7 ms·

This makes you wonder if we might see a resurgence in old school control systems without processors, and def no networks. The Manhattan project was able uraniu

This makes you wonder if we might see a resurgence in old school control systems without processors, and def no networks. The Manhattan project was able uranium purified to get a bomb working without PLCs and networks. All else being equal it's more expensive, but not compared to being unable to keep your network safe from attack. You need to reconfigure the line? Send eight techs down one by one to set new parameters and octople check the first tech's work.

aswanson 6y ago
Analog is the future. Steampunk nuke ops.
- HenryKissinger 6y ago
  There is truth in this comment. Parts of the Russian government have reverted to using mechanical typewriters in lieu of computers, which are too susceptible to malicious hacking. Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    But then again the Russians themselves famously placed very difficult to detect bugs in the mechanical typewriters of the American embassy.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      And the Americans put one in the Soviet embassy’s Xerox machine. I think a potential lesson of the story is to use technology that you understand at least as well as your enemy does. The communist bloc maintained registries of typewriter fingerprints so they could identify which typewriters were used to reproduce samizdat; I think it’s fair to assume that the Russians understand typewriters very well.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    > Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working. Is the threat model there that someone hacks the GPS signal, or that someone shoots down the GPS satellites? Lots of countries have ASATs these days.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Probably jamming. GPS signals are very faint, and on fixed frequency bands.
    - sharikous 6y ago
      Even an idiot can jam GPS. A little more sophisticated attack would be spoofing it, still doable (just a Google search away)
lovedswain 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPKGbg16ulU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPKGbg16ulU
bombcar 6y ago
It seems that there's also some lack of defense-in-depth going on - if the centrifuges need power to power down, why isn't that built into each one? It's interesting that the Manhattan project had to build everything themselves - which if Iran was NOT using off-the-shelf parts and instead was developing everything in-house they'd be less susceptible to certain types of attacks.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > and instead was developing everything in-house This article says they used air-gapped Siemens industrial control systems: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-dutch-mole-aided-the-us-israeli-stuxnet-cyber-attack-on-iran-160026018.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-du...
dragontamer 6y ago
> The Manhattan project was able uranium purified to get a bomb working without PLCs and networks. By enlisting thousands of young women to watch the knobs and dial buttons. https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/women-who-built-bomb/ https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/women-who-buil... They didn't even know they were building the bomb. They just had to enter the room, dial knobs back-and-forth for 8-hours/day, and then go home. Today, that sort of stuff SHOULD be automated. It made sense back then because there weren't computers, but... you really can't just get people to balance knobs 8-hours / day anymore. ------- EDIT: https://www.energy.gov/articles/five-fast-facts-about-calutron-girls https://www.energy.gov/articles/five-fast-facts-about-calutr... Seems like Department of Energy has some historical articles on them too.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  such an activity would also be a lot harder to hide today with eyes in space capturing everything in high-res
  - PartiallyTyped 6y ago
    Also, mass tracking through mobile devices. Even if said devices are in faraday cages, it doesn't take a genius to see that something exists in some area when there are many devices going dark and then coming back up again after some hours. It only takes access to cellphone towers and data.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Last I had heard, Iran's youth unemployment situation certainly would make that feasible...
- grenoire 6y ago
  Not without scheduled Instagram breaks you won't.
  - newsclues 6y ago
    I don’t know, with a good pair of headphones and podcasts, it could be tolerable
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rowanG077 6y ago
I think it would be easier to own the stack. Don't use third party network equipment. Formally verify every layer of the stack. In the end this is probably cheaper then going back to computerless.
hctaw 6y ago
My understanding is that Iran needs high performance centrifuges to enrich Uranium as they do not have an abundance of the stuff, unlike the Manhattan Project. They were able to pile up 50 tons of uranium and light up a lightbulb while other experiments were carried out in parallel to enrich uranium and synthesize plutonium.
markus_zhang 6y ago
The problem is that many Iranians do not agree with the current government or the revolutionary guard. Some of them have access to key infrastructures such as the building that contains the centrifuges. Reverting to old methods might not work so well when you face that situation.
kingkawn 6y ago
https://collapseos.org/ https://collapseos.org/ (i'm not affiliated with this project in any way)
devoutsalsa 6y ago
This sounds like how the Galactica survived in the 2003 BSG reboot. All of the critical systems (fire control, navigation, life support, etc.) were standalone & not networked. The baddies took out all of the new ships & defense networks with a computer virus, and the old Galactica couldn’t be hacked that way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(fictional_spacecraft)#Battlestar_Galactica_(2003) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(fictiona...
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  What does it even mean to “not be networked” and on a Galactic spaceship? I can imagine all of those systems need to communicate within their domain somehow, so they need to be connected. You could make a point that they have “not been connected to the internet”, but then it only takes one node to become a bridge between WAN and LAN and you are Pwned. It’s even worse now because there’s a tendency in software development to discount security this way: “we don’t need to think about security because we have a firewall”. I don’t think this is a valid scenario.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    I always took it to mean fixed purpose control signals rather than sitting on a common bus.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      It takes only one buffer overflow within a fixed purpose control signal handler to convert any bus into a general purpose bus.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        No buses, only fixed purpose control signals. It's pretty hard to buffer overflow if (read_gpio(Ignition_Enable_Pin)) {
        6y ago
lmarcos 6y ago
This is the equivalent of: let's not use a frontend/backend framework in our next project ;)
marto1 6y ago
In a lot of conflicts today the Kalashnikov is the highest tech used in combat so these simple systems are more the rule than the exception. High tech combat gear with VR and exoskeletons is more of a gun dealer's wet dream(e.g. costs a ton, breaks often) than anything that usually gets deployed.
- akiselev 6y ago
  The Kalashnikov looks low tech because it was designed to be cheap to manufacture but I'd argue the AK is one of the technical milestones in the 20th century on par with the assembly line (as horrible as the effects have been). It's carefully designed to operate reliably despite crappy manufacturing and ammunition tolerances after taking a beating in the field, made using whatever crappy metal is available for the receiver and barrel.
raverbashing 6y ago
You can have low powered processors running the show, it's probably very feasible. Or even analog control is doable. "Kids these days etc."
torginus 6y ago
I used to work at a small company that manufactured medical equipment. One of the products we made was a pick-and place robot that handled urine samples. It needed a coordinated 3-axis motor servo motor control, which we initially planned to use PLCs for, however after looking around and seeing the price tag of the stuff that matched our required feature set, we decided to build our own. We were up and running within 2 months, and I can tell you, writing code in C for the control loops is infinitely preferable to whatever monstrosity PLCs can be programmed in. I'd say this is a much more complex scenario than running a single motor at a certain speed depending on some sensor readings.

