How would you like it if the hackers got into the grid control system and told the IP motors that control the floodgates on the big dams to open all the way, and then send them into a tizzy that burns them out, so they can't be used to shut the gates? How much damage would the downstream flooding cause? Yeah, no kidding. Imagine what would happen if that occured with the Three Gorges Dam in China... Woot, 39,300,000,000 cubic metres of water suddenly dropped on your cities!...
Actually, the particular machines that control the resources are very very probably not online. However, other machines with access to their intranet/LAN are. Get yourself control of one employee's machine and you are then effectively sitting inside the office, with the same level of LAN access as the person whose machine you've gained access to, theoretically...
It's a good point - perhaps if they had attempted to start some shutdown sequence, there would have been password prompts, or who knows what.
They might see the full interface that a full admin might have, but if the system was even half-decently-designed, the developers/designers would probably attempt to make it so sitting down at one of the control machines doesn't just give you the immediate ability to shut down everything...
I don't doubt it at all. Many, many businesses running important systems and infrastructure are no more secure than anywhere else. And that security "everywhere else" is basically a lack thereof.
When you think about it for a moment, these kind of key things could be successfully attacked and shut down no problem. It's never been otherwise. There are people that just love to break into systems, and it's obvious that some of those people inevitably have far more destructive intentions than simply "penetration testing".
I mean, I guess it doesn't get a lot of attention because no one's really done a major attack that has had drastic immediate effects (like shutting down the power grid). Frankly I'm amazed something of a comparable scale hasn't happened - but I guess people with those intentions are probably pacified by the fear of being thrown in jail forever...
Dunno, just growing up in quite a high-tech age, I'm amazed electronic break-ins and destructive vandalism aren't happening notably regularly...
The kind of orchestrated attack mentioned in TFA is definitely not "rocket science". A few talented people could pull off major hacks with a pretty trivial level of effort, especially considering all of these networks that run just plain old Windows XP or 2000. Get some clueless data-entry person to "open the important security update i'm emailing you", whee, you're in, have fun. Even in places with pretty strong security policies, you can never really secure your network from weaknesses and variability of the human mind.
It's not even some action-thriller-cyberpunk movie, I'm sure it could happen at pretty much any time - and it doesn't have to be some foreign intelligence agency - it could just be a couple of teenagers who are super pissed about [whatever] and have the know-how and drive to do it.
You think so? I don't... the animals in the Telus ads aren't used to slander the competition - instead they're used in a positive context, making the product more appealing (or whatever). I mean, it's kind of pointless, but it gets peoples' interest, and it's not done in a negative/spiteful context. To me, it just shows the company's perspective, and makes me think "Oh, so that's how they go about doing business, they just talk shit about the competition?"... I think that does more to make Shaw look bad than anyone else. Maybe I'm just idealistic but I think a company should be boasting about their own great features and advantages, and not just slandering/insulting the competition.
Bell, who own a shit load of TV stations across the country, happen to be messing with CBC, their competition...
Funny that you should say that - the CBC is owned by the Government, and is thus funded by taxpayers. It's not really a corporation in the traditional sense. I kind of like the fact that Bell has this pretty much unstoppable competition. Hopefully they'll be kept in line, considering this scenario basically means Bell is shitting on taxpayers' national services.
11-year-old Jon Penn, who took over control of a 60-computer school network in Alabama after the old administrator suddenly left
Oh yeah, I did something like that one time... Well OK, except, the old administrator was still in charge, and he also probably wasn't exactly aware of my knowledge of all the network passwords...;)
Oh yeah, up here in western Canada, Shaw (which uses cable) makes fun of Telus (ADSL) by having talking snails that talk about how they prefer everything to be slow, so that's whey they use DSL, etc... Yeah, snails. Give me a break. How much more contrived can you possibly get? Condescending, for that matter - as though we can't understand something more interesting or subtle, so we need some 3d-animated slow snails to talk slowly and in a low pitch so we can understand the biased message Shaw is trying to get across...
