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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 hap

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.

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.