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United States Government

America Plans 'Aggressive' Cyber Counterattack on Russia (msn.com) 154

The Biden administration "is preparing a series of aggressive cyber attacks on Russia in a major shift in tactics designed as a warning shot to rival powers," reports the Telegraph newspaper: The attack, which is expected in the next fortnight, is in retaliation for the SolarWinds hack, the large-scale infiltration of American government agencies and corporations discovered late last year that was traced back to the Kremlin... The U.S. will not target civilian structures or networks, but the hack is instead designed as a direct challenge to Mr Putin, Russia's President, and his cyber army, The Telegraph understands.

The White House confirmed it will take "a mix of actions" — both "seen and unseen" — although it did not provide specifics on when and how it would do so... "I actually believe that a set of measures that are understood by the Russians, but may not be visible to the broader world, are actually likely to be the most effective measures in terms of clarifying what the United States believes are in bounds and out of bounds, and what we are prepared to do in response," Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Adviser, told the New York Times last week.

Mr Sullivan stressed that traditional sanctions alone do not sufficiently raise the cost to force powers like Russia, or China.

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America Plans 'Aggressive' Cyber Counterattack on Russia

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  • by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @12:41PM (#61182380)

    I fail to see how this will end well.

    Surely to hold the high moral ground... whilst spending the time, effort and money that will otherwise be wasted on such an attack, shuring up your own defenses, would be a far better strategy.

    How can you criticize the actions of your enemies when you demonstrate that you are just as bad as they are?

    Sounds like a giant pissing contest to me and in such events, everyone ends up getting wet.

    • A concession to the UN. Once a nation declares intent the action can be supported if legal. I suggest we focus on the fact that cyber is becoming a field of conflict... This is getting to be "by the book" for sure. I guess the environment is muddied sufficiently so no original fault can be placed, thus the aggressive actions lately? We will see....
      • Once a nation declares intent the action can be supported if legal.

        Where did this come from? UN does not have a mandate to approve unilateral offensives, cyber or brick-and-mortar, never had, and never will.

        This bullshit is completely, 100% pure domestic consumption material of the current administration. After fanning the "Russian hackers" flames for nearly 5 years, their electorate is desperate for closure, and this is the closure.

        • If true, that would be a first.
    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      Nice FP. Fighting fire with fire is rarely optimal.

      Related reading includes Cyber War (2010) by Richard Clarke and The Perfect Weapon (2018) by David Sanger. What the heck. The intersection list is funny and includes the late and much lamented Iain Banks, so here it is: https://shanenj.tripod.com/cgi... [tripod.com] (The financial model has collapsed, so who knows how long it will last...)

      Following along with Clarke's analysis, I'm sure the idea is to remind Putin of Russia's vulnerability to cyber warfare, but the

    • by ameline ( 771895 ) <ian.ameline@Nospam.gmail.com> on Sunday March 21, 2021 @01:18PM (#61182520) Homepage Journal

      If there is no response it will never end -- well or otherwise. The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him. In the context of Russia and Putin, you have to make their games costly enough that their cost/benefit analysis comes up in favor of not attacking and destabilizing western democracies.

      Lack of response and Russia's behavior will only escalate until there is a response. This has been shown again and again.

      • Lack of response and Russia's behavior will only escalate until there is a response. This has been shown again and again.

        Unfortunately, another thing that has been shown again and again is that a measured, proportional, response leads to more escalation.

      • A better response would be putting massive resources into cyber defense and education. Cyber offense is just asking to get pw0ned even harder
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dowhileor ( 7796472 )

        If there is no response it will never end -- well or otherwise. The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him. In the context of Russia and Putin, you have to make their games costly enough that their cost/benefit analysis comes up in favor of not attacking and destabilizing western democracies.

        Lack of response and Russia's behavior will only escalate until there is a response. This has been shown again and again.

        I agree. And I think Georgia, Ukraine, Lithuania,.. will agree as well.

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        The only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him.

        Let's not forget that the largest bully on the planet for almost a century now, is the US of A.

        Despite all propaganda to the contrary, it's been the West that has invaded countless countries, overthrown elected governments, installed terrible dictators and supported terrorists around the globe. Maybe it's not our place to talk about standing up to bullies?

    • Well, I guess it depends on what you want to achieve. Russia seems to go for changes in the US that will benefit them. The US seems to just want Russia to stop. Announcing it has the benefit of making clear that you're not going to take this shit anymore. And that there will be consequences.
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The USA started it and bragged about it. Next step, targeted assassinations. The best targets in the US, not politicians corporate executives. A far more effective action. Target the decision makers, they are not protected by treaty, easy targets, completely amoral. The rest will back right the fuck off, real quick, when the war mongers amongst them start dying.

        So will the German government retaliate against the USA. How about all the other governments the USA hacked and got caught out on. Will they retalia

        • by robi5 ( 1261542 )

          > If the USA really wanted Russia to stop, they would simply do a cyber treaty with Russia

          This is the stupidest thing I've read in a while. You can make all the treaties with Russia that you want. Recent example: Budapest memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which just went down the toilet the moment Putin's popularity decreased and he and cronies felt the need to show something to a receptive populace that's still in hangover from the loss of former glories.

    • Surely to hold the high moral ground...

      Which moral high ground is that? The one which says it's okay to torture people, or the one which says it's okay to turn a blind eye to apartheid because it's being done by your friend?

      whilst spending the time, effort and money that will otherwise be wasted on such an attack, shuring up your own defenses, would be a far better strategy.

      And while you're trying to figure out how to defend yourself, you're still getting hacked/attacked/whatever and losing even more infor

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @01:48PM (#61182634) Journal

      > Sounds like a giant pissing contest to me and in such events, everyone ends up getting wet.

      Absolutely agreed. It would be far better if the US, Russia, and China never attacked each other.

      Perhaps that line of thinking is part of the reason the US hasn't really responded to cyberattacks, other than to occasionally whine.

      Unfortunately, the reality is that as the US let these attacks go without any punishing response, other nations have learned that the US won't respond. They can attack the US all day and everyday and the US won't do anything about it, so long as those attacks come over wires rather than by bombs. So they do in fact attack the US all day every day. They can do so without fear of retribution, so they do so.

      It would be better if they didn't. Fighting just causes people to get hurt. Yet, they are punching us, all the time.

      As someone else posted, sometimes the only way to deal with a bully is to punch them in the nose. Russia doesn't bomb the US *because* they know the US would bomb them back. China doesn't send tanks to the US *because* they know the US would respond by hurting them badly. Sometimes the way avoid constant fighting is to demonstrate that you are prepared to fight back and fight back hard.

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        As someone else posted, sometimes the only way to deal with a bully is to punch them in the nose. Russia doesn't bomb the US *because* they know the US would bomb them back. China doesn't send tanks to the US *because* they know the US would respond by hurting them badly. Sometimes the way avoid constant fighting is to demonstrate that you are prepared to fight back and fight back hard.

        Agree with that.

        Now the question is: Do we know with reasonable certainty that we are hitting the right bully back? Last I checked the news, the probability that Russian government entities were behind the SolarWinds hack was rated as "likely" and "probably" by US government officials.

        And we know that they lie, when it comes to Russia, because we are all smart enough to see the propaganda war that's been going on for the better part of a decade now. There are already jokes out there with the punch line of "

        • That is a somewhat of a problem with cyberattacks -
          Most of the time, we can have about 60%-90% confidence in attribution *for a given attack*.

          On the other hand, we have 110% conference that Russia and China are hitting us all day everyday. We know which buildings their offensive teams work from.

          Without getting into a discussion of to what extent it's wise to make an analogy to kinetic attacks, I'll do so now only for the limited purpose of clarifying what I said above:

          It's as if we see Russian bombers flyi

          • by Tom ( 822 )

            The second problem with cyberattacks is that unlike military attacks, many of them are done by private actors or organized crime, not state actors.

            As an analogy it's more like being shot at from a country like Mexiko, where drug cartels have just as many weapons as the official military does.

            I don't doubt at all that all major powers are active in the cyber domain, both defensively and offensively. What I massively dislike is this vigilante justice where you sometimes don't know if the USA is Batman or Joke

            • That is a little bit of an issue. It's also an issue that can be easily over-stated.

              Attacker 1:
              Nigerian Prince scam (very unsophisticated techniques)
              Trying to steal $250 from random people.

              Attacker 2:
              Ignores that they have access thousands of juicy ransomware targets
              Only exploits military-related companies, and the security companies that protect them.
              Silently moves through the networks, exploiting many different types of systems before being caught
              Engages in espionage, not ransomware or anything else

              The un

              • by Tom ( 822 )

                Sure, you can easily construct an example that is very obvious.