And of course this is all addition to the fact that ADSL service here is actually great and you have dedicated bandwidth that doesn't lessen when your neighbours are also online. People in highly dense areas here get unbelievably shitty speeds. Frankly, the only ISP that has a reputation of slowness here is Shaw. How ironic..:P
Yeah, I work up by gastown, luckily a couple blocks northeast, so it's not too bad. But, there are still a handful of regular homeless people who come into the office building asking for change... one of them has been out there regularly for the last almost 3 years I've worked here, for example.
My band has played a lot of shows in the downtown area, including shows just a block from good ol' Main & Hastings (where, when driving, you almost literally are dodging drugged out zombies that are stumbling across the street). So I've met a lot of whacked out people, witnessed crimes taking place across the street, and of course almost everyone I know has had their car windows smashed (or their entire car stolen). I don't feel bad anymore though, like I did when I was a kid. I more feel pissed off about it. It's hard to feel bad when I feel like "they are fucking up my city".
But, here's what it boils down to. Vancouver is the only big city in BC, or even western Canada. The only place where there's a huge supply of drugs, and there's somewhat of a public transit system, so people can get around. The next big city is an 11+ hour drive away. For homeless people here, there is nowhere else to go. They can't cross the border down to the US (legally) because they don't have ID, or even worse probably have criminal records and aren't interested in the trouble that's going to bring up. There's also an ever-increasing influx of organized crime (enough that the VPD have formed a new anti-gang task force as of a year ago), all of which is almost entirely linked with a pretty lucrative drug trade.
Eh, idunno, pretty depressing. I've watched my neighbourhood turn from a nice quiet spacious foresty area into an overcrowded place loaded with duplexes and townhouses and violent attacks by gang members, in a matter of 10 years. A group of six guys got murdered in my town last year, most of whom went to the same high school as me. What the hell.
Funny that you would show up here. I thought GameRanger was pretty cool when it first came out, but didn't really need much use of it since I didn't play online much. But whatever, it seemed like a pretty great app. I had won a free copy of QuakeFinder during a contest on a pretty popular mac gaming Hotline server, which was pretty cool (yes, with an actual purchased serial # by the server admin). Some time in the future, after I had been using KDX for some time, I started hearing on forums about how GameRanger wouldn't run if KDX was open (link for anyone who isn't aware of the sketchy-ass behaviour). Wow, what the heck? It gets even worse when people are banned from GR for even talking about KDX. As though people are somehow supposed to be okay with your hatred of KDX/Haxial, for whatever unknown reason. I'm sure you've had a lot of people pissed about it. Maybe I don't know how the story ends, but I don't see anyone saying "GameRanger no longer tries to prevent you from running KDX". Lame stuff, man.
I drive a 2008 Honda (Fit), and it has a whole bunch of blue lights. Then again I have them dimmed pretty notably so I'm not blinded at night. The brightest setting is VERY BRIGHT, so much that I've never had it set to even close to the maximum, even during the day.
That "terrorist act" is just used as an excuse/"reason" for them to come down hard on our freedoms and do whatever they feel like doing, in the name of "safety" and "security".. That's it. Just a bullshit excuse for raping the shit out of ordinary peoples' freedoms and liberties.
This scenario of them fingerprinting for domestic flights is a GREAT WAY to desensitize people to such "security measures", so they can take it yet another step further a little while into the future.
As usual, it's a slippery-as-hell slope, and it doesn't seem like people are really standing up against it. Yeah, we rant and bitch online but... like that does a damned thing.
Man, all it does is fill me with such animosity and pessemism. I just feel pissed off. My outlook is constantly degraded and made to be more negative, every day, due to this kind of messed up crap happening. Don't even know what else to say, I just hate it so much.
Also consider that some of the latest machines don't even come with a CD/DVD drive. MacBook Air anyone? Speaking of which, it's very very rare for me to have to use a CD or DVD these days. All my music is in mp3 format already, and I transfer most data over the network or using a 2 gigabyte USB memory stick.
You're joking, right? Younger people not only have more free time to pursue the motivation to hack & crack, but also tend to have more drive to do so, and less ethical reservations about doing so. You know how a lot of techie guys say "yeah, I used to be into that, but i grew out of it", well, that's generally the case with the vast majority of "hacker types" with malicious intent, except that a fair number of them actually pursue those motivations to a much further extent than others.
