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Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

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Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#51

Post by mike_hearn »

gds44 wrote: post #21
simmerup wrote: post #8

It does feel mad that we outsource so much of our national infrastructure maintenance to China. When/if they invade Taiwan, how are we going to do anything when they have that sort of leverage over us? It was bad enough with Russias gas

Well US is not dependent on anyone for her Energy needs. Unlike China. Its quite vulnerable on that front if a few pipelines blow up ala nord stream. This is also why the US has such a large presence in the middle east.

You can convert coal to gas and petrol, and China has a lot of coal. So it can be reduced to an industrial scaling problem which China is very good at.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#52

Post by fabian2k »

roenxi wrote: post #47
kibwen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US not having a policy of signing new people up to the anti-Russia military alliance every few years Weird how all of Russia's neighbors are eager to join a military alliance protecting them from Russia. I wonder if that has something to do with Russia's actions towards its neighbors? No, no, surely the US is to blame for that...

Yeah, sure. But the US chooses who it integrates with militarily. An alternative approach would have been to say "hey, yeah we can see why you'd want to join - but this will foment tensions with Russia, so you can't". That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours. It would have been difficult to get worse outcomes with that approach than what the powers that be managed to get…

The only thing that would have changed is that Russia now also could invade the baltic states. Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded?

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#53

Post by z3phyr »

atemerev wrote: post #31
fabian2k wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours?

Autocracies are inherently unstable and dangerous in this regard. They have every incentive to be irrational and unwilling to negotiate. They call it “sovereignty”, which it isn’t — just a sparkling dictatorship. Autocracies have no place in the modern world.

And yet autocracies are historically the most "successful" types of governments. Humans always and eventually end up selecting autocracies with thunderous applause.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#54

Post by hollerith »

CJefferson wrote: post #49

I wonder if we, in secret, have “mutually assured destruction” of cyber-warfare. It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones. It would be not be that hard to make these worms intelligently use IP to target particular countries. It’s hard for me to…

>It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones.

If that is true, then how come we have not heard much about erasure of data on phones and computers in Ukraine by Russian hackers?

Please don't say that the Kremlin is holding its 0-days in reserve for a more serious conflict! the Kremlin sees the Ukraine situation as extremely serious for Russian national security. It uses large numbers of missiles costing over a million dollars each to degrade Ukraine's electrical grid. It has attempted to assassinate the president of Ukraine many times. Why wouldn't it be all-out trying to do as much damage as possible to Ukraine through cyberattacks?

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#55

Post by sublimefire »

ahubert wrote: post #3

Author here - if you have any questions, please do let me know!

As an SWE I do agree somewhat with what you say but this story is not complete. If you look at the attacks on Ukraine and the cybersecurity damage done it was fairly small in the grand scheme of things. Another important thing is that Microsoft helped them to fight back as well, so it was not a terrible investment. Was there any quantifiable risk assessment done to understand the potential damages if Russians carried out similar attacks in the Netherlands?

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#56

Post by AnimalMuppet »

roenxi wrote: post #47
kibwen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US not having a policy of signing new people up to the anti-Russia military alliance every few years Weird how all of Russia's neighbors are eager to join a military alliance protecting them from Russia. I wonder if that has something to do with Russia's actions towards its neighbors? No, no, surely the US is to blame for that...

Yeah, sure. But the US chooses who it integrates with militarily. An alternative approach would have been to say "hey, yeah we can see why you'd want to join - but this will foment tensions with Russia, so you can't". That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours. It would have been difficult to get worse outcomes with that approach than what the powers that be managed to get…

I don't think Russia invaded Ukraine because it threatened to join NATO. Russia invaded Ukraine because it threatened to have a color revolution leading to a viable democracy in a culture/society that was similar to Russia's. Putin, personally, could not allow that to succeed. It threatened him, personally, too greatly.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#57

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rightbyte wrote: post #11

Who cares? In the case of some sort of big war why would you care about "cyber security" when the day to day problem is not dying from starvation, being drafted, radiation posioning or what ever the problem is. These kind of "we need to prepare" are silly since they implicitly downplay the severity of war and bring us closer to it.

We need to prepare to not be destroyed on the cyber front brings us closer to war? Hard disagree. In a world with sharks, you don't make having to battle a shark more likely by looking less like prey.

Not preparing brings us closer to someone (Russia, China, Iran, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, whoever loses the next presidential election) being able to blackmail society with war-like consequences if we don't do what they want. Worse, more than one adversary could have that level of blackmail on us at once. That's the kind of situation that free peoples fight wars to get out of. And the ones who won't, aren't free for long.

If you consider "not fighting wars" to be more important than "being free", there is nothing more for me to say. And if you think that being free will endure without fighting wars, I think you are hopelessly naive.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#58

Post by r2_pilot »

hollerith wrote: post #54
CJefferson wrote: post #49

I wonder if we, in secret, have “mutually assured destruction” of cyber-warfare. It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones. It would be not be that hard to make these worms intelligently use IP to target particular countries. It’s hard for me to…

>It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones. If that is true, then how come we have not heard much about erasure of data on phones and computers in Ukraine by Russian hackers? Please don't say that the Kremlin is holding its 0-days in reserve for…

In point of fact, Ukraine has been hacked, multiple times during this conflict, and they were hardly damaging. This is in large part due to the fact that this particular conflict(hacking in particular) has been going on longer than just the start of the official war, so Ukraine has been hardening its systems significantly for many years. It goes to show that with dedication, even nation-state actors can be stymied with defense-in-depth.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#59

Post by mcculley »

mike_hearn wrote: post #51
gds44 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well US is not dependent on anyone for her Energy needs. Unlike China. Its quite vulnerable on that front if a few pipelines blow up ala nord stream. This is also why the US has such a large presence in the middle east.

You can convert coal to gas and petrol, and China has a lot of coal. So it can be reduced to an industrial scaling problem which China is very good at.

China imports coal from the United States.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#60

Post by tambre »

distances wrote: post #30
mikewarot wrote: post #19

When I recently asked some air traffic controllers what would happen if GPS became unavailable, it was grumpy sounds all around. I understand a scramble to vector everything to land everything would result in a very busy day for them, because suddenly most planes would be unable to safely navigate, and thus effectively grounded. Cutting the budget for ground based navaids is nuts, in my opinion.

GPS is now often unavailable in eastern/northern parts of Europe due to Russian jamming. Some smaller airfields already had to update their systems not to rely only on GPS.

Finnair at the end of last month suspended service between Helsinki and Tartu due to Russia's GPS jamming [0]. DME is being added next week and they'll resume service next month [1].

[0]: https://news.err.ee/1609328058/finnair-suspends-flights-to-t... [1]: https://news.err.ee/1609343694/finnair-restarts-tartu-flight...

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