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Researchers Connect Flame to Stuxnet
- acron0 14y agoI have to say, although I can only appreciate at a distance the level of skill needed to pull something like this off, reading articles about it blows my frickin' mind. It is both fascinating and terrifying that there are people out there who can do these kinds of things. This, imo, is the stuff that really separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to hackers. And just look how the media frenzied over the likes of LulzSec. I hope they never have to grasp, first hand, just how deep that rabbit hole can go. Really, money and political whim aside, a large portion of our freedom can be attributed to these individuals. That is damn scary. I hope they're kept on a very tight leash, anyway.
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- weavejester 14y ago> Really, money and political whim aside, a large portion of our freedom can be attributed to these individuals. How so?
- gaius 14y agoI assume he means the code breakers at Bletchley Park who were instrumental in preserving freedom in WW2.
- dfc 14y agoWe won the cold war.
- Danieru 14y agoThe soviets had an economic crash. The USA did not win the cold war, the USSR lost it.
- dfc 14y agoWow, I never thought about it like that. Imagine how much earlier the cold war would have ended if American actions effected the allocation of Soviet resources? ;)
- morsch 14y agoDo you ever question that narrative? I know it's a widespread one, and it seems to make sense, but I'm wondering how many of those who bring it up have retraced the research or have the background to even be able to retrace it. This is not a dig at you -- who knows maybe you did do the research, and if not, it's a probably a good and reliable strategy to trust the consensus narrative by default.
- dfc 14y agoI appreciate your comment, in fact I think a lot of this thread is based off blind adherence to the popular narrative (just look at the attention given to who leaked and why). I have done a lot of research and reading in this area. The intelligence/military arena is a hobby/fetish of mine. Just look at the impact of the Stinger and the broader US involvement with Russia's occupation of Afghanistan (Ghost War is the canonical reference). For further evidence of the US's awareness of the importance of economics take a look at the grain subsidies and the discussions for and against.
- Danieru 14y agoYou mean somehow applying resources even less efficiently than soviet economic planners? Is that even possible? I bet if the USA had tried such a tactic all that would have happened is a more efficient allocation. Imagine the covert spy economists giving a policy 'recommendation' talk. "We should take all the grain a farmer grows over a certain threshold. Thus the farmer will not be blinded by greed and will work hard to increase production for the good of the people. And just to be sure that said farmers have stately love in their hearts, let us cause a great famine in our bread bowl." would say the American spys as they outlay their plan to ruin the Soviet Union. The soviet economists upon hearing their own plans recited word for word would realise how brilliant said plan was not. They would then roll a D20 and come up with a marginal better plan.
- kyrra 14y agoThere are a lot of hands involved in something like stuxnet and flame. You have code breakers looking at standard hash and encryption algorithms, looking for weaknesses. You have coders that are writing all the data gathering tools. Other teams working on propagation. A team doing c&c server setup, development. Plus who knows what else. A lot of the research done for stuxnet and flame are probably more general, but were applied for these attacks. This was executed by a number of researchers and developers. Led and organized by managers. Welcome to the inside of the NSA, where a lot of bright math and compsci grads work.
- sliverstorm 14y agoWelcome to the inside of the NSA, where a lot of bright math and compsci grads work. How it should be, IMO. Seems to me the NSA is on the short list of places you would absolutely want to staff with (some of) your best-and-brightest.
- nitrogen 14y agoHow it should be, IMO. Seems to me the NSA is on the short list of places you would absolutely want to staff with (some of) your best-and-brightest. Assuming, of course, that you agree with the mission and methods of the NSA.
- losethos 14y agoWhatchu wanna do God? Who do You love most? Ouch. God says... offering, which was for himself. 9:9 And the sons of Aaron brought the blood unto him: and he dipped his finger in the blood, and put it upon the horns of the altar, and poured out the blood at the bottom of the altar: 9:10 But the fat, and the kidneys, and the caul above the liver of the sin offering, he burnt upon the altar; as the LORD commanded Moses. 9:11 And the flesh and the hide he burnt with fire without the camp. 9:12 And he slew the burnt offering; and Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood, which he sprinkled round about upon the altar. 9:13 And they presented the burnt offering unto him, with the pieces thereof, and the head: and he burnt them upon the altar. ---- Zuckerberg!!?? Nooo!!!!! (God laughed) God says... gold, to bear the table. 37:16 And he made the vessels which were upon the table, his dishes, and his spoons, and his bowls, and his covers to cover withal, of pure gold. 37:17 And he made the candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work made he the candlestick; his shaft, and his branch, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, were of the same: 37:18 And six branches going out of the sides thereof; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side thereof, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side thereof: 37:19 Three bowls made after the fashion of almonds in one branch, a knop and a flower; and three bowls made like almonds in another branch, a knop and a flower: so throughout the six branches going out of the candlestick. ---- I donno. God likes the color of gold, He sorta said one time. You can guess how seriously you should take what I say God says. Mostly, I just repeat sure stuff. Sorta. Zuckerberg kills all his meat himself. In my early days, I was more unstable, certainly doing stranger stuff than that. At least he's not a hipstir Zen buddist guy. That seems kinda pathetic. Zuckerberg seems Jewish... at least the same basis as what I believe. Highs and lows balancing might be true, but God exists!!! God says... 5:19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; 5:20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
- mmaunder 14y agoQuote "The above conclusions point to the existence of two independent developer teams, which can be referred to as ”Team F” (Flame) and ”Team D” (Tilded). Each of these teams has been developing its own platform since 2007-2008 at the latest." This ties in with the data that David Sanger released in his NY Times article just over a week ago. He reveals that the NSA collaborated with Israel's Unit 8200 to create Stuxnet in an op titled "Olympic Games". So we can probably just rename them to "Team USA" and "Team IDF". Sanger's article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=3&pagewanted=2&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimespolitics&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ord...