I used to hang out in chat rooms with guys who were developing their own exploits in C on netBSD machines they set up on their own, etc. etc.. (mid to late 90s).. They were all in their late teens, average of around 17 or 18 years old, no joke. There were a couple guys in college who were 20 or 21 or so, but really, the teens and early 20s is pretty much the prime time to delve into 'questionable' types of endeavours in the high-tech realm.
Oh, by the way, for a little personal anecdote, I cracked/hacked/obtained/whatever the admin password for our Mac lab in my elementary school when I was 9 years old, in grade 3 or 4 (and got banned from the lab for a while of course). Then again, I used utils I found on the net (a keylogger IIRC), but I still think that required a lot more knowledge and investigation than most 9 year olds are willing to pursue. Actually, I created a custom HyperCard stack that let me execute any program I had on a floppy disk - it just had to match the same type/creator code as any of the programs that were available in At Ease. That's pure hack-mindedness at work, and no outside help was consulted.;)
"If you ever saw one that was broken, it's because it lost a boxing match with a nuclear bomb -- on points."
Well, when I was a little kid I was going out to some family function with my parents and I dropped the gameboy onto the ground on the driveway. It was probably about a 3 foot drop onto concrete. The screen no longer worked. Looking at it quite a long time later, it was some internal problem, in that it wasn't just that the LCD ribbon cable disconnected or anything, something was definitely damaged, causing it to no longer display anything.
I was pretty surprised to see this article since my own experience showed a single drop could kill the Gameboy, so...
I think all of what you said was totally redundant. I'm already aware of all that, and so is everyone else here. I also hold the belief that it isn't neccesary for these things to be the case - they just are because they are. I'm saying, that is lame, and I'm trying to hold tech companies to higher expectations than simply making standard tech shit and making money.
"do you know how difficult it is to drive a standard across an industry with literally thousands of players, when each one thinks they have the best solution?"
It's pretty obvious.
"plus, the perfect device doesn't just fall out of someone's ass and save the world. it requires an enormous amount of innovation and pure engineering labor, with constant twists in turns in planning and scheduling to bring a device to market."
Hey, you're right. So what? Who didn't already know that - do you think I didn't? Here's the difference - I don't care. Those are just excuses to NOT be dedicated and driven and make your dreams and goals reality. Seriously, that's all you just said to me. Average people will read what you just said, and settle for what they have now, and never drive to do something better, or more amazing, or whatever.
I know you and other people think "but this is reality, man". And trust me, I'm also very well aware of that, I experience the same kind of "reality checks" with shit like this, on a regular basis. The point is, you can overcome that. People can do amazing things. I'm saying, stop settling for less, and lowering your standards. Needless to say, I plan on doing some really awesome shit with my life, and I've already made some pretty huge progress towards that. What will you do, with an attitude/perspective like yours? Program embedded devices for some faceless corporation, or some similar triviality?
The fact is, technology can be so much more, but it's not, because of that very "average" complacency and willingness to settle and be "comfortable" like I mentioned above. All of your response to my post reflects that. My perspective is that more people need to follow their goals and keep themselves driven to bring their greatest ideas to reality (and actually this applies to anyone, not just people in the tech industry).
Actually, I wouldn't call Fischer's statement pro-terrorism at all. Maybe he's just pissed off at USA's long-standing "we rule the world" attitude and essential bullying of other countries. You know, kind of like back in school where if the high school bully got his ass kicked, you wouldn't even feel bad for a second? Frankly, the parallels there are pretty obvious. Then again I've just set myself up to get modded into oblivion by not saying how much of a crazy asshole he was to make that statement.. Oh well, not going to prevent me from sharing my perspective, especially because of how rare a perspective it seems to be.
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Actually, the particular machines that control the resources are very very probably not online. However, other machines with access to their intranet/LAN are. Get yourself control of one employee's machine and you are then effectively sitting inside the office, with the same level of LAN access as the person whose machine you've gained access to, theoretically...
