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There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

loworbitsecurity.com

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Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#331

Post by KPGv2 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #313
victorbjorklund wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one would lift a finger for him. Russia just watched. The Chinese too. They may be allies in words but in the end each dictator just care about themselves. Just like how Trump wouldn’t help any ally unless he got something out of it.

Power wins in anarchy. International relations are anarchy. There is no actual international law.

> There is no actual international law.

There is, of course, both private and public international law. You don't know what you're talking about.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#332

Post by defrost »

potsandpans wrote: post #330
nonethewiser wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People massively simplify the dynamics of launching a nuke. If Russia launched a nuke on a Ukrainian military target away from civilians there is virtually 0 chance of nuclear retaliation. Ukraine doesn't have them. Does anyone think the US, France, etc. would nuke Russia? Of course not. It's scary, but in some scenarios one nation can absolutely nuke another nation without threat of getting nuked themselves. In real…

Yeah yeah yeah, this is the new narrative that I keep seeing. "A small nuke, as a treat." It's scary, but it's fine!

It's happened before, although with no loss of civilian life.

In 1998 neither India nor Pakistan were considered members of the nuclear warhead club.

Then India detonated 5 warhead sized kiloton and sub kiloton class thermonuclear (fusion / hydrogen) weapons .. and within 20 days Pakistan responded with six atomic tests (non fusion, larger than warhead size).

The interesting thing about that exchange is that India suprised the world intelligence community pants down with capability and execution, and Pakistan's speed of response was equally suprising.

Despite the spectacle of rapid cross fire of eleven nuclear weapons and tense international responses the small nuke treats didn't escalate into anything larger .. and likely served to keep heads a little cooler wrt both India and Pakistan.

All up there has been > 2,000 nuclear detonations across the globe, some definitely intended to intimidate or otherwise push the envelope of possibility.

In that light another small nuke that avoided civilians and had a military target is unlikely to escalate although it would certainly cause a collective intake of breath and give pause.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#333

Post by conradev »

johnisgood wrote: post #135
narmiouh wrote: post #116

I guess one of the interesting things I learnt off this article(1) was that 7% of DNS query types served by 1.1.1.1 are HTTPS and started wondering what HTTPS query type was as I had only heard of A, MX, AAAA, SPF etc... Apparently that is part of implementing ECH (Encrypted Client Hello) in TLS 1.3 where the DNS hosts the public key of the server to fully encrypt the server name in a HTTPS request. Since Nginx and o…

Wait, so you do not leak the host through DNS with this? I have not checked it out yet.

This is so you do not leak the host through TLS. Using DNS to serve an encryption key.

It’s not just encrypted server name indication (ESNI), it is the whole hello now (ECH)! So you don’t leak anything.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#334

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

7952 wrote: post #93
bawolff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not really any reason to conclude that "american tech" was responsible for this attack. If anything, given all the sanctions Venezuela was under and how friendly they are with china, i would be surprised if they were using american tech in their infrastructure. [Of course i agree with the broader point of dont become dependent on the technology of your geopolitical enemies]

There are other attack vectors beyond infrastructure though when the population all have Android Smart Phones running Play Services and communicate using WhatsApp.

I am not sure why you are being downvoted where nothing you said is inaccurate. This practice of reflexively downvoting when disagreeing really is starting to irk me. Argue with OP damn it. How is he wrong?

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#335

Post by mandevil »

stackghost wrote: post #322
mandevil wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a note that the importance of the triad is a very American perspective on deterrence and most other countries don't seem to approach this the same way the US does. The Russians really have a quad (they also have mobile, truck mounted ICBM's that form a significant part of their deterrent, offering some of the guaranteed second-strike advantages that the US gets from SSBN's- and which their SSBN program does not…

I don't agree regarding a quad vs a triad. At risk of sounding like gpt, the triad is not silo/boomer/bomber, it's land-based/airborne/seaborne. Whether or not the survivability of your land-based ICBMs are due to mobility or hardened bunkers doesn't change much at the strategic level .

I don't think they fill the same strategic purposes, though. The value of silo based missiles to the US is as a missile-sponge, taking most of the warheads from a Russian first strike and keeping them from American cities (forcing any Russian first-strike to be counter-force instead of counter-value). This is not particularly valuable, honestly, which is why only the USSR during the height of the Cold War (largely in reaction to Minuteman) and China very recently have also made the investment into large numbers of ICBM silos.(1)

I won't claim to be as much an expert on Russian doctrine, but they seem to consider their mobile missiles to be a survivable second strike weapon, while silo based missiles are obviously not. Because their boomer fleet does not offer the same assured second strike, they rely on those mobile missiles to play a greater deterrent role then the US does.

1: That is the official justification for the US silos. The real reason for silos is, if you want to build a truly insane number of strategic warheads, silos are the only way to afford it- ships and planes and even TELs are too expensive. So first the US (worried they were behind because of the Missile Gap) built a thousand Minuteman (then tripled the deployed warheads with MIRV on the Minuteman-III). Then the Soviets responded with 1000 SS-11s of their own. But if you are only building a few hundred warheads total, you don't bother with silos, they don't add as much value as other delivery mechanisms.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#336

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

Terr_ wrote: post #32
eastbound wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s be honest, that was a crazy operation. I wonder whether they really secured all chances of success, or just winged it with chances of not depositing the leader, and him being able to summon his diplomatic relations into 50 countries declaring war to the USA. While on their way out, if the USA could set everything back to IPv6, that would be nice.

The outcome is less-crazy if one views it as assisting a palace-coup, partnering with a bunch of Venezuelan government and military insiders already seeking to depose Maduro, able to subtly clear the path and provide intel.

I personally think it is both. I think CBS article disclosed that CIA had someone in the inner circle. That, however, does not really take away from how well coordinated it actually was. That does not mean it was a good idea to do it. Just because I can run around naked does not mean I should..

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#338

Post by timeon »

9dev wrote: post #105
bawolff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not really any reason to conclude that "american tech" was responsible for this attack. If anything, given all the sanctions Venezuela was under and how friendly they are with china, i would be surprised if they were using american tech in their infrastructure. [Of course i agree with the broader point of dont become dependent on the technology of your geopolitical enemies]

It’s for sure another alarm signal for the EU to further reduce dependencies on our newest geopolitical enemy… the United States of America.

It is insane that some people need more signals. It was clearly stated by US in February 2025 and several times after that.

Re: There were BGP anomalies during the Venezuela blackout

#340

Post by esseph »

mr_toad wrote: post #254
esseph wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to be willing to use the nukes. The threat has to be real or it doesn't work as a deterrent. I think this is a situation where even if Venezuela had nukes, this still would have happened.

The choice is basically: a. Don’t use nukes, everyone moves one rung up the ladder. b. Use nukes. Ladder is destroyed, everyone dies horribly. Using nukes only makes sense if everyone is going to die horribly anyway. It’s an empty threat otherwise.

Not exactly true.

Our systems are designed around ICBM detection.

A tactical/suitecase nuke like the old US Army Green Light teams wouldn't trigger that. In fact, it would likely take awhile to trace. The "limited nuclear war" concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_teams

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