• BREAKING NEWS: Anonymous now possibly has the power to control the power-grid.
    55 replies, posted
[QUOTE]The computer-hacking confederacy Anonymous might be able to cause a limited power blackout in a year or two, the general who directs the National Security Agency has warned officials, TheWall Street Journal is reporting. Gen. Keith Alexander's warning of a cyberattack on the electrical grid has come in White House meetings and in "other private sessions," the Journal writes, citing "people familiar with the gatherings." Although the so-called hacktivists have not indicated a desire to disrupt the power system, the article continues, "some federal officials believe Anonymous is headed in a more disruptive direction," pointing to the Anonymous announcement last week that members will attempt to shut down the Internet on March 31. Computer security experts doubt that "Operation Global Blackout" will succeed. Any electrical grid attack would likely "inflict limited damage but would be certain to sow alarm, especially if Anonymous took credit publicly," the Journal writes. Grid officials said their systems face regular attacks, and they devote tremendous resources to repelling invaders, whether from Anonymous or some other source. "The industry is engaged and stepping up widely to respond to emerging cyber threats," said one electric-industry official. "There is a recognition that there are groups out there like Anonymous, and we are concerned, as are other sectors." Another industry official noted that the electric grid has a number of backup systems that allow utilities to restore power quickly if it is taken out by a cyberattack or other event. Intelligence officials believe that, for now, the cyber threat to the power grid is relatively limited. The countries that could most quickly develop and use cyber means to destroy part of the grid — such as China and Russia — have little incentive to do it. Those who might have more incentive, like Iran or North Korea, don't have the capability. So far, Anonymous has targeted government and corporate sites, including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and the public sites of the CIA (Feb. 10) and the Federal Trade Commission (Friday). Members also intercepted a call between the FBI and Scotland Yard and have disrupted sites overseas over new laws on intellectual property and online privacy. BLOG: Anonymous takes down CIA site, exposes Ala. personal data Over the weekend, the group announced it would launch attacks every Friday "with the specific purpose of wiping as many corrupt corporate and government systems off our Internet." Follow the Anonymous action on Twitter.[/QUOTE] Well fuck, anonymous is more powerful then ever now. SAUCE: [url]http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/report-nsa-chief-sees-possible-anonymous-hit-on-power-grid/1#.T0M7E7SGt4M[/url]
isn't anon loosely held? How do they get control of a power grid?
You mean a single guy who's using the banner of Anonymous for quick popularity on the subject.
This is the most sensationalist bullshit I have read in a long time. As for the title of the thread, did you even read the article.
I highly doubt a bunch of neckbeards living in their underground basement lairs could inflict any damage.
Lol if they do something like this they are going to be so fucked (Quite literally, Bubba's gonna be waiting for them in federal prison)
Good shut down the power at my work forever so I never have to go back.
You're thinking too small, they don't arrest terrorists, especially not ones who attack the US's life system. They'd likely be shot on the spot or just dispensary into the various out of country prisons and never be heard from again.
[QUOTE=Bledrix;34799249]Good shut down the power at my work forever so I never have to go back.[/QUOTE] Avatar is fitting. :v:
ELITE GROUP OF HACKERS QUICK CENSOR THE INTERNET
Operation Blackout? What? Yea, ok. Ill go buy some bottled water and batteries and pretend its Y2K again. Anonymous, what the fuck. This is not what your supposed to be doing.
[QUOTE=SaintHitler;34799203]Well fuck, anonymous is more powerful then ever now. SAUCE: [url]http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/02/report-nsa-chief-sees-possible-anonymous-hit-on-power-grid/1#.T0M7E7SGt4M[/url][/QUOTE] *Than. And I doubt this.
Shut down everything and cause chaos
[QUOTE=Shiftyze;34799340]*Than. And I doubt this.[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://6inchmove.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/grammar-nazi2.jpg[/IMG]
Is anonymous Santa Claus too?
[QUOTE=SaintHitler;34799371][IMG]http://6inchmove.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/grammar-nazi2.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]Didn't bash you or anything like you just did. Was just being an FP buddy.
It sounds like the people at the Pentagon have been watching too many Bruce Willis movies, this sounds almost exactly like part of "Live Free or Die Hard."
What, are they gonna DDOS the power plants or something?
[QUOTE=Shiftyze;34799400]Didn't bash you or anything like you just did. Was just being an FP buddy.[/QUOTE] Oh, you seemed a bit rude when correcting it. My apologises FP buddy <3
So they shut down the power? I doubt it very much they can actually shut down the power for more then 10 seconds.
[QUOTE=Shiftyze;34799400]Didn't bash you or anything like you just did. Was just being [b]an[/b] FP buddy.[/QUOTE] [b]a[/b]* Facepunch buddy, an is only when it starts with a vowel And like always I doubt anything will actually come of these threats that "Anon" are making, but hey it'll make governments step up their game in defenses at least. welp look at me being dumb
[QUOTE=Nathan;34799533][b]a[/b]* Facepunch buddy, an is only when it starts with a vowel And like always I doubt anything will actually come of these threats that "Anon" are making, but hey it'll make governments step up their game in defenses at least.[/QUOTE] Actually FP is pronounced as 'eff-pee' and is thus a vowel sound unless you say 'fip' instead of F-P I absolutely loathe when grammar NSDAP members are wrong
It pisses me off when news reporters refer to "Anonymous" as a "organized hacking group" and "powerhouse." Anonymous is simply 95% teenagers who think they're capable of hacking shit, and go on trying to start pissing matches against people, meanwhile only about 5% are actually skilled enough to hack anything. Anonymous is simply an umbrella term many hackers use.
Anonymous don't really get much done.
