The New Face of War: A Picture of the Opening Salvo of a Potential New World War

Ah,OK so I am thinking that(if they have a station on Bouvet) by the very way they operate,the IPViking system shows up on the map because in uses non destructive "attacks" to obtain its information maybe?

Norse's globally distributed distant early warning grid of millions of dark sensors, honeypots, crawlers, and agents deliver unique visibility into the Internet - especially the darknets, where bad actors operate.

www.norse-corp.com...

still very puzzling.

Oh sheeeit..Gents-
we haven't just outted a major secret site have we?
I don't fancy my door getting kicked in just cause I looked up some maps and did a bit of putting 2+2 together.

a reply to: Silcone Synapse
LMAO
Doubt it, Major secrets don't show up.
Especially on Google Maps.

But I guess we will find out if none of us are available tomorrow.

a reply to: RedmoonMWC

ROFL,Yep I think we are OK bro-it was their fault for putting the little tie fighter symbol right on the island.
They wanted that location known I guess.

Just a small blurb - I honestly don't want to share much openly because it be pretty easy to identify me but:

As a Sys Admin and Internet Security Officer for a Federal facility - we are more worried about cyber attacks from Iran, not China. They've spent huge amounts of money in developing dedicated penetration infrastructure and teams, and have a grudge against the U.S. for our cyber actions against them.

Some of this is common news - they are already taking posturing stances against us in relation to the nuclear talks, but much of their threat is cyber-threat.

In terms of sophistication Iran represents a larger threat these days than China or Russia.

Most of what we see, though, are just script kiddies jumping on the Anonomyous-wannabe band wagon and using existing DDoS slave networks to do small-scale attacks.

a reply to: Hefficide

Did you get into computing after the year 2000?

I'm a huge gamer with many connections and can confirm that 3 gaming networks went down last month.

World of Warcraft, Vindictus, and Continent of the Ninth. All claimed it was a DDoS attack.

Now I know why.

I wonder if this ties in with the planned hyperinflation of the USD next year, and stock market crash that Soros is betting $2B on?

S&F. Scary times.

Decided to watch the Live map.....a bloody SHED LOAD just launched from France at St Louis!!! This is cray cray, and somewhat exciting.

a reply to: roadgravel

I began computing as an elective in my sophmore year of High School - 1982.

You guys understand that these "cities" like St Louis are not targets but the actual entry points where Norse have their routers to sniff the traffic.

en.wikipedia.org...

Here are some useful maps to understand where are the Tier 1 backbone providers in the US: www.nthelp.com...

St. Louis has a massive satellite up/down link and multiple Tier 1 providers use them.

The little symbol over Bouvet island is traffic that comes from Military/Gov public gateways without indication of a geo location.

a reply to: UnmitigatedDisaster

Stared
Thanks for that.

This is an interesting pov but there are some things that don't quite fit for me, at least not yet.

There are some very simple steps for winning a war. First, disrupt communications. Second, cut supply lines. Third, take out the core command. That still leaves the not at all small problem of the actual fighting forces whom still need to be dealt with.

The military and the government have their own intranet, completely independent of the public internet. Each emergency bunker is linked directly to the others, AF1, etc. There is no need for commercial or public communications or power. In the event of a WW scenario the US war machine will function. The general public...well, we will be left to fend for ourselves for a while. This does not prevent falling victim to weapons such as massive EMP's and the like, but it is protection against what most people would suspect as usable weapons against governments and military agencies.

Electronic commerce can be stopped. Records can be erased. All sorts of frustrating problems can be created. But I don't see any of them causing the down fall of a nation. I used to joke that a team I had put together with funding and a phone line could take over a small country. In reality, we might be able to grab the reins, but that doesn't mean we have control of the wagon.

a reply to: Vroomfondel

Right, because in the end it all comes down to boots on the ground.
So long as citizens are armed that is a problem for any invader.

a reply to: UnmitigatedDisaster

I thought Stuxnet (what Iran should be really mad about) was credited to Israel in most (aware) people's minds?

Why would Iran be so mad at the U.S. from a cyber perspective? Obviously I get why they are "mad" at the U.S. in every other sense.

To be clear, I am honestly curious about your thoughts on this, not being snarky at all.

originally posted by: Springer
a reply to: UnmitigatedDisaster

I thought Stuxnet (what Iran should be really mad about) was credited to Israel in most (aware) people's minds?

Why would Iran be so mad at the U.S. from a cyber perspective? Obviously I get why they are "mad" at the U.S. in every other sense.

To be clear, I am honestly curious about your thoughts on this, not being snarky at all.

I'll start by stating I'm in no way a top-level manager or advisor, or anyone making big decisions or operating out of the NSA or anything. I am, however, responsible for the security of a Federal office building and several smaller offices inside larger Federal buildings; so we get fairly regular security updates and alerts, as well as having fairly regular discussions about it between the other Sys Admins and our head office.

So here's what I've been told, plus a few things that are my own thoughts which I'll try to make sure are distinct.

