Homeland Security warns that Russia could launch cyberattack against US

I wasn't aware Russia ever stopped cyberattacking us.

Biden told them to please leave 16 critical sectors alone. That's like saying you can rape us in the ass, but please use lube.

Tinfoil hat brigade on a stripper ho forum 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

^ He provided evidence. Who's the 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 again?

Im gonna laugh my ass off when Icee gets drafted

Well... like with any other form of aggression, there are degrees of escalation.

Similar to how U.S. and Russian submarines are consistently cat-and-mousing each other without flooding a torpedo tube, there is a constant trading of cyber jabs and blocks between the U.S. and Russia (and other adversary nations as well). In the cyber realm, this mostly consists of breaking into systems to steal or monitor transfer of data / communications. There are also instances where government-sponsored hacker groups infiltrate infrastructure systems but (so far) only to prove that they can. And the reality is that the U.S. does this to Russia as much as they do the same to us.

The potentially scary thing here is that much of the U.S. infrastructure (stuff like transportation, power, manufacturing, comms, banking, etc.) is so outdated and patchwork that it really wouldn't take a lot to cripple whole sectors. This is the fault of multiple Presidential administrations and iterations of Congress. The reality is that fixing/updating infrastructure is astronomically expensive and yet when you're done voters won't notice much of a benefit. It's all invisible to the end user, but the security and stability benefits behind the scenes would be huge. But, invisible benefits don't attract voters, so nobody wants to foot that bill.

While it sucks that the U.S. government won't pay for those upgrades (and it does leave us vulnerable), the good news is that the Russian infrastructure is even more fragile than ours I mean, it's held together with spit and hangers. And the Russian government literally can't afford to perform those same necessary upgrades. The Russians know this and they know that if they launch a successful, large-scale cyber attack against our infrastructure, then our counterattack will have a nearly 100% chance of success. And the Russians also don't have the economy to recover from a serious infrastructure attack.

So, is there reason to worry? Sure, it's something that I think could happen under certain unfortunate circumstances, but it's fairly remote until a lot of the right things go wrong. I think it's more likely that Russia would launch a smaller limited-scope cyber attack to prove a point, and then we'd launch a similar limited-scope retaliation to prove that we can, and that's it. And in whatever sector that smaller attack happens, that'll suck. But it won't be TEOTWAWKI survivalist novel territory.

My advice (for anyone who cares)... now is probably the wrong time to engage in international travel that isn't Canada or Mexico (so, you Zona Norte boys should be A-OK). And if you win a trip to Europe, maybe see if you can't defer the flights until later this year.

^ Go away, Cacaplop

Canada has great strip clubs but shitty ketchup and France has croissants. 2 out of 3 isn’t bad for us.

^ Go away, Cacaplop

This is frightening. As Russia moves physical troops in place, to possibly invade Ukraine, they may also be mounting a cyber attack on us. Sadly, the current administration is still fumbling putting its pants on.

I agree with much of Ishmael’s post. But, there are likely lots of holes that need closing on a very basic level, that would help considerably. The use of stronger passwords would be a start. I know it sounds basic, but I’m sure there are power grids where at least one privileged user

Sorry, I posted prematurely!

Where at least one privileged user has a very simple password. That would be a useful way to avoid lots of these issues.

Ukraine already has a track record of scamming guys with sexy looking women looking for American dollars.

^ Wouldn't trust the Dems in that department.

The DNC got hacked because someone's password was P@ssw0rd.

Get da shit planes ready! I dumpin loads on Russia! 💩💩💩 I troll dem too! I da kang of da trolls!

I better change my TUSCL password

Try G0_aw4y,_Cacapl0p

Several Democratic and Republican government officials, members of Congress, members of the Executive Office, and DoD have been hacked due to a simple password, or spear phished as a result of an authentic-looking email that asked for their password. Technical ineptitude is, unfortunately, one of the truly bipartisan challenges in DC.

And while simple passwords (and simple people...) are part of the problem, when it comes to infrastructure it's both more and less complex. In some sectors, the technology is so outdated that it's possible to brute force into a system. It's also possible to overwhelm and crash a system without ever breaking in.

Another issue in some sectors is that some of the critical specialized hardware is only made in China. And we've discovered (after installing the hardware into a system) that there's discrete, unknown code buried deep in the OS that the Chinese manufacturers will only identify as being part of the normal BIOS (which is almost certainly horseshit). This is a large part of the struggle with Huawei that has been in the news for a few years now.

It would be nice to think that the only hole in this cyber security Swiss cheese is bad password management, but the reality is that there are many, many more holes than that. Our only saving grace is that most of the same vulnerabilities exist in the infrastructure systems belonging to our adversaries, with some being even more vulnerable than our own.

Well said Ishmael. It’s a challenge when technology coming from China is already setup to allow infiltration. The aging portion of our technological infrastructure is dangerous as well.

I remember an old lecture about packet switching, and some of its origins, from some old ma bell guys. It was a very impressive thinking around the time of WWII. I doubt it’s still in place now, but it could be?

Gotta strengthen my password. 1-2-3-4 just won't cut it anymore.....🤨

^ try 4-3-2-1-!