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The UK is Practicing Cyberattacks That Could Black Out Moscow (qz.com)
British defense officials say they have practiced cyber war games that could shut off electricity in Russia's capital, the Sunday Times (paywall) reports. From a report: The measures are part of a wider range of strategies to hit back at an increasingly assertive Russia -- accused of interfering with US elections, cyberattacks on Western targets, and poisoning a former spy on UK soil -- without resorting to a full-blown nuclear attack. "If they sank our aircraft carrier with a nuclear-tipped torpedo, what is our response? There's nothing between sinking their submarine and dropping a nuclear weapon on northern Kamchatka," one senior source told the Sunday Times. "This is why cyber is so important; you can go on the offensive and turn off the lights in Moscow to tell them that they are not doing the right things." Military planners are looking for options if Russian president Vladimir Putin tests NATO's resolve by seizing small islands belonging to Estonia, taking control of Libya's oil reserves, or using "irregular forces" to attack troops, according to the report.
I think I've seen that one already.
Maybe the laws of skulduggery have changed since I was a young whippersnapper, but isn't one of the most important aspects of a secret weapon for it to be secret?
Certainly increasing granularity allows for better proportional response, even on the military side. Also, its a good chance this is significantly developed as policy since it has been made public. The UK would be within its rights to straight out assassinate Vladimir Putin (and that is my preference for a solution, from any party) but diplomacy requires more responses before that to check aggression. War is almost inevitable with Putin in power, but maybe taking out the lights (and blowing up a few oil and gas pipelines -- see US actions against the Soviets and also Iraq) would inspire some homeland revolutionaries to start the revolution on their end. Kill Putin like Gaddafi, or kill him like Saddam, either way he will be dead soon enough and his hierarchy will crumble into infighting for a few decades.
er no, using a nuke against a carrier is declaration of world war III and would be answered as such.
get a clue, fuckwit "senior source"
Plus, whatever non-existent state Russian consumer good might be in their heavy industrial sector is still kicking along just fine and they make their own gas turbines, steam turbines, grid rated industrial controllers (fabbed for them in China), transformers etc.... There should be close to zero Western sourced components in their grid so good luck hacking any of it. My company did some work in Mexico on a Russian sourced generator that was basically a PS-90 jet engine turned into a power plant. There were zero Western parts in the things and we had no idea what we were looking at until we brought in a contractor from Kazakhstan.
That "Russian hackers" allegedly can change election results with impunity from the US to Gibraltar, or that the alleged "victims" of such yuuge machinations can fight back?
The problem of the West is not "assertive Russia", the problem of the West is its weakening, sick democracy, which fell victim of its oligarchies and which is so impotent, that even with the technologies at its fingertips cannot solve elementary problems like decent education and healthcare for everyone.
All this talk of "external enemies" is to cover up the failures at home.
Which, incidentally, is the same thing Putin's doing.
So great to use non-conventional weapons. You blockout Moscow to tell them they are not doing the right things, and they won't be able to respond in kind. Then they just spread the black plague all over London and there will be just enough plausible deniability that you can't respond either. Everyone wins!
If a 900 day siege that largely destroyed one of their largest cities and killed over a million people wasn't able to bring Russia to its knees, surely an electrical blackout in Moscow will!
I am going to tell a joke, but I'll give a warning before telling it. So until the warning, what I say is serious. Moscow residents may not view lights-out as a foreign action. They are much, much more likely to see it as a domestic failure. And if the domestic government-owned news channels subsequently report it as such, 85% of the population will believe it. The remaining 15% never believe anything that the government says, so they won't be a political loss for the RF administration.
Here's the promised joke (because it's too close to the article itself). Question: how can you tell that the US government has fell behind the Russian government in its use of the Internet? Because, unlike the Moscow mayor's website, you can't find the scheduled water outages on the New York mayor's website. This is an actual meme that used to be popular in Russia just a few years ago. Well, it may still be popular, but I was told about it a few years ago.
