Weird how the US IC developed and deployed such advanced software while agreeing that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.
Do we know it was the US IC? I think its likely that it was Mossad.
The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
371–380 of 507 posts
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#372I'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.
The code base for the International Space Station is probably also VERY complex
Probably not. Complex things break a lot. You want the life-critical code to be as simple as possible, with proven correctness if possible. I bet you'll not find 1 recursion in ISS flight code, and you'll not find anything that's not having an known-upper-bound on time run.
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#373I've been arguing about this for the last three days. Mostly around the reason that "complexity" is not strictly the same thing as "sophistication" when it comes to software. Noobs will conflate the two, but experienced programmers will agree that -- just to illustrate my point -- some code which solves a complex problem in a very clever way while also being very clean and easy to maintain will be considered strictly…
On complexity vs sophistication: During the cold war, a US company noticed the USSR had stolen the plans for a natural gas pipeline system, but not the software. In response, the US introduced an integer overflow bug that was uptime dependent, and took something like 6 months to hit. The bug simultaneously cranked up the pumps and closed all the valves in the network. It was known that the Soviet economy would crash…
Do you have a link to more info? Would love to read more but can't seem to find anything.
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
I think, the number of zero-days included in Stuxnet is an important factor in making it sophisticated and complex.
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
^ Exactly If Stuxnet was as successful as I'm sure its creators wanted it to be, we wouldn't be discussing it.
Not necessarily. It would be bound to be have found at some point in time. The article mentions it took at least a year before anyone knew about it. And perhaps there is an even more technical worm out there still hidden and stuxnet was merely a first draft.
perhaps, but perhaps the creators don't know of any more holes. Or perhaps the creators knew about more, but the focus on security that this created resulted in not just the holes stuxnet used being closed, but the others. Or perhaps the creators know about more, but their targets have added layers of security and so they can't actually get their next worm where they want it.
A lot of unknown. Those who's job it is to secure systems have their own tricks.
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#376Stuxnet 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…
Yes, it has the potential to break the MAD equilibrium. It's very ironic to me that offensive technologies do not threaten world peace as much as defensive technologies.
>It's very ironic to me that offensive technologies do not threaten world peace as much as defensive technologies.
ummm... what?
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe because sometimes it can be relatively easy to to write some software, but much harder to find its bugs and write exploits for them? otherwise, why would bugs even exist?
>why would bugs even exist people make mistakes, it is innate feature of human being. Bugs exist because it is not economically effective to find them. Bugs, given unlimited amount of resources, is possible easy to find whenever they are. Google how one guy hacked infamous HackingTeam alone. He provided some estimates how long it took him. Does it make his software the most sophisticated one on the planet? If his sof…
Because something takes a long time to do doesn't necessarily mean that it is complex...
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can you really say that the second bit of code is more "complex"? Yes. Complexity in the sense discussed is related to the domain knowledge (including CS knowledge) required for the program to be written and work well. Else even a trivial BS program could be very complex, just sprinkle it with gotos and unnecessarily convoluted code...
This is such a powerful distinction that I feel it should help us rethink language paradigms. Complexity is not (just) the complications one can impose by construct or the involutions required of ones algorithms, it's the overall real world system your code addresses. Simple programs which are coded simply may address complex phenomena to complex ends--perhaps that's even the ideal?
Something something about simple rules being able to describe complex behaviour. Example: you can describe a flock of birds in motion around an object with 2 or 3 rules.
Complex rules yields stupid results. Example: tax codes in most countries.
Must be a quote but I wasn't able to find a source for it.
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
You want to ask all those who lost their lives in any of the numerous conflicts. Only, because the big clash didn't happen (it nearly happened three times in 1983), this doesn't mean that there weren't any conflicts. E.g., the biggest air war in history, in Laos, even was conducted in secrecy, African politics is just a single mess, etc.
Please consider orders of magnitude - we really do live in peaceful times.
Example: there's far fewer cold war deaths than from traffic accidents, let alone real wars.
WW2 killed 3% of all humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
The end of the Han dynasty killed a large percentage of all chinese people.
For perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll
http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...
Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written
#380Stuxnet 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…
Very interesting comments especially conclusion that voice for peace must be loudest. Generally, personally agree. However, what you think of current USA stance of beefing up defense and probably nuclear arsenal while others are not allowed such weapons? Won't it make them want these weapons even more?