Puzzle box: The quest to crack the world’s most mysterious malware warhead | Hacker News Reader

Puzzle box: The quest to crack the world’s most mysterious malware warhead

arstechnica.com

83 pointsrobin_reala18 comments

Let us keep in mind that as we boot up our own cyber sabres to rattle at China, et al., the USA and Israel are extensively attacking and, essentially, invading sovereign nations and breaching the international peace. I don't like corrupt, oppressive regimes any more than the next guy or gal, but maybe we should try just not creating, causing, supporting, or sustaining them in the first place. I really don't think that the actions our government is taking in our name is in any manner better than the very "regimes" they feel righteous to openly attack.

As with the unfettered use and expansion of drone warfare in a stupid, narrow-minded, degenerate manner; this type of wanton wielding and violence through cyber weapons will backfire on us. Who will no longer feel justified to use the very same tools against our own national grid and economy if we show no ability for restraint at using the nuclear option.

Just a few thoughts to keep in mind. You can't whine and cry once the shit you pull being an asshole is turned on you.

Your points makes sense, but I think it is fair to say that the US is openly engaged in a kind of Cold War with Iran, for good or for ill, and everyone understands that.

When a government uses its resources to prey upon another country's companies, that is also a kind of Cold War. Of course, we cannot prevent China from doing so, if they choose. But are they actually prepared for the eventual tit-for-tat response? At this point, China is merely getting its fair warning. What matters is what unfolds over the next decade.

You can't whine and cry once the shit you pull being an asshole is turned on you.

Is it your opinion that ignoring seven UN resolutions demanding a halt uranium enrichment activities does not on some level constitute asshole behavior?

Why does the US get to continue uranium enrichment/building of nuclear warheads, but places like Iran are not allowed to do so?

Why is the US considered a trustworthy enough country to have control over weapons that if used would change the world in mere seconds and kill millions?

Why does the US get to continue uranium enrichment/building of nuclear warheads, but places like Iran are not allowed to do so?

1. The US doesn't build nuclear warheads, and presently doesn't have the capability of replacing the ones it has. This is a whole issue of its own.

2. Because of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which Iran ratified.

This is an awesome way to encrypt your malware code based on the OS environment of the target.

Looking forward to the researchers finding out more about who did that.

Nice article. I wonder how reliable one can use the targeting mechanism. Essentially it depends on two installed programs, one in the programs folder and one in the $PATH. So by choosing proprietary programs, one can likely target one department of one organization. On the other hand there are programs which are highly suggestive of the user, for example one could target Autocad and therefore target engineers or Cubase and target musicians.

Guess we will find out, when the Iran runs some testing utility on their systems. ( And Ahmadinejad needs a nice topic for a press conference... )

What springs to my mind is targeting special-purpose programs used by states for encryption and secure communications. i.e. inject cryptographic backdoors or sufficiently weaken PRNGs so that intercepted communications can be "easily" deciphered elsewhere.

Amazing. I have always been fascinated by cryptology and espionage. What these virus(Gauss, Flame, Stuxnet) are doing/accomplishing is simply amazing. The cutting edge of cyber warfare.

I don't really have anything to add to the discussion, i know little to nothing of cryptology(sadly). But its stuff like this that inspires me as a programmer to be better, to do better. If these aren't examples of programming that is truly changing the world idky what is.

> The cutting edge of cyber warfare.

Actually all this stuff is 6+ years old. We haven't even stumbled on to the new stuff yet.

I bet that whoever chose the salt chose it so that the resulting RC4 key is not one of the weak ones.

There's really no need to. Given a single block of RC4 ciphertext and no known plaintext, the possibilities for cryptanalysis are slim at best.

You can generate and discard bytes after initialization to avoid the weak key issue as well.

As far as I'm aware, that's not done here. (Warning: I've read analysis on the process, but haven't looked at the code myself)

I was just pointing out that someone who was aware of the key weakness issue would probably just implement the known fix, rather than carefully select and test different salts.

I wish I had the skills to crack that, purely because to see how it was made and understand it, just out of curiosity and to see awesomeness.

There is also the possibility that the target is North Korea, so the price of discovery is that much higher.

Dennis Rodman is a obviously a spy and has already connected the USB device :D

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