ToffeeCup

Posts: 2,958

December 2011
Thought I'd try and bring a subject I find interesting to you shower on the BR....




Software viruses and malware....used to be an issue for old people failing to use the internet or online banking without the proper precautions....but now the world has very much changed.

Governments are now using weaponised software viruses....might sound futuristic....but its very much right here right now.

Stuxnet was, it is widely believed, an Israeli attack on an Iranian nuclear facility which is believed to be enriching uranium for the purpose of making a nuclear weapon.

Stuxnet first appeared in the world in June of 2009. But given its method of deployment, the nature of the selected target and the process by which the virus replicated itself, it would have been around six monts to a year longer than that. Also, experts predict that it would have taken a year and around a million USD to create.

Further info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet




Since Stuxnet... there has been a whole load more of this sort of "state sponsored" stuff coming to light.

On a slightly different note the US has commisioned software that builds and controls a virual army of online civilian personas complete with social media accounts and historically accurate online backgrounds...... whose for another uprising in the Arab Spring?



But the latest one is a bit of an eye opener.....mainly because the yanks are VERY good at this sort of thing.....a virus found on US military drone planes flying over afganistan:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/09/virus-infects-drone-plane-command

I just love the quotes from the three US network security specialists at their base in Nevada:

"we keep wiping it off, but it keeps coming back"

"we think its benign, but we just don't know"

"its getting a lot of attention, but no one is panicking....yet"


These are some of the viruses and/or state sponsored cyber attacks that we know about....just imagine what happens that we...or worse, the government concerned...are completely unaware of...


Discuss...