7 ms·

>We don't know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China or Russia would be my first guesses. Why not the USA?

manojlds 10y ago
With the elections coming, USA would be on the top of my list.
- guccifer42 10y ago
  Good afternoon, Colonel Ivanoff.
- tbarbugli 10y ago
  why?
  - toxican 10y ago
    Because America is an Orwellian hellhole, gawd, haven't you read animal house 84?!
    - che_shirecat 10y ago
      the number of people missing the sarcasm in your post is worrying
      - grzm 10y ago
        Because it's being down voted? I think any down votes are more likely because the comment doesn't add substantively to the conversation and is distracting given other recent threads.
    - masukomi 10y ago
      um. if you are basing your logic on orwelianness then the England should be your your top candidate. massive monitoring of the populace, severe restrictions on the ability to carry anything that is vaguely pointy or goes bang, poor freedom of speech rules (relative to the US).... I love England but as far as orwellian societies go, you can do notably worse than the US.
      - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
        As someone living in England, I can confirm that a) we are an extreme surveillance society, which the general population neither really understands, nor cares about b) the vast majority of us are very grateful we don't have (legalised) guns on the streets, and we suffer from a much lower homicide rate as a result
    - tbarbugli 10y ago
      I did, as far as I remember these book are all about USSR ;)
amalcon 10y ago
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the USA to take down the internet, as they benefit the most from it. A significant fraction of that economy is based on it, much larger than in the cases of China and Russia. It would be like the owner of a coal mine campaigning for a carbon emissions tax: maybe there's something we don't know, but from the information we have it seems unlikely. Note that this wouldn't rule out the USA as such. First, it could be a longshot preparedness thing, with no expectation that it would ever be used. Second, they could be red-teaming the thing (looking for weaknesses so that they can arrange for them to be shored up). In either of these scenarios, it's no less likely that the USA would be doing it than anyone else. If you assume that whoever is doing this is planning to use their knowledge, however, the economic argument makes the USA less likely to be involved.
- falcolas 10y ago
  For either of your cases, I can't imagine the value of having it last this long, or even be this severe. The impact on the economy and trust in a infrastructure company is too high. I'd be more willing to put my money on someone attacking an entity downstream who is normally immune to DDOS attacks of this size.
- barkingcat 10y ago
  There are many types of actors even within the USA nation-state / government. For example, if a particular part of the government got wind of a data dump about to be released by another nation-state or independent actor (for example, a leak of some kind) - I think some parts of the USA government that possesses the ability to do so wouldn't hesitate to take down dns to the entire internet to avoid another similar data leak to the Snowden dump. Be really wary of attributing intent: you do not know who will benefit the most from taking down certain services. To claim that the US benefits from the internet so much that it wouldn't do certain actions to protect itself from certain types of harm is shortsighted. Even my example could be really wrong, but the idea is that nobody really can say - "oh the internet is too important to xyz, they'll never do anything!"
  - omni 10y ago
AsyncAwait 10y ago
The usual thinking goes something like; well, the US created the internet so why would they want to take it down? Yes, NSA spies and all that, but they need the internet up to do that and also as bad as NSA is, it's nowhere near as bad as China or Russia where they ... (ranges from censorship to eating babies alive)
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > The usual thinking goes something like; well, the US created the internet so why would they want to take it down? To pin it on someone else? "17 Intelligence agencies told me Russia hacked our DNC thing" (Clinton). So maybe it is now "Oh look they took down the whole internet as well".
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    Of course, I just tried to explain how the thinking behind the sentiment that it obviously isn't the U.S., not saying I agree with it.
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    >To pin it on someone else? That's... kind of conspiratorial thinking? Would you cut off your own hand so you could blame it on someone else?
    - plasticchris 10y ago
      It's called a false flag operation, and does happen.
      - mzw_mzw 10y ago
        And the ratio of false flag operations to false accusations of false flag operations is about 1:99. Lots of unlikely things "do happen," but if that's the immediate explanation you reach for you're going to be wrong most of the time.
ckozlowski 10y ago
Because we are not indiscriminate like that.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- macawfish 10y ago
  Who is "we"? The u.s. government is a conglomerate of interests, organizations, individuals... Many of whom are quite indiscriminate. I'm not at all proposing that the U.S. was involved here. I'm questioning the simple identification of the U.S. government with the word "we", and the corresponding assumption that this institution is integrated in a carefully discriminating way...
mzw_mzw 10y ago
Why the USA?
balls187 10y ago
Russia retaliating for the US taking out the ESA Mars Drone.
- komali2 10y ago
  I thought, "first actual space battle! Neat!" Then I felt horrible.
- firstworldman 10y ago
  What's this about? Confusing premise. Got any links?
  - funkyy 10y ago
    I assume it was just a joke...
  - balls187 10y ago
    Not a joke, just conjecture. Some NPR story about US Cybercommand responding to Russian cyber attacks, 'at place and time of our choosing.' 'Some you might hear about. Some you might not.' FFWD to a couple days ago, NPR story about a botched European and Russian lander. Today, US Eastern Seaboard is seeing connectivity disruption due to DDoS attacks. * Unwinding the stack, the latest news is these DDoS attacks are not likely state sponsored. Russia pulling off a coordinated attack that soon after and in response to my theorized US retaliation seems unlikely. US attacking a joint partnership between Russia and Europe civilian space program seems unlikely.
briandear 10y ago
Why would they attack themselves?
WorldMaker 10y ago
From the context of the paper, because the USA could just send a three-letter-agency agent of some sort to Dyn, a US-based company, and ask what their infrastructure looks like? (Presuming of course some weird scenario where they weren't already tracking it, which seems unlikely.)

