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The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

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

#131

Post by iand »

vinayms wrote: post #107

I am just your average software dev with zero knowledge of malware creation, speculating here, and might come across as a fool. The author sensationalizes the effort of the creators, painting a Holywoodesque scenario where they break into every possible software company to steal keys to misrepresent the software, going undetected by every possible security company etc. Since this is a Quora post, I can live with him…

The sophistication is to do all this while remaining completelt undetected in a highly secure environment. Iran didn't find Stuxnet, it was stumbled over by Kaspersky Lab.

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

#132

Post by 0x00000000 »

vinayms wrote: post #107

I am just your average software dev with zero knowledge of malware creation, speculating here, and might come across as a fool. The author sensationalizes the effort of the creators, painting a Holywoodesque scenario where they break into every possible software company to steal keys to misrepresent the software, going undetected by every possible security company etc. Since this is a Quora post, I can live with him…

That is a huge oversimplification. Do yourself a favor and read this http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/secur... or just the 'Executive Summary' if you don't want to read the whole thing

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

#133

Post by xmodem »

vinayms wrote: post #107

I am just your average software dev with zero knowledge of malware creation, speculating here, and might come across as a fool. The author sensationalizes the effort of the creators, painting a Holywoodesque scenario where they break into every possible software company to steal keys to misrepresent the software, going undetected by every possible security company etc. Since this is a Quora post, I can live with him…

You should read "Countdown to zero day"[0]. Some of the measures that were taken exceeded what anyone in Hollywood could ever imagine.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Zero-Day-Stuxnet-Digital/dp...

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

#134

Post by LeonM »

cptskippy wrote: post #116

> This driver was digitally signed by Realtek, which means that the authors of the worm were somehow able to break into the most secure location in a huge Taiwanese company, and steal the most secret key that this company owns, without Realtek finding out about it. > Later, whoever wrote that driver started signing it with secret keys from JMicron, another big Taiwanese company. Yet again, the authors had to figure o…

That's not how it works. You need the private key to sign the drivers. This is not a file that developers of those companies have access too.

These keys are usually stored on a HSM. Even if you want to, you wouldn't be able to access the keys stored inside. This is specifically designed to protect against rogue/bribed personnel.

So it's highly unlikely that the stuxnet developers had possession of the key. I'd bet that they somehow had access to the HSM, to have it sign the driver for them.

Companies of this size are audited regularly, so access to the HSM is expected to be strictly controlled.

So yes, it is a pretty secure location, and a highly guarded secret. The fact that they pulled it of to break into not one, but two of those secrets is extremely impressive on it's own.

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

#135

Post by fractallyte »

Certhas wrote: post #99
Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Blackouts. Do what Stuxnet did to the control rooms of a large number of power plants, spinning up the machines to hard, coordinate this attack so it triggers in a large number of places. If you can pull this off for a continental scale, you're looking at potentially months to restore power to everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_gr...

This was the subject of the novel Blackout by Marc Elsberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackout_(Elsberg_novel))

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

#136

Post by steego »

ythn wrote: post #122
steego wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what's worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people? The slow obliteration and starving of millions of people. Imagine Venezuela, but much much worse. Picture a society that doesn't know how to create institutions, conduct trade and collaborate with the people around them without the aid of a computers. Now, I don't know if disabling their computers would result in an incredibly dysfunctional so…

> You know what's worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people? The slow obliteration and starving of millions of people Yeah, I'm going to have to sort of disagree with you there. Once you are dead, you are dead. If you are starving, things can still change and you can still have free agency.

To be clear, I'm not comparing death to starvation.

I'm comparing death by obliteration to death by starvation.

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

#137

Post by ams6110 »

organicmultiloc wrote: post #130
indescions_2018 wrote: post #113

Stuxnet changed history. Any "game of chicken" style equilibria is broken if the probability a nuclear actor's command and control drops below 100%. If there is even a 1% chance that when a Big Red Button is pushed the missiles fail to launch the game becomes unwinnable. Simulations of imperfect information in dynamic brinkmanship where both players are known to have advanced cyber capabilities results in a single dr…

The problem is not everyone on the world stage is a rational game theory nerd that links to papers like we want them to be. Also 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster, so maybe we should stop that.

> 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster

Has it? The last 60 years have been relatively peaceful, by historical standards.

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

#138

Post by yosito »

steego wrote: post #85
Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You know what's worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people? The slow obliteration and starving of millions of people. Imagine Venezuela, but much much worse. Picture a society that doesn't know how to create institutions, conduct trade and collaborate with the people around them without the aid of a computers. Now, I don't know if disabling their computers would result in an incredibly dysfunctional so…

Who stands to benefit by destabilizing the western world to such a degree? Clearly some big players like Russia and China, as well as some smaller players can benefit from destabilizing the western world a little bit. But if they destroy it to the point where millions of people are suffering, they'll bring suffering on themselves as well. It seems to me that they're probably motivated to level the playing field and gain dominance more than completely destroying or starving people on a large scale.

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

#139

Post by mykull »

vinayms wrote: post #107

I am just your average software dev with zero knowledge of malware creation, speculating here, and might come across as a fool. The author sensationalizes the effort of the creators, painting a Holywoodesque scenario where they break into every possible software company to steal keys to misrepresent the software, going undetected by every possible security company etc. Since this is a Quora post, I can live with him…

Just addressing the last thing you said, I think sophistication has to do with the level of knowledge required to implement. Whether that means knowledge politely asked for or through other means has implications for the difficulty of implementation but perhaps not sophistication of the software.

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

#140

Post by tscherno »

LeonM wrote: post #134
cptskippy wrote: post #116

> This driver was digitally signed by Realtek, which means that the authors of the worm were somehow able to break into the most secure location in a huge Taiwanese company, and steal the most secret key that this company owns, without Realtek finding out about it. > Later, whoever wrote that driver started signing it with secret keys from JMicron, another big Taiwanese company. Yet again, the authors had to figure o…

That's not how it works. You need the private key to sign the drivers. This is not a file that developers of those companies have access too. These keys are usually stored on a HSM. Even if you want to, you wouldn't be able to access the keys stored inside. This is specifically designed to protect against rogue/bribed personnel. So it's highly unlikely that the stuxnet developers had possession of the key. I'd bet th…

That`s how it should work in theory, in practice it was most likely how the parent has described it.
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