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“So far, there is no evidence that the United States has actually turned off the power in any of the efforts to establish what American officials call a “persis
by _iyig 7y ago
“So far, there is no evidence that the United States has actually turned off the power in any of the efforts to establish what American officials call a “persistent presence” inside Russian networks, just as the Russians have not turned off power in the United States.”
The NYT decision to frame these efforts as “attacks” rather than “infiltration” is certainly an interesting one. In essence, the U.S. has built a (digital) mutually-assured destruction deterrent. We wouldn’t refer to past nuclear drills or tests as “attacks” on Russia, so I find the use of that phrase here intriguing. I assume they simply borrowed the vocabulary of security researchers, knowing that it would mean something different to much of their readership.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y agoSince they're actively planting stuff in their systems, I consider calling it an attack appropriate. That's not "testing nukes in your own desert", that is "sneaking into someone's factories and planting bombs", if we're looking for an analogy. And I'm surprised that this is openly admitted by the US, and tolerated by both sides, instead of being treated as an act of war.
- mogadsheu 7y agoMaybe they’re both more concerned with attacks from terrorist groups than from each other. The analogy would be one guy telling a colleague that his fly is down before a client meeting. They both might want the same position but an unrecognized failure would make them both look bad.
- gubbrora 7y agoMy impression is that it's easier to attack than to defend or detect. That would make the country who doesn't attack a sucker. So treating it as an act of war isn't viable.
- emXdem 7y agoThe New York Times has a trash editorial board. Fuck them with a barbed instrument made of lava.
- dang 7y agoWe've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. You may not owe the New York Times better, but you do owe the community better if you want to post here. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- alexandercrohde 7y agoUhh, I think "attack" is the only term. If you installed such software in US power plants it would almost certainly be described as "hacking," "a [cyber] attack", and likely if multiple targets "terrorism." Regardless of your opinion US/Russia, we should all hold that words need objective meanings that can't be "bent" for convenience.
- freehunter 7y agoYeah this is pretty basic information security terminology. An "attack" is any attempted intrusion, successful or not, damaging or not. If the threat actor managed to breach your defenses and gain unauthorized access, that's called an attack. For some definitions: https://www.beyondtrust.com/blog/entry/difference-between-a-threat-actor-hacker-attacker https://www.beyondtrust.com/blog/entry/difference-between-a-...
- meowface 7y agoI think it's an attack in the network/technical sense but not the strategic sense. There's a bit of a conflation of terms here because there are at least two layers to any operation like this; the system intrusion itself, and using the access to achieve some kind of real world objective. Militarily or strategically, this would just be something like reconnaissance and preparation, I think (I know almost nothing about militaries though). So it's a system attack but not an "attack-attack".
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoIf someone breaks into my house and plants a bomb under my bed, I'm comfortable calling that an "attack" even if they haven't set it off yet.