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Is this news for the Five Eyes countries? I heard earlier last year about Australian ASD working with NSA and I'd assume GCHQ in Operation Glowing Symphony, whe

Is this news for the Five Eyes countries? I heard earlier last year about Australian ASD working with NSA and I'd assume GCHQ in Operation Glowing Symphony, where they hacked a bunch of ISIS recruiting sites. I'd be surprised if they didn't have this to be honest. It'd be interesting to know the magnitude of the capability. Can they crash the internet? or a person's life? or a power station? And it'd also be great to know what their target acquisition time time was and ROE.

mtgx 6y ago
If you stop seeing this as "news" and start seeing it as "PR", then it makes more sense.
brodouevencode 6y ago
I had the same thought. Why would anyone be surprised? Quite honestly (because the UK way of life aligns with mine) I'm glad that they do.
vsareto 6y ago
This isn't surprising, but it seems like posturing and deception are more effective for cyberwar than conventional capabilities, and this article was probably written for that purpose.
- csilverman 6y ago
  That's what I was thinking. I'd imagine cyberwar capabilities are a lot more difficult for enemies to assess, at least in regards to conventional weapons. You can't spot them by satellite or anything; you'd have to estimate them based on knowledge of past attacks or reports from spies/informants. That strong element of uncertainty, combined with confident public statements and the knowledge of UK technical expertise in general, is probably a pretty decent deterrent, even if the abilities in question happened to be exaggerated.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > even if the abilities in question happened to be exaggerated. I donno. Stuxnet demonstrated how sophisticated the capabilities are of highly advanced nations, and that was around 10 years ago. At this point, I suspect that the assumption is that any computer-controlled system will be a target for cyber-espionage, and that it might not be obvious that such an attack is underway without some kind of monitoring that relies on statistical analysis of the performance deviance from some expected value. To compound the problem, the USA & China can likely obtain technical specs for just about any system produced in the world by just asking, and failing that, through corporate espionage. Which means these countries are pretty well positioned to pull off crazy hacks that wouldn't even seem possible.
    - csilverman 6y ago
      Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply the abilities were exaggerated; just saying that the amorphous nature of cyberwar means you could give an adversary pause by claiming abilities you may not have yet. (Whereas claiming you have, say, 1,200 bombers when you only have half that number is more easily determined).
3pt14159 6y ago
No it is not news in the least. Even Canada has offensive cyber and has members of the military talking with some regularity about how they use it in completely declassified settings. You can literally buy a ticket to a conference and hear these guys talk about it.
- csomar 6y ago
  Is this stuff available on youtube?
  - bdamm 6y ago
    The stuff on YouTube that I've seen has US generals talking vaguely about it. But even as far back as 2012 I was talking with US red team operators who were pretty open about the structure of cyber operations. At that time there was a team working in one branch of the government (NSA) developing malware for zero-day vulnerabilities, and another branch of the government (Air Force) putting the malware to work in actual operations. I think they called them "bit bombs" at the time, not sure what it's called now, but I can only imagine that the capability is even more developed and probably more widespread within US DoD. I'd expect the Army probably has their own cyber operators, for example, in addition to the specialized operators in cyber command.
sandworm101 6y ago
Anyone with a boat anchor can crash the internet. Well... Maybe a few anchors and some coordination.

mtgx 6y ago

If you stop seeing this as "news" and start seeing it as "PR", then it makes more sense.

brodouevencode 6y ago

I had the same thought. Why would anyone be surprised? Quite honestly (because the UK way of life aligns with mine) I'm glad that they do.

vsareto 6y ago

This isn't surprising, but it seems like posturing and deception are more effective for cyberwar than conventional capabilities, and this article was probably written for that purpose.

csilverman 6y ago
That's what I was thinking. I'd imagine cyberwar capabilities are a lot more difficult for enemies to assess, at least in regards to conventional weapons. You can't spot them by satellite or anything; you'd have to estimate them based on knowledge of past attacks or reports from spies/informants. That strong element of uncertainty, combined with confident public statements and the knowledge of UK technical expertise in general, is probably a pretty decent deterrent, even if the abilities in question happened to be exaggerated.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > even if the abilities in question happened to be exaggerated. I donno. Stuxnet demonstrated how sophisticated the capabilities are of highly advanced nations, and that was around 10 years ago. At this point, I suspect that the assumption is that any computer-controlled system will be a target for cyber-espionage, and that it might not be obvious that such an attack is underway without some kind of monitoring that relies on statistical analysis of the performance deviance from some expected value. To compound the problem, the USA & China can likely obtain technical specs for just about any system produced in the world by just asking, and failing that, through corporate espionage. Which means these countries are pretty well positioned to pull off crazy hacks that wouldn't even seem possible.
  - csilverman 6y ago
    Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply the abilities were exaggerated; just saying that the amorphous nature of cyberwar means you could give an adversary pause by claiming abilities you may not have yet. (Whereas claiming you have, say, 1,200 bombers when you only have half that number is more easily determined).

3pt14159 6y ago

No it is not news in the least. Even Canada has offensive cyber and has members of the military talking with some regularity about how they use it in completely declassified settings. You can literally buy a ticket to a conference and hear these guys talk about it.

csomar 6y ago
Is this stuff available on youtube?
- bdamm 6y ago
  The stuff on YouTube that I've seen has US generals talking vaguely about it. But even as far back as 2012 I was talking with US red team operators who were pretty open about the structure of cyber operations. At that time there was a team working in one branch of the government (NSA) developing malware for zero-day vulnerabilities, and another branch of the government (Air Force) putting the malware to work in actual operations. I think they called them "bit bombs" at the time, not sure what it's called now, but I can only imagine that the capability is even more developed and probably more widespread within US DoD. I'd expect the Army probably has their own cyber operators, for example, in addition to the specialized operators in cyber command.

sandworm101 6y ago

Anyone with a boat anchor can crash the internet. Well... Maybe a few anchors and some coordination.