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US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

arstechnica.com

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

#141

Post by SoftwareMaven »

talmand wrote: post #70
hieronymusN wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't nearly as terrifying as the Cold War with the USSR. We're not threatened with nuclear war, nor having the near misses that could trigger it (Cuban missile crisis). No one is building bomb shelters in their backyards, because right now the balance of power is very much in the United States' favor. Could things get there with another nuclear enabled power like China? Maybe, in time. Iran is not an existentia…

I disagree, any attempt to shutdown a significant part of our power grid is terrifying to me. We are at a point in our society that we cannot survive without electricity for a large amount of time. Our economy would shutdown, people will starve as easily obtainable food would go away, certain medicines that keep people alive would spoil, hospitals would shut down, and more. We are so deeply ingrained in having electr…

Obligatory pointer to One Second After by William R. Forstchen[1], which is a factionalized account of what came out of the US EMP Attack Commission[2].

A power hiccup is not a problem. A systemic power failure is a catastrophe!

1. http://www.onesecondafter.com/ 2. http://EMPCommission.org/

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

#142

Post by kbolino »

jerf wrote: post #106
cjdavis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the threat of terrorism is not imaginary, it is certainly negligible compared to other threats.

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)

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

#143

Post by dpark »

Morg wrote: post #102
dpark wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can't "safely" say that. You've no evidence that the US military has ever been involved in creating a wide-scale biological pandemic. This is just conspiracy theory bunk. I'm not sure how you can reasonably compare testing nuclear weapons to the supposed propagation of HIV, either. These two things have nothing in common.

Alright, you want details ? During the testing of nuclear weapons, the US had no problem testing the secondary effects of nukes through radiation far beyond the blast zone, by putting boats with soldiers to watch the thing. It was widely known at that time that radiation was bad for you mkay, and that nuclear fission bombs were nuclear fission bombs, i.e. accelerated nuclear degradation bombs and drained all their ex…

> I wouldn't put it past THOSE people to do such a thing, would you?

This is amazingly bad logic.

  The US has done some bad things.
  This is a bad thing.
  Therefore the US did this.
  Q.E.W.T.F.
There is no link here, except in your own mind.

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

#144

Post by Morg »

Symmetry wrote: post #127
Morg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, you want details ? During the testing of nuclear weapons, the US had no problem testing the secondary effects of nukes through radiation far beyond the blast zone, by putting boats with soldiers to watch the thing. It was widely known at that time that radiation was bad for you mkay, and that nuclear fission bombs were nuclear fission bombs, i.e. accelerated nuclear degradation bombs and drained all their ex…

Yes, the US has done bad things, and AIDS is a bad thing, but it doesn't follow that the US caused AIDS. After all, nature has had no trouble creating pandemics without any deliberate human help over the centuries.

(just to be clear, I have no clue wether HIV was assisted by some military programmes, but I can safely say such "mistakes" have been made in the past by the same army, like when they used to test nukes for example)

That means I just used the HIV word to connect to the concept of bio weapon testing gone wrong - weapon testing gone wrong.

The reason why is that one of the most popular theories on HIV is that the US military had a part in its development.

I don't know and I don't care, those people have such a bad karma even AIDS wouldn't make much difference - just read the disclaimer next time ;)

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

#145

Post by Morg »

dpark wrote: post #143
Morg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, you want details ? During the testing of nuclear weapons, the US had no problem testing the secondary effects of nukes through radiation far beyond the blast zone, by putting boats with soldiers to watch the thing. It was widely known at that time that radiation was bad for you mkay, and that nuclear fission bombs were nuclear fission bombs, i.e. accelerated nuclear degradation bombs and drained all their ex…

> I wouldn't put it past THOSE people to do such a thing, would you? This is amazingly bad logic. The US has done some bad things. This is a bad thing. Therefore the US did this. Q.E.W.T.F. There is no link here, except in your own mind.

There is no link here, except in your own mind.

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

#146

Post by jerf »

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)

That's a canned knee-jerk response, not one that shows you read my message. That's not relevant data to the question of what future bioattacks or computer attacks are possible... and note my continued avoidance of the term "terrorism". Once an attack is launched the source isn't very relevant. Failing to secure our infrastructure because "terrorism isn't something to be afraid of" is still a stupid move because it leaves you open to not-terrorism just as much.

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

#148

Post by guelo »

If the UN security council was a fair body Stuxnet would be judged to be an unprovoked act of war and the US and Israel would be sanctioned in some way. But of course the US gets to have it's thumbs on the UNSC scales. But the question is, if the US is going to blatantly abuse its privileged position like this how long is it going to last? There has been a Western consensus on a liberal framework for international law going back to WWII which was based on the idea that we are the good guys, democratic, moral, law abiding, etc. GWBush and Obama have been doing their best to destroy that because of lobbying by our war mongering Israeli "friends".

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

#149

Post by gcb »

guelo wrote: post #148

If the UN security council was a fair body Stuxnet would be judged to be an unprovoked act of war and the US and Israel would be sanctioned in some way. But of course the US gets to have it's thumbs on the UNSC scales. But the question is, if the US is going to blatantly abuse its privileged position like this how long is it going to last? There has been a Western consensus on a liberal framework for international la…

Military power is a requirement for international politics.

Do you think counties summit to laws because of what? If no one can over power then, they have to abide to no law. UNis just to cut costs for the dominating military powers.

Want something done? It costs less to send some talker to tell about the power you can mobilize than to mobilize that power at once.

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

#150

Post by gcb »

bluedanieru wrote: post #65
hieronymusN wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't nearly as terrifying as the Cold War with the USSR. We're not threatened with nuclear war, nor having the near misses that could trigger it (Cuban missile crisis). No one is building bomb shelters in their backyards, because right now the balance of power is very much in the United States' favor. Could things get there with another nuclear enabled power like China? Maybe, in time. Iran is not an existentia…

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.

Terrorist, the new communist.
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