20 ms·

Here are the 'cyber 9/11' scenarios that really worry the experts

110 points by SREinSF 8y ago

tyingq 8y ago
Some sustained attack against a core function worries me. DNS, BGP, etc.
- ggggtez 8y ago
  Hitting DNS would probably take down credit card payments, but I think the worry about hitting electric/water grid is a step up in terms of how immediate the danger would be to actual lives.
  - cronix 8y ago
    I think electrical is all you'd really need to take out. If it were an attack like stuxnet, where it physically destroys the power generators, we will be in for a very long ride without electricity. Potentially years. The generators can get so hot they just melt/fuse internally, permanently destroying it. And, it can take many months to years to get a replacement. They're not just sitting on a shelf somewhere, and if dozens or hundreds are needed simultaneously... Seeing as how everything is centered around electricity, including water pumps, internet, financial systems, gas pumps (knocking out the whole supply system), etc., it would be game over and we'd be in a Lord of the Flies situation. Think about shutting off the failsafes on a nuclear power plant and ramping it up to run outside of normal parameters causing a meltdown. PBS - NOVA (CyberWar Threat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnTLju9_cE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnTLju9_cE Watch the whole thing, but check around the 37min mark for demos with generators. PBS - NOVA (Rise of the hacker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZdasoAGMQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZdasoAGMQs This gives a very good description of stuxnet, which is released out in the wild now for anyone to use. THAT, is downright scary.
Theodores 8y ago
Hacking some financial system or industrial control isn't really the big threat demanded of 'cyber warfare' that is just sensible information security, building systems to best practice, reviewing them and updating as per normal. The real danger is an idea that gets all too popular. For instance, the could be a new climate change type of group that comes along and gets too much mindshare. In fact there was a new group who closed five of London's bridges the other day. I doubt that they will be the group from which big ideas emanate from to take over the world but you never know. So the case can be made for all of this extra spending on the basis that it is all there to do things that sound sensible - 'Internet Security' - but there is capability being built for the more nefarious 'cyber warfare', making sure ideas that threaten business as usual get taken out.
- isostatic 8y ago
  For those confused, the op is complaining because some protesters staged a protest on a few bridges in London last week over their view that the UK government is not doing enough to tackle climate change. Civil disobedience existed well before the internet, on a far larger scale.
  - Theodores 8y ago
    Precisely. Mass surveillance under the pretext of some fuzzy cyber warfare remit has a chilling effect. This does not have to be mentioned, it is just a silent fear thing. So if people self censor themselves then they never group to that 'far larger scale'. Conversely the 'cyber 9/11' is if some idea - an idea that isn't limited to civil disobedience comes in a message where people don't self censor themselves then they could 'group to a far larger scale'. The status quo can't be threatened even by common sense ideas. So an idea in a message that 'goes viral' is the 'cyber 9/11' most feared. There is an art to controlling information in a democracy.
    - matt4077 8y ago
      I don't really understand much of what you are trying not so say. But I do think there is promise in your ideas of self-censorship and you should definitely think more about that concept.
badrabbit 8y ago
Bricking every intel cpu,Using a likely 0 day in JunOS and ASR routers to make them all inoperable for a few days,similar wipe outs of cloud provider infrastructure come to mind. But if I was the well resourced attacker I would use multiple teams and target a diverse variety of important services and infrastructure and coordinate an phased long term(weeks) attack. I would not cripple the internet as a whole,especially social media. In battle,hiding your location and intent is crucial to victory. Social media would play a critical role in sowing confusion amidst the chaos. Isolate part of the country and spread a message that some internal political group (antifa or alt-right for example) launched a physical WMD attack,use access to fortune 500 company networks to send emails and other communication indicating internal collapse of the companies,one corp is going bankrupt,another has been lying about profits is under SEC investigation. Chaos after chaos. The goal of a "cyber 9/11" would not be to cripple the internet but (imho)rather to exploit it to acheive three independent goals: 1) Long term (multi?)National and Economical instability and possibly collapse. 2) Make the internet as it stands today a mortal threat to society. 3) As a precursor to a physical invasion. The kinetic attack would be only of the many rumors and reports being circulated. Any and all damage to your enemy's communications brings you one step closer to victory with minimal effort. More on goal #2: The goal of 9/11 was not to kill some americans. The goal was to destabilize the west by attacking important symbols of economic and political prosperity. It worked,economy was only momentarily destabilized but 17 years later america and the west are grappling to keep their democracies and basic freedoms. The goal of terrorism is to terrorize not to merely kill(which is why mass shooters are not labeled terrorists,their intent is murder not change through terror). A Cyber 9/11 would have similar goals where the intent is to change and cause long term weakening of the adversary. What makes the internet strong is not BGP,DNS and secure operating systems. It's the fact that people trust it for reliable and resilient communication and governments view it as a strength to their political and economical stability as opposed to a dangerous liability. The goal of terrorism is to change your beliefs so that fear resulting from the attack changes your policy and principles.
