Cyber Warfare

[Moonbat]

I think we can all agree that it has begun, but I wonder what people think of it?

Stuxnet was designed especially to halt progress in Iran's 'alleged' nuclear weapons program, the virus worked so well no one knew it was there until it copied itself off the target computers and was taken into the public sphere.

The same can be said for its follow on 'Flame' which is, I believe, said to be a new level of cunning and complexity for a computer virus.

If, as has been reported, these viruses came from a joint US-Isreli program to attack Iran then would it be fair to say that the US and Iran are at war? And if you wouldn't agree they are (at least not a full scale war) what rights do Iran have considering the US have taken the first agressive steps in this war. As far as I can see the only thing stopping the creation and uploading of these viruses being construed as an agressive act of war was that they are designed solely to stop the development of weapons (alas this also comes with stopping nuclear power, but I guess the US see that as a part of the same mission)

Does Iran has any right (if it can prove it) to prosecute the US (and/or Israel) for the computer attacks?

I think there have been reports of Chinese attacks on American companies (and possibly government installations) but as far as I can tell there is no come back from the US, just some politcal posturing.

Where will this lead us, will there be a covert world war going on, where governments attack other governments in an effort to destabilise them and keep them occupied on anything other than economical gain?


It is irresponsible of the US to create a new level of computer weaponry, considering that 'flame' has now made its way to Russia and been discovered, knowing that it will probably be reverse engineered and the new tactics that America pioneered (or new programming cunning that probably took highly intelligent teams of military grade programmers months or years to design) will find their way into the commerical (black market) side of computer viruses, so that we the public will have to face greater threats to our computers?

***Please note this message contains a virus and that I (Moonbat's evil twin - Sunfish) have taken control of your computer and will be using it to slowly heat the world and cause a rise in sea levels. EVIL LAUGH

[Venusian Broon]

Originally Posted by Moonbat

Where will this lead us, will there be a covert world war going on, where governments attack other governments in an effort to destabilise them and keep them occupied on anything other than economical gain?

A further example are the numerous attacks that the Baltic states seem to get - that appear to originate from further to the east, near Moscow...

Really I think it comes down to how you define 'war' and perhaps more importantly 'national interest'. I wouldn't be surprised at all that governments have always employed covert actions, many of which are easily deemed malicious, against other countries - even their stanchest allies (and vice versa of course). All to defend what they see as necessary and the national interest. It helps that plenty of schemes have been caught out and made public

I mean look at the UK and US. During the course of two world wars, the US did more to dismantle and accelerate the break up and dissolution of the British Empire (and replace it with their own eventually) than the Germans, Japanese and Russians combined.* And we were firmly on the same side. Just not when it came to their economic interest.


* I'll leave the morality of the British Empire to one side as another topic, just using it to illustrate the power struggle that occured.

[Dave]

Filed under the heading: Everything I Know I learned from watching Die Hard 4.0

Eugene Kaspersky, the co-founder and chief executive of security firm Kaspersky Labs says:

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/securit...528-1zeg0.html
I watched the movie for 20 minutes, then pressed pause, got a cigarette and a glass of Scotch. To me it was really scary: they were talking about real scenarios. It was like a user guide for cyber terrorists. I hated that movie. We came to the [potential] of cyber terrorist attacks years before Die Hard 4.0, but it was forbidden in my company to explain it to journalists, because I didn't want to open Pandora's Box. I didn't want to let people think that my business is the business of fear. And I didn't want the bad guys to learn from these ideas.

Wasn't it claimed that Russia had already cyber attacked Estonia in 2007 ?

If this is a new Cold War then I think it began quite a long time ago.

[Venusian Broon]

Originally Posted by Dave

Filed under the heading: Everything I Know I learned from watching Die Hard 4.0

Eugene Kaspersky, the co-founder and chief executive of security firm Kaspersky Labs says:.

mmm.... head of a computer and internet security firm tells us that it's unbelievably dangerous out there in the wilds of cyberspace...(but don't worry, if you buy his software we'll all be safe ).

