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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 21 2019, @11:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the anarchy-and-chaos dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3196

A cyberattack could wreak destruction comparable to a nuclear weapon

People around the world may be worried about nuclear tensions rising, but I think they're missing the fact that a major cyberattack could be just as damaging—and hackers are already laying the groundwork.

With the U.S. and Russia pulling out of a key nuclear weapons pact—and beginning to develop new nuclear weapons—plus Iran tensions and North Korea again test-launching missiles, the global threat to civilization is high. Some fear a new nuclear arms race.

That threat is serious—but another could be as serious, and is less visible to the public. So far, most of the well-known hacking incidents, even those with foreign government backing, have done little more than steal data. Unfortunately, there are signs that hackers have placed malicious software inside U.S. power and water systems, where it's lying in wait, ready to be triggered. The U.S. military has also reportedly penetrated the computers that control Russian electrical systems.

As someone who studies cybersecurity and information warfare, I'm concerned that a cyberattack with widespread impact, an intrusion in one area that spreads to others or a combination of lots of smaller attacks, could cause significant damage, including mass injury and death rivaling the death toll of a nuclear weapon.


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  • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:52PM (14 children)

    by Hartree (195) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:52PM (#883117)

    You can always imagine a situation where the results of something spiral into a catastrophe. This is the Golden BB idea of someone with an old rifle getting off a lucky shot that hits the pilot of a low flying fighter just which crashes into the infantry unit attacking your position killing all of them. You can then say that a single bullet can be as powerful as infantry backed up by air power. Well... Yeah... Sorta... In an incredibly contrived situation.

    Given the choice of a cyber attack that takes some time to unfold and a nuclear weapon going off a few feet from me, I'll still generally take the cyber attack, thank you. I might be able to do something about that.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:59PM (8 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @01:59PM (#883122)

    All told, I've probably lived in about 3 months of zero-power, zero-phone, zero-internet post hurricane "attack" areas, and it's not much of a problem in reality.

    The biggest adjustment was the concept that dialing 911 didn't do jack squat. All in all, people don't really need first responder help all that often, so it doesn't really change much, and when you know it's not there... adjust accordingly.

    Slightly scarier is when the roads are impassible - you're trapped and you can't leave "the zone" even if you wanted to. Keeping the chainsaws tuned up is a good prep for that, or just be patient, the power crews do eventually get to everybody.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:45PM (3 children)

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:45PM (#883184) Homepage Journal

      In such a situation it helps a lot that there's a rest of the world available to provide assistance.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:56PM (2 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:56PM (#883192)

        Right, and the only credible cyber-doomsday-scenario is one in which a BIG part of the country goes down all at once, much bigger than a CAT 5 power loss zone. Even then, I think people would be surprised how well things still work without the net nannies watching over...

        Now, when Elon de-trains all the semi-drivers after replacing them with self-driving trucks, which quickly evolve to include automatic loading / unloading at their endpoints... that could get sticky when they go down.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:40AM (1 child)

          by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:40AM (#883541) Homepage Journal

          GPS navigation could still work, assuming the satellites aren't attacked, and assuming the trucks already have their regular routes downloaded.

          Until they can't recharge any more. But that's a fuel shortage, which would happen with regular trucks, too.

          -- hendrik

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:13AM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:13AM (#883562)

            It is frightening how quickly gas stations are stripped of fuel during a hurricane... Rita in Houston was quite the lesson.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Hartree on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:40PM (3 children)

      by Hartree (195) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:40PM (#883239)

      (@JoeMerchant)

      Katrina?

      I have a brother that had an extended power/phone/water/whatnot outage from that in Pascagoula MS (though his house was intact), but sounds like you were in a worse hit area.

      That's why I prefer the Midwest and tornados. The destruction is major, but localized and there are lots of resources to help you if you are hit. In a major hurricane or widespread major earthquake, everyone near you is just as much in need of help that doesn't exist anymore.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:50PM (2 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:50PM (#883244)

        Was in SouthEast Houston for Katrina - no biggie there. Rita was a cluster of an evac. Also did Andrew in Miami, and a couple of storms more recently with shorter outages, but still long enough to hook up the generator to the house water pump...

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:41AM (1 child)

          by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:41AM (#883542) Homepage Journal

          Let me hope you enjoy the excitement of seeing a good storm up close.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:20AM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:20AM (#883564)

            I think Andrew qualified as a good storm, I was in North Miami for that - the stronger bands hit north of us in Fort Lauderdale, and the eye hit my Uncle's house in Homestead, but we still had a semi-truck sized pile of itty bitty oak tree branchlets that blew out of the neighbors' trees all over the yard, and nothing to do but rake them up with no electricity (no AC, no fans) in the super clear sunny hot days that almost always follow an early season storm like Andrew. Power didn't come back on there for over 6 weeks, longer in Homestead. A few days after the storm we did manage to hook up a phone to some of the downed landlines and get to dial out for a few calls, but that didn't last too long before 60Hz power bled all over the phone lines, conspiracy nuts would think that BellSouth did that on purpose to stop people from "stealing" long distance from the downed lines. They're the oh-so-caring company who sent bills to people in trashed houses who hadn't had phone service for months, but their first piece of mail was a PAST DUE bill for phone service in the month following the storm.

            After that, and seeing Rita/Katrina hit nearby, I'm pretty O.K. with the fact that we missed the year of 4 storms in Miami, and Ike in Houston.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:03PM (4 children)

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:03PM (#883156) Journal

    I think if you confronted the author with the same choice, they'd agree with you. The two attacks are not comparable. There's a very wide range of scenarios for either type of attack, but having a chance to get out of harm's way is a big, big difference.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:30PM (2 children)

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 21 2019, @03:30PM (#883174) Homepage Journal

      "Comparable" presumably means "can be compared", i.e., we can tell whether one is less than, equal, or greater then the other.

      If they are really close to one another, we may be unable to distinguish these three cases, so presumably they're not comparable.

      It they are really different, it is clear which one is greater, and thus comparable.

      So if a major, continent-wide cyber-attack is as nothing compared to a nuclear attack, I'd say they are comparable.

      :-)

      • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)

        by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:06PM (#883225) Journal

        "Comparable" can also mean of roughly equivalent magnitude which I think is the meaning intended in the submission.

        As you suggest, I mean in the sense of "can be compared", because one can envision so many different scenarios. For example, in the case of nuclear are we talking about a Bomb in a Suitcase or a full scale state sponsored attack?

        • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:44AM

          by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:44AM (#883543) Homepage Journal

          Just pointing out the perversity of language drift. And how mathematicians often use the same words in entirely different meanings from the rest of us. In this case, terminology used for partial orders.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hartree on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:34PM

      by Hartree (195) on Wednesday August 21 2019, @05:34PM (#883236)

      This is one of those where the details of the scenarios matter an awful lot. You can envision a tactical nuke attack on a nearly uninhabited island versus a computer worm that causes a last ditch attempt to divert a planet killer asteroid to fail. Or you can unleash 3 or more way Mutually Assured Destruction via all out exchanges with associated nuclear winter versus a worm that shuts down a single city water supply.

      As a general case though, I'd prefer a rogue hacker with a computer than say, a rogue militant group with a nuke.