SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Although "offensive cyber" seems to have a different definition to my re-collection, Britain's Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, gave a speech at Cyber 2017 outlining how the Ministry of Defence is tackling today's cyber threats:
A stronger password here, a Windows update there, and we would have stood an even better chance of warding off the Parliamentary and Wannacry attacks. So my second point is that the MOD has a key role to play in contributing to a culture of resilience. That's why we set up the Defence Cyber Partnership Programme (DCPP) to ensure that companies with whom we have defence contracts are properly protecting themselves and meeting a host of cyber security standards.
Strengthening our deterrence
But there's a third way in which we can protect our national infrastructure, and that's by strengthening our deterrence. So we're using our rising budget to invest our £178bn in full spectrum capability, from carriers to Ajax armoured vehicles, fifth generation F35 to the latest UAVs, signalling to potential cyber strikers that the price of an online attack could invite a response from any domain, air, land, sea or cyber space. And when it comes to the latter, we're making sure that offensive cyber is now an integral part of our arsenal. We now have the skills to expose cyber criminals, to them hunt down and to prosecute them, to respond in kind to any assault at a time of our choosing.
Our National Offensive Cyber Planning allows us to integrate cyber into all our military operations. And I can confirm that we are now using offensive cyber routinely in the war against Daesh, not only in Iraq but also in the campaign to liberate Raqqa and other towns on the Euphrates. Offensive cyber there is already beginning to have a major effect on degrading Daesh's capabilities.
Unfortunately, the Vault7 leaks show that at least one nation-state believes it is able to imitate attacks from other nation-states:
What was once conspiracy is now fact, as it appears the CIA has essentially developed their own NSA without the oversight. Under the Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), over 5,000 hackers have produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware targeting everything from anti-virus software to commonly used consumer devices. This includes malware which makes it look like it was planted by a foreign government or hacker. This includes Russia, essentially proving the CIA has the ability to plant evidence to make it look like Russian hackers were the culprits. This potentially disrupts and discredits the entire Russia hacking narrative being pushed by the media.
So, under Britain's official foreign policy, when a country has sustained attacks or just a flaky infrastructure, that's sufficient justification to bomb a random country rather than attack the wrong computers. After Iraq was bombed for having Weapons of Mass Distraction and bombed again due to Saudi Arabian terrorists, will North Korea get bombed due to NHS failure?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday June 28 2017, @06:29PM (3 children)
After the first Persian Gulf war, arms inspectors found underground calutrons that were powered by buried cables from power stations hundreds of miles away.
HiRez [fas.org] - scroll down about halfway.
The calutron is a large mass spectrometer. They're not very efficient but they are easier to build than uranium hexafluoride centrifuges.
Also found were copies of declassified Manhattan Project patents. "declassified" because, in its infinite wisdom, in 1965 the government declassified all but one of the projects secrets. The one remaining secret was the design of the initiator, that supplies neutrons to start the chain reaction in Plutonium bombs. All of the uranium assembly bomb secrets were declassified.
You can even purchase the Los Alamos Primer from Amazon.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:24PM (1 child)
Errr, no, declassified because these things are "common sense" to every undergraduate physics student. And there is a much easier way to separate uranium than using a centrifuge (yes, gas centrifuge because UF6 is gas). But it's not used because
1. proliferation -- you don't want to give people ideas
2. gas centrifuges are already in place (for power plants, obviously), so why invest in new assets you don't need?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 28 2017, @08:46PM
SILEX?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 29 2017, @01:22AM