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The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

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Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#81

Post by giancarlostoro »

some_account wrote: post #74
fapjacks wrote: post #8

I'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…

If you are a state actor, it's not difficult to gather a couple of programmers from the "antivirus" and security field and build something that is hard to detect. It would be impressive if it was the work of a teenager but it's not.

You also somehow need access to the industrial grade target platform in some way shape or form which is not something a teenager has lying around in their room nor extensive knowledge about to this extent.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#82

Post by noxToken »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #65
omribahumi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to second this. The things I wrote throughout my career that I'm most proud of aren't very complex. I find it very satisfying to understand a problem so well, up to the point you can find a simple and elegant solution to it. It makes the solution easier to reason about with other team members, and easier for the team to maintain it later. I see this as making your domain expertise available as a framework for…

Simplicity is always a sign of a quality solution. I’m not sure why anybody would ever conflate complexity with quality or sophistication. I wrote some very complex code in college, but it wasn’t very high quality.

To date, my most complex piece of software in terms of how it was implemented was a simple calculator written in my first programming course. About a week before I started it, I had learned about regular expressions (the programming construct, not the formal language construct).

The basic implementation was a calculator that could add, sub, mul, div, pow, and sqrt. Bonus points were awarded for adding additional functionality including lettered variables. It started with a relatively clean shunting-yard implementation, but my use of regular expressions quickly fixed that.

My calculator worked under most circumstances, but that thing is an eye sore. I'll never get rid of that source code. I like to go back and look a few key pieces of software I've written through the years.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#83

Post by Clubber »

askmike wrote: post #51
andrelaszlo wrote: post #40

What do you think, are the authors of Stuxnet reading Hacker News? I wonder how tempting it is to comment, and what the repercussions would be.

"throwaway account for obvious reasons - I'm a devops for the C&C servers. Our process is actually quite similar to most other tech companies. We spend half our time arguing over what programming language to use (node/go/rust) and the other half arguing over whether we should use microservices."

I assume you spend a lot of time getting the SME to clarify what the hell they mean by "such and such," as well. :)

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#84

Post by aequitas »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
nathanm412 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

I think you would need to think in the line of a global economy/technology/infrastructure collapse (no power production/utilities, (global) transport, financial crisis), millions of first world being thrown into third world conditions (no access to water, food, medicine) due to the large cities depending on technology. Also see: https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e01

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#85

Post by steego »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #68
nathanm412 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're quickly heading toward the age of the first Virtual WMD. The implications can be as wide as your imagination, but possibly worse than existing WMDs.

I'm having a hard time imagining a virtual WMD that is worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people.

You know what's worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people? The slow obliteration and starving of millions of people.

Imagine Venezuela, but much much worse.

Picture a society that doesn't know how to create institutions, conduct trade and collaborate with the people around them without the aid of a computers.

Now, I don't know if disabling their computers would result in an incredibly dysfunctional society that would starve, but it's not unthinkable. If it did, the suffering could be far beyond the instant obliteration of millions of people.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#86

Post by Clubber »

jjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #77
Clubber wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of controllers for say a dam, or an autopilot system in a jet.

Which you consider worse than the instant obliteration of millions of people?

I'm not sure it would be. I don't think we've considered all that can happen with a sophisticated worm.

The problem with leveraging nukes is MAD. With worms, you can do a lot of damage without even knowing who did it. Think the Anthrax attacks in 2001 x 1000.

With worms, you can do a bunch of damage over a long period of time without getting discovered. What's the US going to do, start a nuclear war over it? No, see MAD above.

I mean if a worm could figure out how to stop shipping (say simultaneously disable control / start systems of vehicles or gas pumps), people will start to starve after a few days, then probably total chaos will happen leading to a bunch of deaths. That's just a single scenario.

How about if a worm took control of all the air traffic towers simultaneously and change the information so that controllers would start crashing planes everywhere.

I know nuclear war has been played out on tv and in movies for the last 70 years or so, but I don't see an all out nuclear war between two states lobbing hundreds of warheads at each other ever happening. At least not intentionally. Any type of nuclear detonation would either be accidental, or very isolated.

Re: The Stuxnet worm may be the most sophisticated software ever written

#87

Post by a-dub »

some_account wrote: post #74
fapjacks wrote: post #8

I'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…

If you are a state actor, it's not difficult to gather a couple of programmers from the "antivirus" and security field and build something that is hard to detect. It would be impressive if it was the work of a teenager but it's not.

The SCADA stuff was novel and interesting though and goes above and beyond your average malware both in what it did and the idea to do it in the first place.

A really creative hack, so to speak. (or destructive? anti-destructive? shrug)

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