Re: military strike possible?

["gregh" <chows () ozemail com au>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Meritt James" <meritt_james () bah com>
To: <security-basics () securityfocus com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 4:11 AM
Subject: military strike possible?


> Going from the premptive strike philosophy demonstrated in Mideastern
> countries, what are your thoughts on a military strike against (as yet
> unseen) "cyberterrorists" a'la
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/985295.asp?0si=- if there were extranational
> agents tampering with identified components of the infrastructure to
> the extent that they were risking human life?

I think it was two years ago that I posted to Bugtraq something much simpler
and more devastating. I outlined how you could easily take out all
non-military shielded infrastructure including people nearby and how it
could all be linked to mobile phones and when the terrorist is flying out of
USA, he just sends a group SMS to all those mobile numbers and that
simultaneously sets off the attack. I even pointed out that to build these
things, a person can walk down the street with every single part in plain
sight and no-one would think anything about it as they are everyday parts.
What was worse was that someone responded with a "how to put that idea
together" and did an estimate that it would cost US$30 to build each of the
items that would be used in the attack. All non-military shielded places
with computers that are critical, power stations, emergency response
agencies, national guard, telephones, you name it would all go down.

Now you may be wondering what the use in that would be because though it
would take some time, likely within 24 hours most would be fixed and within
a week all would be fixed. The idea of war is misdirection. If you wanted to
attack USA or direct people all over the place stretching resources PAST
breaking point, you would do this and in the meantime do whatever it was you
had in mind - eg a portable nuke to whatever target - which would be a heck
of a lot more likely to succeed.

Lastly, you may all be wondering what it has to do with cyber security.
Well, I originally was thinking how easy it would be to take down a wi-fi
network and then graduated to whatever else it would kill and kept going. I
was at the "cyber security" stage at the time I posted that. Unfortunately
the idea is an actual easy to make (for those with electronics ability) idea
that doesn't require hijacking a plane and can cause more havoc and deaths
than the TTT attacks did if done properly. Since I posted that, an actual
use of the part of the idea has come out. The bombing of Bali's night club
was caused by an SMS to a mobile phone (I am not saying they read my post
and got the idea but that they did what I predicted COULD happen). Makes me
wonder who may have built the actual device to cause this chaos (noting that
you would have to have many, not one, to do major damage). One other thing -
a strike at the right moment against the US NYSE would cause major chaos and
require one device. The damage it would cause would snowball to include
financial chaos. That would, in turn, do major damage to every Western
economy at the very least.

If you think any of that is just sci-fi at the very best, might I point out
the similarities between the major power outages in certain cities across
the world, all close to each other and how, though unrelated to the above
more than likely, no-one has yet given a convincing explanation of them?

Greg.




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