- tyingq 8y ago
  I accidentally stumbled on an interesting approach to sow discontent. There was a forum that was hotlinking a "words to images" script I had on one of my websites. They would post these images as their "text" instead of plain text. It was hammering my server, so I changed up the script to return random inflammatory and/or inappropriate images if the referer was this forum site. I was using the source IP as the rand() seed, so everyone on the forum had a different view of the images, but consistent in that it remained constant for any single user. The resulting chaos and infighting was pretty funny until they figured it out.
catacombs 8y ago
It's only a matter of time before foreign hackers have the power to turn off the United State's electrical grid. Look how Russia did it in Ukraine.
- olivermarks 8y ago
  Decentralizing the attack surfaces would go a long way to mitigating 'turning off the grid'. The US arguably has the advantage of their grids being lots of different grids patched together and run by 500+ companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_U.S._power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_U.S._power_transmi... Against that there are probably lots of backdoors and security lapses amongst all these daisy chained systems...
- tedivm 8y ago
  That time has come and gone. We're essentially in a state where MAD principles apply. https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/03/21/northeastern-researchers-address-russian-power-grid-attack/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/03/21/northeastern-resear...
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Question: do HN-ers think that Russia and /or China have the capability of, say, shutting down our grid or water supplies? The army would have to restore order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977... I think they do, but we can return the favor.
hummingurban 8y ago
When a foreign adversarial state launches 'cyber 9/11' it would imply a few things: 1) The offending country is willing to escalate/desires to provoke skirmishes that may lead to major battles with or without conventional military. 2) The offending country is so desperate, the only way to reboot their economy is to start a losing battle so it can be rebuilt. 3) the economy of the offending country is so skewed at the top of the leadership, they are willing to thin the herd using foreign intervention, and build up a zealous supporter base who is out for blood for vengeance. TLDR: The adversarial state will launch a 'cyber nuclear' attack when it thinks is fully ready to take the brunt of 12 American carrier groups armed with manned and unmanned stealth fighters.
- z3phyr 8y ago
  What if you can't figure out who the offending country is? The USA like any other nation is just some people who have emotions and psychology that can be tinkered with. How about six American Carrier groups against the other six??
  - clubm8 8y ago
    >What if you can't figure out who the offending country is? Sounds like a great excuse to take out all the "usual suspects" at once.
    - z3phyr 8y ago
      Theorotically, in a world without consequences the USA can take out multiple powers very easily. Practically (and without usage of nuclear weopons), the USA can barely handle attrition. Also the USA have not fought a conventional war with another competent regional power since World War 2 and that too was with many allies.
      - badrabbit 8y ago
        Even something like vietnam would be very difficult now with all the internal division and the prelude strife they'll cause.
jacquesm 8y ago
A cyber 9/11 would be the prelude to a shooting war if committed by a nation state. 9/11 was not conducted by a nation state.
- lustysocietyorg 8y ago
  > 9/11 was not conducted by a nation state. Of course this post will be downvoted or ignored but maybe someone is willing to check the links to learn. It was conducted by at least 2 states: USA and Israel; the only "beneficiaries". Besides the USA is not a nation state like Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state Larry Silverstein: WTC 7 "Pull It" from 2002 Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lSC3jXFDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lSC3jXFDE Stand for the Truth: A Government Researcher Speaks Out | 9/11 Evidence and NIST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM The 9/11 Building Collapse | Richard Gage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2QqxpYcvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2QqxpYcvA 9/11 Suspects: The Dancing Israelis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XHm56O2NTI&t=414 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XHm56O2NTI&t=414 9/11 Trillions: Follow The Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA&t=3131 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA&t=3131 CIA Agent Confesses On Deathbed: ‘We Blew Up WTC7 On 9 11’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmx-DiWUqfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmx-DiWUqfs
