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Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by LifeLiverTransp on Thursday March 15, 2018 @09:42AM (#16592735)
I wonder how often such "mistakes" are actual some state-bound to secrecy hacker doing the ethical thing.

So here is to the nameless, rotting in some oubliette, making mistakes, so others can return to theire familys at night, a secret brotherhood of servants to ruthless masters.

Cheers.

Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by archgoon on Thursday March 15, 2018 @10:51AM (#16593311)
For clarity, the mistake LifeLiverTransp is referring to is:

> The only thing that prevented an explosion was a mistake in the attackers’ computer code, the investigators said.

Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by larkeith on Thursday March 15, 2018 @12:16PM (#16594124)
Slightly more detailed:

> The only thing that prevented significant damage was a bug in the attackers’ computer code that inadvertently shut down the plant’s production systems.

Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by Nomentatus on Thursday March 15, 2018 @01:50PM (#16595012)
Worthy thought, Germany suffered a lot of this in WWII, with Russians finding dud bombs disabled at the factory that included notes like: "Cheers comrades! This dud is a gift from now-disbanded Mechanics Union 456 of Stuttgardt!"
Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by tomjakubowski on Thursday March 15, 2018 @03:49PM (#16595999)
That's great. Do you have a source where I can read more on this? Googling has only turned up information on sabotage by forced (Polish, Jewish, etc.) labor at munitions factories, which is interesting in its own right, but not from begrudged ex-union workers from Germany.
Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by Nomentatus on Thursday March 15, 2018 @10:25PM (#16598122)
A biography of a WWII Russian fighter pilot, was the source for the cited instance, as I recall.

Red Star Airacobra: Memoirs of a Soviet Fighter Ace 1941-45: v. 2 Evgeniy Mariinskiy Kindle book.

Of course, there are many more: the brief resistance on D-Day from many non-German troops counts, the betrayal to the British embassy of Germany's rocket program, the Garbo mission (main agent betrayed program), Canaris maybe betraying Hitler from the start, Heisenberg's "miscalculation" and slowness that killed the Germany Atomic Bomb program (along with his offer of mutual sabotage to Bohr), etc.

Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by jack6e on Thursday March 15, 2018 @12:30PM (#16594264)
Probably not many. The most recent SO developer survey said only 20% of respondents thought responsibility for unethical code fell on developers, compared to 80% thinking designers/managers should be responsible.

That's globally. I imagine the sense of responsibility decreases in ethically-gray areas like nation-state warfare against adversaries, and among developers working in strongly hierarchical, military(-esque) environments, for autocratic regimes focused on destroying national/ethnic/religious enemies (as this appears to have been done by).

Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by dgut on Thursday March 15, 2018 @11:22AM (#16593608)
Typo... oops.
Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by wallace_f on Thursday March 15, 2018 @11:31AM (#16593698)
I had the same thought; but then I read about $500 million in charitable relief to Haiti disappearing, or Harvard faculty lying to the public about the health and safety of lead or sugar because they received some bribe, and I don't know what to think.
Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by larkeith on Thursday March 15, 2018 @12:21PM (#16594179)
Everyone is unique, and choose differently based on their history and context.
Re:Saudi Arabia cyber attack goal was chemical plant explosi... by wallace_f on Thursday March 15, 2018 @03:06PM (#16595648)
Yea. But sometimes it just seems so shocking that some people who could act with such humanitarian goals share this world with others who just don't care.