                The real world is more muddy. What about a sophisticated attacker with a carefully executed strategy who exploits a chain of targets to plant an exploit, and that exploit is then used for espionage as well as ransomware attacks?

                Also, the Russian government has never investigated and prosecuted any of these criminals.

                That's true. It's not unique to cybercrime, though. Russia is quite selective on which crimes it cooperates on (those exist as well, there is longstanding cooperation with INTERPOL and EUROPOL, for example) and which it t

                • > Sure, you can easily construct an example that is very obvious.
                  > The real world is more muddy.

                  Yes, that example is one you can handle with 60 seconds of education and no relevant experience. I'm about to start a 13-week graduate level class on the topic, because some examples aren't quite that simple. Students are expected to have relevant work experience before enrolling in the class.

                  Keep in mind that just because you can only learn integer addition in a few minutes, that doesn't mean modular addit

                  • by Tom ( 822 )

                    Attribution is kinda like that - you can only learn the basics in 60 seconds. That doesn't mean there isn't more to learn, that you couldn't spend 300 seconds and learn more.

                    Again, I agree with you. Information security is my profession. Mostly on the management level, but I have enough tech background to know about forensics, anti-forensics, attack patterns and threat intelligence.

                    If one of the people I know and trust came to me and said "I've done the forensics, this is clearly group X from country Y" then I would accept that because I know that and how it is possible to identify threat actors with reasonable degrees of certainty.

                    When the government announces the same in a pr

                    • That makes sense.

                      It's been my experience that one can pretty much ignore what the top politicians say. I wouldn't put much stock in Trump, Biden, Pelosi, or Schumer suggesting attribution because they live and breathe politics. (Which only make sense, they are expert politicians). Statements they make are heavily slanted by politics.

                      In the other hand, what CISA says consistently matches up with the consensus of independent analysis.

        • by robi5 ( 1261542 )

          > Last I checked the news, the probability that Russian government entities were behind the SolarWinds hack was rated as "likely" and "probably" by US government officials.

          > And we know that they lie, when it comes to Russia

          So, putting the two together... maybe they internally rate it as "100% certainty" but don't want to communicate for some reason. Telling the domestic population, it's 100% certainty may not be deemed productive, and telling an adversary that their methods were thoroughly transparen

    • (Mis)quoting Einstein, we don't know with what weapons III cyber world war will be fought, but IV cyber war will be fougth with abacus and slide rule...
    • USA internet is extremely vulnerable. It is the only part of the world where the BGP announcements between core internet providers are not filtered. That's just for starters. Its infrastructure vulnerabilities are so numerous that even a 5th world nation can bring it down to its knees and keep it there. The only reason it was not done before is because it is generally viewed as an action of last resort and nobody wants to cop some tomahawks as a payback.

      Both the Chinese and Russians have tested it though

    • Our goal is not "to hold the moral high ground," but to defend our nation. Sorry, Ivan.

    • > I fail to see how this will end well.

      More money for the central bankers and the military industrial complex. Why else do something at the federal level?

      Meanwhile the US power grid is exposed and SCADA is a disaster. Go buy some water containers.

    • "I fail to see how this will end well."

      They^ll switch off the heater in Putin's office and he will just light the analog open fire.

    • whilst spending the time, effort and money that will otherwise be wasted on such an attack, shuring [sic] up your own defenses, would be a far better strategy.

      Shoring up defenses is absolutely necessary, but limiting yourself to defense it's not a better - or even a good - strategy. This is because there is a huge asymmetry of cost/benefit of attack versus defense.

      First, let's talk about financial/resource costs: you don't need a lot to carry effective cybernetic attacks against infrastructure. You only need a few dozen or hundreds of skilled professionals, and some relatively cheap hardware - resources easily accessible for a state actor. By contrast, defending

    • It'll be like the endless proxy wars the US and Soviet Union fought in the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s... both sides will score points, and the end result will be a stalemate. They both know how the game is played, it's just business as usual. In particular, at this moment giving Russia some pushback is probably a good thing since the US has been entirely at the receiving end so far.
    • its cyber attacks, whether or not the US retaliates or not. Probably the only sure way to stop them is to create what amounts to cyber land mines - if a system is being attacked,, the "Land mine" attacks the attacker and shuts down their computer system
  • Worst Idea.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whatchamacallit ( 21721 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @12:44PM (#61182396) Homepage

    Plausible deniability is key. You just do it and you don't brag about it. Broadcasting it ahead of time is remarkably dumb. It also invites retaliation and escalation. Information Technology is full of security holes that are constantly being discovered and fixed. Some date back decades. Nationstate Cyber warfare is all about zero-day exploits which you don't want to waste. If you are holding a royal flush of security exploits you don't use them for fear of tipping the hand of the enemy to your capabilities. You save those for when you really need them during a serious conflict.

