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A counter argument would be that this is moot. You should secure your systems from these kinds of attacks. To assume that the Iranians or anyone else would not
by cromwellian 12y ago
A counter argument would be that this is moot. You should secure your systems from these kinds of attacks. To assume that the Iranians or anyone else would not have developed them independently from the Western intelligence agencies is security through obscurity.
In some ways, perhaps Stuxnet did the world a favor, but showing the vulnerability of airgapped infrastructure that people assume is safe from attack. Stuxnet may have accelerated the capabilities of adversaries, but sooner or later, it would have been developed anyway.
- rabbyte 12y agoBy that logic everything that's possible is also inevitable. The feasibility of something is only one factor and, more often than not, new developments are extensions of older developments.
- cromwellian 12y agoDo you think that the exploits that Stuxnet took advantage of would not have been discovered or leveraged by Russian, Chinese, or other hackers? I would argue that if your system has a flaw, and the threat model is such that it's feasible for an entity with the resources of a nation state to take advantage of and the value of penetration is high, sooner or later, it will be taken advantage of. So yes, in that sense, it is inevitable. There's no benefit to closing our eyes and hope that no other state'e NSA equivalent will be able to penetrate our flaws.
- rabbyte 12y agoI'm not at all in disagreement on your security ethic. It's difficult to say what would happen but context does matter. If Stuxnet came from a different source, had a different target, or was published as a research project the effects would be different. History is ripe with instances where someone makes a discovery, keeps it secret, and it remains secret for a long time so I'm not willing to believe everything is inevitable just yet.