I can be a cold-hearted cynic sometimes

Originally Posted by Dave

If this is a new Cold War then I think it began quite a long time ago.

Well if it is (no reason to suppose it isn't) I'd call it Cold War II. Because I'd lump Cold War I with what I term 'Grand World War I' (1914-1989)

[Shane Enochs]

People wonder why countries such as Iran might want nuclear weapons...

I think countries need to stop screwing with each other. Iran might not be so hostile if we all just started open trading with them (not that they're particularly hostile anyway. Iran hasn't attacked another country in forever).

I just don't think that cyber warfare, or physical warfare for that matter, is the answer.

[Bowler1]

As we all link up and let computers control more and more of our world the risk of ture cyber war gets scary. I suspect in the end this is another version of the cold war as countries and large corporations compete with each other for advantage, lets hope so.

But just imagine your cash card stopped working and all banking records were scrambled. This happened to the whole of the UK in a second. So sort of like the Euro crisis but worse, no-one could access money. The records would eventually be restored and possibly in just a few days. All very, very unlikely but the damage caused by this would be something, riots for sure, but what else would happen?

Interesting views on Iran, SE.

[Shane Enochs]

Originally Posted by Bowler1

Interesting views on Iran, SE.

I think we, for whatever reason, usually see the "enemy" as something else other than human. So whenever we have an enemy (be it the IRA, Al Qaeda, Iran), we see them as incapable of human emotions or thought. It's important to look at why these people do what they do, though.

Al Qaeda's attack on the United States was because of US involvement in affairs that they shouldn't have been meddling in, and the final straw was building bases in Saudi Arabia. So that was their reason. I'm not saying it makes it right, I'm just saying that was their reason for doing what they did.

Iran, on the other hand, feels threatened and rightly so. The United States has 45 military bases in the countries surrounding Iran. On top of that, the UN has been saber rattling for quite a while now. Iran is very aware that sh*t is about to go down.

After seeing what happened in Iraq (no nukes) and Afghanistan (no nukes), and then looking at North Korea (nukes), what might you strive for if you were Iran?

[Moonbat]

I expect this thread to throw up more of a discussion than it has so far, but what surprised (and delighted me) was this week's new scientist had an article on Cyber warefare.

Over the past decade, USexperts have strenuously warned of the ominous possibiity of other nations "rouge states" or terrorists attack US infrastructure through the internet. As it happens, however, it is the US that has developed malicious software and launched it against another country.

It then goes on to talk about the development of nuclear weapons mainly for the fear that the Germans would develop them first, and then how they were used on Japan after Germany was defeated and proved not to have developed them.

It ends with this:

How ironic that the first known military use of cyberwarfare is ostensibly to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons: a new age of mass destruction will being in an effort to close a chapter from the first age of mass destruction.

In reality cyberweaponry is a much bigger threat to 1st world nations than 3rd world, due to the reliance upon technology in those more advanced nations.

With the banking mess up this week in the UK, how prepared are we (or any other nation) to face a serious threat in the form of a attack on technological infrastructure?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Moonbat

With the banking mess up this week in the UK, how prepared are we (or any other nation) to face a serious threat in the form of a attack on technological infrastructure?

Very little, I'd say.

I think it is partly because people can't believe it possible, and only partly because they don't think it is possible.

If I can give an example (and I have just watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, I could not survive without electricity, but my grandmother probably would, and my great grandmother would have no problem at all.

My children have never known a world without online banking, online shopping, social networking, youtube, wikipedia, itunes. To take that away from them would be the same as taking electricity away from me, or them losing an arm, and so they prefer to keep their heads in the sand.

But if this is a Cyberwar, then history tells us that each time a weapon is produced, in turn, a defence will be developed. And so on infinitum...

Or as Vonnegut would say, "So it goes..."

[Moonbat]

then history tells us that each time a weapon is produced, in turn, a defence
will be developed.

Has a defence against nuclear weaponry been developed?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Moonbat

Has a defence against nuclear weaponry been developed?

