5 ms·

This is quite important for the current debates we're having. If you look at the news media, or the Hacker News front page for that matter, you stumble upon art

This is quite important for the current debates we're having. If you look at the news media, or the Hacker News front page for that matter, you stumble upon articles accusing China and Russia to hack into foreign governments regularly. Similarly, China and other asian countries are often accused of adding backdoors to their hardware (e.g., routers, switches, telco equipment). The only* backdoors ever found in hardware were found in hardware build by US-based companies. And, of course, Stuxnet is the first example of governments (USA and Israel) attacking a foreign country's critical infrastructure with a "digital weapon." I'm not sure how to feel about that. *I'm not sure this is still true today --- Let me add that, when it comes to topics like this one we should probably stick to what we know for sure. Figuring out if code is a backdoor or a bug is already hard enough (not always though). The same goes for attacks. Governments accuse each other of doing a lot of things, and fortunately, sometimes they even admit that they make these claims up. Oh and please don't take my word for any of this. There are well known and respected people who speak very openly about these topics on conferences like CCC, DEFCON, etc.

kokomo 12y ago
I 'heard' that stuxnet was responsible for fouling fukushima (scrambling reactor controls) and similarly beta tested at a US reactor in the south somewhere... but I 'heard' it on the interwebs
kokomo 12y ago
i think it's been used against Iran's nuclear program as well?
Dove 12y ago
I'm not sure how to feel about that. I know how I feel about it: I would much rather wars were fought with code and robots than with tanks and bayonets. And I would rather those than CBRN weapons! Certain countries were going to neutralize that facility. Had to, for survival reasons. The only real question is . . . how? They could have picked a full-scale war. They could have precision-bombed the facility. They could have assassinated the workers. These solutions have all been chosen in the past, in similar scenarios. By comparison with the other options available, Stuxnet achieved the goal in an extremely civilized manner, with no loss of life. They say the purpose of war is to kill people and break things, but really it isn't -- it's to accomplish objectives, to make people do what you want. The killing and breaking is really just a way to make objectives happen. And the better targeted your weapons are, the better you can make what you want to happen happen with less and less extra mess. Cyberweapons are some of the best targeted things ever dreamed of in the history of warfare. You can disable infrastructure without going within miles of harming a human on either side, military or otherwise. I am a big fan.
- hawkice 12y ago
  To give a concrete example of your excellent point: You could hack into missile guidance systems and have the missiles all route to the Pacific ocean -- having the boards fritz-out is a MUCH less powerful weapon, blowing up the factory for missiles is much less powerful than that. I'm sure if Stuxnet could make the machinery seem to work but not give them good enough materials to build anything worthwhile, (1) those engineers would have done that, and (2) the public would still not know about it. This is perhaps the best argument for cyber-weapons, too (the intelligence/espionage element): it inverts the incentives. You build a gun, I need a better gun. You have a bomb, I need a bigger bomb that kills more people and destroys more and more. But cyber-weapons? Best cyber-weapons change the very least possible to accomplish the actual objective. Breaking the ENIGMA, for instance, didn't change every single tactical choice for the Allies. To do so would eliminate a large portion of the benefits.
  - AlyssaRowan 12y ago
    The drawback is that they require systematic vulnerabilities to work; therefore the rhetoric for state-sponsored malware demands systems deliberately be left vulnerable to attack, either by failing to fix vulnerabilities found or deliberately inserting them (as in by backdoors) This has a global effect. The "enemy" uses the same things you do. A weapon to attack them demands weaknesses in everyone's armour, including your own. They are so easily reverse-engineered and repurposed to attack you or third parties, so easily developed by low-budget or non-state actors, and so easily misattributed, that they exhibit all the same essential properties as biological weapons. I think state-sponsored malware should be banned, by international treaty, and I say this as someone with expertise in the field.
    - hawkice 12y ago
      So, let's tease out a couple ideas here, that way I can address your core idea at its best. >They are so easily reverse-engineered and repurposed to attack you You probably meant just third parties here. No one is checking government machine's patch level and demanding an explanation -- if they have the exploit they probably patched any vulnerable systems before they used it. > I think state-sponsored malware should be banned, by international treaty So, espionage is largely _already_ banned by international treaty, including fairly specific rules about how, if you are a soldier down behind enemy lines you can escape using a disguise but not if you are a spy (I hope this conveys how bizarre international law is, the idea that if a spy is caught that their use of a disguise will play a factor in their fate). Suffice it to say, you want a "soft ban", because you want them to not be used in reality (not just that you don't want them used in threat gestures, etc. -- plus you can't really rely on international law for things like this, as we've seen by recent NSA leaks as well as Merkel's response to learning she was personally wiretapped). ---- Most importantly: you have an argument that is too general. You could make _precisely the same argument_ in defense of banning pistols in any wars. (1) enemy is symmetrically offensive; (2) if there exist defenses, your opponent is likely to use them; (3) this leaves you largely unprotected to isomorphic attacks for all useful versions of this weapon (soldiers can still die from gunshot wounds); (4) similar technology can be devised by your opponents; (5) guns can be developed by low-budget or non-state actors; (6) direct attribution for gun crime is difficult (about half of murders in the US go unsolved, and that's not in a war zone). So governments paying for pistols is too dangerous and should be "soft banned" or banned by international treaty. I believe you have a more complex belief that would provide for much better discussion (subject matter experts typically do). Would you mind expanding on your ideas and sharing?
pimlottc 12y ago
> The only* backdoors ever found in hardware were found in hardware build by US-based companies. What was the backdoor, can you provide a link?
- xenophonf 12y ago
  No one's absolutely certain, but the following article makes a pretty good case for Crypto AG: https://web.archive.org/web/20080101082631/http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=169&a=4686 https://web.archive.org/web/20080101082631/http://www.inteld... Edited to add: I tried chasing down a few of the links mentioned in the comments of https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_i.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors..., but I hit some dead ends and lack time to give you further detail. Sorry about that. As far as I can tell, the original report comes from Der Spiegel.
- kbart 12y ago
  Another one: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/sn...

