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Are you talking about the introduction of backdoors or just exploiting vulnerabilities that are there? Because the latter sounds analogous to the creation of a
by unishark 6y ago
Are you talking about the introduction of backdoors or just exploiting vulnerabilities that are there? Because the latter sounds analogous to the creation of a tank bomb which might theoretically used against your tanks also.
The parent poster said the NSA "can" do attacks that don't reduce the security US assets. They didn't claim that all possible attacks fit this description. For example they can try to guess at bad passwords used on that foreign computer system.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoRoot comment: >>> how about the NSA used its powers to defend Americans instead of hoarding zero days and spying on them? >> why does this have to be XOR? Because these are opposed goals. Defending Americans means invalidating zero-days. You could restrict yourself solely to attacks that don't rely on flaws in the software. In that case, you would have no reason to hoard zero-days, because you are ideologically committed to never use them. That would be weird in a few different ways. But most relevant here, it answers "Why can't we do both?" with "We can, as long as we never do the second one!" This is not really a compelling response.
- colordrops 6y agoBut this isn't answering my question - why aren't they opposed goals for other parts of the military? Why just cyber? And we've already addressed the question of exposing ourselves - attacks can targeted and not universal, just like physical attacks. This property is not specific to cyber. For the inverse, the military could decide to use a bioweapon, but it would also attack ourselves.