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Hacks Raise Fear Over NSA's Hold on Cyberweapons (nytimes.com)
Nicole Perlroth, and David Sanger, writing for The New York Times: Twice in the past month, National Security Agency cyberweapons stolen from its arsenal have been turned against two very different partners of the United States -- Britain and Ukraine. The N.S.A. has kept quiet, not acknowledging its role in developing the weapons (alternative source). White House officials have deflected many questions, and responded to others by arguing that the focus should be on the attackers themselves, not the manufacturer of their weapons. But the silence is wearing thin for victims of the assaults, as a series of escalating attacks using N.S.A. cyberweapons have hit hospitals, a nuclear site and American businesses. Now there is growing concern that United States intelligence agencies have rushed to create digital weapons that they cannot keep safe from adversaries or disable once they fall into the wrong hands. On Wednesday, the calls for the agency to address its role in the latest attacks grew louder, as victims and technology companies cried foul. Representative Ted Lieu, a California Democrat and a former Air Force officer who serves on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees, urged the N.S.A. to help stop the attacks and to stop hoarding knowledge of the computer vulnerabilities upon which these weapons rely.
Even worse than that is they expect us to believe that they can securely escrow master keys to break all encryption. What a bunch of jokers.
Unlike real weapons, these weapons can be multiplied easily. Try that with a tank.
That alone should mean that these "virtual guns" are under a tighter control. Even a nuke can only detonate once, but one such "weapon" can be used all over the globe billions of times.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Never create a weapon that you wouldn't want to fall into the hands of your worst enemy.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Your statement doesn't even make sense. So if I shoot a rocket at the cracked part of a wall the rocket ceases to be a weapon?
The analogy is that these are very much like biological weapons. If you're going to use those, you have to be damn sure that the "good guys" all have vaccines, and that the weapon can't mutate.
There is a very good reason that biological weapons are NOT used.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Exactly. The problem here is that people are trying to apply pre- information age thinking to post- information age constructs. This idea that you can build a cyber "weapon" that can only attack "bad" people and cannot be trivially altered to ignore whatever protections you put into place to keep it from being used against "good" people, is ludicrous.
Yes, exactly like guns. It's ludicrous to think you can proliferate millions of guns to "good" people, and they won't be also used by "bad" people.
The NRA. It pooped its pants right there in the public square. And rather than trying to clean up, it just stands there yelling "MY SHIT DON'T STINK!" while continuing to make squeaky farts..
This is probably go to a new school next year level public humiliation, but they apparently have no shame.
If you should see someone who works for the NRA, hand them a roll of toilet paper.
[citation needed]