Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A lingering question that's been perplexing me (Re: Cyberwarfare)....

I guess my whole question is based upon the observation that when you step back a little and look at all of these various attacks, it seems that they are not all that connected. Target shoppers credit cards, then Medical business customer identities, and so on. All different industries with no real relation to each other.

If you step back even farther, the randomness becomes less random and it looks like somebody is testing the perimeter...

The one thing that seems to be the common ground is that each of these attacks are on businesses, not utilities, and they tend to be identity grabs. It's like the interest is on business itself rather than on the infrastructure such as water and electricity.

Do this several times over and over, and you end up with a detailed database of individual identities and the detailed make up of an entire economy.

Compile this and it's easy to determine how to bring the most pain to the most people via their economy....

I think the glaring thing for me is that you don't see or hear about a village or city that had their water shut off or a blackout happen due to hackers, even though these facilities are very very vulnerable. So, why aren't they being targeted?

It's just an observation and question at this point. As with any observation, perspective is key, and it's quite possible that I'm not seeing the forest for the tree's....

When dogs started dying from tainted dog food, do you think that was a test? All the strains of flu from China, think that is a test?

You bet they are, and not just from the Chinese but from the entire world... anything to get a slight advantage.

Or it could be pointing up the juicy targets for dialing for dollars attacks.

As you mentioned earlier with diverse systems each attack has to be customized so there is some strength in diversity. For major institutions I suspect we have pretty good white hats poking and prodding constantly. And vigilance, as in jumping on a DOS attack NOW.

Mr. HaJ-

This book is a few years old already, but does a very good job of addressing many of the vulnerabilities you are talking about. It's a scary look at what could happen in a future conflict, add your own opinions about who/what could be the enemy actor.


Goodreads Reviews

all of which begs the question,: why are networks so easy to hack?

With so much at stake, and the mechanics of things as they are, it should be fairly simple to put an 'air gap' between your computer and the internet.
If hackers can get in, then other tech folks can make it more difficult. Looks like the security guys just are not doing their jobs.

a test for how much [bleep] we'll tolerate to keep the shelves of wal-mart filled with cheap goods made with no regulations

heard today on the radio - there are 6 figure jobs for hackers out there to test network firewalls - no high school diploma required

OTOH ...

If there's any one organization in the world that probes and stores known vulnerabilities for use at a later time it's the US government. For years there's been talk about a "switch" that could shut down the internet. I wouldn't doubt that the US could this if wide spread computer attacks jeopardized the US economy.

"I feel that I should point it that although you are correct that everything is computer related, everything is not on the same computer or network.

What you describe would have to be a multitude of simultaneous attacks across thousands, if not millions of separate networks."

The recent news that some Russian hackers had acquired usernames and passwords numbering in the billions shows that this is currently possible, probably using 'bots' that can scan and get many network addresses simultaneously. I'm sure they didn't have hackers in the millions or even thousands working together to accomplish this feat.

Once they can establish contact, it should be within an expert hacker's capability to infect or shut down most of the internet.

Myron

If credit card or bank account information is stolen it can't be kept quiet because everyone affected will be spilling the beans. But look at the weird reports that so-and-so "discovered" that records had been stolen some amount of time ago but there is no evidence of further exploit. Some of the hackers just seem to be accumulating an inventory of vulnerabilities.

If you just get into a utility and look around, who is going to publicize that their security was breached? We'll never hear of it. And if their evil goal is some future mass attack, they would stop at looking around the other side of the utilities firewall or leaving a trojan or two buried on the far side. There would be no point at all in causing problems at the time. Just accumulate vulnerabilities and wait for the "launch time".