It's a good point - perhaps if they had attempted to start some shutdown sequence, there would have been password prompts, or who knows what.
They might see the full interface that a full admin might have, but if the system was even half-decently-designed, the developers/designers would probably attempt to make it so sitting down at one of the control machines doesn't just give you the immediate ability to shut down everything...
I don't doubt it at all. Many, many businesses running important systems and infrastructure are no more secure than anywhere else. And that security "everywhere else" is basically a lack thereof.
When you think about it for a moment, these kind of key things could be successfully attacked and shut down no problem. It's never been otherwise. There are people that just love to break into systems, and it's obvious that some of those people inevitably have far more destructive intentions than simply "penetration testing". I mean, I guess it doesn't get a lot of attention because no one's really done a major attack that has had drastic immediate effects (like shutting down the power grid). Frankly I'm amazed something of a comparable scale hasn't happened - but I guess people with those intentions are probably pacified by the fear of being thrown in jail forever...
Dunno, just growing up in quite a high-tech age, I'm amazed electronic break-ins and destructive vandalism aren't happening notably regularly...
The kind of orchestrated attack mentioned in TFA is definitely not "rocket science". A few talented people could pull off major hacks with a pretty trivial level of effort, especially considering all of these networks that run just plain old Windows XP or 2000. Get some clueless data-entry person to "open the important security update i'm emailing you", whee, you're in, have fun. Even in places with pretty strong security policies, you can never really secure your network from weaknesses and variability of the human mind.
It's not even some action-thriller-cyberpunk movie, I'm sure it could happen at pretty much any time - and it doesn't have to be some foreign intelligence agency - it could just be a couple of teenagers who are super pissed about [whatever] and have the know-how and drive to do it.
You think so? I don't... the animals in the Telus ads aren't used to slander the competition - instead they're used in a positive context, making the product more appealing (or whatever). I mean, it's kind of pointless, but it gets peoples' interest, and it's not done in a negative/spiteful context. To me, it just shows the company's perspective, and makes me think "Oh, so that's how they go about doing business, they just talk shit about the competition?"... I think that does more to make Shaw look bad than anyone else. Maybe I'm just idealistic but I think a company should be boasting about their own great features and advantages, and not just slandering/insulting the competition.
Bell, who own a shit load of TV stations across the country, happen to be messing with CBC, their competition...
Funny that you should say that - the CBC is owned by the Government, and is thus funded by taxpayers. It's not really a corporation in the traditional sense. I kind of like the fact that Bell has this pretty much unstoppable competition. Hopefully they'll be kept in line, considering this scenario basically means Bell is shitting on taxpayers' national services.
11-year-old Jon Penn, who took over control of a 60-computer school network in Alabama after the old administrator suddenly left
;)
Oh yeah, I did something like that one time... Well OK, except, the old administrator was still in charge, and he also probably wasn't exactly aware of my knowledge of all the network passwords...
Oh yeah, up here in western Canada, Shaw (which uses cable) makes fun of Telus (ADSL) by having talking snails that talk about how they prefer everything to be slow, so that's whey they use DSL, etc... Yeah, snails. Give me a break. How much more contrived can you possibly get? Condescending, for that matter - as though we can't understand something more interesting or subtle, so we need some 3d-animated slow snails to talk slowly and in a low pitch so we can understand the biased message Shaw is trying to get across...
:P
And of course this is all addition to the fact that ADSL service here is actually great and you have dedicated bandwidth that doesn't lessen when your neighbours are also online. People in highly dense areas here get unbelievably shitty speeds. Frankly, the only ISP that has a reputation of slowness here is Shaw. How ironic..
Yeah, I work up by gastown, luckily a couple blocks northeast, so it's not too bad. But, there are still a handful of regular homeless people who come into the office building asking for change... one of them has been out there regularly for the last almost 3 years I've worked here, for example.
My band has played a lot of shows in the downtown area, including shows just a block from good ol' Main & Hastings (where, when driving, you almost literally are dodging drugged out zombies that are stumbling across the street). So I've met a lot of whacked out people, witnessed crimes taking place across the street, and of course almost everyone I know has had their car windows smashed (or their entire car stolen). I don't feel bad anymore though, like I did when I was a kid. I more feel pissed off about it. It's hard to feel bad when I feel like "they are fucking up my city".
