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I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

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Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#141

Post by edelbitter »

Zigurd wrote: post #116

First let's acknowledge that this could very easily be a misconfiguration issue. But, I'd be a lot more inclined to that idea if it wasn't for how they failed: they started a defrost cycle that turned the freezers into heaters, spoiling the food quicker. And the failure happened overnight, delaying discovery of the problem. It could be just a compounding of bad luck. But an attacker with access to the specs for the f…

I was thinking timezone update - because of course an internet-connected freezer needs updated zone info so one can configure defrost schedules without the benefit of UTC.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#142

Post by jamiek88 »

0xWTF wrote: post #129
ericmay wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally agree with your assessment, but in the case of Guam or other more remote installations if there were catastrophic issues we'd just airlift food in. Costly but certainly manageable. Hawaii I'm not sure why that would be an issue unless the whole island was attacked or shut down. Even if the on-base shops were hacked you could just go shop at Wal-Mart or Costco or any number of other locations on the islands.…

Guam freezers and chillers were offline several times the years when I was there. You just didn't get milk, butter, eggs, ice cream, meat, etc those weeks.

When were you there?

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#143

Post by segmondy »

CobaltFire wrote: post #67

As someone who spent over 20 years active duty, and spent a ton of my career in the IT, security, etc. side of the house: Unlikely to be a hack, more likely to be a misconfiguration or update sent incorrectly. That said, the timing of the disclosure and the issue are rather concerning. Regarding the highest value targets to hit with an attack like this, you would want to target Guam, Hawai'i, and other isolated overs…

[flagged]

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#145

Post by TZubiri »

gavinsyancey wrote: post #93
TZubiri wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unlikely to be a hack, more likely to be a misconfiguration or update sent incorrectly. Are these materially different? Assuming that there wasn't a literal command to turn off all freezers, from an organizational, non criminal perspective, to the organization the damage will be the same, the root cause will be a bug (whether exploited by chance or malice), and the fix will be the same(fixing the bug).

> Are these materially different? A hack implies an adversary, and intentional targeting.

But is it materially different? Or is it a difference in quantitative increase of likelihood of the exploit?

The thesis "everything hackable" will be hacked, and with the advent of hacking LLMs, the boundary between criminal hacking and civil hacking is being blurred, it's no longer attributable to a criminal intent, hacking commands are just something that happens through no criminal intent.

Practically, the hackers, whether human or syntehtic, are a catalyst, they accelerate the rate at which a bug that causes damage will manifest, and perhaps the magnitude of the manifestation, but the essence of the negative manifestation of that bug is the same. Whether it was triggered by a solar ray flipbit or by a rogue LLM or by a russian hacker, the essence of the issue is the same.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#146

Post by lowbloodsugar »

lenerdenator wrote: post #85
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are usually on a separate Network. Then someone plugs in a cable because boss wants something "over there" and there's already a network that runs "over there". Or optimizes to a smart switch with vlans, and then someone else optimizes to a single vlan. It's not hard to not give a shit, or not understand, network security.

That someone can be brought into an office and shown a small diagram of the approved network topology. Then they can be shown a small diagram of the current network topology. Next, they can be asked if they're the same. If they're not, they can finally be asked if they're aware that deviating from the approved network topology without consulting infosec is grounds for termination of their employment.

We're talking about the military. Many years ago I heard a presentation by an IT guy in the marines. He stated that senior officers would regularly give him instructions that would violate some policy or other - such as giving their secure laptop direct access to the internet so they could check their personal email - as an order. That is, they could not refuse. I hope things have changed, but this fellow was dead serious at the time.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#148

Post by munificent »

segmondy wrote: post #143
CobaltFire wrote: post #67

As someone who spent over 20 years active duty, and spent a ton of my career in the IT, security, etc. side of the house: Unlikely to be a hack, more likely to be a misconfiguration or update sent incorrectly. That said, the timing of the disclosure and the issue are rather concerning. Regarding the highest value targets to hit with an attack like this, you would want to target Guam, Hawai'i, and other isolated overs…

[flagged]

We are a very social species who likely evolved to feel good when we share juicy information.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#149

Post by bjackman »

meliz242 wrote: post #119
bjackman wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to these comments coz I was curious about the AI usage here, and FWIW I also thought it smelled AI written, but I didn't think it was slop. (IMO not all AI output is slop and not all slop comes from AI). My main question was "did Claude do the investigation by itself or just write up the article from someone's notes?" Also though, I'm quite willing to believe this is human written and the human just happens to…

Nope, I'm one of those lucky folks who was privileged enough to be accused of writing in a weird and probably too mature for my high school English paper-way before the advent of gpt, lol. I've had to all but remove the em-dash from my vernacular, thanks to the ~ plague of inauthenticity ~ as I call it. I did all the digging, researching, writing, etc myself. The reason the screenshots are from mobile is because I wr…

> Is there any type of sidebar/footnote that you, as a reader, would like to see to denote AI usage during the writing and/or research process?

It's not something I expect, but I definitely don't see an issue with people putting a couple of sentences in an "expand to see AI usage notes" tab at the top or bottom of the page.

> Would you expect none?

As in, would I expect no AI usage? Coz no I absolutely expect people to use AI.

If you had got Claude to do this investigation for you then actually I think that would have been notable enough to include details of your AI workflow. But not because "it's cheating not to disclose it", rather because you'd probably have come up with quite a neat workflow that is interesting in its own right.

Re: I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked

#150

Post by CobaltFire »

segmondy wrote: post #143
CobaltFire wrote: post #67

As someone who spent over 20 years active duty, and spent a ton of my career in the IT, security, etc. side of the house: Unlikely to be a hack, more likely to be a misconfiguration or update sent incorrectly. That said, the timing of the disclosure and the issue are rather concerning. Regarding the highest value targets to hit with an attack like this, you would want to target Guam, Hawai'i, and other isolated overs…

[flagged]

Nothing I shared is, in any way, even close to something I am concerned with sharing.

This type of wargaming scenario is literally stuff they give to brand new kids out of high school to get them thinking. It's not anything close to "loose lips sink ships."

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