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Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this? I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
by Merman_Mike 6y ago
Does the US conduct offensive cyber operations like this?
I feel like we never hear about them in the news.
- corytheboyd 6y agoHistory is written by the victors, as they say
- fabianhjr 6y agoThe United States has admitted to perpetrating coups to get a us-friendly dictator in otherwise democratic societies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI
- Merman_Mike 6y agoCurious how this is connected at all to my question? I know "America Bad" is trendy now, but I don't see the connection.
- fabianhjr 6y agoEspionage is less aggressive and overt than perpetrating coups in democratic societies.
- dash2 6y agoHis question was "does the US conduct cyber espionage", not "does the USA do bad things?" Let's not let every post about international politics degenerate into a contest about which state is the wickedest.
- Daho0n 6y agoPlease, this isn't Reddit. The US just happens to be part of the list of bad guys together with Russia, North Korea, Israel, PRC, etc. The difference is that on sites with a lot of US users pointing the finger at the US is more often than not seen as someone being Edgy or whatever while pointing it at Russia is cool/patriotic/stating the facts/etc.
- bitcharmer 6y agoThis. Over the past few months I've noticed HN slowly slipping into the reddit-esque, us-centric groupthink in the comments section. The bias is apparent and I fear the trend is accelerating.
- dillondoyle 6y agoYes. Stuxnet being the most famous which brought this to more daylight -'cat out of the bag.' Trump admin also did a press push after changing policy to ramp up digital offense [1]. Notably these stories were obviously is coordinated and on purpose. e.g. not just someone leaker talking to reporter it was strategy. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/under-trump-u-s-military-ramps-cyber-offensive-against-other-n1019281 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/under-tru...
- ehsankia 6y agoThat push was actually interesting, since they were intentionally being open about their cyber capabilities. They also had a "press tour" about how they hacked ISIS [0]. There's clearly some mind games going on by showing your hand like that. [0] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/763545811/how-the-u-s-hacked-isis https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/763545811/how-the-u-s-hacked-...
- dillondoyle 6y agoTotally interesting! Kind of similar mindset to nuclear weapons it seems being open about our capabilities; if you attack us, we attack you as a deterrent. But that doesn't seem to stop Russia who doesn't give AF already under huge sanctions, or non-state groups like ISIS
- southeastern 6y agoAll nations do. It's become very normal. On the surface relations are nice and respectful. But we even spy on our allies behind closed doors. Take the case of Germany, that became public knowledge because of wikileaks. We had Angela Merkel's office wiretapped, among other things[1]. After it became known, they hardly responded past some internal investigations. I think their Senate switched to storing documents offline too. But at this point it isn't something inexcusable. And you can be sure Germany does too[2]. Knowledge is power. 1- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-usa-spying-idUSKCN0PI2AD20150709 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-usa-spying-idUSKC... 2- https://m.dw.com/en/how-the-uss-cia-and-germanys-bnd-spied-on-world-leaders/a-52358527 https://m.dw.com/en/how-the-uss-cia-and-germanys-bnd-spied-o...
- asia92 6y agoThis is actually pretty fucked up
- WJW 6y agoWelcome to the world :)
- comboy 6y agoIs it really? Theoretically with perfect information you don't need to go to war, you can just compute the result and start with treaty negotiations.
- dash2 6y agoThis. There's actually an argument that spying helps peace. My dad (a journalist, RIP) was once at a UN conference in the 70s, and made the remark to a Chinese official in a light-hearted spirit: "of course you spy on us, we spy on you, and what's wrong with that?" This caused a major row and he was forced to apologize.
- ProAm 6y agoIt's just business.
- Yajirobe 6y agoNah, the US couldn't do such an awful thing towards other nations
- 29athrowaway 6y agoMost large deals (e.g.: aerospace, defence contracts, infrastructure projects) are backed by diplomacy and/or various flavors of espionage.
- user764743 6y agoThere was a guy called "Edward Snowden" who revealed a bunch of offensive cyber operations a while back. You may have heard of him.
- 1MachineElf 6y agoTrust me, you will not hear about them. Also, when the US government detects it's been infiltrated, it's also rare to hear about it. That's why whenever you see articles like this that make attribution, I recommend viewing them with skepticism, simply because the information is specifically selected.
- jrochkind1 6y agoThey pretty much don't ever want you to hear about them in the news. They don't want compromised entities to know they are compromised so they will keep revealing sensitive information through the systems; they don't want specific vulnerabilities they are using to be known so they won't be patched, or even the general sorts of capabilities they have to be known; and at least traditionally it's thought like it makes the U.S. (or any other country) look bad to be breaking other country's laws and spying on them like this, when it's a country we theoretically aren't in hostilities with. It might make the attacked nations feel they have to retaliate in some way too, if it's public. Perhaps if the NSA focused more on defense instead of offense, they'd have been better able to protect our own government against this sort of attack. Who can say if some of the vulnerabilities used were ones the NSA in fact knew about but was keeping in it's pocket for it's own use. A well-resourced expert federal agency actually focused on security could make everyone safer from snooping; when they instead prioritize snooping themselves, they instead help make everyone less safe from snooping.