I have to say, although I can only appreciate at a distance the level of skill needed to pull something like this off, reading articles about it blows my frickin' mind. It is both fascinating and terrifying that there are people out there who can do these kinds of things. This, imo, is the stuff that really separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to hackers. And just look how the media frenzied over the likes of LulzSec. I hope they never have to grasp, first hand, just how deep that rabbit hole can go. Really, money and political whim aside, a large portion of our freedom can be attributed to these individuals. That is damn scary. I hope they're kept on a very tight leash, anyway.
There are a lot of hands involved in something like stuxnet and flame. You have code breakers looking at standard hash and encryption algorithms, looking for weaknesses. You have coders that are writing all the data gathering tools. Other teams working on propagation. A team doing c&c server setup, development. Plus who knows what else.
A lot of the research done for stuxnet and flame are probably more general, but were applied for these attacks. This was executed by a number of researchers and developers. Led and organized by managers.
Welcome to the inside of the NSA, where a lot of bright math and compsci grads work.
Wow, I never thought about it like that. Imagine how much earlier the cold war would have ended if American actions effected the allocation of Soviet resources?
;)
Do you ever question that narrative? I know it's a widespread one, and it seems to make sense, but I'm wondering how many of those who bring it up have retraced the research or have the background to even be able to retrace it.
This is not a dig at you -- who knows maybe you did do the research, and if not, it's a probably a good and reliable strategy to trust the consensus narrative by default.
I appreciate your comment, in fact I think a lot of this thread is based off blind adherence to the popular narrative (just look at the attention given to who leaked and why). I have done a lot of research and reading in this area. The intelligence/military arena is a hobby/fetish of mine. Just look at the impact of the Stinger and the broader US involvement with Russia's occupation of Afghanistan (Ghost War is the canonical reference). For further evidence of the US's awareness of the importance of economics take a look at the grain subsidies and the discussions for and against.
You mean somehow applying resources even less efficiently than soviet economic planners?
Is that even possible? I bet if the USA had tried such a tactic all that would have happened is a more efficient allocation.
Imagine the covert spy economists giving a policy 'recommendation' talk.
"We should take all the grain a farmer grows over a certain threshold. Thus the farmer will not be blinded by greed and will work hard to increase production for the good of the people. And just to be sure that said farmers have stately love in their hearts, let us cause a great famine in our bread bowl." would say the American spys as they outlay their plan to ruin the Soviet Union.
The soviet economists upon hearing their own plans recited word for word would realise how brilliant said plan was not. They would then roll a D20 and come up with a marginal better plan.
Um, the winky face was included to indicate sarcasm. Do you actually think that the actions of the US had no impact on the soviet's allocation of resources? To take the discussion back to where it began do you actually think that the intelligence community had no impact on the cold war?
"The sharp drop in oil prices, from $66 a barrel in 1980 to $20 a barrel in 1986 (in 2000 prices) certainly was a heavy blow to Soviet finances. Still, adjusted for inflation, oil was more expensive in the world markets in 1985 than in 1972, and only one-third lower than throughout the 1970s. And at the same time, Soviet incomes increased more than 2 percent in 1985, and inflation-adjusted wages continued to rise in the next five years through 1990 at an average of over 7 percent."