But, here's what it boils down to. Vancouver is the only big city in BC, or even western Canada. The only place where there's a huge supply of drugs, and there's somewhat of a public transit system, so people can get around. The next big city is an 11+ hour drive away. For homeless people here, there is nowhere else to go. They can't cross the border down to the US (legally) because they don't have ID, or even worse probably have criminal records and aren't interested in the trouble that's going to bring up. There's also an ever-increasing influx of organized crime (enough that the VPD have formed a new anti-gang task force as of a year ago), all of which is almost entirely linked with a pretty lucrative drug trade.
Eh, idunno, pretty depressing. I've watched my neighbourhood turn from a nice quiet spacious foresty area into an overcrowded place loaded with duplexes and townhouses and violent attacks by gang members, in a matter of 10 years. A group of six guys got murdered in my town last year, most of whom went to the same high school as me. What the hell.
Funny that you would show up here. I thought GameRanger was pretty cool when it first came out, but didn't really need much use of it since I didn't play online much. But whatever, it seemed like a pretty great app. I had won a free copy of QuakeFinder during a contest on a pretty popular mac gaming Hotline server, which was pretty cool (yes, with an actual purchased serial # by the server admin). Some time in the future, after I had been using KDX for some time, I started hearing on forums about how GameRanger wouldn't run if KDX was open (link for anyone who isn't aware of the sketchy-ass behaviour). Wow, what the heck? It gets even worse when people are banned from GR for even talking about KDX. As though people are somehow supposed to be okay with your hatred of KDX/Haxial, for whatever unknown reason. I'm sure you've had a lot of people pissed about it. Maybe I don't know how the story ends, but I don't see anyone saying "GameRanger no longer tries to prevent you from running KDX". Lame stuff, man.
I drive a 2008 Honda (Fit), and it has a whole bunch of blue lights. Then again I have them dimmed pretty notably so I'm not blinded at night. The brightest setting is VERY BRIGHT, so much that I've never had it set to even close to the maximum, even during the day.
That "terrorist act" is just used as an excuse/"reason" for them to come down hard on our freedoms and do whatever they feel like doing, in the name of "safety" and "security".. That's it. Just a bullshit excuse for raping the shit out of ordinary peoples' freedoms and liberties.
This scenario of them fingerprinting for domestic flights is a GREAT WAY to desensitize people to such "security measures", so they can take it yet another step further a little while into the future.
As usual, it's a slippery-as-hell slope, and it doesn't seem like people are really standing up against it. Yeah, we rant and bitch online but... like that does a damned thing.
Man, all it does is fill me with such animosity and pessemism. I just feel pissed off. My outlook is constantly degraded and made to be more negative, every day, due to this kind of messed up crap happening. Don't even know what else to say, I just hate it so much.
Also consider that some of the latest machines don't even come with a CD/DVD drive. MacBook Air anyone? Speaking of which, it's very very rare for me to have to use a CD or DVD these days. All my music is in mp3 format already, and I transfer most data over the network or using a 2 gigabyte USB memory stick.
Oh and BTW, I am in western Canada. ;)
You're joking, right? Younger people not only have more free time to pursue the motivation to hack & crack, but also tend to have more drive to do so, and less ethical reservations about doing so. You know how a lot of techie guys say "yeah, I used to be into that, but i grew out of it", well, that's generally the case with the vast majority of "hacker types" with malicious intent, except that a fair number of them actually pursue those motivations to a much further extent than others.
;)
I used to hang out in chat rooms with guys who were developing their own exploits in C on netBSD machines they set up on their own, etc. etc.. (mid to late 90s).. They were all in their late teens, average of around 17 or 18 years old, no joke. There were a couple guys in college who were 20 or 21 or so, but really, the teens and early 20s is pretty much the prime time to delve into 'questionable' types of endeavours in the high-tech realm.
