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Imagine the havok someone could cause by messing with the drugs taken by White House employees at all levels. There is so much potential for gain - just slowing

Imagine the havok someone could cause by messing with the drugs taken by White House employees at all levels. There is so much potential for gain - just slowing response time on an important day for your mission, much less confusing it, causing critical staff to be out sick, etc. More generally, sometimes I wonder about supply chain attacks on the White House. If the requirement of security is to make attacks more expensive than they are worth to the attacker, how do you secure the White House where issues are existential to many people and/or regularly worth trillions of dollars? Yet people in the White House must live normal lives, and have plenty of abnormal needs too (being the White House). The government can't custom manufacture everything internally from raw materials, nor secure every supply chain, so how can they secure the White House?

infamouscow 3y ago
The primary reason it doesn't happen is because it's a lot harder to pull these things off than the public perceives. The examples of supply chain attacks in the wild, or within some controlled environment discussed ad nausea in conference settings are completely different than a supply chain attack against a nation-state with sophisticated intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies. It's not even worth comparing them. The consequences for making a mistake in a supply chain attack against a nation-state are extremely grave, i.e., expect torture and execution in your future. Imagine arriving in a foreign country and trying to gather the information needed to pull this off. How long before someone finds your behavior peculiar and reports it to the state for investigation. Now you have to accomplish your task knowing there's a good chance you're being watched closely.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  I'm not suggesting it's trivial at all, but the value is extremely high and the attackers are the most capable nation states. Also, I expect that these days reconnaissance can be done, to some increased degree, electronically and remotely and with much less risk.
  - 4d4m 3y ago
    The fear is well placed - I think this is a likely attack vector, especially with the rise of compounding pharmacies being used to skirt regulation for localized delivery. There's little to no oversight of compounding pharmacies due to their rapidly increasing numbers.

infamouscow 3y ago

The primary reason it doesn't happen is because it's a lot harder to pull these things off than the public perceives. The examples of supply chain attacks in the wild, or within some controlled environment discussed ad nausea in conference settings are completely different than a supply chain attack against a nation-state with sophisticated intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies. It's not even worth comparing them. The consequences for making a mistake in a supply chain attack against a nation-state are extremely grave, i.e., expect torture and execution in your future. Imagine arriving in a foreign country and trying to gather the information needed to pull this off. How long before someone finds your behavior peculiar and reports it to the state for investigation. Now you have to accomplish your task knowing there's a good chance you're being watched closely.

wolverine876 3y ago
I'm not suggesting it's trivial at all, but the value is extremely high and the attackers are the most capable nation states. Also, I expect that these days reconnaissance can be done, to some increased degree, electronically and remotely and with much less risk.
- 4d4m 3y ago
  The fear is well placed - I think this is a likely attack vector, especially with the rise of compounding pharmacies being used to skirt regulation for localized delivery. There's little to no oversight of compounding pharmacies due to their rapidly increasing numbers.