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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

#73

Post by zarriak »

drawnwren wrote: post #58

What's the workaround to the new nyt ad blocker blocker?

Do you mean anti ad-blocking or the new detection for "private" mode? It took the NYT like 6 hours after WaPo started detecting incognito mode for them to start doing the same thing. That was about a week ago.

I just open chrome to read the articles but if you want to be away from google, install a firefox derivative and setup to accept trackers and the like and delete all cookies on shutdown.

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

#74

Post by imchillyb »

tehjoker wrote: post #18

The USG is insane. The evidence of Russian interference in our elections is not that impressive and it probably didn't have much impact (compared with Clinton sending American advisors and billions to Yeltsin in the 90s). Instead, to paper over the decrepit nature of the American political system, they are attacking civilian infrastructure in a nuclear armed nation. Insanity.

> ... to paper over the decrepit nature of the American political system, they are attacking civilian infrastructure in a nuclear armed nation. @tehjoker

Uh, I think what you /really/ mean is:

In retaliation to numerous US Network Infrastructure incursions -from the same entity- the US has attempted their own software implantation within the attacker's networks.

Fixed that for ya! ;)

_____

Also, from the article itself which you apparently didn't read:

""" 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. """

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

#75

Post by Phlarp »

solarkraft wrote: post #30
Phlarp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I prefer security focused organizations attempted to deploy their limited resources more effectively. Well trained and security conscious end users are very hard to attack.

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

#76

Post by meritt »

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.

Have you read about the 2016 United States election interference? [1] Or the Russian probing of the US power grid? [2]

Russia has been attacking critical infrastructure in the US for years. This is at best an incredibly latent response from a government who in many cases welcomes these attacks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/us/politics/russian-hacke...

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

#77

Post by ghostpepper »

zzzcpan wrote: post #35
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…

I'm not sure about the US, but in Russia and, well, in all former Soviet states energy systems are not actually connected to the internet and where there is automation it can all fallback to manual operations, so they can survive cyber attacks like nothing happened (almost, as figuring things out and communications cost some time).

This didn't stop the 2015 attack Ukraine's power systems from wreaking havoc, although I suppose if it was entirely computerized they could have been offline for much longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_gr...

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

#78

Post by Nextgrid »

sansnomme wrote: post #68
geofft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Note that POTS pretty much doesn't exist anymore. Analog phone lines only run up to a point at which they get converted to SIP which then runs over IP (while it's often using "private" networks, it's not air-gapped from the Internet and thus can still be compromised).
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