Scary for admins

[BlueByte]

US and Israel waged cyberwar on Iran

Confirmed: US and Israel waged cyberwar on Iran | ExtremeTech

Personally as someone who is an admin I can only imagine if there is any escalation at all to this "cyber war" activities its going to make life a lot less fun. As it is there is almost a constant attack on any machine that is exposed to the net.

Large scale I would suspect the first large target would be root DNS as they are an easy single point of failure for most people. Or worse yet they produce a virus of their own to this same sophistication that just collects info and does not disrupt anything, it runs and hides and just sends info back home.

[b1lk1]

This is no real surprise to anyone that has freewill thought. While people that believe things like this (such as I do) will be called names and such, the fact that the world's governments do the best possible job they can to rook the public and steal our rights in order to protect us is just another reason to not trust ANY government.

This thread is sure to be derailed by people that state it is wrong to question the government, it is just another aspect of the impending world government that is being formed and readied right under our noses.

[jibz]

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[AkG]

Well lets see....

option A) send in the troops and start another war....yeah not a good idea
option B) Nuke Iran....yeah major downsides to this one too!
option C) Let a country that supports terrorists, calls us the "great shitan" and wants to wipe Israel (first) and the rest of the western world off the map have NUCLEAR weapons....yeah this option is even worse than the first two.
option D) Do a surgical strike but not via conventional weapons but by a computer virus.

Unless Im missing an option option D was the best of a bad situation....and if you think its only "us" doing this you are naive. EVERY country that can engage in cyber warfare...IS. Computer systems and infrastructure is the NEW "cold war" and its being fought right in front of us...just as it has been for well over a decade and a half (if not longer in its current form).

[JJThomp]

Originally Posted by AkG

Well lets see....

option A) send in the troops and start another war....yeah not a good idea
option B) Nuke Iran....yeah major downsides to this one too!
option C) Let a country that supports terrorists, calls us the "great shitan" and wants to wipe Israel (first) and the rest of the western world off the map have NUCLEAR weapons....yeah this option is even worse than the first two.
option D) Do a surgical strike but not via conventional weapons but by a computer virus.

Unless Im missing an option option D was the best of a bad situation....and if you think its only "us" doing this you are naive. EVERY country that can engage in cyber warfare...IS. Computer systems and infrastructure is the NEW "cold war" and its being fought right in front of us...just as it has been for well over a decade and a half (if not longer in its current form).

Option E. Write them a very angry letter circa League of Nations 1933... Useless.

[BlueByte]

F) Attack a country through cyber means, and have that country retaliate through physical means.

Iran is not really a issue but China for instance, a country who has also been caught red handed conducting cyber attacks. Attacking another country is still provoking, and at some point countries tend to put down the twigs and pick up boom sticks. To think otherwise is as naive as sticking your head in the sand.

That aside, when more and more governments sanction hacking other countries I think we could fundamentally change the face of the internet or face greater attacks from opposing countries. The great firewall of china might become the norm for other countries, not because of censorship but from the need to defend the average person from being attacked. Something will have to be done if things continue to escalate.

This just ends up damaging this wonderful borderless internet that we have come to know. I am certainly not surprised, just disappointed. Also ends up creating more work for me and I sound like a hippy now... dammit

[AkG]

No naive...a realist. Its better to have cyberwars such as this vs "brush wars" / "Low Intensity Conflicts" of the first cold war....Yeah it is. MUCH less deaths. MUCH less fallout, overkill, bleed over, etc.
What you are saying is because it was a good idea this time that next time it could lead to www3. Thats a classic slippery slope argument and slippery slope arguments are a logical fallacy. A whole bunch of other things have to happen for that "slope" to exist....and a lot of smart people to suddenly go stupid.

Good example of why its a fallacious argument:
Substitute in "economic" for "cyber" and you have another "war" which is being waged...hell since the idea of money was invented. RARELY does it lead to all out war.

Seriously "cyberwar" is just the sport of kings being played on a different field.

More importantly in THIS instance there was no "F" option (and once again no solution is right for ALL scenarios. there are times when economic, physical, diplotmatic means make more sense...just not in THIS case). Iran w/out nukes == no physical threat. Iran WITH nukes....is a scary thought.

So once again. Give me an alternative that would have worked. Economic warfare (aka sanctions) doesnt work when the country has a valuable resource like oil (always countries willing to look the other way). Diplomatic channels? Rofl. Your dealing with a fanatical country that not only beleives but PREACHES that killing innocents and dieing in the process is the best / fastest / easiest way to get into "heaven". That leaves A) ignoring them B) doing something about the threat. A) blows as a long term solution. So what would you have had Israel/US/etc do? Send in an air strike...which would have had a higher chance of starting another war? Out and out nuke iran?

Cyberwarfare is just another tool. Denying "us" the use of that tool...is naive. Not all problems are nails which require a hammer...but when it IS a nail kinda prob...using anything besides a hammer is stupid. It was an elegant solution to a thorny problem. Whoever did it (and no the US and Israel have NOT confirmed it...the article is a rehast of a rehash of an articel which is filled with innuendo and "unnamed sources") was damn smart and my hats off to them. They took a no win / lose-lose scenario and changed the playing field until it WAS a win-win scenario.

[Agafaba]

Its not like there were several physical attacks against the scientists or anything either, I definitely dont remember the news reporting that someone attached a bomb to the side of a car and drove off before it exploded killing one of their top scientists... nope.

[BlueByte]

Underhanded cloak and dagger tactics work short term when no one knows about them. Once people find out they tend to not like being duped and you create a generation of people that have a fairly valid hate on for the aggressor. Iran leaders=bat sh!t crazy, while the populace has become largely a younger/more liberal generation. Not that middle eastern regimes falling lately have been clean cut but its proves what a country's population is capable of when they grow tired of dictators. Instead we give them a good reason to slip back and cling to their dictators when other countries attack them, and cut them off.

I don't think it was the best option, but I don't know all the facts so maybe it was. I do know they are walking a thin line that might backfire, the 80's come to mind since we are talking cold war. I don't envy world leaders, its being stuck between a rock and a hard place with stuff like this.

[AkG]

Oh yeah its like a nuclear weapon...you should NOT use it unless its the only option. I just think it was the only real one in this case. YMMV :>

But srsly mate....the younger generation? You do realize that in Egypt for example (arab spring...rah rah rah...blah) the two top contenders for the new leader are Muslim Brotherhood. The pro-West / non Nutters who help START the revolution came in way...way down in the pack in the recent run off elecetions?...As in the group that hates the west and are pro-Terrorism (or at the very least friendly with the other "arms" of the Muslim Brotherhood that blow themselves up) and have a quid pro quo relationship with the Egyptian internal security agency (the thugs who torture and kill peeps) are now almost certainly going to be the new leaders of Egypt. The entire ME is a mess. At this point the West could give everyone a pony...hell a UNICORN and they would all still hate us. The sooner we get off oil so that we can go back to ignoring (and not supporting those SOBs in power over there) the better. :)