Articles like this drive me insane. You cannot "hack" a power grid. You can hack some bits of modern substations or controller units or anything carrying billing or traffic information, but that's not special, half that shit runs on vendor software rather than proprietary stuff, and is essentially a PC that old performs one function and runs on Windows or Linux. In any instance when people are referring to shit one can use to damage a grid it either involves actually breaking into a facility and forcing a change, which doesn't count (a bit like saying you can "hack into" a bank by driving a tank into the lobby and blasting the vault) or farfetched "electricity is magic" crap that shows a complete lack of understanding as to how the grid is structured. We've had no instances of actual damage caused by hacking- third parties observing grid behavior, yes, and third parties causing a problem that would not have occured save for user error (i.e. an employee reacted improperly, which happens [I]all the fucking time[/I]), but never a third party demonstrably causing damage or an outage via hacking. Our biggest issues there come from lack of standardization, storms, and equipment just getting old. Homeland Security and related groups say otherwise, but they've also demonstrated in press releases that they don't actually know what a power grid is either (e.g. Dan Kaminsky's classic ridiculous assertion that "the number of people in the position to cause harm on SCADA has been thankfully relatively small", despite the fact that SCADA is not a [I]system,[/I] but a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA"][I]type[/I][/URL] of control system). Normally any time someone claims damage to a public utility [URL="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/11/hack_against_sc.html"]it later turns out the utility just died.[/URL] [URL="http://sconce.ics.uci.edu/cps-sec/presentations/Cardenas-hotsec08.pdf"]Or a pissed ex-employee left behind a present, or it happened in Russia in the 80s with no objective confirmation that some asshole didn't just fuck up[/URL], or what have you.
[QUOTE=Xenocidebot;34799818]Articles like this drive me insane. You cannot "hack" a power grid. You can hack some bits of modern substations or controller units or anything carrying billing or traffic information, but that's not special, half that shit runs on vendor software rather than proprietary stuff, and is essentially a PC that old performs one function and runs on Windows or Linux. In any instance when people are referring to shit one can use to damage a grid it either involves actually breaking into a facility and forcing a change, which doesn't count (a bit like saying you can "hack into" a bank by driving a tank into the lobby and blasting the vault) or farfetched "electricity is magic" crap that shows a complete lack of understanding as to how the grid is structured. We've had no instances of actual damage caused by hacking- third parties observing grid behavior, yes, and third parties causing a problem that would not have occured save for user error (i.e. an employee reacted improperly, which happens [I]all the fucking time[/I]), but never a third party demonstrably causing damage or an outage via hacking. Our biggest issues there come from lack of standardization, storms, and equipment just getting old. Homeland Security and related groups say otherwise, but they've also demonstrated in press releases that they don't actually know what a power grid is either (e.g. Dan Kaminsky's classic ridiculous assertion that "the number of people in the position to cause harm on SCADA has been thankfully relatively small", despite the fact that SCADA is not a [I]system,[/I] but a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA"][I]type[/I][/URL] of control system). Normally any time someone claims damage to a public utility [URL="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/11/hack_against_sc.html"]it later turns out the utility just died.[/URL] [URL="http://sconce.ics.uci.edu/cps-sec/presentations/Cardenas-hotsec08.pdf"]Or a pissed ex-employee left behind a present, or it happened in Russia in the 80s with no objective confirmation that some asshole didn't just fuck up[/URL], or what have you.[/QUOTE] [img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/winner.png[/img][img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/zing.png[/img][img]http://www.facepunch.com/fp/ratings/information.png[/img]
Change group passwords or switch to RSA tokens. PROBLEM SOLVED.
All these articles about anon are being a bit more optimistic than required. Unless something [i]actually[/i] happens, then it's not exactly something I'd be interested in reading.
[QUOTE=Xenocidebot;34799818]Articles like this drive me insane. You cannot "hack" a power grid. You can hack some bits of modern substations or controller units or anything carrying billing or traffic information, but that's not special, half that shit runs on vendor software rather than proprietary stuff, and is essentially a PC that old performs one function and runs on Windows or Linux. In any instance when people are referring to shit one can use to damage a grid it either involves actually breaking into a facility and forcing a change, which doesn't count (a bit like saying you can "hack into" a bank by driving a tank into the lobby and blasting the vault) or farfetched "electricity is magic" crap that shows a complete lack of understanding as to how the grid is structured. We've had no instances of actual damage caused by hacking- third parties observing grid behavior, yes, and third parties causing a problem that would not have occured save for user error (i.e. an employee reacted improperly, which happens [I]all the fucking time[/I]), but never a third party demonstrably causing damage or an outage via hacking. Our biggest issues there come from lack of standardization, storms, and equipment just getting old. Homeland Security and related groups say otherwise, but they've also demonstrated in press releases that they don't actually know what a power grid is either (e.g. Dan Kaminsky's classic ridiculous assertion that "the number of people in the position to cause harm on SCADA has been thankfully relatively small", despite the fact that SCADA is not a [I]system,[/I] but a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA"][I]type[/I][/URL] of control system). Normally any time someone claims damage to a public utility [URL="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/11/hack_against_sc.html"]it later turns out the utility just died.[/URL] [URL="http://sconce.ics.uci.edu/cps-sec/presentations/Cardenas-hotsec08.pdf"]Or a pissed ex-employee left behind a present, or it happened in Russia in the 80s with no objective confirmation that some asshole didn't just fuck up[/URL], or what have you.[/QUOTE] I wonder if other than the stuff involving Iranian power plants if anyone has actually really managed to exploit a SCADA system that is actually in use In the real world.
My question is, who in their right mind thinks they could black out the entire internet for even a second? That's like saying you can disrupt the connection of every single computer on the planet, and it strikes me as something that's impossible save mass power-shortages or us all [b]dying[/b] v:v:v
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