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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

#61

Post by dang »

emXdem wrote: post #50
_iyig wrote: post #23

“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 (dig…

The New York Times has a trash editorial board. Fuck them with a barbed instrument made of lava.

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You may not owe the New York Times better, but you do owe the community better if you want to post here.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#63

Post by dang »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #32
dang wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It got a software penalty In other words, HN is not ranking posts by votes, but by some (presumably handcrafted) algorithm that shapes which topics are more likely to make it to the front page. TIL.

All our software is proudly handcrafted.

This is how HN has always worked. There are three components to the system: community, software, and moderation. You need all three in order to keep a place like this functioning. None of this is secret; we post about it all the time and are happy to answer questions.

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

#64

Post by geofft »

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…

My old apartment's intercom system had a bit of advertising material saying it was "computerized, not internet-connected" (or something like that) - it was an electronic system, but all it had was a connection up to the front door entry system, a terminal for the doorman, and the ability to call 911 if you pressed the panic button. No fancy cloud apps to drain your battery and then get hacked.

If an apartment intercom can realize this is important, why can't an oil refinery?

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

#66

Post by mysterydip »

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…

Good shortsighted intentions? I've heard something like this before:

Person A: "but how will we know if one of our closed networks gets compromised?"

Person B: "I know, let's add remote monitoring capability!"

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

#67

Post by Redoubts »

""" Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.

Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

Because the new law defines the actions in cyberspace as akin to traditional military activity on the ground, in the air or at sea, no such briefing would be necessary, they added. """

Way to bury the lede

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

#68

Post by sansnomme »

geofft wrote: post #64
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…

My old apartment's intercom system had a bit of advertising material saying it was "computerized, not internet-connected" (or something like that) - it was an electronic system, but all it had was a connection up to the front door entry system, a terminal for the doorman, and the ability to call 911 if you pressed the panic button. No fancy cloud apps to drain your battery and then get hacked. If an apartment interco…

I presume it works through Plain Old Telephone System and pre-recorded messages and not Twilio with Google Cloud Speech.

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

#69

Post by mirimir »

megaremote wrote: post #57
mirimir wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall reading, some years ago, that the US reserves the right to respond to cyberattacks with nuclear weapons. I wonder if Russia also does. Playing games with power grids etc is arguably much higher stakes than fighters messing with each other, or even with passenger planes. Or navy ships passing too closely. Edit: I guess that it was more like a heads up for adversaries. As in "don't think that we won't". Just i…

> that the US reserves the right From whom do they reserve that right?

OK, it was a bad choice of words.

Basically, the US has warned adversaries.

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

#70

Post by alexandercrohde »

_iyig wrote: post #23

“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 (dig…

Uhh, I think "attack" is the only term. If you installed such software in US power plants it would almost certainly be described as "hacking," "a [cyber] attack", and likely if multiple targets "terrorism."

Regardless of your opinion US/Russia, we should all hold that words need objective meanings that can't be "bent" for convenience.

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