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Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

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Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#111

Post by hughesjj »

indymike wrote: post #85
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…

> I wonder if we, in secret, have “mutually assured destruction” of cyber-warfare. Low-orbit nuclear EMP would be that option. Not cyber... technically.

Is the idea that that would essentially form a 'shield'of radiation that none of our existing satellites could penetrative with a resolvable signal? Or just that most of our satellites are LEO?

I'd imagine anything in GEO would be far out enough to survive a LEO emp

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#112

Post by Animats »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #90
lsh123 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DME (distance measuring equipment) is much simpler than LORAN. However, navigation computers can use multiple VOR / DME signals to compute position similar to LORAN or GPS. The problem is that DME / VOR are typically limited to 50-200nm (and even lower at lower altitudes) which requires extensive network to make it comparable to GPS / LORAN.

I appreciate the reply. Are there any canonical reference sources you would recommend to learn more about this implementation? Edit: sources provided are helpful, thank you lsh123 and Animats!

Wikipedia?

The basics: A VOR (Very high frequency omni-directional range) station just gives you the bearing to the VOR. It's simple. It's a large ring of antennas with another antenna in the middle. It sends out a big omnidirectional pulse, and then sweeps around the circle like a lighthouse. The time difference between the omnidirectional pulse and the directional pulse tells you your bearing to the VOR station. The aircraft just receives; it doesn't send anything. Range is maybe 200 miles.

DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) came later. It's a request-response system. Time between aircraft request and DME station response gives you distance to the DME station. Most VORs also have a DME system installed, so you can get range and bearing.

VOR bearings aren't very accurate. Error is up to ±4°. So position from VOR and DME isn't very good far from a VOR. VORs are thus installed at major airports, so positional info gets better as you approach the airport, and pilots can find the airport reliably. SJC (San Jose International Airport) has a VOR northwest of the airport. It's a huge antenna array in a big open field, and can be seen from 101 north of the airport. It needs all that open land to work well. Obstacles would distort the directional beam and make the error worse.

The FAA has shut down over a hundred VOR stations as redundant.[1] The original plan was to shut down even more, but there was much pushback. In addition to airport VOR stations, there were chains of "enroute" VOR stations, so that aircraft could fly along established airways from VOR to VOR. Some of those have been shut down.

The FAA now uses the term "minimum operational network" for what's available with GPS down.[2]

GPS jamming is very real. Here's a real-time map of known GPS jamming and spoofing.[3] Current jamming is mostly near Ukraine and Lebanon, plus the Black Sea. War zones. Discussion at Ops.group, which is a site for people involved in international aviation operations.[4]

[1] https://www.faa.gov/ato/navigation-programs/vor-target-disco...

[2] https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2021/july/pilot...

[3] https://spoofing.skai-data-services.com/

[4] https://ops.group/blog/where-is-the-spoofing-today/

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#113

Post by FL410 »

This is one of my favorite reads on HN to date. I hope more people see it. It's funny how, even as a "nerd," I often think about if we are doing the wrong thing by taking the nerdy approach to problems that could be solved more simply. It feels like we often choose the most complex or nerdiest approach to prove to ourselves and others that we can and not whether we should - which isn't to say that we shouldn't ever - just that some problems deserve the simple solution.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#114

Post by pixl97 »

hollerith wrote: post #107
kjkjadksj wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the same reason why they aren’t using their nuclear weaponry.

Isn't that a fully-general argument? I say that flywheels will cause a revolution in military affairs. You reply with, "Why haven't we seen flywheels used in war?" I reply that flywheels are such a potent weapon that armies are afraid to deploy them out of fear that their enemy will response by using flywheels against them, which would be just too terrible and might cause a global ecological catastrophe or a general…

You are going to die, going to happen to all of us, nothing we can do about it.

Now, the when is the part that gets the attention of our little monkey brains.

1. Within the next 15 minutes.

2. Sometime within the next 100 years.

Your scenario is a type 2 scenario. At some time in the ethereal future 'flywheels' may cause the death of mankind. Well, we're all going to die in the ethereal future anyway so who cares.

Nuclear weapons are a type 1 problem. It's like a gun being pointed at your head and someone screaming "give me the money", you're not going to be thinking about what's for dinner because the likelihood of dinner is low.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#116

Post by pixl97 »

hughesjj wrote: post #111
indymike wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if we, in secret, have “mutually assured destruction” of cyber-warfare. Low-orbit nuclear EMP would be that option. Not cyber... technically.

Is the idea that that would essentially form a 'shield'of radiation that none of our existing satellites could penetrative with a resolvable signal? Or just that most of our satellites are LEO? I'd imagine anything in GEO would be far out enough to survive a LEO emp

More like it would fry the electrical grid rendering our server farms and telecommunication networks without power.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#118

Post by ein0p »

fabian2k wrote: post #22
roenxi wrote: post #20

> I know it sounds devastating, but you have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun. The pre-war era. It is madness that we're in a position where this can be baldly stated by a PM and there has been no "huh?" moment when people stop and assess how badly the broader West's military, economic and diplomatic efforts have failed over the last 30 odd years. Possibly longer. I wasn't expecting to see land wars i…

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

Basically the opposite of this “advice”: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#119

Post by ahubert »

jeffrallen wrote: post #37

It is too bad he didn't follow up on "we give control to foreign clouds" with "we need European data sovereignty, our governments need to choose local cloud providers". Because they exist. I work for one. The cloud is just someone else's computer. But if that someone else is your neighbor, they may be motivated by the same things as you, and can contribute helpfully to your goals.

(author here) You might be interested in my writing on this very subject -> https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/cloud-naive-europe-and-the...
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