Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

quora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 507 posts

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

#61

Post by diffeomorphism »

chatmasta wrote: post #46
bflesch wrote: post #23

Would it have been easier or harder to implement Stuxnet if the target networks were running some sort of linux? Or if it would've been a mac-only facility? I'm curious.

Linux and Mac have bugs just like Windows. The only reason they have a reputation of being safer is because windows dominates marketshare, so any "spray and pray" type virus will naturally target windows over mac/linux. On the other hand, if you or your organization is the victim of a targeted hack, it makes no difference what OS you're running. Any sufficiently motivated and skilled attacker will eventually find a w…

> The only reason they have a reputation of being safer is because windows dominates marketshare

... and centralized updates for all software and libraries and make it hard to use old libraries and selinux and ...

Of course any software has bugs, but "only reason" is very much false equivocation.

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

#62

Post by danielmg »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #32
saagarjha wrote: post #17

> This driver was digitally signed by Realtek > that driver started signing it with secret keys from JMicron I think this is the scariest part of the worm. Not only do the people writing it have access to zero-days, they also somehow have (possibly physical) access to the private keys of two large corporations.

Both from Taiwan I see. So if the parties involved have some pull with their government it could be that. They also could of: bought them, cracked them or as you said stolen them.

*could have

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

#63

Post by stef25 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #18
gadders wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Without wanting to get in to Middle East political discussions, I don't think anyone there wants to sincerely "wipe out" another nation. The consequences would just be brutal and wouldn't be worth it.

I think Israel is much more in the business of targeted strikes on personnel and infrastructure to keep their enemies in check, something they're very capable of.

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

#64

Post by raverbashing »

saagarjha wrote: post #17

> This driver was digitally signed by Realtek > that driver started signing it with secret keys from JMicron I think this is the scariest part of the worm. Not only do the people writing it have access to zero-days, they also somehow have (possibly physical) access to the private keys of two large corporations.

I'm not so sold on the belief of the author the keys were kept under best security practices.

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

#65

Post by AmericanChopper »

omribahumi wrote: post #14
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…

I want to second this. The things I wrote throughout my career that I'm most proud of aren't very complex. I find it very satisfying to understand a problem so well, up to the point you can find a simple and elegant solution to it. It makes the solution easier to reason about with other team members, and easier for the team to maintain it later. I see this as making your domain expertise available as a framework for…

Simplicity is always a sign of a quality solution. I’m not sure why anybody would ever conflate complexity with quality or sophistication. I wrote some very complex code in college, but it wasn’t very high quality.

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

#66

Post by stef25 »

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?

A usb drive discreetly dropped in the parking lot, labelled cat memes would probably do the trick

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

#67

Post by nathanm412 »

vbsteven wrote: post #39

The scary thing about this is: Stuxnet is one of the "most sophisticated" pieces of malware we have discovered up until now . Who knows what kinds of software are still out there quietly doing their thing in the shadows.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

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

#68

Post by Harvey-Specter »

nathanm412 wrote: post #67
vbsteven wrote: post #39

The scary thing about this is: Stuxnet is one of the "most sophisticated" pieces of malware we have discovered up until now . Who knows what kinds of software are still out there quietly doing their thing in the shadows.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

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

#69

Post by Clubber »

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…

Yes, in my experience, solving a problem / feature well involves three steps:

1. Get the code to work 2. Clean up the code 3. Simplify the code

1 is self explanatory. 2 involves removing any logical redundancy, separating and cleaning the logic into methods, etc. 3 involves simplifying logic and logical mechanisms.

Most developers only do step 1 and maybe step 2. Step 3 is where beauty comes in.

If I could organize my thoughts around this concept, it would probably make a pretty good article. I don't know who the source is but a good quote goes something like this, "real genius isn't solving the complex, it's solving the complex in a simple way."

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

#70

Post by rollulus »

lol-lol wrote: post #31

I would argue that this one was more sophisticated: http://pferrie.tripod.com/papers/zmist.pdf What I am seeing lately with malware is increasing decline in sophistication, today malware is lame compared to the malware created around 2000. I would think that level of low level knowledge is rapidly dropping. When there were still real file infectors, there were some serious nasty technologies involved (btw, todays ran…

I agree. Mistfall (and z0mbie himself) was years ahead of its time.

For those not aware of Mistfall: typical viruses simply append their code to the target. To avoid detection, polymorphism was introduced: viruses generate permutations of decryption logic for the actual static but encrypted virus body. The next step was metamorphism: the virus body itself got permuted. Mistfall was one step further: it disassembled the host, merged in its own permuted body and rebuilt the host. Here is an article by the author himself [1]. This was in 2000.

In general, before hacking and cybercrime became a commercial activity, there was a lively virus writing scene, where highly skilled people played the cat and mouse game with anti virus producers, created magazines with the sources of their creations and wrote articles.

Too bad that z0mbie disappeared. Sometimes when news about elite Russian hackers hits the news I wonder if it's him.

[1]: http://z0mbie.daemonlab.org/autorev.txt

Post reply on HN