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Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

arstechnica.com

131–140 of 158 posts

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#131
post #60

The Jaguar hack cost the UK $2.5Bn and dropped production to levels you'd normally only see during open warfare. Recovery took many months, and the financial damage persists today. We still operate with a primitive homunculi where a gunshot is considered aggressive, but sabotaging infrastructure that can kill hundreds from cold is being waved at.

The difference is the bureaucratic "doubt" about who did what.

Which, with the current zeit geist, should really be minimized to almost zero

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some news about some psy-op or some damage every couple of days. We hear about "Russian trolls" and influencing the political discourse. I wonder if there is any symmetrical response to this happening. How about unleashing psy-ops and "Western trolls" in Runet? Is Europe in purely defensive mode?

FWIW it seems Russia's trolling activities took a pretty significant hit after Prigozhin fell out of a window in 2023, as the "Internet Research Agency" was one of his ventures.

Probably just caused outsourcing to india and china.

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#133
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet the West made absolutely no attempt to calm the Russians down and for some reason announced in 2008 plans to expand to Georgia and Ukraine, despite even Western experts warning about that being utterly provocative. It is the right of any sovereign country to freely join any military alliance, including NATO. The fact that this upsets Putin says more about him than the alliance and its (potential) members.

The US needs to start showing they actually believe that first by letting Cuba, several countries in South America, including Venezuela, and now even Greenland, freely choose who they ally with. Otherwise you’re just the same as Putin.

Greenland is a Danish territory, Denmark is already in NATO. Cuba is an ex-USSR ally, since USSR was sanctioned and that included allies, Cuba was sanctioned as well. Cuba is also sanctioned because of their own politics, similar to how Milosevic's Yugoslavia was.

Russia is threatening a direct military invasion to present-day and potential future NATO and EU members. When has the EU done the same to any of your listed countries/territories? When have the US said they will invade a country for simply allying with Russia or the BRICS?

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#134
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you walk down the streets of Paris or Berlin does it look like it’s wartime, Like what exactly would you want them to do? Run around screaming all day because there's a war in another country 2000 km away from them? No, people just go on with their lives, doing their jobs, taking care of family and friends, paying their taxes, so that specialized workers in the ministry of defence can take care of the war stuff f…

> It's even similar in Kiev, when you walk down the streets you see people living their lives. Gyms, bars, cafes, clubs are full and lively. People don't stop living and enjoying their daily lives just because there's shelling somewhere else in the country. While it's true to a certain degree, you make it sound like Kyiv residents are having a grand old time right now. But in reality, the majority are trying very har…

>While it's true to a certain degree, you make it sound like Kyiv residents are having a grand old time right now.

I am not. You choose to interpret it that way.

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. Calling going out to a gym, cafe, club or a bar during wartime, as anything other than enjoying life, diminishes the real tragedy of those who are fighting on the front line and don't enjoy such leisure activities. Some people are fortunate enough that they can still get to enjoy life even if their country is in a war, as just like in every war ever, not everyone is affected equally.

I wasn't aware gym membership could bring 2,500 Ukrainian civilians back from the dead.

You aren't aware, because you're making stupid analogies in bad faith that have nothing to do with what I'm saying.

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you seen the competence in those who manage the infrastructure? i'd say i would need significant proof before assuming anything. And IF russia is doing it, I would still say that we should put 99% blame on the absolute incompetents running the infrastructure, 1% russia.

That seems like just victim blaming - "she was asking for it with the clothes she was wearing".

no, thats not the same. If you for example leave your front door open, and the insurance finds out, do you think they will be doing "victim blaming" ?

so lets turn this logic around on those megacorps that leaks personal data, suppose they run an open postgres or mongodb with ALL the customer data, no password or default password, on the open ipv6, is it victimblaming to go after them for this? after all, its the big bad criminals that stole the data?

the truth of the matter is that yes, the ones that take the data are criminals, but so are the one that doesnt take proper pracautions.

Have you actually seen how these infrastructure things operate? many of them have open scada systems directly coupled to the internet. Many of them have sms gateways that just accepts messages from _ANY_ phone number to issue shutdowns.

I know because I have been brought in to look at some of those things as a consultant

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#137

Poland has a high alertness status for like 5 years now. So there was time to be prepared.

There's some news about some psy-op or some damage every couple of days. We hear about "Russian trolls" and influencing the political discourse. I wonder if there is any symmetrical response to this happening. How about unleashing psy-ops and "Western trolls" in Runet? Is Europe in purely defensive mode?

I think Europe hasn't developed this kind of political manipulation ability. Europe seems to operate in the mode where as long as the political institutions are still standing, everything is felt to be alright. US democrats also operate in this mode.

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#138
post #60

The Jaguar hack cost the UK $2.5Bn and dropped production to levels you'd normally only see during open warfare. Recovery took many months, and the financial damage persists today. We still operate with a primitive homunculi where a gunshot is considered aggressive, but sabotaging infrastructure that can kill hundreds from cold is being waved at.

The difference is the bureaucratic "doubt" about who did what. Which, with the current zeit geist, should really be minimized to almost zero

Blame everything on X group i don’t like is a bold move

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#139
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software with vulnerabilities was defectively written. If someone makes tanks with paper for armour, because it cuts costs, they are to blame if those tanks catch fire.

A tank is designed for war. Infrastructure is designed to serve some other utility. Claiming it should also be hardened against (cyber) war is acknowledging that there is an aggressor performing an attack of war, not that the infrastructure is failing the utility it was designed for. It's fine to have this view that software should be defect free and hardened against sophisticated nation-state attackers, but it stret…

okay, so you think just attaching PLCs to an rs485-to-ethernet adapter and connecting it straight unauthenticated to the internet, and then calling it a day is simply perfectly reasonable, since "well.. cant expect to harden against cyber warfare!! no defect!!!" ?

because this is the kind of stuff infrastructure things do, along with MANY other things. Im sure not all infrastructure does it, but plenty do.

This is not hardening, its BASIC security. any scriptkiddie from same country could find it and cause problems.

How far would you say they should go to stop domestic script kiddies from messing with it? and if script kiddies from other countries mess with it, is it now cyber warfare?

Re: Poland's energy grid was targeted by never-before-seen wiper malware

#140

Will this be the time that EU grows a spine and comes together to oppose Russia? Naaa, better continue to have Germany and France continue to destroy the Union by looking only at their self interests while they pretend to talk tough on Trump and sabotage any real internal changes so that they can keep their crumbs. Just this week, France’s meddling halted a deal that was 30 years in the making: Mercosul while their p…

>France’s meddling halted a deal that was 30 years in the making: Mercosul

Mercosur would actually be Polish complaint to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU)

https://www.visahq.com/news/2026-01-22/pl/polish-meps-spearh...

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