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New Krebs on the Sony hack and others.
New Shades of spy thrillers
They can be identified by the complete lack of identifying features.
--

Drew
New From the "other" category
This one slipped under the radar while the "Kim Young One will not prevent me from seeing a lame comedy" brouhaha was in full swing.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/22/hackers_pop_german_steel_mill_wreck_furnace/
Talented hackers have caused "serious damage" after breaching a German steel mill and wrecking one of its blast furnaces.

This was YAN attack on the SCADA system and the perps knew what they were doing. Estimated real life damages are over $100M.

No incling which site was hit, but in the comments, someone connects the dots to a 2013 investment report by a Brazilian affiliate of Thyssen-Krup reporting one of their blast furnaces going terminally tits up for unspecified reasons.
Expand Edited by scoenye Dec. 31, 2014, 04:35:33 PM EST
New Do I not see a n-MTon nuke with 8 of its 9 Safeties hors de combat?
Everyone 'here' fully groks to fullness the precariousness of, simply uncountable 'processes' in industries whose CIEIOs have a tendentious.. relationship to "what I.T. does", especially re. all the Hows? Bean counters, probably livid at the thought of supporting Two entirely unconnected systems--and equally ignorant of the manifold subtleties of what fully-[]- Separate means--would be the nemeses of the careful-enough architect of such a proposal, for all obvious pecuniary considerations in every corner-office. Is that even arguable?

Can 'one' [ever??] legislate some Musts? (given the odd little side-effect of maybe the Next ad hoc event? sorta leading to the chaotic demise of Westrun-civilization (or at least of: that Holy 'Progress' thing: which is worshipped quite more lavishly than any home-religion is, in any Rich country.))

ie. Have digested, appetizingly-enough: Command and Control (Eric Schlosser 2013), a tour de force of US nukes, sub-titled Nuclear weapons, the Damascus accident and the Illusion of Safety. He makes The Case with 116 pp of Notes/Refs. And That! is about mondo-'security' procedures, weighed in metric tons of paperwork, training etc.

I merely presume that: no Industrial profit-driven Corp. ever ever comes within an order/magnitude minitude? of either the Aim or the execution of that Plan.
Review tl;dr: In sum: The US was simply.. lucky-Lucky-LUCKY! across the many examples described, from Day1 until quite recently (nor can that System be certified as idiot-proof now.. or perhaps ever?)

Who wrote, The more we learn the darker it gets? Found only this re. torture. Mebbe so, on NPR.

As with AGW, Over-population [that which cannot even be discussed] and similar: this Elephant appears to get--even today--mostly lip-service and 'suggestions' that the devoutly-greedy "might deem to Make Happen." SUGGESTIONS? for a mondo-vulture-Capitalist to ... well. you. know. It's dirt snakes. Again and still.


So many bitchin epitaphs for the clueless-species; so little time.. (even to sort-them-before-burning.)
New For this particular incident
The US was not lucky, it likely laid the groundwork and unleashed the beast. The Stuxnet worm was a US/Isreali attack specifically targeting the Iranian enrichment centrifuges. But the thing spread beyond Iran and anyone with the knowledge to dissect a copy got the roadmap to attack Siemens controllers.
New NY Times: NSA had cracked NK networks years ago.
NY Times:

WASHINGTON — The trail that led American officials to blame North Korea for the destructive cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment in November winds back to 2010, when the National Security Agency scrambled to break into the computer systems of a country considered one of the most impenetrable targets on earth.

Spurred by growing concern about North Korea’s maturing capabilities, the American spy agency drilled into the Chinese networks that connect North Korea to the outside world, picked through connections in Malaysia favored by North Korean hackers and penetrated directly into the North with the help of South Korea and other American allies, according to former United States and foreign officials, computer experts later briefed on the operations and a newly disclosed N.S.A. document.

A classified security agency program expanded into an ambitious effort, officials said, to place malware that could track the internal workings of many of the computers and networks used by the North’s hackers, a force that South Korea’s military recently said numbers roughly 6,000 people. Most are commanded by the country’s main intelligence service, called the Reconnaissance General Bureau, and Bureau 121, its secretive hacking unit, with a large outpost in China.

The evidence gathered by the “early warning radar” of software painstakingly hidden to monitor North Korea’s activities proved critical in persuading President Obama to accuse the government of Kim Jong-un of ordering the Sony attack, according to the officials and experts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the classified N.S.A. operation.

[...]

Still, the sophistication of the Sony hack was such that many experts say they are skeptical that North Korea was the culprit, or the lone culprit. They have suggested it was an insider, a disgruntled Sony ex-employee or an outside group cleverly mimicking North Korean hackers. Many remain unconvinced by the efforts of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to answer critics by disclosing some of the American evidence.

Mr. Comey told the same Fordham conference that the North Koreans got “sloppy” in hiding their tracks, and that hackers periodically “connected directly and we could see them.”

“And we could see that the I.P. addresses that were being used to post and to send the emails were coming from I.P.s that were exclusively used by the North Koreans,” he said. Some of those addresses appear to be in China, experts say.

The skeptics say, however, that it would not be that difficult for hackers who wanted to appear to be North Korean to fake their whereabouts. Mr. Comey said there was other evidence he could not discuss. So did Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the N.S.A. director, who told the Fordham conference that after reviewing the classified data he had “high confidence” the North had ordered the action.


FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
     Krebs on the Sony hack and others. - (Another Scott) - (5)
         Shades of spy thrillers - (drook)
         From the "other" category - (scoenye) - (2)
             Do I not see a n-MTon nuke with 8 of its 9 Safeties hors de combat? - (Ashton) - (1)
                 For this particular incident - (scoenye)
         NY Times: NSA had cracked NK networks years ago. - (Another Scott)

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He calls himself my towel boy.
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