aswanson 6y ago

Analog is the future. Steampunk nuke ops.

HenryKissinger 6y ago
There is truth in this comment. Parts of the Russian government have reverted to using mechanical typewriters in lieu of computers, which are too susceptible to malicious hacking. Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  But then again the Russians themselves famously placed very difficult to detect bugs in the mechanical typewriters of the American embassy.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    And the Americans put one in the Soviet embassy’s Xerox machine. I think a potential lesson of the story is to use technology that you understand at least as well as your enemy does. The communist bloc maintained registries of typewriter fingerprints so they could identify which typewriters were used to reproduce samizdat; I think it’s fair to assume that the Russians understand typewriters very well.
- philwelch 6y ago
  > Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working. Is the threat model there that someone hacks the GPS signal, or that someone shoots down the GPS satellites? Lots of countries have ASATs these days.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Probably jamming. GPS signals are very faint, and on fixed frequency bands.
  - sharikous 6y ago
    Even an idiot can jam GPS. A little more sophisticated attack would be spoofing it, still doable (just a Google search away)

lovedswain 6y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPKGbg16ulU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPKGbg16ulU

bombcar 6y ago

It seems that there's also some lack of defense-in-depth going on - if the centrifuges need power to power down, why isn't that built into each one? It's interesting that the Manhattan project had to build everything themselves - which if Iran was NOT using off-the-shelf parts and instead was developing everything in-house they'd be less susceptible to certain types of attacks.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> and instead was developing everything in-house This article says they used air-gapped Siemens industrial control systems: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-dutch-mole-aided-the-us-israeli-stuxnet-cyber-attack-on-iran-160026018.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/revealed-how-a-secret-du...

