The True Masters Of Cyberwarfare - Squirrels
January 16, 2017 2:02 PM Subscribe
At a recent presentation at Shmoocon, security researcher Cris "SpaceRogue" Thomas discusses the results of his "CyberSquirrel 1" project, which monitors animal related infrastructure outages.
His assessment? The squirrels are winning.
Previously.
Previously.
By now I can handle "cyber", "cyber attack", and maybe even "cyberwar" without either giggling or cringing too much, but the other day I heard a serious news report on the radio and they went with "cyberhacking".
posted by sfenders at 2:36 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by sfenders at 2:36 PM on January 16, 2017 [6 favorites]
I want that squirred "cyberwar4ever" logo on a t-shirt as much as I've ever wanted anything.
posted by daisystomper at 2:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by daisystomper at 2:44 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]
Of course the squirrels are winning, Doreen Green is majoring in computer science.
posted by Pendragon at 2:50 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by Pendragon at 2:50 PM on January 16, 2017 [11 favorites]
We had joy we had fun! We had seasons in the sun! - Squirrels
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:07 PM on January 16, 2017
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:07 PM on January 16, 2017
The morning of my FIL's memorial service, a squirrel chewed through the power line that ran to the church. We were down until just before service started. Little fuckers have no respect.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:15 PM on January 16, 2017
posted by Thorzdad at 3:15 PM on January 16, 2017
Squirrels running on the cable outside used to require Verizon to perform service on the line every few years. Guess the coax for cable/internet/phone now is sturdier, or more likely the digital encoding isn't as affected as the voice lines were.
Anyway. Yeah. I can totally see them being a root-cause of a whole lot of outages.
posted by mikelieman at 3:47 PM on January 16, 2017
Anyway. Yeah. I can totally see them being a root-cause of a whole lot of outages.
posted by mikelieman at 3:47 PM on January 16, 2017
Squirrel chew is still a problem with coaxial cable (as well as chew damage from voles, moles, and rabbits)
So many problems with your cable connection are caused by squirrels. Squirrels also like to access the lockboxes on the sides of apartment buildings and nest in them. Related to that, mama squirrels also like to attack very surprised cable technicians who are trying to repair things in the lockbox.
posted by Electric Elf at 5:52 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]
So many problems with your cable connection are caused by squirrels. Squirrels also like to access the lockboxes on the sides of apartment buildings and nest in them. Related to that, mama squirrels also like to attack very surprised cable technicians who are trying to repair things in the lockbox.
posted by Electric Elf at 5:52 PM on January 16, 2017 [3 favorites]
I have a vivid memory of being in college and either a squirrel or a raccoon chewed through the electrical trunk line, which was underground, and then briefly closed the gap with his body while being electrocuted to death but then it knocked out the power to some 80,000 people (including the college campus and about 1/3 of the neighboring city) for several hours because underground lines take longer to repair.
Anyway, since it was college, many young men took the opportunity to throw couches out upper story windows onto the quad and then light them on fire, because college. So it was 7500 bored students wandering in the dark from couch fire to couch fire. Campus security and campus life were not pleased.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]
Anyway, since it was college, many young men took the opportunity to throw couches out upper story windows onto the quad and then light them on fire, because college. So it was 7500 bored students wandering in the dark from couch fire to couch fire. Campus security and campus life were not pleased.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:01 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]
In honor of Giuliani's assignment I hope the ferrets get in on the action too.
posted by univac at 6:45 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by univac at 6:45 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
Chicago is aware of this issue, what with the squirrel assassination attempts.
posted by turtlebackriding at 7:44 PM on January 16, 2017
posted by turtlebackriding at 7:44 PM on January 16, 2017
I once saw a presentation at a university colloquium by a "world-renowned cybersecurity expert" who owned a consulting company that got a lot of work with the DoD. He started by showing a Google Map with hundreds of dots -- almost all in China. "These," he said, "are all IP addresses that have attacked my business."
After chatting with him I later determined they were just IP addresses that had done port scans of his home server that had his incredibly dumb blog on it.
Fear sells, and the millions of automated botnet attacks on everything plugged in to the Internet mean there's more than enough fear to go around.
posted by miyabo at 8:09 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
After chatting with him I later determined they were just IP addresses that had done port scans of his home server that had his incredibly dumb blog on it.
Fear sells, and the millions of automated botnet attacks on everything plugged in to the Internet mean there's more than enough fear to go around.
posted by miyabo at 8:09 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
which is why the success rate of squirrel cyberwar ops is doubly impressive to me.
posted by some loser at 8:13 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by some loser at 8:13 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
A wise man once said "It's...ah...so important. We've got to do the cybers better."
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:45 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:45 PM on January 16, 2017 [2 favorites]
It just occurred to me that this means from now on, all ITSEC TRAs (Threat-Risk Assessments) will need to have the likelihood/ability to execute for the threat of SQUIRREL ATTACK to be rated HIGHER than that of "State Actors". At least in the Denial of Service Category. Heavy lulz.
posted by some loser at 8:36 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by some loser at 8:36 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]
60 Minutes the other week (S49E16, yt) included a segment entitled "The Coming Swarm" covering the development of autonomous weaponry within the U.S. military, which included footage of a group of 100 inexpensive flying drones, each about the size of a shoe, dropped from airplanes.
All they did was fan out and patrol a designated area while making a terrifying buzzing-screeching sound, but squirrel-inspired attacks on power infrastructure seem like a better application, if they latched onto power lines and drilled through the insulation to short them out, or attacked the power plants directly. I guess they could throw themselves into a plane's turbines en masse like pigeons, too.
posted by XMLicious at 9:09 AM on January 17, 2017
All they did was fan out and patrol a designated area while making a terrifying buzzing-screeching sound, but squirrel-inspired attacks on power infrastructure seem like a better application, if they latched onto power lines and drilled through the insulation to short them out, or attacked the power plants directly. I guess they could throw themselves into a plane's turbines en masse like pigeons, too.
posted by XMLicious at 9:09 AM on January 17, 2017
A more sophisticated state-sponsored attacker could save a lot of money and just use actual squirrels instead, dropped by the thousands from stealth aircraft. The terminal velocity of a falling squirrel is such that most of them would probably survive and possibly be angry.
posted by sfenders at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by sfenders at 10:46 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]
And after being air-dropped on enemies of America, they should also be far, far away from my house. Win-win!
posted by wenestvedt at 11:43 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 11:43 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]
Maybe the attacks on Georgia, Estonia, and Ukraine were carried out by operators left over from the Soviet super-squirrels program. Even now, sleeper squirrels dwell in treetops across America, waiting for the calls on their squirrel-phones that speak the codewords that trigger their brainwashing.
posted by XMLicious at 12:07 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by XMLicious at 12:07 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]
something something moose and squirrel
posted by ostranenie at 10:23 PM on January 17, 2017
posted by ostranenie at 10:23 PM on January 17, 2017
something something moose and squirrel
Who are Donald Trump's Russian FSB handlers?
Alex, I'll take "Out in the cold-war part II" for 800...
posted by mikelieman at 11:16 PM on January 17, 2017
Who are Donald Trump's Russian FSB handlers?
Alex, I'll take "Out in the cold-war part II" for 800...
posted by mikelieman at 11:16 PM on January 17, 2017
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