    Starting a cyberwar is very bad for all involved globally.

    • by ameline ( 771895 )

      I would agree if this were not a response to attacks already carried out by the enemy. When responding to a bully, you need to do it overtly -- publicly and obviously -- so everyone sees what happens and who is doing it. Otherwise it is wasted effort.

      This is about showing everyone (not just the bully) the consequences. In short, when someone fucks around, make sure they find out. (And ensure everyone else who is considering fucking around clearly sees the consequences.)

      • Except the weapons have a very short lifespan and once you use them. The jig is up, the cat is out of the bag, etc. The security exploits are fixed. You have to come up with new exploits which is far from easy.

        • In which case a "minor skirmish" cyberwar would be a good thing, would it not? The exploits keep getting fixed, and pretty soon everything is far more secure, and all the criminals that were already quietly using those exploits are S.O.L.

          You're not going to break out the really big guns for a chest-pounding competition - you save those in case you really need them. But for now the US has shown itself to be completely incompetent at cyber defense, stockpiling vulnerabilities shared by its own infrastructur

        • Except the weapons have a very short lifespan and once you use them. The jig is up, the cat is out of the bag, etc. The security exploits are fixed. You have to come up with new exploits which is far from easy.

          And what if it turns out not to be based on "exploits?" Or involves deactivating hardware?

      • First, you don't have to make it public to teach the bully the lesson, as long as they feel the pain they will think twice of doing it again. If the idea is "disproportionate response as a deterrent", then sure, claim credit, but not until you're done responding. Declaring your plans ahead of time is just posturing to your constituents, and if true, it completely gives up a huge first-mover advantage of surprise. It does sounds like something a current Democratic Party administration would do though, so at

    • You just do it and you don't brag about it.

      That depends entirely on what your objective is.

    • Re:Worst Idea.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @02:11PM (#61182730)

      Starting a cyberwar is very bad for all involved globally.

      I'd put money on it that this idea is exactly was is trying to conveyed to the Kremlin.

    • by jetkust ( 596906 )

      Broadcasting it ahead of time is remarkably dumb.

      What would be even dumber is if they weren't already hacking Russia the entire time.

    • by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      I agree you never say what your going to do normally however in the case of Russia and China they will never admit they got hacked they will blame it on something else.
    • Broadcasting it ahead of time is remarkably dumb.

      If the actions turn out to be things they can't stop, even when they know something is coming, then it will turn out to be remarkably powerful.

      Time will tell.

      I suspect that a large portion of it will involve traffic of theirs that travels over networks they don't (and can't) control, and which they rely on.

    • by fazig ( 2909523 )
      It's not as dumb to broadcast it as you make it out to be.

      It can be a very effective intimidation tactic that commonly referred to as 'terror' (in the psychology sense). If the threat being made is believed by the target, it will serve to make them more paranoid than they already are. They'll spend resources on their end to tighten down control, and further erode liberties.
      If that happens then you just don't waste your resources on actually carrying out the attack, because you've already done enough dama
    • by invid ( 163714 )
      Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret.

      --Dr. Strangelove

    • And yet too much deniability means it looks like you aren't doing anything, which emboldens opponents and demoralizes supporters.
  • It is reported by sources familiar with the effort, that the first target will be Sci-Hub.

  • by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @12:47PM (#61182410)

    . . . the American 'Aggressive' Cyber Counterattack!

    Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise

    Surprise? Oh, shit.

    • by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @02:38PM (#61182818)

      Nope. Our chief weapon is really big guns. Both literally and metaphorically. And when it comes to cyber-warfare we've proven time and again we're completely lousy at making shields, so our primary defense is to convince others not to attack. Not unlike nuclear war, though with less radioactive fallout.

      If you want to convince someone not to mess with you, telling them you're going to bloody their nose so that they can prepare for your attack, and then bloodying it anyway can be a wonderful way to convince them that maybe they really don't want to provoke you again.

      A public display of force is also far more effective at convincing third parties that they also don't want to provoke you.

