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US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

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Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#241

Post by knowaveragejoe »

kbolino wrote: post #226
webXL wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have no real control over either, so why make such a big deal of the former? Not true. Even thought they need to be much smarter about it, people with guns, whom our tax dollars fund and who's power and number I fear and would like to limit, can reduce the likelihood of a terrorist ruining my life. Scientists can do the same for cancer, but unfortunately, we have more people who can fight terrorism that who c…

You cannot effect much control over a signal that you cannot distinguish from random noise. There are so many factors that affect the likelihood of terrorism, and yet even in a bad year that likelihood is insignificant. Our ridiculously outsized counterterrorism efforts are akin to putting a shroud around the Earth to block out cosmic background radiation. It would cost more money than we can fathom, and in the end w…

It's equally hard to measure how much of a threat terrorism actually poses. One could easily make the argument that the reason it's perceived to be so little of a threat today is because we've gotten damn good at stopping terrorist plots. See the recently intercepted ALQ documents which describe how good the West has gotten at tracking their movements and foiling their plans.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#242

Post by MartinCron »

freshhawk wrote: post #178
strags wrote: post #170

"[Obama] repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons—even under the most careful and limited circumstances—could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks. “We discussed the irony, more than once,” one of his aides said." "Irony" is the wrong word. It's "hypocrisy".

Not when you honestly believe in American Exceptionalism

Isn't exceptionalism just a code word for hypocrisy?

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#243

Post by marshray »

cdi wrote: post #235
jbooth wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to politics. Syria, currently best known for massacring their own citizens, chaired the UN human rights council a few years ago. International politics is always going to consist of covert actions on one hand coupled with righteous moral statements on the other. See, for example, the USSR talking about protecting the eastern bloc from western imperialist exploitation by, well, dominating and exploiting their…

>exploiting their countries. any evidence for that? In my understanding the USSR was dominating eastern bloc countries, hindering their democratic economic development by enforcing archaic hierarchical undemocratic regime. Exploiting? I haven't heard about that. Countries were pretty autonomous in all things unrelated to ideology/politics.

I think dominating a country militarily and installing puppet governments and banning their religion and forcing their children to learn your native language is bad enough. If nothing else, the Eastern Bloc was being exploited for the purpose of providing a land buffer zone against military invasion. I.e., the risk of being a front line battlefield was being exported.

If you're looking for a shipping manifest for raw materials from an EB country to the USSR at prices below free market rates I imagine you could find that too. But to me that's not the primary point.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#244

Post by MartinCron »

kbolino wrote: post #142
jerf wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The physical terrorism threat is negligible. The generalized cheap-attack-with-disproportionate-damage threat I can't in good conscience write off quite so readily. Biological attacks are still scarily possible, and if we start talking computer viruses it becomes scarier again. Recall Stuxnet didn't merely inconvenience people, it destroyed hardware. If someone manages to write a virus that, say, destroys a significa…

Terrorist victims in 2001: 3,000 Murder victims in 2001: 15,000 Car collision fatalities in 2001: 42,000 Cancer deaths in 2001: 550,000 The only thing that's disproportionate is how we react to terrorism. (statistics are for United States)

Terrorist victims in 2001: 3,000

That's not entirely true. There were ~3000 terrorism-related deaths, but the point of terrorism is that it victimizes an entire society by creating a culture of fear and uncertainty. That's what differentiates terrorism from (conventional) murder.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#245

Post by [deleted] »

Cadsby wrote: post #205
berntb wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parallel comment by salimmadjd has a point about Pakistan maybe being even worse than Iran, when it comes to terror support (I do doubt that Saudi A as a country is worse). I might stand corrected, there. >>Every powerful country kills the civilians/citizens of other countries To explicitly target civilians is serious because it breaks the laws of war, etc. Democracies generally don't do that.