dragontamer 6y ago

> The Manhattan project was able uranium purified to get a bomb working without PLCs and networks. By enlisting thousands of young women to watch the knobs and dial buttons. https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/women-who-built-bomb/ https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/women-who-buil... They didn't even know they were building the bomb. They just had to enter the room, dial knobs back-and-forth for 8-hours/day, and then go home. Today, that sort of stuff SHOULD be automated. It made sense back then because there weren't computers, but... you really can't just get people to balance knobs 8-hours / day anymore. ------- EDIT: https://www.energy.gov/articles/five-fast-facts-about-calutron-girls https://www.energy.gov/articles/five-fast-facts-about-calutr... Seems like Department of Energy has some historical articles on them too.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
such an activity would also be a lot harder to hide today with eyes in space capturing everything in high-res
- PartiallyTyped 6y ago
  Also, mass tracking through mobile devices. Even if said devices are in faraday cages, it doesn't take a genius to see that something exists in some area when there are many devices going dark and then coming back up again after some hours. It only takes access to cellphone towers and data.
zdragnar 6y ago
Last I had heard, Iran's youth unemployment situation certainly would make that feasible...
grenoire 6y ago
Not without scheduled Instagram breaks you won't.
- newsclues 6y ago
  I don’t know, with a good pair of headphones and podcasts, it could be tolerable

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rowanG077 6y ago

I think it would be easier to own the stack. Don't use third party network equipment. Formally verify every layer of the stack. In the end this is probably cheaper then going back to computerless.

hctaw 6y ago

My understanding is that Iran needs high performance centrifuges to enrich Uranium as they do not have an abundance of the stuff, unlike the Manhattan Project. They were able to pile up 50 tons of uranium and light up a lightbulb while other experiments were carried out in parallel to enrich uranium and synthesize plutonium.

markus_zhang 6y ago

The problem is that many Iranians do not agree with the current government or the revolutionary guard. Some of them have access to key infrastructures such as the building that contains the centrifuges. Reverting to old methods might not work so well when you face that situation.

kingkawn 6y ago

https://collapseos.org/ https://collapseos.org/ (i'm not affiliated with this project in any way)

devoutsalsa 6y ago

This sounds like how the Galactica survived in the 2003 BSG reboot. All of the critical systems (fire control, navigation, life support, etc.) were standalone & not networked. The baddies took out all of the new ships & defense networks with a computer virus, and the old Galactica couldn’t be hacked that way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(fictional_spacecraft)#Battlestar_Galactica_(2003) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(fictiona...

heavenlyblue 6y ago
What does it even mean to “not be networked” and on a Galactic spaceship? I can imagine all of those systems need to communicate within their domain somehow, so they need to be connected. You could make a point that they have “not been connected to the internet”, but then it only takes one node to become a bridge between WAN and LAN and you are Pwned. It’s even worse now because there’s a tendency in software development to discount security this way: “we don’t need to think about security because we have a firewall”. I don’t think this is a valid scenario.
- monocasa 6y ago
  I always took it to mean fixed purpose control signals rather than sitting on a common bus.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    It takes only one buffer overflow within a fixed purpose control signal handler to convert any bus into a general purpose bus.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      No buses, only fixed purpose control signals. It's pretty hard to buffer overflow if (read_gpio(Ignition_Enable_Pin)) {
      - 6y ago

lmarcos 6y ago

This is the equivalent of: let's not use a frontend/backend framework in our next project ;)

marto1 6y ago

In a lot of conflicts today the Kalashnikov is the highest tech used in combat so these simple systems are more the rule than the exception. High tech combat gear with VR and exoskeletons is more of a gun dealer's wet dream(e.g. costs a ton, breaks often) than anything that usually gets deployed.

akiselev 6y ago
The Kalashnikov looks low tech because it was designed to be cheap to manufacture but I'd argue the AK is one of the technical milestones in the 20th century on par with the assembly line (as horrible as the effects have been). It's carefully designed to operate reliably despite crappy manufacturing and ammunition tolerances after taking a beating in the field, made using whatever crappy metal is available for the receiver and barrel.

raverbashing 6y ago

You can have low powered processors running the show, it's probably very feasible. Or even analog control is doable. "Kids these days etc."

torginus 6y ago

I used to work at a small company that manufactured medical equipment. One of the products we made was a pick-and place robot that handled urine samples. It needed a coordinated 3-axis motor servo motor control, which we initially planned to use PLCs for, however after looking around and seeing the price tag of the stuff that matched our required feature set, we decided to build our own. We were up and running within 2 months, and I can tell you, writing code in C for the control loops is infinitely preferable to whatever monstrosity PLCs can be programmed in. I'd say this is a much more complex scenario than running a single motor at a certain speed depending on some sensor readings.