I wonder if we, in secret, have “mutually assured destruction” of cyber-warfare.
It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones. It would be not be that hard to make these worms intelligently use IP to target particular countries.
It’s hard for me to imagine how much damage it would do if I could wipe even say 25% of all work and home computers, maybe every phone not updated in the last 6 months, and a decent chunk of online servers.
>It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones.
If that is true, then how come we have not heard much about erasure of data on phones and computers in Ukraine by Russian hackers?
Please don't say that the Kremlin is holding its 0-days in reserve for a more serious conflict! the Kremlin sees the Ukraine situation as extremely serious for Russian national security. It uses large numbers of missiles costing over a million dollars each to degrade Ukraine's electrical grid. It has attempted to assassinate the president of Ukraine many times. Why wouldn't it be all-out trying to do as much damage as possible to Ukraine through cyberattacks?
In point of fact, Ukraine has been hacked, multiple times during this conflict, and they were hardly damaging. This is in large part due to the fact that this particular conflict(hacking in particular) has been going on longer than just the start of the official war, so Ukraine has been hardening its systems significantly for many years. It goes to show that with dedication, even nation-state actors can be stymied with defense-in-depth.
Isn't that a fully-general argument? I say that flywheels will cause a revolution in military affairs. You reply with, "Why haven't we seen flywheels used in war?" I reply that flywheels are such a potent weapon that armies are afraid to deploy them out of fear that their enemy will response by using flywheels against them, which would be just too terrible and might cause a global ecological catastrophe or a general breakdown of society.
You are going to die, going to happen to all of us, nothing we can do about it.
Now, the when is the part that gets the attention of our little monkey brains.
1. Within the next 15 minutes.
2. Sometime within the next 100 years.
Your scenario is a type 2 scenario. At some time in the ethereal future 'flywheels' may cause the death of mankind. Well, we're all going to die in the ethereal future anyway so who cares.
Nuclear weapons are a type 1 problem. It's like a gun being pointed at your head and someone screaming "give me the money", you're not going to be thinking about what's for dinner because the likelihood of dinner is low.
Is the idea that that would essentially form a 'shield'of radiation that none of our existing satellites could penetrative with a resolvable signal? Or just that most of our satellites are LEO?
I'd imagine anything in GEO would be far out enough to survive a LEO emp
It seems like a reasonable assumption to me that major world powers probably have enough 0-days at any one time that they could use them together to format a significant proportion of the world’s computers and phones. It would be not be that hard to make these worms intelligently use IP to target particular countries.
It’s hard for me to imagine how much damage it would do if I could wipe even say 25% of all work and home computers, maybe every phone not updated in the last 6 months, and a decent chunk of online servers.