US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by redwood » Sat, Jun 02, 2012, 4:44 PM UTC

jpxxx wrote: post #125

andylei wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Both of which condemn the US and Israel. Not Iran. you know, its possible that the US, Israel, AND Iran are all doing bad things. just because Iran is not being condemned by a some media organizations does not mean it has any meaningful high ground. why are you skeptical that iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons? if they weren't, why would they be developing secret enrichment facilities? why would "The IAEA B…

It is a stone cold, dead in the ground for a decade, crystalline clear FACT that Iran has no nuclear weapon manufacturing program, and no plausible capacity to engage in one in the near future. Period, full stop, end telegram. Armed with this certainty, you can now begin to answer the rest of your questions for yourself.

Why are they enriching above power production levels then?

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

#302

Post by berntb » Sat, Jun 02, 2012, 6:56 PM UTC

Cadsby wrote: post #262

Turing_Machine wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I doubt it makes a difference to the populations affected whether they were an intentional target, or the gps on the smart bomb that just leveled your house glitched out." You're wrong. If an airliner (or even a weapon) goes astray and kills my family, I am going to be angry, no doubt about it. If you've deliberately targeted my family, my anger is going to be greater by several orders of magnitude. For example, thi…

That, as well as the story linked (which I read carefully), are really bad analogies, for what I think of obvious reasons. I do think intent can matter at times. Perhaps what I'm more zeroing in on is that idea that I don't find saying you didn't mean to, when you repeatedly kill civilians in very large numbers, such that certain countries have a long history of being on the receiving end of American collateral damag…

If I understand right: You argue that no war is worth high collateral damage, even if involved democracies (more or less) follow the laws of war?

How about if a junta relies on that a democracy don't want to pay those prices and creates a situation where blood will flow if they don't get their will?

Arguably, both Japan 1945 and Saddam Hussein are cases of that.

Do you REALLY want dictators to rely on using their own people's suffering to get out of e.g. sanctions or surrender? I doubt it...

Sorry for coming in late. I bother writing these answers because I used to have similar opinions as you before my hair started to fall out. You are a standin for a young berntb, I guess.

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

#303

Post by marshray » Sat, Jun 02, 2012, 7:14 PM UTC

phaus wrote: post #293

marshray wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you realize that NSA, perhaps the biggest and most capable information security organizations in the world has always been under the Pentagon. It's absurd to suggest the US attention to data security started with the establishment of "Cyber Command". My personal view is that it's a dangerous experiment in ineptitude allow the Pentagon to "defend in cyberspace" US networks. Most of the people who are tossing ar…

I didn't say that the creation of CYBERCOM marked the beginning of U.S. involvement in cyberspace. It was created just a few years ago, because our government's leadership felt that we needed to do far more than we have been. The NSA is very good at what they do, but unless they expand dramatically, other organizations are going to have to be formed.

That's fine. I'd just like to disagree with the idea that the US was late to this party. If anything the US has been one of a few countries leading the world into this "cyber arms" race, albeit mostly covertly until recent years.

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

#304

Post by lstroud » Sat, Jun 02, 2012, 9:00 PM UTC

The truth is, if you love the Internet you had better start fighting to stop these escalations. Otherwise, it will cease to exist. The first time a massive attack causes real fear in western civilization, people will start questioning how much they really need it in their lives.

The lack of plausible deniability will lead to escalation. Once it does, national security (from the perspective of each country) will govern it's growth, not freedom.

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

#305

Post by cdi » Sat, Jun 02, 2012, 9:33 PM UTC

mitjak wrote: post #295

cdi wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: "Initially, COMECON served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods.[46]" So it looks like they used eastern bloc resources to restore Soviet Union devastated…

Explainable action? I'm lost for words. Also I'm Russian.

Very explainable, if you replace now common mindset of "well being of people, their liberty to participate in market" with mindset of "world revolution, opposition to capitalist, imperialistic powers". Priority of restoration of SU first, as a power house of world revolution, becomes explainable. There was a Cold War going on, you know. Suppression of democratic reforms too - "if people don't want our brand of hierarchical command communism, then they're mistaken, they're not ready, we know better". Governments always say they know what's better for people. Of course "communism" in some far future is better than living a better life today, in eyes of communist government ideologue.

