iran claims they have no nuclear weapons... I doubt the US really can find out for sure because Iran has moved this stuff underground I am sure so as to not be seen via satellites. But hey, this is my 2 cents.
It will be a couple obvious truths sprinkled with brand-new-to-you-lies that you won't readily know the difference. Fuck this movie and fuck the NSA and CIA.
Citizen Four is what you should watch. Ed. Mother Fucking. Snowden.
to either a) acts of terrorism and sabotage or b( acts it deems to be an act of war?
I think even the merkins arent daft enough to boast about those.
Or not. If Michael Hayden says something, try to figure out why he said it, because it sure isn't to provide information to the public.
American, huh. Insightful, huh. We say " finger on the button..."
FTFY
Whilst you are of course right if jihadism is committed to terrorism, but the question is whether it must be. The alternative of doing massive amounts of economic damage to the USA until it does what they wants is one that they haven't attempted yet, which is what I'm getting at. A serious and sustained attack on the vulnerabilities of the rail network of a major city would probably be more debilitating and therefore effective in changing the mind of the general public than a spectacular terrorist attack. It's easy to get people to stand up to terrorism after a one off incident, but if it's meaning their commute EVERY morning is a mess?
It's not as if the far more murderous Russian spooks were involved.
French spooks were clumsy and got caught. Mossad let people know they are involved and spread the fear without getting caught.
Make a movie about something Symantec supposedly found. Buy our software that we can't even give away anymore because it sucks so bad. The real joke is, it'll slow their machines down big time.