The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written • Hacker News Board

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#51

Post by askmike » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

andrelaszlo wrote: post #40

What do you think, are the authors of Stuxnet reading Hacker News? I wonder how tempting it is to comment, and what the repercussions would be.

"throwaway account for obvious reasons - I'm a devops for the C&C servers. Our process is actually quite similar to most other tech companies. We spend half our time arguing over what programming language to use (node/go/rust) and the other half arguing over whether we should use microservices."

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#52

Post by tmoertel » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:07 PM UTC

fapjacks wrote: post #8

I've been arguing about this for the last three days. Mostly around the reason that "complexity" is not strictly the same thing as "sophistication" when it comes to software. Noobs will conflate the two, but experienced programmers will agree that -- just to illustrate my point -- some code which solves a complex problem in a very clever way while also being very clean and easy to maintain will be considered strictly…

Indeed. I think that the mark of sophistication is not complexity but irreducible complexity. Sophisticated solutions are those that have been reduced to their simplest form.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#53

Post by Udik » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:09 PM UTC

placebo wrote: post #41

jjoonathan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has nukes and is trying to build an excuse to wipe out Iran (without incurring internal or international wrath).

source/citation (not so much for the nukes, but for wanting to wipe out Iran)?

Israelis don't want to wipe out Iran (as much as Iran doesn't want to wipe out Israel- I think they have a more generic aspiration to the end of what they call Israeli regime)- but they surely want a weak, divided, impoverished Iran, and they have been lobbying the US for a long time to wage war against it. The US unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement has been in Israel's wishlist for years. Not because it improves the chances of peace or because it makes Iran less of a threat- quite the opposite. But because it weakens it and improves the chances of a war.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#54

Post by ssijak » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:11 PM UTC

And then people make a fuss about Russia "hacking" the election with some dumb Facebook ads which cost less than maxed out Ford Mustang.

When on the other hand we have the state-sponsored military grade/purpose viruses used to attack other nations/regions (Flume attacked a large number of targets and countries) and nobody blinks an eye.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#55

Post by Udik » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:12 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #16

cerebrum wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that Israel is the nation always mongering war against Iran I second you.

Well, to be fair, Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon and wants to wipe out Israel.

To be fair, Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon, as it has been proven again and again by the thorough inspections and controls allowed by the JCPOA agreement, which the US have just undermined and probably killed for good.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#56

Post by Yajirobe » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:13 PM UTC

I have a question. Since the worm travels from USB to USB, does that mean that it infected thousands (or more) of regular people USBs but did nothing, until it found itself in a purity facility? Or was the worm somehow directly sent (physically or digitally) to the facility?

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#57

Post by syeaj » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:16 PM UTC

Yajirobe wrote: post #56

I have a question. Since the worm travels from USB to USB, does that mean that it infected thousands (or more) of regular people USBs but did nothing, until it found itself in a purity facility? Or was the worm somehow directly sent (physically or digitally) to the facility?

IIRC, there was an agent who brought the stick into the facility.

Also, read this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/11/iran-nuclear-c...

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#58

Post by stef25 » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:18 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #27

sneak wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try not to think about how many SREs in the big five are likely receiving a second secret paycheck from Langley and/or Fort Meade.

They mentioned they were Tawainese comapanies. I’d bet it was stolen rather than passed to them by some insider.

The hard part was writing the worm and getting it in to the facility, not getting in to Realtek's network. I would bet.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#59

Post by bhouston » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:19 PM UTC

andrelaszlo wrote: post #40

What do you think, are the authors of Stuxnet reading Hacker News? I wonder how tempting it is to comment, and what the repercussions would be.

Of course at least a few of them are reading Hacker News. I understand from the Snowden files that the teams are moderately large and then run for years. So there were likely many dozens of software developers who contributed to Stuxnet.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#60

Post by jquinby » Fri, May 18, 2018, 12:20 PM UTC

I thoroughly enjoyed this writeup as well: https://www.langner.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/to-kill-a...

Appendix C is my favorite part: a look at all the things that can be gleaned from television footage of the facilities, brief glances at control screens, etc.