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U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#21

Post by peterlk »

PatrolX wrote: post #10
pmoriarty wrote: post #8

"For the past year, energy companies in the United States and oil and gas operators across North America discovered their networks had been examined by the same Russian hackers who successfully dismantled the safety systems in 2017 at Petro Rabigh, a Saudi petrochemical plant and oil refinery." Why are these systems even connected to the internet? Decades ago, creating such connections might have been a forgivable ov…

Internet connected or not they'll always be vulnerable.

I don't understand your point. Everything is vulnerable; you can never secure something fully. Security in layers is how security works, and disconnecting critical systems from the internet seems like a good layer to add.

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#22

Post by systematical »

PatrolX wrote: post #10
pmoriarty wrote: post #8

"For the past year, energy companies in the United States and oil and gas operators across North America discovered their networks had been examined by the same Russian hackers who successfully dismantled the safety systems in 2017 at Petro Rabigh, a Saudi petrochemical plant and oil refinery." Why are these systems even connected to the internet? Decades ago, creating such connections might have been a forgivable ov…

Internet connected or not they'll always be vulnerable.

See stuxnet

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#23

Post by _iyig »

“So far, there is no evidence that the United States has actually turned off the power in any of the efforts to establish what American officials call a “persistent presence” inside Russian networks, just as the Russians have not turned off power in the United States.”

The NYT decision to frame these efforts as “attacks” rather than “infiltration” is certainly an interesting one. In essence, the U.S. has built a (digital) mutually-assured destruction deterrent. We wouldn’t refer to past nuclear drills or tests as “attacks” on Russia, so I find the use of that phrase here intriguing. I assume they simply borrowed the vocabulary of security researchers, knowing that it would mean something different to much of their readership.

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#24

Post by mycall »

pmoriarty wrote: post #8

"For the past year, energy companies in the United States and oil and gas operators across North America discovered their networks had been examined by the same Russian hackers who successfully dismantled the safety systems in 2017 at Petro Rabigh, a Saudi petrochemical plant and oil refinery." Why are these systems even connected to the internet? Decades ago, creating such connections might have been a forgivable ov…

Air gap systems can still be attacked.

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#25

Post by mycall »

holoduke wrote: post #7
true_tuna wrote: post #6

Holy crap. This is huge news. Isn’t a cyber attack on critical infrastructure kind of an act of war? I’m not sure how wise this course of action is.

It's part of a larger game these nations are playing. There will not be a war between Russia and the US. Not with China who is ultimately the enemy of both Russia and the US. These incidents are meant to keep each other awake.

This depends. If blackouts start happening, the situation could escalate to war pretty fast.

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#26

Post by yasp »

mycall wrote: post #25
holoduke wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's part of a larger game these nations are playing. There will not be a war between Russia and the US. Not with China who is ultimately the enemy of both Russia and the US. These incidents are meant to keep each other awake.

This depends. If blackouts start happening, the situation could escalate to war pretty fast.

Plus, what if multiple state actors penetrate a system and each lay their own "implants"? Mutually assuredly destruction only works if you can attribute an attack. Unless you're planning on destroying non-guilty actors too. What if NK, China, and Russia all hack the same system and then eventually the system fails catastrophically as a result of malware and no one takes credit. How could the US respond? What if the perpetrator were an adversary that wasn't even known to have penetrated the system?

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#27

Post by kindof-bullshit »

dang wrote: post #4
yasp wrote: post #2

Despite having received 18 votes in 5 hours and while never having advanced beyond page 3 on the list of trending links (position #67 currently), this piece trails behind another Times piece, "Why don't more American men take paternity leave?", which is on page 2 (position #45 currently), and which has received only 6 votes in the span of 8 hours. WTF

It got a software penalty, probably correctly, because this topic is unfortunately more likely to lead nationalistic flamewar than thoughtful discussion. But let's try taking the penalty off and seeing. By the way, you can't derive story rank from points and submission time—HN's system is more complex than that. That's all that "WTF" means here.

A "software" penalty. Okay, Dan. Why don't you just come out and say someone modded it, rather than hide behind the veil of some dubious natural language processing or ratio analysis.

That's like blaming the dog for a fart.

The truth is that everyone operating HN would rather keep users in the dark about how and why stories land where they do. The idea being that if we could predict what the software might do, we'd try to manipulate the narrative, and if we knew when the hand of god intervened we might dare blaspheme.

But that gives up the truth anyway, because if we cannot know what "the software" will do, then we are prevented from knowing such facts, only in service to a false narrative, and that, in and of itself, is an unnatural intervention and willful deception.

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#29

Post by Phlarp »

noir_lord wrote: post #17
PatrolX wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet connected or not they'll always be vulnerable.

More or less vulnerable is the question though. Given the state of play with security, a connection to the internet is pretty much going to always be more vulnerable.

This is about nation state adversaries. There should be no illusions that they laugh at people who think they are safe behind air gaps and routinely cross them. Often both infiltrating and exfiltrating data.

Re: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

#30

Post by solarkraft »

Phlarp wrote: post #29
noir_lord wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less vulnerable is the question though. Given the state of play with security, a connection to the internet is pretty much going to always be more vulnerable.

This is about nation state adversaries. There should be no illusions that they laugh at people who think they are safe behind air gaps and routinely cross them. Often both infiltrating and exfiltrating data.

Would you prefer systems being very easy to attack or very hard?
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