Snowden says Israel, U.S. created Stuxnet virus that attacked Iran

Re:Snowden says Israel, U.S. created Stuxnet virus that atta... by s_q_b on Monday July 15, 2013 @06:11PM (#6048875)

Yeah, you can, but it doesn't look like the systems were built that way. Honestly, the state of cybersecurity is pretty bad throughout both the public and private sectors. Somehow I doubt the NSA is immune to that trend.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Snowden says Israel, U.S. created Stuxnet virus that atta... by mjolk on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @06:32AM (#6050904)

>Yeah, you can, but it doesn't look like the systems were built that way.

Both Linux and Microsoft support file permissions. No excuse.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Snowden says Israel, U.S. created Stuxnet virus that atta... by s_q_b on Tuesday July 16, 2013 @11:53AM (#6052674)

File permissions aren't nearly enough here. He had access to their network systems, so you'd need encryption in transit as well, and a thousand other safeguards at both the software and hardware level.

Not to mention, Snowden was an offensive cybersecurity researcher. He knew the NSA's safeguards in and out, and thus was intimately familiar with their weaknesses. He could most likely plant malware wherever he wanted. If you think security at that level is as trivial as file permissions, you haven't thought through the problem realistically.

This is all of course, speculation. My main point is that, regardless of the reasoning or other theoretical designs, current NSA systems do not appear to have fine grained unbreakable access control.

[ Parent | on HN ]