Now given that Moscow has scheduled water outages, how difficult will it be to explain away electric outages which were not scheduled?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Make better use of your time and go kill Vladimir Putin.
Then put in place 10 trucks, each with a medieval trebuchet designed to fling a heavy-gauge metal cable over each of the high-voltage transmission lines to the city. to short them out.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
for psychological effect,
use a drone-swarm to carry each cable and drop it across the 3 phases of the power transmission line.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
but if Russia or someone else does it, then it's an act of aggression, terrorism, because they should never be able to defend themselves or fight back when we decide to strike first, possibly for no reason other than that we feel threatened simply because they exist on the same planet.
Yeah, that's the only thing they'll turn off with that. Sure. Besides, Moscow will probably be back on much faster than any western country. You know they're going to turn our electricity off when you try to turn off theirs, don't you?
I think there is a name for that condition called "MAD" or
Mutually assured darkness.
One side taking out the electricity to the other will meet a response meaning both sides are left fumbling around in the darkness after sun down.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
seems to me to be the cause of many problems today. These are people who have got to the top in their country, they start by beating up political opponents, often ensure their position (head of state for a long time), then go into other countries and hurt people. I won't mention names, but there are plenty around.
Critical infrastructure should not be accessible from the internet.
Yes, the previously mentioned trebuchet and drone attacks on 3-phase circuits still work but you need to be closer than a few hundred miles to pull this off without anyone noticing before it's too late.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If I wanted to cause massive disruption to an electrical grid, I would use a combination of cyber and physical attacks. The key is in planning. I'd make sure I had a team who's job it was to constantly monitor the target - they would be probing for vulnerabilities, maintaining details of every utility employee from the chairman of the board to the meter readers for use in social engineering, watching satellite images for signs of cable laying. When it's time to launch the attack, I'd want my people to know that network better than the power operators own engineers - and then I'd have them decide which weak points to strike with hacking, which pylons need the unsubtle application of an angle grinder or small explosive charge from one of the few precious sleeper agents, and how best to flood the operator with plausible-looking fake emails directing people to conduct repairs that would only make the situation worse and have their engineers chasing non-existent faults out into the middle of Siberia.
I really want to write an essay here but the short answer is the UK and security prowess are not two things that go together. The UK has the same level of stupidity that other western countries have but they have an extra layer of arrogance and cronyism that even Scott Adams couldn't capture.
... typical human response. "Oh look, there's a murderer! ... Let's ... MURDER him!" ... murder?"
"But we are better, because he is evil!"
"And why is he evil?"
"Because he murders!"
"And that justifies your
"Yes! I'm punishing him!"
"So by that logic, I should now murder you too!"
"What? Why?"
"Cause you are a murderer too!"
"But he's evil! He murders!"
"So do you."
"But I have a valid reason, and am reacting to somebody who did us harm!"
"You know, that's the exact same thing the murderer told me."
"But I'm right, and he's wrong!"
"He says that too."
"But..."
How is that so freaking hard to get? Why is our legal system literally showing criminals that harming people is not the problem, and completely fine, but that not being the one in power when doing it, is the problem? We can't expect to behave like they do, and then be surprised that they think it's OK too. WE think it's OK too.
You're not superior. Your motives are not more righteous or justified. Everyone who ever committed a crime, had an excuse that he and everyone in his group thought was perfectly valid and fine. It never it. ... Ever. ... That's what it the concept of a "right" means. ... And you either are what you despise, or you are not.
Its important not to confuse strategy to tactics. Strategically you want to exaggerate your capability (i.e. we all all powerful, bow to our will). Tactically you want surprise before the appropriate defenses can be employed..
I, for one, welcome out new rapey overlord!!
I think Russians do that for fun already, look on youtube.
Bill hasn't been prez for decades.
Then why do you keep bringing him up you faggot fucking apologist?
And why do you like it so much when I do you breakfast eating human?
LOL.And STILL the Jewish media hasn't printed ONE example of a 'meddling' Facebook post.
No! UK is *Practising* Cyberattacks.
I'm off to buy a generator and a satellite internet connection...