/tech/ - Technology★

Further recall that Argentina's current disputed government claimed with little proof that their massive blackout earlier in the year was at the cause of a "Cyberattack" from the United States.

Hack away! NYT says US planted CYBER KILL SWITCH in Russian power grid… media shrugs

Published time: 15 Jun, 2019 21:25 Edited time: 16 Jun, 2019 05:53

The best defense is a good offense: the US seems to have taken this maxim to its logical conclusion, and has “aggressively” hacked Russia’s power grid, according to a new report. God forbid the shoe were on the other foot.

An in-depth report in the New York Times on Saturday lays out an alleged ongoing US operation to penetrate and implant malware in Russia’s power grid, partly as “a warning” to Moscow, and partly to stake out the high ground should competition between the two powers one day spill over into outright cyber warfare.

Due to the clandestine nature of the subject, the article is light on specifics. All we know is that the authority to carry out offensive cyber operation is enshrined in the National Defense Authorization Act since last summer, and that President Donald Trump delegated approval for such attacks to Cyber Command -- set up by the Obama administration in 2008 to counter alleged similar efforts by Moscow – around the same time.

“Russia is hacking the American power grid as a demonstration of its capabilities.”

Only, joking! It’s actually the US attacking Russia (reports @nytimes). But just try to imagine the hysteria in US/UK media, if it were the other way around? https://t.co/Y1oRthnoqY

--- Bryan MacDonald (@27khv) June 15, 2019

In the absence of details, the Times treated its readers to a carousel of security officials talking up their “aggressive” posture, including one faceless intelligence spook who bragged “We are doing things at a scale we never contemplated a few years ago.” A chorus of these same officials also justified the cyberwar efforts, including one who dropped the wonderfully Washingtonian term “defend forward” to describe the incursions.

But imagine for a second that the shoe were on the other foot? How would the Times cover a sophisticated Russian effort to infiltrate the US grid? How massive would the media uproar be?

It would be naive to think that both nations haven’t probed each other’s cyber defenses for weaknesses. However, the Times struck a different tone when “Russian hackers” were accused of penetrating the American utilities grid last summer.

The article then mentioned “hundreds of victims” in the event of Russia launching a cyberattack. (No potential Russian victims were mentioned in Saturday’s article). “It is hard to fully understand why they have put so much effort” into planting malware in the grid, the Times pondered back then. This week, the American efforts were explained as a simple matter of national security.

As for what response a cyberattack could warrant, the Times painted a picture of the US firing a “digital shot across the bow” while carefully avoiding open war. A Russian attack, meanwhile, would “almost certainly result in a military response,” a general quoted in both articles said.

Of course, last year’s article was written at a time when panic over “Russian meddling,”“Russian interference,” and “Russian hackers” was at fever pitch. The hysteria then was not confined to the pages of the New York Times, and US outlets competed with each other to deliver the most terrifying Russian conspiracy theories they could muster.

The heavyweight champion of fearmongering and conspiracies was undoubtedly MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. Night after night, Maddow detailed new and sinister Russian ploys to interfere in elections, undermine democracy, and even freeze Americans to death in their homes.

That’s right, Maddow warned viewers earlier this year that Russian hackers may have infiltrated the US power grid and could literally “flip the off switch” at any time.

“What would you do if you lost heat, indefinitely, as the act of a foreign power?” she asked her viewers. “What would you and your family DO?” As Maddow rang every alarm bell she could, much of the United States was going through a record-breaking freeze, with temperatures in North Dakota down to -33 degrees Fahrenheit (-36 Celsius).

However, it gets cold in Russia too. Like, very cold. For all its talk of “warning shots” at Putin, the New York Times never considered the fact that an attack on Russia’s utility grid could leave ordinary citizens without heating, in a country where winter temperatures regularly drop below -33, and where at one point last year, one village recorded a temperature lower than that of the planet Mars.

But when the cyberwar is waged by Washington, geopolitical victory trumps human lives, and supersedes the danger of open war, and the harshest measures are necessary just to prove a point.

As one former Obama administration official told the newspaper: “We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response, just to show the world we’re not lying down and taking it.”

U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid

June 15, 2019

WASHINGTON --- The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said.

In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections.

Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue, after years of public warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. that Russia has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines, or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States.

But it also carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.

The administration declined to describe specific actions it was taking under the new authorities, which were granted separately by the White House and Congress last year to United States Cyber Command, the arm of the Pentagon that runs the military’s offensive and defensive operations in the online world.