      Of course, that assumes you can pull it off, which remains to be seen. And that you can do so in a manner which doesn't give good cause for a counterattack - e.g. indiscriminately killing civilians while hunting terrorists is a *really* good way to make even more terrorists than you started with. Only an idiot would do such a thing unless making more terrorists for an eternal war was actually the goal. Our own military handbooks have warned against the inevitable outcome of such behavior for many decades.

  • OK, so since his inauguration two months ago we are now in a new shooting war in Syria and a new cyberwar with Russia. Meanwhile the talks with China have gotten hard to hear as the saber rattling escalates toward the threshold of pain.

    Quite the contrast from Trump, who managed to go four years without starting a single new war - a nice contrast to the other presidents of the last 3/4 century or so. He drew down the troops abroad, too. (Another policy Biden has reversed.)

    Interesting times.

    • by Jmc23 ( 2353706 )
      I remember the only time the MSM praised Trump was when he bowed to pressure in first few months of office and bombed Syria.
      • I remember the only time the MSM praised Trump was when he bowed to pressure in first few months of office and bombed Syria.

        That was after Russia and Syria gassed civilians. And even then the con artist called up his Russian handler and warned him ahead of time so the Russian troops could be moved out of harm's way.

        Also, that "attack" cost us tens of millions of dollars (approximately $89 million) and took out a runway for three days. Money well spent, wouldn't you say?

        • That was after Russia and Syria gassed civilians.

          No, thats after they (the deep state) tricked even the president of the united states into thinking that happened, but now we know for a fact differently, while you still spout the bullshit lie. You are a significant part of the problem. Years after the truth is revealed, you still spread the lie.

    • by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @01:24PM (#61182546)
      So conflict in Syria and cyber espionage with Russia are completely new events to happen in the past 3 months?

      I believe publicly announcing intent is silly unless it's a complete bluff and simply meant to observe Russia's response. If they do plan real action, let's not be ignorant and pretend these activities have not gone on for the past couple of decades.

      And please, Trump threatened to launch nukes at N. Korea.. so peace keeper he was not.
      • Bluster is very different from actually dropping a bomb on a wedding party. If you consider bluster to be an act of war then a large percentage of countries are at war right now as various leader types over the planet say stupid shit every day before they've even had breakfast.

        The facts on the ground is nothing happened between the US and NK in the last 4 years of any note. If anything, the NK quieted down a bit in the last 2 years after we started ignoring them which isn't a bad course of action when dea

    • by Subm ( 79417 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @02:04PM (#61182712)

      > Trump, who managed to go four years without starting a single new war

      Capitulation and adoration to Putin and Kim is hardly peace. Ask how appeasement went for Chamberlaine.

      • by Tom ( 822 )

        How was that moderated "insightful" ???

        Chamberlaine was dealing with a Nazi Germany that had just invaded a foreign country (Czech) and his solution was to sign The Munich Agreement [wikipedia.org].

        So unless I missed the part where Trump gave a seizable part of South Korea away to Kim Jong-Un, these things are not comparable.

        (and no, the Krim doesn't count, that's quite a bit more complicated and we can talk about Maidan in a seperate topic)

        • by invid ( 163714 )
          Well, there was that incident of the annexation of Crimea. Yes, that did happen under Obama and yes, both Obama and Trump have been too soft on Putin, although of the two, Trump's softness was much more like that of a perfumed, squealing sex-slave.
          • by Tom ( 822 )

            I literally pointed out that you shouldn't use that example.

            Crimea is a bit complex. It goes back to arbitrary borders defined within the USSR, often intentionally creating conflicts between various ethnicities. It also goes back to a "revolution" that was more of a coup and that was heavily influenced by western powers and used terror and right-wing extremist militia to overthrow the local government. The NATO expansion also played a large role - given past developments, Russia had to assume Ukraine as a p

            • by invid ( 163714 )

              Yeah, I missed the Krim reference. I read Slashdot during compiles and they gave me a faster computer recently.

              It is true that if Russia lost Crimea it would be such a significant blow to their naval forces in the Black Sea as to be an existential threat to their position as a regional power, so much so that they might resort to a shooting war to keep it. Nonetheless, they did take it from a sovereign nation and after doing so have been extremely belligerent to the west with such little push-back that Puti

            • by robi5 ( 1261542 )

              > I literally pointed out that you shouldn't use that example.

              That's precisely the example to use. You can't say, "don't use the glaring example just b/c it invalidates my point".
              Sure the borders evolved the way they evolved. Still, according to international law, and the Budapest memorandum, there was clarity about those borders. Russia is already the largest country on Earth by a large margin, and most resource-rich.

