A kind of blatant example of cybersecurity that probably involves informant and agent protection is the attack on Iranian nuclear centrifuges. It took a bit before it was broadly realized that there was a virus responsible for those problems. Then a further while until it was realized that the virus wasn't a generic bot-net sort of virus to take over the machines.
The virus was specifically engineered to fuck with those centrifuges. At that point, you realize that it was really an attack. But it wasn't a command and control attack, trying to gain remote control over those machines. It was an attack specifically designed to manipulate things attached to those machines, ie the centrifuges. Which means that whoever wrote the virus not only had some serious black hat chops, they also had help from people that know those particular centrifuges and know what would seriously damage them. At that point, you've got a team of people that may span multiple countries concentrating on developing the virus, figuring out the delivery mechanism, penetrating defenses and working with people who know nuclear centrifuges. That is almost certainly going to involve a fair amount of human capital that needs to be protected. I suspect we'll see more of this in the future. Probably already have and we just don't know it. Judah On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Dana <[email protected]> wrote: > > by the way, if you can comment on what sort of cybersecurity threat > might be classified I'd be interested. I would think that detection > usually happens at the hardware and software level, and that there > would not be the concern about protecting an informant or an agent > that you might have in other situations. Or, because of course I don't > actually know that, supposing there were such people, how pointing out > a threat would endanger them. Considering the state of network > security, I'd suspect that there's little point in worrying about > anything exotic enough to be identifiable until really basic problems > like default passwords are resolved.... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:350261 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