- cornellwright 8y ago
  And 9/11 was still a prelude to a shooting war.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  Depends on your perspective,they acted on behalf islamic states,although not directly supported. Their backing isn't as important as their intent. For example,North Korea supports APT groups that operate with loose connections to Pyongyang,it's rumored one of these groups(Lazarus?) Was behind the Sony hacks which were effectively a much smaller act of cyber terrorism. They attacked to terrorize Sony into changing its repease of a movie mocking their leader.
  - 8y ago
miketery 8y ago
I think prior to cyber 9/11 we're more likely to see actors executing attacks for financial gain. i.e. for competitive advantage or market manipulation. > A hacker took over the Twitter account of the Associated Press in 2013, tweeting "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured." The stock market instantly fell 143 points. Regardless, our best defense is diversification/decentralization - which goes against normal economic development (mergers and centralization). But as the risk increases (more attacks) - then the balance will shift to support diversification (well I hope).
- partiallypro 8y ago
  Wouldn't work very well, even in your example you'd have to be a very quick trader and the SEC would catch it immediately after the fact. Whatever the attack, it would have to be very real not some fake event.
aviv 8y ago
The cyber 9/11 will be done by rogue AWS employees who are part of a sleeper cell at Amazon.
- wrinkl3 8y ago
  This is an interesting idea: how many Big-N companies have sleeper cells, capable of wrecking havoc the moment they're called upon?
eatMyFuck 8y ago
Gee, "Cyber 911" is a really unfortunate buzzword that reduces serious infrastructure attacks to a curious soundbite from a media outlet. It sounds like Chris Hanson's follow-up Reality TV exposé series, for Dateline, circa 1998 after winning multple awards for To Catch A Predator, in which he further demonstrates the perils of the Information Super Highway.
keyme 8y ago
I think a cyber 9/11 is just about the only thing that'll make us get our shit together in this industry. Hopefully it happens before cyber WWI.
gcb0 8y ago
it's very telling how everyone here is making the same mistakes USA intelligence made on 911 itself. 911 was some internal actors, sponsored by some CIA trained warlord who they forgot from 20 years before, but they could only see attacks coming from big nation states. Here the comments are making the same mistake. cyber 911 can be something like a random operative who was given some covert training and now focus it on the coutry who trained them. instead everyone can only see full blown world war from well organized and funded nation states. my guess: the (israeli?) company the US outsourced scada atacks on iran (stuxnet) will start selling the same tech (which most US facilities are still vulnerable to) other actors, such as north korea or syrians who felt betrayed with the US constant side-changing.
- tyingq 8y ago
  I read the other comments, and it's not "everyone here", or even a majority. There's also one specifically pointing out that 9/11 wasn't state sponsored, posted more than an hour ago.
- Haydos585x2 8y ago
  I think you're right. I wrote about this in a mediocre essay for a university competition (https://nickhayden.com/blog/war-poverty-and-the-human-elements-of-cybersecurity/ https://nickhayden.com/blog/war-poverty-and-the-human-elemen...) I think what we'll see is people living in poverty being radicalised, not too different from what we have in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan except now instead of risking their lives attacking a US convoy they just start hitting businesses with invalid security until they find something big. We're probably not too far away from it.
  - stef25 8y ago
    > until they find something big What do you envisage that to be?
    - Hextinium 8y ago
      If the electrical grid in the US to go down for greater than 2 weeks I think that could be an example of systematic shutdown that would be something big enough to sufficiently scare people into radically different habits.
FloNeu 8y ago
Well - and all they really needed was facebook... a mad reality tv star, and a mass of uneducated americans...
ohiovr 8y ago
A nation won’t play this hand without expecting to back it up with standard military options. So when things get to that point it should come as no surprise.
aaron695 8y ago
Lol, nutty HN thinks 9/11 was the direct product of a nation state do they? So let's leave the larping conspiracy world for a second and actually talk about a 'cyber 9/11' All someone needs to know is a 0 day that could brick a lot of computers (or phones) remotely and have a small botnet that could do it. The complexity won't/can't be much more than lets run a plane into a building. It'd be pretty funny, millions might die in the immediate aftermath depending on how good the brick is (GFC killed millions) but I could see a lot of strength in the aftermath. But as 4-chan says - for the lolz, one needs no reason. I just don't get why it hasn't happened yet?
crb002 8y ago
Remotely rooting automobiles during rush hour to accelerate. Several models now stupidly designed with media systems on same wire where it is physically possible.

