471–480 of 507 posts
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99.99% of the time, Windows works just fine for me. Stuxnet only needed to work once.
It worked multiple times. And it needed to propagate, undetected, for months until it made its way into the nuclear facility. It didn’t just work once.
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Most importantly it worked very successfully. With Windows, Google search, or most of the others mentioned here, they have had a huge number of problems. The word used was "sophisticated." I think that also implies some level of near-flawlessness in the end result.
... except it was discovered and widely publicized.
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> The rest of it is all about asking the associated companies, politely, to cooperate. What keeps this cooperation secret? It would only take one weak link at any one of those companies to reveal -- accidentally or otherwise -- that they were coerced into providing their signing keys. As soon as that got out, speculation runs amok: Are all products from said company compromised? This would be ruinous to a company, so…
I'm not sure that it would be ruinous. Isn't RSA still trusted? People have a tendency to overlook or even defend broken protocol when it's "the good guys"
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Err, they absolutely were trying for a nuclear weapon. That’s what Stuxnet and (later) JCPOA were trying to stop.
You're confusing uranium enrichment with attempts to build nuclear weapons. Irans's research into nuclear weapons has ended in 2003, 15 years ago. Iran has nuclear power plants though, and uranium enrichment is needed to fuel them. I think the reason Trump and Netanyahu are so enraged by the JCPOA agreement is that it makes concessions to Iran in exchange of.. nothing, since Iran already didn't have any active nuclea…
> Iran has nuclear power plants though, and uranium enrichment is needed to fuel them.
They have a single commercial reactor[0], and it doesn't need the enrichment levels they are producing.
Most reactors are light water reactors (of two types – PWR and BWR) and require uranium to be enriched from 0.7% to 3-5% U-235 in their fuel. This is normal low-enriched uranium (LEU). There is some interest in taking enrichment levels to about 7%, and even close to 20% for certain special power reactor fuels, as high-assay LEU (HALEU).[1]
Iran has over 200kg(!) of 20% enriched uranium[2]. I guess it could be for an unbuilt, experimental reactor like they claim. It seems unlikely, since they haven't pursued any contracts for a reactor like that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushehr_Nuclear_Power_Plant
[1] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...
[2] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
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Ok, still seemingly the trick Stuxnet used was looping a good copy of those fancy panels and (still through windows) changing (slightly) the operating parameters of the machine, so in this case Windows (directly or indirectly) was capable of monitoring the device and change its operating status.
Are you saying that there are no zero-days for platforms other than Windows? There could just as well have been a Linux computer used as interface to the embedded system that runs the centrifuges, that could be owned.
What I was trying to say is that something that has a more direct connection to the device is less likely to be prone on this specific kind of attack, which is AFAICU a sort of MITM (displaying a loop of the recorded display), and of course with a very "vertical" and "dedicated" operating system there should be less chances of the "casual" insertion of a USB stick in it (and possibly even no USB port at all on the actual hardware used).
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> 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.
The world also became a lot more connected, so we're exposed a lot more to wars and such abroad, and we've matured morally speaking and can see that all wars are unnecessary.
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I agree that markets tend to buffer the effects significantly. The problem is in times of crisis, the appreciation of market dynamics and rule of law tend to wane. Even if those things are intact, the flow of goods and services can be undermined by well-intentioned but misguided politicians. My point was simple. Despite the systems of trade, a catastrophic shock in trade or production systems could literally kill mil…
I’m intrigued - how does that play out in your head? There’s a disaster causing social collapse but a free market for food remains. Demand outstrips supply so it becomes too expensive for many to buy. What do people do before they can go back to the land and sow their own food? What about areas with a lack of suitable available land (as referenced in a sister post by the potato famine)?
The scarcity, Mukherjee writes, was caused by large-scale exports of food from India for use in the war theatres and consumption in Britain - India exported more than 70,000 tonnes of rice between January and July 1943, even as the famine set in. This would have kept nearly 400,000 people alive for a full year. Mr Churchill turned down fervent pleas to export food to India citing a shortage of ships - this when shiploads of Australian wheat, for example, would pass by India to be stored for future consumption in Europe. As imports dropped, prices shot up and hoarders made a killing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10...
I guess if I was to assume a scenario that could lead to the starvation of millions, I'd imagine a poorer country making the mistake of relying too much on some sort of electronic platform to trade and save their money. Let's say this country/region also relied too much on exporting some agricultural commodity that was being affect by a change in climate.
A catastrophic attack on their banking platform could theoretically destroy the local populations confidence in the trading currency as well as scare away foreign lenders. It may create incentives where it's more advantageous to hoard food and sell it on the international markets rather than distribute it to local customers who can't pay.
Free markets tend to create the most value in the long run. In some situations, hoarding can create incentives to distribute to underserved areas. In scenarios where the underserved areas do not have a means of payment (monetary, barter, indentured servitude, etc.), free markets and hoarding can simply be horrifyingly cruel.
What are your thoughts?
I'd argue that Google Search is much more sophisticated than Stuxnet. Windows is much more sophisticated. Linux is more sophisticated than Stuxnet. The list goes on. We tend to ignore the sophistication of things we are familiar with, and hype those that surprise. But that's not a fair measure of anything.
In my view, the sophistication is implied by the breadth of expertise required to put the whole thing together. Google Search and the OS landscape are for sure broad and sophisticated. However, their development was accomplished by computer scientists. In order for stuxnet to be effective, it was necessary to employ expertise in: - Uranium enrichment methods and processes - Capital equipment control systems and their…
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I’m intrigued - how does that play out in your head? There’s a disaster causing social collapse but a free market for food remains. Demand outstrips supply so it becomes too expensive for many to buy. What do people do before they can go back to the land and sow their own food? What about areas with a lack of suitable available land (as referenced in a sister post by the potato famine)?
I honestly didn't invest too much time playing out scenarios out in my head, rather I was mentally recalling events in modern history where we've simply allowed millions of people to starve. From a BBC article: The scarcity, Mukherjee writes, was caused by large-scale exports of food from India for use in the war theatres and consumption in Britain - India exported more than 70,000 tonnes of rice between January and…