kokomo 12y ago

I 'heard' that stuxnet was responsible for fouling fukushima (scrambling reactor controls) and similarly beta tested at a US reactor in the south somewhere... but I 'heard' it on the interwebs

kokomo 12y ago

i think it's been used against Iran's nuclear program as well?

Dove 12y ago

I'm not sure how to feel about that. I know how I feel about it: I would much rather wars were fought with code and robots than with tanks and bayonets. And I would rather those than CBRN weapons! Certain countries were going to neutralize that facility. Had to, for survival reasons. The only real question is . . . how? They could have picked a full-scale war. They could have precision-bombed the facility. They could have assassinated the workers. These solutions have all been chosen in the past, in similar scenarios. By comparison with the other options available, Stuxnet achieved the goal in an extremely civilized manner, with no loss of life. They say the purpose of war is to kill people and break things, but really it isn't -- it's to accomplish objectives, to make people do what you want. The killing and breaking is really just a way to make objectives happen. And the better targeted your weapons are, the better you can make what you want to happen happen with less and less extra mess. Cyberweapons are some of the best targeted things ever dreamed of in the history of warfare. You can disable infrastructure without going within miles of harming a human on either side, military or otherwise. I am a big fan.

hawkice 12y ago
To give a concrete example of your excellent point: You could hack into missile guidance systems and have the missiles all route to the Pacific ocean -- having the boards fritz-out is a MUCH less powerful weapon, blowing up the factory for missiles is much less powerful than that. I'm sure if Stuxnet could make the machinery seem to work but not give them good enough materials to build anything worthwhile, (1) those engineers would have done that, and (2) the public would still not know about it. This is perhaps the best argument for cyber-weapons, too (the intelligence/espionage element): it inverts the incentives. You build a gun, I need a better gun. You have a bomb, I need a bigger bomb that kills more people and destroys more and more. But cyber-weapons? Best cyber-weapons change the very least possible to accomplish the actual objective. Breaking the ENIGMA, for instance, didn't change every single tactical choice for the Allies. To do so would eliminate a large portion of the benefits.
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  The drawback is that they require systematic vulnerabilities to work; therefore the rhetoric for state-sponsored malware demands systems deliberately be left vulnerable to attack, either by failing to fix vulnerabilities found or deliberately inserting them (as in by backdoors) This has a global effect. The "enemy" uses the same things you do. A weapon to attack them demands weaknesses in everyone's armour, including your own. They are so easily reverse-engineered and repurposed to attack you or third parties, so easily developed by low-budget or non-state actors, and so easily misattributed, that they exhibit all the same essential properties as biological weapons. I think state-sponsored malware should be banned, by international treaty, and I say this as someone with expertise in the field.
  - hawkice 12y ago
    So, let's tease out a couple ideas here, that way I can address your core idea at its best. >They are so easily reverse-engineered and repurposed to attack you You probably meant just third parties here. No one is checking government machine's patch level and demanding an explanation -- if they have the exploit they probably patched any vulnerable systems before they used it. > I think state-sponsored malware should be banned, by international treaty So, espionage is largely _already_ banned by international treaty, including fairly specific rules about how, if you are a soldier down behind enemy lines you can escape using a disguise but not if you are a spy (I hope this conveys how bizarre international law is, the idea that if a spy is caught that their use of a disguise will play a factor in their fate). Suffice it to say, you want a "soft ban", because you want them to not be used in reality (not just that you don't want them used in threat gestures, etc. -- plus you can't really rely on international law for things like this, as we've seen by recent NSA leaks as well as Merkel's response to learning she was personally wiretapped). ---- Most importantly: you have an argument that is too general. You could make _precisely the same argument_ in defense of banning pistols in any wars. (1) enemy is symmetrically offensive; (2) if there exist defenses, your opponent is likely to use them; (3) this leaves you largely unprotected to isomorphic attacks for all useful versions of this weapon (soldiers can still die from gunshot wounds); (4) similar technology can be devised by your opponents; (5) guns can be developed by low-budget or non-state actors; (6) direct attribution for gun crime is difficult (about half of murders in the US go unsolved, and that's not in a war zone). So governments paying for pistols is too dangerous and should be "soft banned" or banned by international treaty. I believe you have a more complex belief that would provide for much better discussion (subject matter experts typically do). Would you mind expanding on your ideas and sharing?

pimlottc 12y ago

> The only* backdoors ever found in hardware were found in hardware build by US-based companies. What was the backdoor, can you provide a link?

xenophonf 12y ago
No one's absolutely certain, but the following article makes a pretty good case for Crypto AG: https://web.archive.org/web/20080101082631/http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=169&a=4686 https://web.archive.org/web/20080101082631/http://www.inteld... Edited to add: I tried chasing down a few of the links mentioned in the comments of https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_i.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors..., but I hit some dead ends and lack time to give you further detail. Sorry about that. As far as I can tell, the original report comes from Der Spiegel.
kbart 12y ago
Another one: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/sn...