Oh, by the way, for a little personal anecdote, I cracked/hacked/obtained/whatever the admin password for our Mac lab in my elementary school when I was 9 years old, in grade 3 or 4 (and got banned from the lab for a while of course). Then again, I used utils I found on the net (a keylogger IIRC), but I still think that required a lot more knowledge and investigation than most 9 year olds are willing to pursue. Actually, I created a custom HyperCard stack that let me execute any program I had on a floppy disk - it just had to match the same type/creator code as any of the programs that were available in At Ease. That's pure hack-mindedness at work, and no outside help was consulted.
Dude, I agree that the cd-check is bullshit, but... just go grab a no-cd crack from somewhere like game copy world or mega games. ;) JFGI, btw.
Wait wait, let me 'fix' that for you:
"I'll cut off the terrist's interweb tubes!"
Auggh... *eternal sigh*.. even if it's correct to his pronounciation, it's still so wrong....
"If you ever saw one that was broken, it's because it lost a boxing match with a nuclear bomb -- on points."
Well, when I was a little kid I was going out to some family function with my parents and I dropped the gameboy onto the ground on the driveway. It was probably about a 3 foot drop onto concrete. The screen no longer worked. Looking at it quite a long time later, it was some internal problem, in that it wasn't just that the LCD ribbon cable disconnected or anything, something was definitely damaged, causing it to no longer display anything.
I was pretty surprised to see this article since my own experience showed a single drop could kill the Gameboy, so...
Yeah well, just because it's not a surprise doesn't make it any less fucking heinous.
I love how you replaced one slang term with another, "bricked" for "fubared". ;)
Oh, thousands of innocent people, that supposedly democratically voted in the government that has such bully-like behaviours?
I think all of what you said was totally redundant. I'm already aware of all that, and so is everyone else here. I also hold the belief that it isn't neccesary for these things to be the case - they just are because they are. I'm saying, that is lame, and I'm trying to hold tech companies to higher expectations than simply making standard tech shit and making money.
"do you know how difficult it is to drive a standard across an industry with literally thousands of players, when each one thinks they have the best solution?"
It's pretty obvious.
"plus, the perfect device doesn't just fall out of someone's ass and save the world. it requires an enormous amount of innovation and pure engineering labor, with constant twists in turns in planning and scheduling to bring a device to market."
Hey, you're right. So what? Who didn't already know that - do you think I didn't? Here's the difference - I don't care. Those are just excuses to NOT be dedicated and driven and make your dreams and goals reality. Seriously, that's all you just said to me. Average people will read what you just said, and settle for what they have now, and never drive to do something better, or more amazing, or whatever.
I know you and other people think "but this is reality, man". And trust me, I'm also very well aware of that, I experience the same kind of "reality checks" with shit like this, on a regular basis. The point is, you can overcome that. People can do amazing things. I'm saying, stop settling for less, and lowering your standards. Needless to say, I plan on doing some really awesome shit with my life, and I've already made some pretty huge progress towards that. What will you do, with an attitude/perspective like yours? Program embedded devices for some faceless corporation, or some similar triviality?
The fact is, technology can be so much more, but it's not, because of that very "average" complacency and willingness to settle and be "comfortable" like I mentioned above. All of your response to my post reflects that. My perspective is that more people need to follow their goals and keep themselves driven to bring their greatest ideas to reality (and actually this applies to anyone, not just people in the tech industry).
Couldn't have said it better, I was about to write a post almost identically worded. *thumbs up*
Actually, I wouldn't call Fischer's statement pro-terrorism at all. Maybe he's just pissed off at USA's long-standing "we rule the world" attitude and essential bullying of other countries. You know, kind of like back in school where if the high school bully got his ass kicked, you wouldn't even feel bad for a second? Frankly, the parallels there are pretty obvious. Then again I've just set myself up to get modded into oblivion by not saying how much of a crazy asshole he was to make that statement.. Oh well, not going to prevent me from sharing my perspective, especially because of how rare a perspective it seems to be.
"The schools have fat kids always trying to woo girls into getting laid"
;)
Hey man, I think I speak for everyone here when I say, our appearance isn't necessarily what repels people - we're just weird regardless.