110 points by SREinSF 8y ago

tyingq 8y ago

Some sustained attack against a core function worries me. DNS, BGP, etc.

ggggtez 8y ago
Hitting DNS would probably take down credit card payments, but I think the worry about hitting electric/water grid is a step up in terms of how immediate the danger would be to actual lives.
- cronix 8y ago
  I think electrical is all you'd really need to take out. If it were an attack like stuxnet, where it physically destroys the power generators, we will be in for a very long ride without electricity. Potentially years. The generators can get so hot they just melt/fuse internally, permanently destroying it. And, it can take many months to years to get a replacement. They're not just sitting on a shelf somewhere, and if dozens or hundreds are needed simultaneously... Seeing as how everything is centered around electricity, including water pumps, internet, financial systems, gas pumps (knocking out the whole supply system), etc., it would be game over and we'd be in a Lord of the Flies situation. Think about shutting off the failsafes on a nuclear power plant and ramping it up to run outside of normal parameters causing a meltdown. PBS - NOVA (CyberWar Threat): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnTLju9_cE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnTLju9_cE Watch the whole thing, but check around the 37min mark for demos with generators. PBS - NOVA (Rise of the hacker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZdasoAGMQs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZdasoAGMQs This gives a very good description of stuxnet, which is released out in the wild now for anyone to use. THAT, is downright scary.

Theodores 8y ago

Hacking some financial system or industrial control isn't really the big threat demanded of 'cyber warfare' that is just sensible information security, building systems to best practice, reviewing them and updating as per normal. The real danger is an idea that gets all too popular. For instance, the could be a new climate change type of group that comes along and gets too much mindshare. In fact there was a new group who closed five of London's bridges the other day. I doubt that they will be the group from which big ideas emanate from to take over the world but you never know. So the case can be made for all of this extra spending on the basis that it is all there to do things that sound sensible - 'Internet Security' - but there is capability being built for the more nefarious 'cyber warfare', making sure ideas that threaten business as usual get taken out.

isostatic 8y ago
For those confused, the op is complaining because some protesters staged a protest on a few bridges in London last week over their view that the UK government is not doing enough to tackle climate change. Civil disobedience existed well before the internet, on a far larger scale.
- Theodores 8y ago
  Precisely. Mass surveillance under the pretext of some fuzzy cyber warfare remit has a chilling effect. This does not have to be mentioned, it is just a silent fear thing. So if people self censor themselves then they never group to that 'far larger scale'. Conversely the 'cyber 9/11' is if some idea - an idea that isn't limited to civil disobedience comes in a message where people don't self censor themselves then they could 'group to a far larger scale'. The status quo can't be threatened even by common sense ideas. So an idea in a message that 'goes viral' is the 'cyber 9/11' most feared. There is an art to controlling information in a democracy.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    I don't really understand much of what you are trying not so say. But I do think there is promise in your ideas of self-censorship and you should definitely think more about that concept.

badrabbit 8y ago

Bricking every intel cpu,Using a likely 0 day in JunOS and ASR routers to make them all inoperable for a few days,similar wipe outs of cloud provider infrastructure come to mind. But if I was the well resourced attacker I would use multiple teams and target a diverse variety of important services and infrastructure and coordinate an phased long term(weeks) attack. I would not cripple the internet as a whole,especially social media. In battle,hiding your location and intent is crucial to victory. Social media would play a critical role in sowing confusion amidst the chaos. Isolate part of the country and spread a message that some internal political group (antifa or alt-right for example) launched a physical WMD attack,use access to fortune 500 company networks to send emails and other communication indicating internal collapse of the companies,one corp is going bankrupt,another has been lying about profits is under SEC investigation. Chaos after chaos. The goal of a "cyber 9/11" would not be to cripple the internet but (imho)rather to exploit it to acheive three independent goals: 1) Long term (multi?)National and Economical instability and possibly collapse. 2) Make the internet as it stands today a mortal threat to society. 3) As a precursor to a physical invasion. The kinetic attack would be only of the many rumors and reports being circulated. Any and all damage to your enemy's communications brings you one step closer to victory with minimal effort. More on goal #2: The goal of 9/11 was not to kill some americans. The goal was to destabilize the west by attacking important symbols of economic and political prosperity. It worked,economy was only momentarily destabilized but 17 years later america and the west are grappling to keep their democracies and basic freedoms. The goal of terrorism is to terrorize not to merely kill(which is why mass shooters are not labeled terrorists,their intent is murder not change through terror). A Cyber 9/11 would have similar goals where the intent is to change and cause long term weakening of the adversary. What makes the internet strong is not BGP,DNS and secure operating systems. It's the fact that people trust it for reliable and resilient communication and governments view it as a strength to their political and economical stability as opposed to a dangerous liability. The goal of terrorism is to change your beliefs so that fear resulting from the attack changes your policy and principles.

