Cyberwar

Iran placed old fashioned mines on some tankers, and then shot down a spy drone, and the world (and the US left/Democrats/MSM) prepared their talking points against Trumpie boy because they assumed he'd bomb them in retaliation.

But then, Trumpieboy thought "outside the box". From Richard Fernandez:

Members of Congress had already geared up in anticipation to block the war that was sure to come. "As the prospect of a confrontation with Iran continues to rise, an increasing number of members of Congress have a new objective: ensuring President Trump does not launch a war without their approval."

But he didn't bomb anything biological.

Even though the Washington Post sources called the strike "a long-in-the-making cyberattack that took down Iranian missile control computers," it still caught conventional wisdom by surprise. Just as the Battle of the Coral Sea was the first naval engagement conducted beyond the visual range of opposing fleets, the recent exchange of strikes marks the first public battle between two nations in which only automata died.

Fenandez goes on to point out the problem with this: like economic sanctions, it hurts ordinary people, but does not necessarily topple their leaders.

On the other hand, it does weaken them enough that they are no longer a threat.

This attack got into the news, but the dirty little secret is that the US has been the target for cyberattacks for years. (for example, my OPM personnel file was one of millions hacked by China "unknown persons".)

This is why people aware of this threat were so enraged that Hillary had an insecure email server and found out that Huma took sensitive emails and information to her apartment and used her husband's computer to print them out. 

That last part especially raised eyebrows, since her husband was into porn and that is an easy way to get a malwaree virus on your computer.


StrategyPage wrote about the problem in 2007.

The U.S. Department of Defense has noted the increasing number of hackers trying, and succeeding, to get into military networks. This sort of thing has been going on since the 1980s, when a gang of West German hackers, hired by the Soviet secret police (KGB) were caught inside Department of Defense networks, stealing classified data.
But in the last few years, the hacker activity has accelerated. Currently, Department of Defense networks get probed six million times a day. 

and a more recent article (May 2009) notes that Iran has lots of these cyberwarriors.

This use of APTs was one advantage Iran had against its enemies. Decades of sanctions had made it impossible for Iran to obtain modern weapons or technology in general. But via the APTs, they created or employed they could steal much of what they wanted.

So just a variation of "spy vs spy", right?

Wrong. Everything is connected nowadays.

and if you watched DieHard4.0, you know how a cyberattack on basic utility systems could decimate the country.

(and not just a cyber attack: A half decent solar flare could do the same thing).

ZDnet (Dec2018) has an article on this that should give you nightmares.

Unlike traditional military attacks, a cyberattack can be launched instantaneously from any distance, with little obvious evidence of any build-up, unlike a traditional military operation.... governments and intelligence agencies worry that digital attacks against vital infrastructure -- like banking systems or power grids -- will give attackers a way of bypassing a country's traditional defences, and are racing to improve their computer security.

More at ZDNet here

and here is a "WAGD" scenario by an independent video maker:





presumably, I should be safe here in the rural Philippines where everyone including my maid has a smartphone, but most people have generators etc. since we get periodic typhoons, floods, and brownouts...

but actually we had a minor cyberwar kerfuffle with China a couple years ago (actually, Chinese hackers who are of course government inspired, but the Filipino hackers were just students causing mischief, but it does show how we do have the talent to do these things)., 

So if China wanted to play rough with us via cyberwar, we might be in trouble... but not completely helpless.