21–30 of 116 posts
Not trying to claim whataboutism, but I think there's an elephant in the room. The end result of the NSA saying "ok, as of today we've completely disarmed our cyberweapon stockpile and released patches for all vulnerabilities to the appropriate software companies" wouldn't be the end of cyberattacks. It would just be someone else doing them. I don't know what the real solution is. Maybe there is none.
This is merely a taste of what is to come. When President Obama stated in December[0] that we will deliver a "proportional response" to Russian hacking at the "time and place of our own choosing", it seemed that most of the country was proud, almost gleeful at the thought that we would be striking back. I for one was mortified. We should not be escalating cyberwar, even if we do have proof of who attacked us. People…
And at what point, after "cyber-damaging" some piece of critical infrastructure (and/or harming/killing people), does the the other side run out of exploits and just launch actual missiles instead?
Two questions 1. Why do they not simply take the weapons of a network? Maybe store it on some physical media, or a computer not networked unless it's time to take a Kim down a notch? 2. Are these "weapons" really that dastardly? Most of these common ransom-ware and viruses are easily avoided, and only succeed because of naive users. Backdoors aren't a weapon, they're there on purpose. Sniffing, spying, and logging ca…
> Most of these common ransom-ware and viruses are easily avoided, and only succeed because of naive users. The problem is that the large majority of the users is naive.
This is merely a taste of what is to come. When President Obama stated in December[0] that we will deliver a "proportional response" to Russian hacking at the "time and place of our own choosing", it seemed that most of the country was proud, almost gleeful at the thought that we would be striking back. I for one was mortified. We should not be escalating cyberwar, even if we do have proof of who attacked us. People…
Oh what a world we live in where cyberwarfare could result in death. I would have never thought, as a kid, that life (and death) would end up this "real".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Koch_(hacker)
[2] (German) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB-Hack
Cyberwar hasn't necessarily led to the massive loss of life associated with nuclear or chemical weapons. Until that happens (or like with nuclear weapons, we can culturally show how much of a zero-sum game it is), ordinary people won't have an incentive to take action. Technically minded people may carry capital, but we're vastly outnumbered by the dwindling working class politically.
Hopefully these issues will also put a stop to government's requesting software backdoor access.
Backdoors in US infrastructure = invitation to Russia and China to go right through it.
Not trying to claim whataboutism, but I think there's an elephant in the room. The end result of the NSA saying "ok, as of today we've completely disarmed our cyberweapon stockpile and released patches for all vulnerabilities to the appropriate software companies" wouldn't be the end of cyberattacks. It would just be someone else doing them. I don't know what the real solution is. Maybe there is none.
Not trying to claim whataboutism, but I think there's an elephant in the room. The end result of the NSA saying "ok, as of today we've completely disarmed our cyberweapon stockpile and released patches for all vulnerabilities to the appropriate software companies" wouldn't be the end of cyberattacks. It would just be someone else doing them. I don't know what the real solution is. Maybe there is none.
Somebody could have done that right now as well, but nobody did make them so far (or used them in any significant way that people know of). Instead of (ab)using somebody else's mistakes to your own advantage (and possibly have it backfire) you could also tell that person about their mistakes so the whole world could benefit and there would be 1 issue less in the world to worry about.
Here's one reason such a stockpile could be used for good: say a previously unknown vuln is attacking "our" (whomever that is for you) infrastructure. The command and control has been traced back to a cluster that's vulnerable to one of the weapons in your stockpile. Now you can potentially disable it, stop it spreading, tell all of them to run an updated version of the code that essentially does nothing, etc. For all I know, this could have happened already.