manojlds 10y ago

With the elections coming, USA would be on the top of my list.

guccifer42 10y ago
Good afternoon, Colonel Ivanoff.
tbarbugli 10y ago
why?
- toxican 10y ago
  Because America is an Orwellian hellhole, gawd, haven't you read animal house 84?!
  - che_shirecat 10y ago
    the number of people missing the sarcasm in your post is worrying
    - grzm 10y ago
      Because it's being down voted? I think any down votes are more likely because the comment doesn't add substantively to the conversation and is distracting given other recent threads.
  - masukomi 10y ago
    um. if you are basing your logic on orwelianness then the England should be your your top candidate. massive monitoring of the populace, severe restrictions on the ability to carry anything that is vaguely pointy or goes bang, poor freedom of speech rules (relative to the US).... I love England but as far as orwellian societies go, you can do notably worse than the US.
    - oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
      As someone living in England, I can confirm that a) we are an extreme surveillance society, which the general population neither really understands, nor cares about b) the vast majority of us are very grateful we don't have (legalised) guns on the streets, and we suffer from a much lower homicide rate as a result
  - tbarbugli 10y ago
    I did, as far as I remember these book are all about USSR ;)

amalcon 10y ago

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the USA to take down the internet, as they benefit the most from it. A significant fraction of that economy is based on it, much larger than in the cases of China and Russia. It would be like the owner of a coal mine campaigning for a carbon emissions tax: maybe there's something we don't know, but from the information we have it seems unlikely. Note that this wouldn't rule out the USA as such. First, it could be a longshot preparedness thing, with no expectation that it would ever be used. Second, they could be red-teaming the thing (looking for weaknesses so that they can arrange for them to be shored up). In either of these scenarios, it's no less likely that the USA would be doing it than anyone else. If you assume that whoever is doing this is planning to use their knowledge, however, the economic argument makes the USA less likely to be involved.

falcolas 10y ago
For either of your cases, I can't imagine the value of having it last this long, or even be this severe. The impact on the economy and trust in a infrastructure company is too high. I'd be more willing to put my money on someone attacking an entity downstream who is normally immune to DDOS attacks of this size.
barkingcat 10y ago
There are many types of actors even within the USA nation-state / government. For example, if a particular part of the government got wind of a data dump about to be released by another nation-state or independent actor (for example, a leak of some kind) - I think some parts of the USA government that possesses the ability to do so wouldn't hesitate to take down dns to the entire internet to avoid another similar data leak to the Snowden dump. Be really wary of attributing intent: you do not know who will benefit the most from taking down certain services. To claim that the US benefits from the internet so much that it wouldn't do certain actions to protect itself from certain types of harm is shortsighted. Even my example could be really wrong, but the idea is that nobody really can say - "oh the internet is too important to xyz, they'll never do anything!"
- omni 10y ago

AsyncAwait 10y ago

The usual thinking goes something like; well, the US created the internet so why would they want to take it down? Yes, NSA spies and all that, but they need the internet up to do that and also as bad as NSA is, it's nowhere near as bad as China or Russia where they ... (ranges from censorship to eating babies alive)

rdtsc 10y ago
> The usual thinking goes something like; well, the US created the internet so why would they want to take it down? To pin it on someone else? "17 Intelligence agencies told me Russia hacked our DNC thing" (Clinton). So maybe it is now "Oh look they took down the whole internet as well".
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  Of course, I just tried to explain how the thinking behind the sentiment that it obviously isn't the U.S., not saying I agree with it.
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  >To pin it on someone else? That's... kind of conspiratorial thinking? Would you cut off your own hand so you could blame it on someone else?
  - plasticchris 10y ago
    It's called a false flag operation, and does happen.
    - mzw_mzw 10y ago
      And the ratio of false flag operations to false accusations of false flag operations is about 1:99. Lots of unlikely things "do happen," but if that's the immediate explanation you reach for you're going to be wrong most of the time.

ckozlowski 10y ago

Because we are not indiscriminate like that.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
macawfish 10y ago
Who is "we"? The u.s. government is a conglomerate of interests, organizations, individuals... Many of whom are quite indiscriminate. I'm not at all proposing that the U.S. was involved here. I'm questioning the simple identification of the U.S. government with the word "we", and the corresponding assumption that this institution is integrated in a carefully discriminating way...

mzw_mzw 10y ago

Why the USA?

balls187 10y ago

Russia retaliating for the US taking out the ESA Mars Drone.

komali2 10y ago
I thought, "first actual space battle! Neat!" Then I felt horrible.
firstworldman 10y ago
What's this about? Confusing premise. Got any links?
- funkyy 10y ago
  I assume it was just a joke...
- balls187 10y ago
  Not a joke, just conjecture. Some NPR story about US Cybercommand responding to Russian cyber attacks, 'at place and time of our choosing.' 'Some you might hear about. Some you might not.' FFWD to a couple days ago, NPR story about a botched European and Russian lander. Today, US Eastern Seaboard is seeing connectivity disruption due to DDoS attacks. * Unwinding the stack, the latest news is these DDoS attacks are not likely state sponsored. Russia pulling off a coordinated attack that soon after and in response to my theorized US retaliation seems unlikely. US attacking a joint partnership between Russia and Europe civilian space program seems unlikely.

briandear 10y ago

Why would they attack themselves?

WorldMaker 10y ago

From the context of the paper, because the USA could just send a three-letter-agency agent of some sort to Dyn, a US-based company, and ask what their infrastructure looks like? (Presuming of course some weird scenario where they weren't already tracking it, which seems unlikely.)