tyingq 8y ago
I accidentally stumbled on an interesting approach to sow discontent. There was a forum that was hotlinking a "words to images" script I had on one of my websites. They would post these images as their "text" instead of plain text. It was hammering my server, so I changed up the script to return random inflammatory and/or inappropriate images if the referer was this forum site. I was using the source IP as the rand() seed, so everyone on the forum had a different view of the images, but consistent in that it remained constant for any single user. The resulting chaos and infighting was pretty funny until they figured it out.

catacombs 8y ago

It's only a matter of time before foreign hackers have the power to turn off the United State's electrical grid. Look how Russia did it in Ukraine.

olivermarks 8y ago
Decentralizing the attack surfaces would go a long way to mitigating 'turning off the grid'. The US arguably has the advantage of their grids being lots of different grids patched together and run by 500+ companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_U.S._power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_U.S._power_transmi... Against that there are probably lots of backdoors and security lapses amongst all these daisy chained systems...
tedivm 8y ago
That time has come and gone. We're essentially in a state where MAD principles apply. https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/03/21/northeastern-researchers-address-russian-power-grid-attack/ https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/03/21/northeastern-resear...

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Question: do HN-ers think that Russia and /or China have the capability of, say, shutting down our grid or water supplies? The army would have to restore order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977... I think they do, but we can return the favor.

hummingurban 8y ago

When a foreign adversarial state launches 'cyber 9/11' it would imply a few things: 1) The offending country is willing to escalate/desires to provoke skirmishes that may lead to major battles with or without conventional military. 2) The offending country is so desperate, the only way to reboot their economy is to start a losing battle so it can be rebuilt. 3) the economy of the offending country is so skewed at the top of the leadership, they are willing to thin the herd using foreign intervention, and build up a zealous supporter base who is out for blood for vengeance. TLDR: The adversarial state will launch a 'cyber nuclear' attack when it thinks is fully ready to take the brunt of 12 American carrier groups armed with manned and unmanned stealth fighters.

z3phyr 8y ago
What if you can't figure out who the offending country is? The USA like any other nation is just some people who have emotions and psychology that can be tinkered with. How about six American Carrier groups against the other six??
- clubm8 8y ago
  >What if you can't figure out who the offending country is? Sounds like a great excuse to take out all the "usual suspects" at once.
  - z3phyr 8y ago
    Theorotically, in a world without consequences the USA can take out multiple powers very easily. Practically (and without usage of nuclear weopons), the USA can barely handle attrition. Also the USA have not fought a conventional war with another competent regional power since World War 2 and that too was with many allies.
    - badrabbit 8y ago
      Even something like vietnam would be very difficult now with all the internal division and the prelude strife they'll cause.

jacquesm 8y ago

A cyber 9/11 would be the prelude to a shooting war if committed by a nation state. 9/11 was not conducted by a nation state.

lustysocietyorg 8y ago
> 9/11 was not conducted by a nation state. Of course this post will be downvoted or ignored but maybe someone is willing to check the links to learn. It was conducted by at least 2 states: USA and Israel; the only "beneficiaries". Besides the USA is not a nation state like Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state Larry Silverstein: WTC 7 "Pull It" from 2002 Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lSC3jXFDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lSC3jXFDE Stand for the Truth: A Government Researcher Speaks Out | 9/11 Evidence and NIST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAv-114bwM The 9/11 Building Collapse | Richard Gage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2QqxpYcvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu2QqxpYcvA 9/11 Suspects: The Dancing Israelis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XHm56O2NTI&t=414 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XHm56O2NTI&t=414 9/11 Trillions: Follow The Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA&t=3131 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA&t=3131 CIA Agent Confesses On Deathbed: ‘We Blew Up WTC7 On 9 11’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmx-DiWUqfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmx-DiWUqfs
cornellwright 8y ago
And 9/11 was still a prelude to a shooting war.
badrabbit 8y ago
Depends on your perspective,they acted on behalf islamic states,although not directly supported. Their backing isn't as important as their intent. For example,North Korea supports APT groups that operate with loose connections to Pyongyang,it's rumored one of these groups(Lazarus?) Was behind the Sony hacks which were effectively a much smaller act of cyber terrorism. They attacked to terrorize Sony into changing its repease of a movie mocking their leader.
- 8y ago