- forgotusername 14y agoPlease don't refer to that NYT article as "data" (noun: Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis). The it-must-have-been-us presumptive mentality despite the absolute lack of concrete evidence bothers me to the point of contempt.
- mmaunder 14y agoDear "forgotusername". David Sanger is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter and Chief White House correspondent for the NY Times where he has been for a spectacular 30 year career. He worked with the US administration to determine what data in that article was safe to publish and what would compromise ongoing ops.
- forgotusername 14y agoMaking an appeal to authority doesn't change anything. Most people seem to fail to grasp that there is an $8bn industry spanning the globe who thrive on secret software vulnerabilities. Beyond the presence of these, the only surprising fact surrounding either worm is that Stuxnet targeted Siemens PLCs. If it weren't for that, there is nothing to demonstrate either of these worms weren't written by an entity as relatively benign as an acutely talented, bored teenager. But ignore reality, pepper dramatic terms like Iran, cyber war, espionage, license to kill around liberally and see what effect it has on your freedom to use your computer in coming years. That may be the only tangible result of all this hot air. You should also be aware that same industry stands to make the most direct gain from any increase in public perception of information security, and any resulting regulation.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoThe most fascinating part of this for me was the fact it looks like Flame was developed prior to Stuxnet. Not the other way around as most people believed.
- Achshar 14y agoWell flame is alot more complex than stuxnet, so it only makes sense it would be better at keeping itself hidden, and for longer.
- droithomme 14y agoIf true, since we now know who wrote Stuxnet, therefore we now know who wrote Flame.
- DanielBMarkham 14y agoAfter reading Sanger's NYT piece, I am becoming more and more concerned about the administration leaking/deciding-to-release information about Stuxnet. As this article shows, once the cat is out of the bag people can start learning all kinds of interesting things about your intelligence activities. Usually such covert acts which could be considered an act of war are separate and disjointed. You find a spy in East Germany and it's a one-time incident. But with technology, you find one op and you start pulling the thread and all sorts of ops come out of the woodwork. I'm a libertarian and definitely support a more open society. But I also believe that any government must keep secrets on occasion. Whether or not Stuxnet (or any other sort of cyber-warfare) was a good idea is a separate issue. My concern is that, from a technology standpoint, there may not exist the separation of operations that is critically necessary for continued intelligence activities to be successful. Or, to rephrase, Stuxnet wasn't just the ratcheting up of cyber-warfare in the particular arena of nuclear non-proliferation. With the acknowledgment that the U.S. is responsible, and the way deconstructing one operation can lead to exposing another, it's ratcheting up the stakes for all intelligence-based cyber activities in all arenas. When the eventual shit storm comes, the U.S. will be the one that gets the blame for it (fairly or not).
- gaius 14y agoThe US govt has basically thrown down the gauntlet to every hacker in the world and invited them to take a crack at the US. I hope the leak was worth it, for Obama's reelection campaign. Because it was incredibly irresponsible to boast about it, that is like a red rag to a bull.
- DanielBMarkham 14y agoI'm a firm believer that the president gets final call on what's secret and what's not. If that wasn't the case, you'd have the intelligence agencies basically running around unfettered. I also understand that it's an election year, and the party that is out of power is going to do their best to make everything into a crisis. Having said all of that, when the administration releases information that affects programs that might have taken large sums of money to develop over many years, that might have many more years of usefulness, that has the potential to change the geopolitical landscape for the country for the worse, and that draws attention from every hacker on the planet? It's a little more serious than the usual election year nonsense. My concern is that I do not believe the country received any benefit at all from the release, and the harm could go for quite some while. Quite frankly when things like this happens it helps make a strong case for the idea that the agencies _should_ keep things from oversight, and I think that's the worst part of the whole thing. We need to get rid of a lot of the secrecy we have -- perhaps 99% or more -- but the things that remain secret should be soberly treated as such. Time will tell what kind of damage has really been done after all the smoke clears. Hopefully not much, but I doubt it.