That question is rather like asking, "Has a defence against gunpowder been developed?"

We do not yet have the ability to dampen nuclear reactions; that is science fiction, however, the deployment of them, first from aircraft, and then by intercontinental ballistic missiles, and then to multiple independentable targeted warheads, has been paralleled by the development of counter attack interceptors; land, sea, air and space based sensors and lately the strategic defence initiative.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18517841

The better you are at detecting cyber-actions, the better you are at infiltrating others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18253331

Iran says it has developed tools that can defend against the sophisticated cyber attack tool known as Flame.

[Vertigo]

Originally Posted by Moonbat

With the banking mess up this week in the UK, how prepared are we (or any other nation) to face a serious threat in the form of a attack on technological infrastructure?

I think this RBS banking mess up is very revealing indeed with regard to our technological vulnerability.

As I understand it it was down to a badly managed upgrade which had errors in it. A relatively minor thing really and nothing compared to the damage that a truly malign cyber attack might be expected to achieve.

So now look at the damage caused by that relatively minor banking glitch. Speaking from my own experience my business has had £5500 tied up for a week by this minor glitch and we don't even bank with them. Others have defaulted on home mortgages, can't get their money etc.

As I say this was only a relatively minor glitch yet we can see the damage caused by a single major bank going down for just a few hours. Just imagine the effect if multiple major banks got taken down for several days.

Another great vulnerability in the modern day is the GPS system. Most of us think this is only about finding your way through the streets of London (or wherever). However, what many people aren't aware of is just how many critical businesses are dependent on the time signal from the GPS system. Most businesses don't have an atomic clock in their basements but the GPS time signal effectively gives them one (accurate to within 100 billionths of a second according to the US gov site) and one that is frequently used not just by financial institutions (timing of transactions) but also by energy networks, instrumentation, meteorology, and I'm sure many others. Some kind of cyber attack that took out the GPS network would have devastating consequences.

As Moonbat suggested such an attack would be orders of magnitude more devastating to a developed country than to an undeveloped one.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Vertigo

Another great vulnerability in the modern day is the GPS system. Most of us think this is only about finding your way through the streets of London (or wherever).

American researchers took control of a flying drone by "hacking" into its GPS system

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18643134

What if you could take down one of these drones delivering FedEx packages and use that as your missile?" Fox News quoted Mr Humphreys.

"That's the same mentality the 911 attackers had."

[Vertigo]

Of course it's not just cyber warfare that we are vulnerable to but a serious sun storm could do even more damage.

I guess all this is the price that we have to pay for our increasing dependence on technology. Things like this will always involve games of leap frog; security gets improved, anti-security beats the improvements, security is improved again and so on. We see this happening everyday with our anti-virus software packages (I trust everyone is running one ). This will always continue like this and I can't see that ever really changing. Sadly, within humanity, there is, has always been, and probably always will be a stong streak of vandalism; the desire to mess up other people lives for no reason other than their ability to do so. Incidentally, in my opinion, that attitude extends beyond just hackers to many people seeking power, in government, within protest/action groups, terrorist organisations, criminal organisations and so on.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by Shane Enochs

I think we, for whatever reason, usually see the "enemy" as something else other than human. So whenever we have an enemy (be it the IRA, Al Qaeda, Iran), we see them as incapable of human emotions or thought. It's important to look at why these people do what they do, though.

Al Qaeda's attack on the United States was because of US involvement in affairs that they shouldn't have been meddling in, and the final straw was building bases in Saudi Arabia. So that was their reason. I'm not saying it makes it right, I'm just saying that was their reason for doing what they did.

Iran, on the other hand, feels threatened and rightly so. The United States has 45 military bases in the countries surrounding Iran. On top of that, the UN has been saber rattling for quite a while now. Iran is very aware that sh*t is about to go down.

After seeing what happened in Iraq (no nukes) and Afghanistan (no nukes), and then looking at North Korea (nukes), what might you strive for if you were Iran?

Excellent post, Shane.