But in a public appearance on Tuesday, President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said the United States was now taking a broader view of potential digital targets as part of an effort “to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyberoperations against us, ‘You will pay a price.’”

Power grids have been a low-intensity battleground for years.

Since at least 2012, current and former officials say, the United States has put reconnaissance probes into the control systems of the Russian electric grid.

But now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense, officials say, with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before. It is intended partly as a warning, and partly to be poised to conduct cyberstrikes if a major conflict broke out between Washington and Moscow.

The commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, has been outspoken about the need to “defend forward” deep in an adversary’s networks to demonstrate that the United States will respond to the barrage of online attacks aimed at it.

>>1070358

“They don’t fear us,” he told the Senate a year ago during his confirmation hearings.

But finding ways to calibrate those responses so that they deter attacks without inciting a dangerous escalation has been the source of constant debate.

Mr. Trump issued new authorities to Cyber Command last summer, in a still-classified document known as National Security Presidential Memoranda 13, giving General Nakasone far more leeway to conduct offensive online operations without receiving presidential approval.

But the action inside the Russian electric grid appears to have been conducted under little-noticed new legal authorities, slipped into the military authorization bill passed by Congress last summer. The measure approved the routine conduct of “clandestine military activity” in cyberspace, to “deter, safeguard or defend against attacks or malicious cyberactivities against the United States.”

Under the law, those actions can now be authorized by the defense secretary without special presidential approval.

“It has gotten far, far more aggressive over the past year,” one senior intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity but declining to discuss any specific classified programs. “We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago.”

The critical question --- impossible to know without access to the classified details of the operation — is how deep into the Russian grid the United States has bored. Only then will it be clear whether it would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness or cripple its military — a question that may not be answerable until the code is activated.

Both General Nakasone and Mr. Bolton, through spokesmen, declined to answer questions about the incursions into Russia’s grid. Officials at the National Security Council also declined to comment but said they had no national security concerns about the details of The New York Times’s reporting about the targeting of the Russian grid, perhaps an indication that some of the intrusions were intended to be noticed by the Russians.

Speaking on Tuesday at a conference sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bolton said: “We thought the response in cyberspace against electoral meddling was the highest priority last year, and so that’s what we focused on. But we’re now opening the aperture, broadening the areas we’re prepared to act in.”

He added, referring to nations targeted by American digital operations, “We will impose costs on you until you get the point.”

Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” --- software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.

Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction --- and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

Because the new law defines the actions in cyberspace as akin to traditional military activity on the ground, in the air or at sea, no such briefing would be necessary, they added.

The intent of the operations was described in different ways by several current and former national security officials. Some called it “signaling” Russia, a sort of digital shot across the bow. Others said the moves were intended to position the United States to respond if Mr. Putin became more aggressive.

>>1070354 (OP)

It kinda seems out of character for the Russkies to network their power grid heavily enough for cyber attacks to be able to completely fuck it. Especially considering that they're willing to use typewriters to escape hacking. You'd think they'd secure at least the vital parts of their grid with similar old-school methods.

>>1070371

Basically every country has a networked powergrid running some hella old COBOL or Ada system. In the UK they don't even know where they are.

A few months ago there was a huge power outage in Venezuela, just when the US was pushing for regime change and Marco Rubio was tweeting about it within minutes of it happening. Similar stuff happened in Yugoslavia before the NATO attack.

>>1070371

Not really, unfortunately. Consider how many nations that aren't allied with the USA (some even openly hostile, like the Iran) still use Windows for critical infrastructure.

>>1070400

Not using closed source software is one thing. Another is not connecting it to the internet.

Nothing critical should be connected to the internet. It's just not a good idea.

>>1070405

Things don't have to be connected to the internet to be hacked you fucking newfag. You just hack the guy who programs the PLCs.

>>1070547

Sending a honeytrap or bagging a guy's family isn't cyber warfare anymore though.

>>1070400

how is Iran openly hostile?

>>1070559

Iran is quite literally the most hostile nation on earth, don't you even read anon!?

The new york times said Iran hacked Brexit and also they put a killswitch in star wars so if you watch it you can't get abortions anymore and if you google china 3 times then on the 2nd thursday of next month your mother will hurt herself unless you subscribe and like the new york times

Guccifer should have known better than to open that Hillary sex folder.