News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by cutting power. Parent comment

Re:Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by c... by HenryKissinger on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @03:33PM (#26797853)
There is truth in this comment.

Parts of the Russian government have reverted to using mechanical typewriters in lieu of computers, which are too susceptible to malicious hacking.

Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by c... by philwelch on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @04:05PM (#26798399)
> Also, the US Navy started instructing enlisted seamen how to navigate at sea by the stars, in case GPS stops working.

Is the threat model there that someone hacks the GPS signal, or that someone shoots down the GPS satellites? Lots of countries have ASATs these days.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by c... by sharikous on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @05:50PM (#26799809)
Even an idiot can jam GPS. A little more sophisticated attack would be spoofing it, still doable (just a Google search away)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by c... by monocasa on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @04:33PM (#26798870)
Probably jamming. GPS signals are very faint, and on fixed frequency bands.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by c... by formerly_proven on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @04:03PM (#26798373)
But then again the Russians themselves famously placed very difficult to detect bugs in the mechanical typewriters of the American embassy.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Israel may have destroyed Iranian centrifuges simply by c... by philwelch on Tuesday April 13, 2021 @04:13PM (#26798567)
And the Americans put one in the Soviet embassy’s Xerox machine.

I think a potential lesson of the story is to use technology that you understand at least as well as your enemy does. The communist bloc maintained registries of typewriter fingerprints so they could identify which typewriters were used to reproduce samizdat; I think it’s fair to assume that the Russians understand typewriters very well.

[ Parent | on HN ]