You are leaving out a rather glaring example. Neither atomic bomb, dropped by the one and only country ever to use them, were dropped on military targets. The "Democracies" of the world kill many innocent civilians, an order of magnitude in fact than any terrorist related event if you really want to compare the two. Not because the people running them are cartoonishly evil or anything, it simply reflects the massive…

[deleted]

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#246

Post by Cadsby »

berntb wrote: post #227
Cadsby wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are leaving out a rather glaring example. Neither atomic bomb, dropped by the one and only country ever to use them, were dropped on military targets. The "Democracies" of the world kill many innocent civilians, an order of magnitude in fact than any terrorist related event if you really want to compare the two. Not because the people running them are cartoonishly evil or anything, it simply reflects the massive…

I wrote: To explicitly target civilians is serious because it breaks the laws of war Got the answer: "kill many innocent civilians" Sigh, it is illegal to target . In a war, civilians will die. My point was that some sides do try to avoid civilan casualities. You didn't argue against my point, you made a spin. Then, someone isn't morally right by being weaker, so different strength have nothing to do with it. The nuc…

> Sigh, it is illegal to target. In a war, civilians will die. My point was that some sides do try to avoid civilan casualities. You didn't argue against my point, you made a spin.

You place a lot of emphasis on intentionality. While it's an aspect worth considering, I don't find it as nearly as persuasive as you seem to. Many military actions are undertaken knowing full well the result with be civilian causalities, often many, and they are done anyway. Like I said earlier, I don't think your distinction means much to the victims whether they were intentional targets or not.

> The nuclear bombs over Japan was 1: a long time ago,

Uh, not really. It's still within living memory for many. And I think highly pertinent when discussing current issues of nuclear weapons/proliferation.

> 2: a complex choice (e.g. military production in cities, different standards in WWII, the target selection process, etc, etc). You condemn without discussing that.

I didn't get into those aspects in the interest of brevity, and because it veers a bit too off topic. I have considered them all at length, and ultimately find them unconvincing from a moral standpoint. Also notice how any actions taken by our society, or those representing it, immediately become complex and a hundred shades of grey. I'm sure those supporting acts of terrorism make similar rationales. No one buys it in that case, and I think we should be highly skeptical when our leaders seek to justify it in ours.

> I am sorry, but I must say that you write simplified propaganda. Please increase quality, I want a better HN. :-(

I'm not sure how to respond to such hyperbole. Everything I've stated is factually true. You can disagree with my interpretation, or the implicit conclusions I've drawn, but labeling it as simplified propaganda is just silly.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#247

Post by marshray »

MartinCron wrote: post #242
freshhawk wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when you honestly believe in American Exceptionalism

Isn't exceptionalism just a code word for hypocrisy?

Perhaps, but it's still useful as a distinct term because it refers to the body of argument used to justify it.

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#248

Post by marshray »

phaus wrote: post #207
strags wrote: post #170

"[Obama] repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons—even under the most careful and limited circumstances—could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks. “We discussed the irony, more than once,” one of his aides said." "Irony" is the wrong word. It's "hypocrisy".

At one point special warfare was also considered taboo, now it is the U.S.'s bread and butter. Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare. When it comes to international conflict, right and wrong are often subjective. Of course someone who is hostile towards the west is going to feel justified about h…

> Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare.

Out of curiosity, what makes you say this?

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#249

Post by dfc »

phaus wrote: post #207
strags wrote: post #170

"[Obama] repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons—even under the most careful and limited circumstances—could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks. “We discussed the irony, more than once,” one of his aides said." "Irony" is the wrong word. It's "hypocrisy".

At one point special warfare was also considered taboo, now it is the U.S.'s bread and butter. Unfortunately while our nation recognized the need to develop our black ops capabilities early on, we are a bit late to the party when it comes to cyber-warfare. When it comes to international conflict, right and wrong are often subjective. Of course someone who is hostile towards the west is going to feel justified about h…

Taboo? Do you have a reference for that? I was always under the impression that the initial resistance to SO was from traditional generals in the pentagon who came up through the infantry and armored ranks...

Re: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

#250

Post by MartinCron »

Symmetry wrote: post #119
wpietri wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the obvious thing would be to look for Internet activity on the machine. E.g., recent files for popular sites in a browser cache directory. Or live network traffic for public netblocks.

But it has to start out on machines connected to the public internet before spreading to the secret facility via USB drive. If it didn't spread when connected to the Internet, it wouldn't work. And it already doesn't blow up centrifuges when it's not on the target network.

it already doesn't blow up centrifuges when it's not on the target network

I can verify that. None of my centrifuges have been blown up.

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