331–340 of 507 posts
So.... For people who have followed this story more closely then i have, did the hostile actor ever get identified? Last i checked it was a toss up between USA, Israel and France, was a conclusion ever drawn?
I'd argue that Google Search is much more sophisticated than Stuxnet. Windows is much more sophisticated. Linux is more sophisticated than Stuxnet. The list goes on. We tend to ignore the sophistication of things we are familiar with, and hype those that surprise. But that's not a fair measure of anything.
In my view, the sophistication is implied by the breadth of expertise required to put the whole thing together. Google Search and the OS landscape are for sure broad and sophisticated. However, their development was accomplished by computer scientists. In order for stuxnet to be effective, it was necessary to employ expertise in: - Uranium enrichment methods and processes - Capital equipment control systems and their…
So the question of "sophistication" is both subtle and difficult to call.
Edit: And the production of a algorithm that's a conglomeration of ad-hoc processes might qualify as another sort of sophistication, see "the hardest program I ever wrote":
http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/09/08/the-hardest-pro... http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/09/08/the-hardest-pro...
I'd argue that Google Search is much more sophisticated than Stuxnet. Windows is much more sophisticated. Linux is more sophisticated than Stuxnet. The list goes on. We tend to ignore the sophistication of things we are familiar with, and hype those that surprise. But that's not a fair measure of anything.
Stuxnet changed history. Any "game of chicken" style equilibria is broken if the probability a nuclear actor's command and control drops below 100%. If there is even a 1% chance that when a Big Red Button is pushed the missiles fail to launch the game becomes unwinnable. Simulations of imperfect information in dynamic brinkmanship where both players are known to have advanced cyber capabilities results in a single dr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is not everyone on the world stage is a rational game theory nerd that links to papers like we want them to be. Also 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster, so maybe we should stop that.
> 60 years of treating every other country as a box in a threat model to be manipulated against other boxes has been a completely unmitigated disaster Has it? The last 60 years have been relatively peaceful, by historical standards.
I'd argue that Google Search is much more sophisticated than Stuxnet. Windows is much more sophisticated. Linux is more sophisticated than Stuxnet. The list goes on. We tend to ignore the sophistication of things we are familiar with, and hype those that surprise. But that's not a fair measure of anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But do those things really contribute to the sophistication of the software? For example imagine some code written with no understanding of uranium enrichment: const int CENTRIFUGE_RPM = 500; And then some other code written with a deep understanding of uranium enrichment: const int CENTRIFUGE_RPM = 1203; Can you really say that the second bit of code is more "complex"? Same goes for stolen driver signing keys and so…
> const int CENTRIFUGE_RPM = 1203; As the linked article points out, it wasn't just raising the speed, it was raising it in a subtle enough way to ruin the process while other experts routinely monitored the system