and Friedman use Stuxnet as a case not only walk us through this dramatic operation—a real-life Mission: Impossible plot—but they also study in cyberweapons. Stuxnet was designed to activate ethical In contrast to indiscriminate malware, such as an email virus, under highly specific conditions that narrowed its target to one, only if exactly 984 centrifuges were linked e.g., together and controlled by a certain system. This specificity and requisite inside knowledge reveals how operating hard it is to hit a weapons lab or any other sensitive facility, and therefore how unlikely cyberterrorism might be: To cause true damage entails understanding the devices themselves: how they run, their engineering, an of and their underlying physics. Stuxnet, for example, involved cyber experts as well as experts in nuclear physics and engineers familiar with a On top of expertise, expensive software tests had to be specific kind of Siemens-brand industrial equipment. the required conducted As a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy Lucas] explains, on working versions of the target hardware. [George “the threat of cyber terrorism, has been vastly overblown,” because conducting a truly mass-scale act of in particular, terrorism using cyber outstrips the intellectual, organizational, and personnel capacities of even means “simply the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most sophisticated international criminal enterprises. To be blunt: neither the 14-year old hacker in your next-door neighbor’s upstairs bedroom, nor the two or three person al Qaeda cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are going to bring down the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams.” By comparison, the entire 9/11 plot cost less than $250,000 in travel and organizational costs and used simple box-cutters.
and Friedman not only walk us through this dramatic operation—a real-life Mission: Impossible plot—but they also use Stuxnet as a case study in ethical cyberweapons. In contrast to indiscriminate malware, such as an email virus, Stuxnet was designed to activate under highly specific conditions that narrowed its target to one, e.g., only if exactly 984 centrifuges were linked together and controlled by a certain operating system. This specificity and requisite inside knowledge reveals how hard it is to hit a weapons lab or any other sensitive facility, and therefore how unlikely cyberterrorism might be: To cause true damage entails an understanding of the devices themselves: how they run, their engineering, and their underlying physics. Stuxnet, for example, involved cyber experts as well as experts in nuclear physics and engineers familiar with a specific kind of Siemens-brand industrial equipment. On top of the required expertise, expensive software tests had to be conducted on working versions of the target hardware. As a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy [George Lucas] explains, “the threat of cyber terrorism, in particular, has been vastly overblown,” because conducting a truly mass-scale act of terrorism using cyber means “simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational, and personnel capacities of even the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization, as well as those of even the most sophisticated international criminal enterprises. To be blunt: neither the 14-year old hacker in your next-door neighbor’s upstairs bedroom, nor the two or three person al Qaeda cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are going to bring down the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams.” By comparison, the entire 9/11 plot cost less than $250,000 in travel and organizational costs and used simple box-cutters.
Zero%20Days%20Negative%20-%20Michigan7%202015.docx