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Cyberwarfare

Started by Recusant, December 13, 2019, 08:54:14 PM

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Recusant

Just as with conventional war, there's not much that the average person can do that would affect this new form of conflict. Some will consider it another thing to worry about, but that's pointless. Being aware of the possibilities, I think we can't do much more than perhaps taking some steps to try to insulate ourselves from harm. Fair warning; it's a long piece, and not cheering.

"The Drums of Cyberwar" | The New York Review of Books

QuoteIn mid-October, a cybersecurity researcher in the Netherlands demonstrated, online, as a warning,* the easy availability of the Internet protocol address and open, unsecured access points of the industrial control system—the ICS—of a wastewater treatment plant not far from my home in Vermont. Industrial control systems may sound inconsequential, but as the investigative journalist Andy Greenberg illustrates persuasively in Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers, they have become the preferred target of malicious actors aiming to undermine civil society. A wastewater plant, for example, removes contaminants from the water supply; if its controls were to be compromised, public health would be, too.

That Vermont water treatment plant's industrial control system is just one of 26,000 ICS's across the United States, identified and mapped by the Dutch researcher, whose Internet configurations leave them susceptible to hacking. Health care, transportation, agriculture, defense—no system is exempt. Indeed, all the critical infrastructure that undergirds much of our lives, from the water we drink to the electricity that keeps the lights on, is at risk of being held hostage or decimated by hackers working on their own or at the behest of an adversarial nation. According to a study of the United States by the insurance company Lloyd's of London and the University of Cambridge's Centre for Risk Studies, if hackers were to take down the electric grid in just fifteen states and Washington, D.C., 93 million people would be without power, quickly leading to a "rise in mortality rates as health and safety systems fail; a decline in trade as ports shut down; disruption to water supplies as electric pumps fail and chaos to transport networks as infrastructure collapses." The cost to the economy, the study reported, would be astronomical: anywhere from $243 billion to $1 trillion. Sabotaging critical infrastructure may not be as great an existential threat as climate change or nuclear war, but it has imperiled entire populations already and remains a persistent probability.

[Continues . . .]
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


No one

War, humankind's true love.

xSilverPhinx

Makes sense. So many strategic points are dependent on the internet these days.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Ecurb Noselrub

So have a small house in the country with lots of food and water stocked, a well, an outhouse, and some solar panels.  When the grid goes down, drive there with gasoline you have stored and survive until it's all over.

billy rubin

Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on December 22, 2019, 03:52:40 PM
So have a small house in the country with lots of food and water stocked, a well, an outhouse, and some solar panels.  When the grid goes down, drive there with gasoline you have stored and survive until it's all over.

i have all of that except solar.

well, the chickenhouse has sloar. but not the house.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Ecurb Noselrub

Quote from: billy rubin on December 22, 2019, 05:32:37 PM
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on December 22, 2019, 03:52:40 PM
So have a small house in the country with lots of food and water stocked, a well, an outhouse, and some solar panels.  When the grid goes down, drive there with gasoline you have stored and survive until it's all over.

i have all of that except solar.

well, the chickenhouse has sloar. but not the house.

Good for you.  My goal is to find someone who has it and take it from them. Where is your house?  ;D

billy rubin

it's not much. just an RV-size panel about one foot square hooked to a motorcycle battery. it keeps a single dim 12-volt light on in the chicken house so that the possums can see when they're stealing the chicken feed.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Recusant

Prep and pray, brothers.  :smokincowboy: :shooty:  :-\
"Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration — courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth."
— H. L. Mencken


billy rubin

my house actually is fairly robust.

it's an old farmhouse, with a 22-foot dug water well next to the kitchen porch. i took the pump off to fish out the dead rabbit when we moved in, but a simple pitcher pump could reach the water at minimal cost. there's no indoor bathroom, so there's nothing that needs water to flush.

when we moved in there was a non-electric shovel coal furnace in the cellar that worked extremely well. no fan, convection circulation. sadly, it was about 100 years old and sprung a leak that dumped smoke into the house. so we lost the non-grid heat. but we have about 15 acres of hardwoods that could be managed for stove fuel.

and we still have a number of aladdin kerosene lamps that put out about 60 watts worth of light each, so we're not limited there.

plenty of whitetails to shoot if we need food.



"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Dark Lightning

I've looked at Google Earth enough to know where the swimming pools are in my neighborhood, and who has hogs and chickens (all unlawful in our residentially zoned area, thus non-punitive laws if those critters disappear down our gullets).  ;) There's a fair supply of long pig around here too, for that matter. Guess I'll have to eat grass for roughage, though. The wife bought bug-out kits for us to place in our vehicles, and wanted me to pack up medications with the one in my car just in case. Nothing I need to keep me alive, even in long term, except for the Viagra.  ;D

xSilverPhinx

Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on December 22, 2019, 03:52:40 PM
So have a small house in the country with lots of food and water stocked, a well, an outhouse, and some solar panels.  When the grid goes down, drive there with gasoline you have stored and survive until it's all over.

A house in the country? Um...no thanks.  ;D I will take my chances.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


billy rubin

why is that, silver?

last night i listenened to tbe coyotes sing by the lightof the waning moon. sounds fanciful, but its my real life.

of course, chicken and goat shit iz part of my life too.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

xSilverPhinx

Quote from: billy rubin on December 23, 2019, 02:36:42 PM
why is that, silver?

last night i listenened to tbe coyotes sing by the lightof the waning moon. sounds fanciful, but its my real life.

of course, chicken and goat shit iz part of my life too.

I prefer urban areas, though not too crowded. When I was around 18 I moved to a small farm with my mother and basically hated it, so far from everything that was important to me then. No internet meant I would die a little inside every day. We used to just go there for the weekends at first but when my father divorced my mom we had to leave the apartment in the city and we forced to go there. No money meant I couldn't move out on my own.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey