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German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

reuters.com

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Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#71

Post by RGamma »

phreeza wrote: post #10

Possibly important to note the timing of this admission right on the heels of the announcement of our defense minister that she wants to build a 'cyber' division in the army with 13500 people working there. Thats almost 10% of our armed forces. I could only find decent reporting about this in german: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plaene-der-verteidigungsm...

That program is completely misguided. You don't need thousands of "cyber soldiers", just a few good computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Because a system built from trusted and provably correct components (hardware and software) is infinitely better than a swiss cheese with dozens of people attempting to keep it from falling apart. And from that point on, you only need to teach soldiers to operate their equipment correctly.

The challenges of information technology w.r.t. warfare are fundamentally different from usual war tactics. You can't solve them by throwing lots of personel or big guns at them. If midst-fight your equipment or infrastructure fails because of security flaws, it's not because there's no personel to deal with it (for that it's already too late): it's because its designers failed at the drawing board.

It'd be better they concentrated on quality instead of quantity and the resignative "anything can be hacked" myth a lot of popular media is putting forward, as if information technology operated according to the same rules the physical battlefield does. These analogies only go so far...

(of course the same applies to non-military contexts as well)

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#72

Post by microcolonel »

What am I even reading?

A nuclear power plant has computers on its airgapped network infected with a computer virus from 8 years ago for an operating system which expired from support two years ago.

At least the nuclear power plant near me runs on a PDP-11.

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#73

Post by emmelaich »

RGamma wrote: post #71
phreeza wrote: post #10

Possibly important to note the timing of this admission right on the heels of the announcement of our defense minister that she wants to build a 'cyber' division in the army with 13500 people working there. Thats almost 10% of our armed forces. I could only find decent reporting about this in german: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plaene-der-verteidigungsm...

That program is completely misguided. You don't need thousands of "cyber soldiers", just a few good computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Because a system built from trusted and provably correct components (hardware and software) is infinitely better than a swiss cheese with dozens of people attempting to keep it from falling apart. And from that point on, you only need to teach soldiers to operate their…

You'd need a lot more for offensive operations.

And although the article says only a few of those thousands will be used for offensive ops, I suspect that many more will be.

I think you can make a better effort with more people; the critical thing is the quality of the people.

Of course there's a good chance more will be less valuable!

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#75

Post by RGamma »

emmelaich wrote: post #73
RGamma wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That program is completely misguided. You don't need thousands of "cyber soldiers", just a few good computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Because a system built from trusted and provably correct components (hardware and software) is infinitely better than a swiss cheese with dozens of people attempting to keep it from falling apart. And from that point on, you only need to teach soldiers to operate their…

You'd need a lot more for offensive operations. And although the article says only a few of those thousands will be used for offensive ops, I suspect that many more will be. I think you can make a better effort with more people; the critical thing is the quality of the people. Of course there's a good chance more will be less valuable!

Yes, I was focussing more on the defensive aspect. In offense the situation may be different, but in that case, if your enemy is in large-scale possession of technology that would make it susceptible to this in the first place, bad things have happened...

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#76

Post by gpvos »

cm3 wrote: post #69
elcapitan wrote: post #2

I found that part much more .. interesting: > As an example, Hypponen said he had recently spoken to a European aircraft maker that said it cleans the cockpits of its planes every week of malware designed for Android phones. The malware spread to the planes only because factory employees were charging their phones with the USB port in the cockpit.

Yeah, it's sad that so many people actually use USB ports at airports to charge their devices, without knowing what they are connecting their devices to. I don't expect them to know better, but all their data could be copied, stuff could be modified. Isn't there an adapter which limits the active lines to just what's needed to pass power, no data, or is charging without some data exchange impossible?

The data lines are used for signalling which charging speed the device supports. You can cut them, but then you get the lowest denominator charging specs, which is quite slow.

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#77

Post by hga »

cm3 wrote: post #69
elcapitan wrote: post #2

I found that part much more .. interesting: > As an example, Hypponen said he had recently spoken to a European aircraft maker that said it cleans the cockpits of its planes every week of malware designed for Android phones. The malware spread to the planes only because factory employees were charging their phones with the USB port in the cockpit.

Yeah, it's sad that so many people actually use USB ports at airports to charge their devices, without knowing what they are connecting their devices to. I don't expect them to know better, but all their data could be copied, stuff could be modified. Isn't there an adapter which limits the active lines to just what's needed to pass power, no data, or is charging without some data exchange impossible?

https://www.crowdsupply.com/xipiter/usbcondom

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#78

Post by 67726e »

philfrasty wrote: post #17
phreeza wrote: post #10

Possibly important to note the timing of this admission right on the heels of the announcement of our defense minister that she wants to build a 'cyber' division in the army with 13500 people working there. Thats almost 10% of our armed forces. I could only find decent reporting about this in german: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plaene-der-verteidigungsm...

Yeah, totally agree. They also have aggressive print advertising everywhere (here in Munich) for this campaign. I wonder if they can attract any real talent though? Only people I know willingly wanted to work for the Bundeswehr eiter did not have the grades to study elsewhere or went to Afghanistan for the money.

Hell, if they would accept foreigners like the US military does and provide a path to citizenship I'd be all over it.

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#79

Post by nitrogen »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #5
TillE wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next sentence pretty much confirms my impression that this claim is almost certainly bullshit: > Because the plane runs a different operating system, nothing would befall it. But it would pass the virus on to other devices that plugged into the charger. That's just...not how computers work.

I could maybe understand it if it was a USB hub, and the phones all had a defect that meant rogue USB signals could infect them. So if 2 people plugged into the same hub at the same time, it could spread. But if the claim is that the virus lie 'dormant' in the uninfectable plane OS, then I can't understand that.

USB devices cannot contact each other, only the master can communicate with the devices on the bus. It is a tree with one device at the root.

Re: German nuclear plant infected with computer viruses, operator says

#80

Post by known »

The head of the BND, the German equivalent of the American CIA, has been booted out of his job on the orders of chancellor Angela Merkel, two years before he was officially due to retire. No reason for the leadership change was disclosed

http://qz.com/671383/germany-has-sacked-its-spy-chief-but-ha...

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