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Well of course, hacking is an activity that has by far the most leverage both criminally and militarily in the modern era. For ~$1M you can successfully attack

by Veserv 6y ago

Well of course, hacking is an activity that has by far the most leverage both criminally and militarily in the modern era. For ~$1M you can successfully attack and completely compromise essentially any Fortune 500 company in the world. For ~$1M you could target the current model year of any brand of car in the world and develop a remote attack to simultaneously target every car of that model year at rush-hour and engage the cruise control at maximum speed, engage the anti-lock braking to disable the brakes, and, if applicable, engage the autosteer to turn slightly into oncoming traffic as these researchers [1] demonstrated could be done 5 years ago on a budget of only $80k. For ~$1M-10M you could likely target the most popular types of generators used in a power grid and at the very least deactivate if not disable their software governors and over-rev them to destroy them as demonstrated by the DoD 14 years ago [2] and as militarily deployed by Russia against Ukraine [3] which could result in the loss of power for months if sufficiently widespread. At the very least our internet-connected stoves with remote turn-on [4] are safe since, as we all know, the software developers for stoves are the best minds of our generation so it would cost far more than the ~$1M to hack a Fortune 500 company to remotely turn on the gas at 2 AM in the morning and then the igniter at 3 AM with results like this: WARNING [5][6]. For less than the price of a tank any government can develop a weapons system that is comparable in power to a full scale nuclear first strike that you can deploy instantly in your enemy's territory. Not just that it can be tuned to any scale of destruction you want from an individual all the way up to full scale nuclear strike, and it can be done untraceably or, even better, you can pin it on one of your other enemies as the CIA had the capability to do [7]. Frankly, any government not feverishly developing such weapons systems given that they only cost a few measly million to develop for the immense capabilities they provide is either ignorant or fighting the last war. This is The Tool that a small nation can use to achieve parity with superpowers given their miniscule cost and immense leverage. [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-acceleration-hacks/ https://www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GSEchbDuB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GSEchbDuB8 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_grid_cyberattack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2015_Ukraine_power_gr... [4] https://www.geappliances.com/ge/connected-appliances/ranges-ovens-cooking.htm https://www.geappliances.com/ge/connected-appliances/ranges-... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2JPLMzQjkk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2JPLMzQjkk [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX9-puUjoDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX9-puUjoDU [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7#UMBRAGE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7#UMBRAGE

ackbar03 6y ago
Where can I purchase this? you have an ebay or amazon link or something?
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Like, in principle you're right. In practice, cyber attacks at the level of terror that is equivilent to a "full scale nuclear first strike" simply have not happened (yet). I do believe that you might be making a bit of hyperbole with the scale of possible terror potentially possible for such small amounts of money. Some crazy mofo should have done this by now. You're telling me that ted kaczynski types don't exist for hacking?
- shostack 6y ago
  Read up on NotPetya. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware)
- Veserv 6y ago
  No, the reasoning that it is easy enough for some crazy person to do so, but none have done so yet, therefore it is unlikely to be possible is deeply flawed. On 2001/09/11 hijackers flew Boeing 767s into buildings for the first time in history and killed thousands. Yet, Boeing 767s had been flying for 19 years by that point and there were planes equally good for such a task for 40-50 years. On 2016/07/14 in Nice a person drove a truck into a promenade killing 86 people. Yet, cargo trucks had been in operation for 100? years by that point. These ideas are obvious, easily achievable, available for decades, and require no particularly advanced knowledge or skills to plan, yet took literal decades to occur after the point at which they became feasible. The capability to engage in a large scale cyber-physical attack is maybe 10-15 years old. Not even a generation has passed since it became technologically feasible. To put that into perspective, Ted Kaczynski started his attacks when he was 36. If at the very moment that it became possible an 18 year old "crazy mofo" also figured that out they would still not be as old as Ted Kaczynski was when he started.
- lumost 6y ago
  At these prices, cyber attacks are much cheaper than cruise missiles but too expensive for most criminals/terrorists without an explicit objective. You'd expect state actors to use these attacks to achieve a particular goal, where the cyber attack option is weighed against the cruise missile option. Permanently destroying a power grid doesn't make a ton of sense for any reasonable objective other than total war.

by Veserv 6y ago

ackbar03 6y ago

Where can I purchase this? you have an ebay or amazon link or something?

Der_Einzige 6y ago

Like, in principle you're right. In practice, cyber attacks at the level of terror that is equivilent to a "full scale nuclear first strike" simply have not happened (yet). I do believe that you might be making a bit of hyperbole with the scale of possible terror potentially possible for such small amounts of money. Some crazy mofo should have done this by now. You're telling me that ted kaczynski types don't exist for hacking?

shostack 6y ago
Read up on NotPetya. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petya_(malware)
Veserv 6y ago
No, the reasoning that it is easy enough for some crazy person to do so, but none have done so yet, therefore it is unlikely to be possible is deeply flawed. On 2001/09/11 hijackers flew Boeing 767s into buildings for the first time in history and killed thousands. Yet, Boeing 767s had been flying for 19 years by that point and there were planes equally good for such a task for 40-50 years. On 2016/07/14 in Nice a person drove a truck into a promenade killing 86 people. Yet, cargo trucks had been in operation for 100? years by that point. These ideas are obvious, easily achievable, available for decades, and require no particularly advanced knowledge or skills to plan, yet took literal decades to occur after the point at which they became feasible. The capability to engage in a large scale cyber-physical attack is maybe 10-15 years old. Not even a generation has passed since it became technologically feasible. To put that into perspective, Ted Kaczynski started his attacks when he was 36. If at the very moment that it became possible an 18 year old "crazy mofo" also figured that out they would still not be as old as Ted Kaczynski was when he started.
lumost 6y ago
At these prices, cyber attacks are much cheaper than cruise missiles but too expensive for most criminals/terrorists without an explicit objective. You'd expect state actors to use these attacks to achieve a particular goal, where the cyber attack option is weighed against the cruise missile option. Permanently destroying a power grid doesn't make a ton of sense for any reasonable objective other than total war.