On Iran:

What I've been told: Iran views the U.S. in the same way we tend to view China - a cyber threat to their country with entire teams and/or divisions dedicated to hacking Iranian infrastructure. The are well experienced with the U.S. meddling with their country, politically and militarily, and believe we are constantly trying to undermine them due to their nuclear programs' "threat". Their buildup of anti-cyberterrorism, as well as their development of dedicated cyber "assault" teams is, in the Iranian government mind, a response to protect themselves and take the offensive; and in our minds a preemptive act to try to gain the upper hand in the cyberwar(s) to come.*


My own belief: They don't believe Israel capable of high-level cyber attacks or terrorism. They know how in bed the U.S. and Israel are, and assume that at least some, if not all, of the core work for Stuxnet was developed by American specialists. Whether or not this is true (conspiracies abound, right? lol) this means most of their development is pretty much "pre-venge" against the world. I think they probably have legitimate concerns, but since they aren't proven they are basically being preemptive. In this I agree with what I've been told in general.

On general hacking and the increase in DDoS attacks:

What I've been told: Pockets of semi-organized groups of low-level hackers utilizing existing botnets to replicate the attacks of better organized groups. The reason they tend to target games and other non-essential companies or infrastructure is because they lack the knowledge, coordination and/or ability to obfuscate their attacks - meaning they know they would be caught easily if they did anything major against the government.

My own belief: Pretty much the same. It's a bunch of script kiddies and wannabe hactavists trolling people on innoccent things like games or popular webforums because they don't have the skill to take on real targets; and most of them don't actually want to or have the guts to. Additionally many of the DDoS attacks are the same because they are just copying what's already been done. Really well organized hactavist groups might call on the poser masses to get them to help; but any real penetration and information extraction they are doing is much quieter and rarely involves DDoSing a site, except maybe as decoys.


*The Cyber Wars: My own term, and one many of us use but it is in no way a "official" title or even some cool "secret project". It's just what a lot of us jokingly call it. Really what's happening is Iran is building up a strong, and in many industry experts opinions, the most advanced cyber-attack infrastructure yet. There are several security companies and spokespeople who've already warned that they've been in the "information gathering" stage for at least two years and appear to be winding down that "phase" to lead to something new, but currently unknown.

Our marching orders: Do your normal thing. Administer your systems, watch your network, do your job. Regularly review firewall and antivirus/malware logs for odd traffic or attempts at entry and report anything unusual. We've been told our biggest immediate threat is that we don't know from what direction or intention an attack would come from. Most of the -real- threats against the U.S. (ie: not kiddy ddos attacks) have spent long amounts of time quietly watching our networks, gathering our routing patterns and traffic points, trying to identify weakspots to attack or create connections through, and generally to determine the most effective way to cause network failures.


Conclusion: Sorry guys, I know it wasn't anything exciting like leaked CIA reports - and a lot of this is stuff many of you know or conjectured for yourself - but sadly reality isn't always that exciting. At least at my level. Maybe someday...

Edit: I will add that my firewall logs regularly show more suspicious/denied traffic from Chinese IP's than Iranian - but I think that's actually more supportive of the worry about Iran. They aren't being overt and trying to actively probe; they are just watching and developing detailed knowledge.

Sorry for neglecting this thread for a day or slightly longer. Real life and other pressing matters took precedence. I did pop in and posted links to my two other current threads showing that the vitriolic scene, showing the cinematic death of Kim Jung Un leaked. FTR there are links to the video ( unless they've been cleansed since late last night ).

That is relevant to this subject because if Sony / NK are a part of this current cyberstorm, then today should be another day of exceptionally high traffic.

DDOS attacks will not take down the US or any government/infrastructure. A website is not the same thing as infrastructure. Websites intentionally allow outside communication and as such can be taken down. Important facilities computers are almost certainly not connectable from the outside.

Imagine you buy 2 desktop computers with no wireless and you hook them up to power in your living room, but do not connect the internet cable to the computer. These are safe because there is no way for them to talk to anything at all. You can talk to them if you connect them to the internet or if you plug in a disk, usb device etc, but no way else.

Now, connect a cable between these two computers but continue not being connected to the internet. Now the computers can talk to each other as a "network", but no outside force can do anything. Important infrastructure is built like that. When you hear about problems with these types of places, it comes from someone dropping malicious code on them from a disk, usb device etc.

I wouldn't worry too much honestly.

a reply to: Hefficide

I see St. Louis getting hit a lot on the feed. The attacker several times has been Comcast...interesting. Also the University of Michigan was taking part in some hacks to other Universities, could be educational.

Can't believe how many attacks originate from China and are aimed at the US. Seattle seems to be a huge target after watching for only 10 minutes.



-Ninja

a reply to: fendi

The threat to our infrastructure via cyberattack is very real.

And again.

And again.

An d yet again.

There are stand alone networks that do not have Internet capability, to be sure. But the lions share of our infrastructure does not fall into that category. In fact most closed systems exist in labs and military environments.

originally posted by: Hefficide
a reply to: roadgravel

I began computing as an elective in my sophmore year of High School - 1982.

I just thought it odd that you didn't understand the Y2K situation. Maybe you are not a software person and were not involved much in the changes.