              Also, I think it was just a stupid decision to go for Crimea and Donbass. Russia has co

      • by hoofie ( 201045 )

        Chamberlain's primary mission was to buy time for the UK to rearm. He knew exactly what was coming and that war was probably inevitable.

      • What capitulation?

        And could it be that you are misinterpreting the ability to recognize which people respond to flattery and which respond to pressure as, "adoration"? Which politicians are promoting appeasement and which aren't? Did Trump try to appease or contain Iran? Which approach is Biden taking? What about the only nation that actually poses a direct threat to the US - China?

        We have a bad habit of assuming that dictators are bullies and democratically elected leaders are anything but. Truth

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @02:07PM (#61182726)

      Quite the contrast from Trump, who managed to go four years without starting a single new war

      Yes... because he kissed the ass of dictators as they put a bounty on US troops and pushed away our allies. All our enemies were delighted to have Trump sabotage the US and our national standing on the world stage.

    • by jetkust ( 596906 )

      OK, so since his inauguration two months ago we are now in a new shooting war in Syria and a new cyberwar with Russia.

      The cyberwar isn't new, it just hasn't been televised.

    • [Trump] drew down the troops abroad, too. (Another policy Biden has reversed.)

      No he didn't. Troop levels stayed the same. Trump just shifted resources toward Iran.

      I've seen no evidence the Trump Administration used less munitions overall. His targets were simply different.

  • ... hacking people is bad.

    It's funny, how nobody ever freaking gets this.

    The US has just justified every Russian hack of the past. Because, according to the US, hacking is absolutely OK, if you call it a "warning shot" and a "retaliation" or whatever. Which, of course, Putin can do just as well. I mean he was literally put in power by somebody (Yeltsin) who was elected because the US manipulated the Russian elections. (Source: CIA agents, in the Washington Post.) So if anyone has an axe to grind ...

    But in r

  • The Biden Administration consists of stupid individuals if they announce these kind of operations ahead of time. Mind you that the Russians have always denied any involvement and will proclaim this as an excuse to do even more harm. This could eventually lead to a military confrontation with real people being killed.

    Are we going to wage a nuclear war over the hacking of computer systems? I believe this simply isn't worth it. We should secure our systems using the latest technology like Rust and micro-ker
  • For four years the U.S. had to witness the genuflecting nightmare of the con artist bend over backwards to appease his Russian handler. Not once in those four years did the con artist say a single bad word about Russian actions, even going so far as to defend Russia's deliberate bombings of civilians and medical personnel in Syria. Who knows how many national secrets were given away during Putin's one-on-one with his manchurian candidate.

    Now we have someone who acts like a leader and defends this country

  • Who do you think is "better" at it? Cyberwar?
  • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday March 21, 2021 @01:44PM (#61182612)
    I'm concerned that there are no accepted rules of engagement and no standards on cyber warfare. Is a cyber attack on a strategic nuclear asset the equivalent of a conventional attack, and arguably justification for a nuclear strike? (if the Russians started torpedoing our missile subs, that would be assumed to be starting a nuclear war). What about cyber attacks that cause substantial loss of life? Or very large economic damage? Does it matter if the damage is directly physical, or if its is causing people to take actions that indirectly cause damage? I think the potential for damage from cyber weapons is extremely large - and that could then lead to an even larger conventional or even nuclear war
    • We can blame the US for that. After all more than a decade ago, China and Russia was asking the US to get together to craft laws that would regulate cyberwarfare. The US said no, with the army thinking that their offensive capabilities were far above their competitors, and thus thought that any regulation would only harm US interests while helping Russia and China. Now they are crying everyday about it.

      Although some guy here states that China was trying to curb freedom of speech and control the internet,

  • Resident Biden's stair climbing skills [twitter.com], this isn't going to end well [powerlineblog.com].

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • It's high time they started attack the actual attackers instead of their own citizens.
  • by Tom ( 822 )

    So the country that lied on WMDs and used that lie to invade another country is now claiming that yet another country is behind a large-scale exploit (let's ignore the traces leading to a third major country, and the fact that the software defect that caused the weakness shouldn't have been there in the first place) and will use that to openly attack said other country.

    Given that the military has for a while now considered Cyberspace another domain, like land, sea and air, this is an act of war. They either

  • elections.
    what if ivan had an election where the ivans vote counted

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