miketery 8y ago

I think prior to cyber 9/11 we're more likely to see actors executing attacks for financial gain. i.e. for competitive advantage or market manipulation. > A hacker took over the Twitter account of the Associated Press in 2013, tweeting "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured." The stock market instantly fell 143 points. Regardless, our best defense is diversification/decentralization - which goes against normal economic development (mergers and centralization). But as the risk increases (more attacks) - then the balance will shift to support diversification (well I hope).

partiallypro 8y ago
Wouldn't work very well, even in your example you'd have to be a very quick trader and the SEC would catch it immediately after the fact. Whatever the attack, it would have to be very real not some fake event.

aviv 8y ago

The cyber 9/11 will be done by rogue AWS employees who are part of a sleeper cell at Amazon.

wrinkl3 8y ago
This is an interesting idea: how many Big-N companies have sleeper cells, capable of wrecking havoc the moment they're called upon?

eatMyFuck 8y ago

Gee, "Cyber 911" is a really unfortunate buzzword that reduces serious infrastructure attacks to a curious soundbite from a media outlet. It sounds like Chris Hanson's follow-up Reality TV exposé series, for Dateline, circa 1998 after winning multple awards for To Catch A Predator, in which he further demonstrates the perils of the Information Super Highway.

keyme 8y ago

I think a cyber 9/11 is just about the only thing that'll make us get our shit together in this industry. Hopefully it happens before cyber WWI.

gcb0 8y ago

it's very telling how everyone here is making the same mistakes USA intelligence made on 911 itself. 911 was some internal actors, sponsored by some CIA trained warlord who they forgot from 20 years before, but they could only see attacks coming from big nation states. Here the comments are making the same mistake. cyber 911 can be something like a random operative who was given some covert training and now focus it on the coutry who trained them. instead everyone can only see full blown world war from well organized and funded nation states. my guess: the (israeli?) company the US outsourced scada atacks on iran (stuxnet) will start selling the same tech (which most US facilities are still vulnerable to) other actors, such as north korea or syrians who felt betrayed with the US constant side-changing.

tyingq 8y ago
I read the other comments, and it's not "everyone here", or even a majority. There's also one specifically pointing out that 9/11 wasn't state sponsored, posted more than an hour ago.
Haydos585x2 8y ago
I think you're right. I wrote about this in a mediocre essay for a university competition (https://nickhayden.com/blog/war-poverty-and-the-human-elements-of-cybersecurity/ https://nickhayden.com/blog/war-poverty-and-the-human-elemen...) I think what we'll see is people living in poverty being radicalised, not too different from what we have in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan except now instead of risking their lives attacking a US convoy they just start hitting businesses with invalid security until they find something big. We're probably not too far away from it.
- stef25 8y ago
  > until they find something big What do you envisage that to be?
  - Hextinium 8y ago
    If the electrical grid in the US to go down for greater than 2 weeks I think that could be an example of systematic shutdown that would be something big enough to sufficiently scare people into radically different habits.

FloNeu 8y ago

Well - and all they really needed was facebook... a mad reality tv star, and a mass of uneducated americans...

ohiovr 8y ago

A nation won’t play this hand without expecting to back it up with standard military options. So when things get to that point it should come as no surprise.

aaron695 8y ago

Lol, nutty HN thinks 9/11 was the direct product of a nation state do they? So let's leave the larping conspiracy world for a second and actually talk about a 'cyber 9/11' All someone needs to know is a 0 day that could brick a lot of computers (or phones) remotely and have a small botnet that could do it. The complexity won't/can't be much more than lets run a plane into a building. It'd be pretty funny, millions might die in the immediate aftermath depending on how good the brick is (GFC killed millions) but I could see a lot of strength in the aftermath. But as 4-chan says - for the lolz, one needs no reason. I just don't get why it hasn't happened yet?

crb002 8y ago

Remotely rooting automobiles during rush hour to accelerate. Several models now stupidly designed with media systems on same wire where it is physically possible.