Considering SU later become net subsidizer of Eastern Bloc, and that these countries were in pretty good shape right after SU dissolution, with all the limitations of "socialist economy", one-sided interpretation of history as exploitation, plunder, and atrocities and nothing more, sounds to me extremely stupid and narrow minded. As stupid as "killing his own people" meme. I'm disgusted by people who do moral interpretations of history with today's dominating moral standards. "Let's not forget atrocities of Roman Empire, plunder, enslavement, domination, exploitation of neighboring peoples ." Whole world history is one big atrocity.

Also, people who consider Soviet Union, a primitive oriental despotism, as a communist regime, without quotation marks - have no class.

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

#306

Post by rbanffy » Sat, Jun 02, 2012, 11:04 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #275

rbanffy wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries or terrorist groups rarely justify military action (even if it's cyberwarfare). At best, they explain it.

On the contrary--they often go to great lengths to justify it. The German invasions of Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands were deemed protective occupations, in order to prevent the Allies from invading them. The Gulf War was justified by a UN resolution. You can find some attempt, however feeble, to justify any recent military action.

That's the point. Each and every military action creates an attempt to justify it. It usually fails at both justifying it and explaining the actual reasons behind it.

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

#307

Post by mvzink » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 12:55 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #281

cdi wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 find it disturbing that so many people are so very willing to ignore or defend the atrocities of communism in the 20th century. Just after the end of WWII the Soviets adopted a "plunder" policy with regard to occupied Eastern European countries. Forcing them to produce huge quantities of raw materials and industrial goods to be used within the USSR, extracting as much wealth from the beleaguered post-war economies…

I feel like I harp on this a lot, but a quick reminder: that's not communism. I know there isn't really a better name for the ideology/policies of the USSR (and other "communist" states) but I think it's worth (repeatedly) pointing out the huge and longstanding misnomer, since they have very few and very tenuous and/or butchered connections to any philosophy of Marx.

These are not atrocities of an ideology, however misinterpreted, these are atrocities of people and of a state.

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

#308

Post by ucee054 » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 1:09 AM UTC

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".

BlackAdder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qCx-xiz1F0#t=9m28s

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

#309

Post by ucee054 » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 1:25 AM UTC

berntb wrote: post #69

bluedanieru wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war itself isn't nearly as terrifying, but somehow the US government is finding it even easier to erode civil liberties now than it ever did during the Cold War.

>>somehow the US government is finding it even easier to erode civil liberties now than it ever did during the Cold War. Iran is probably the worst country on the planet when it comes to supporting terrorism. Consider that democracies in general seems to go crazy when they have active terrorism problems and throw out human rights and the law book. E.g. Germany, USA, Israel, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, etc. (The only…

I grew up in London when the IRA were leaving bombs in the trains stations, we didn't have this "throw out rights and laws" nonsense.

And Norway didn't go nuts over the Breivik attack either.

Oh, and are you aware that Israel backed Jundullah, which is a Pakistani AlQaeda?

Command of the facts helps avoid embarrassment.

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

#310

Post by mayanksinghal » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 1:56 AM UTC

cdi wrote: post #305

mitjak wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explainable action? I'm lost for words. Also I'm Russian.

Very explainable, if you replace now common mindset of "well being of people, their liberty to participate in market" with mindset of "world revolution, opposition to capitalist, imperialistic powers". Priority of restoration of SU first, as a power house of world revolution, becomes explainable. There was a Cold War going on, you know. Suppression of democratic reforms too - "if people don't want our brand of hierar…

> do moral interpretations of history with today's dominating moral standards

I cannot upvote this enough. I feel sad when people forget that most of the history has been rewritten to suit newer regimes, newer philosophies. And the practice is still very dominant. Howsoever informed we may try to be about past, especially past that we haven't lived through but heard about in books or media or discussions, we are still aware of only part of the story. The part that survived, the part that dominated. And what is worse, we often tend to classify some leaders as well as their supporters who have failed and then replaced by their antitheses, to have this innate evil - while forgetting that they may very well be not 'evil' in their own morality; and hence ignorance not evilness causes their evil actions.