September 11th 2001 terror strikes set
the tone for warfare in the 21st century
but the 21st century has also seen the
rise of another kind of warfare warfare
that lets nations and loners do battle
without guns or bombs these days the
biggest threat we face may be a rogue
actor with a laptop and a desire to
wreak havoc cyber warfare is probably
the greatest challenge that we have as
far as our nation’s national security is
concerned we have an advantage over
every other form of competition with
possible allies except one and that
cyber warfare and when you see the
potential of what a successful cyber
attack can achieve its enough to make
you a deeply concerned this is going to
be the new battlefield an unseen and
visible battlefield where teams of
hackers from various nations will duel
in 2010 a computer virus named Stuxnet
demolished a secret Iranian nuclear
weapons plant hackers at Symantec
Corporation unraveled its mysteries
what makes that different was it didn’t
just stick to the cyber world it
actually breached and caused sort of
real-world kinetic damage
nothing that we had ever seen before
so stuff that just begins running all
around the world onto Windows machines
everywhere what it was doing was it was
also looking for something else and
we’re looking for these things that are
called PLC’s or these small computers
that control things like factories like
the power grid what you see here is the
code that is put on for the PLC and this
the normal process code was obviously
turns the PLC on or off and controls it
when we first got the code
it’s literally zeros and ones you know
it’s sort of unintelligible it was only
later that we were able to determine
that actually this code would targeted
specifically Iran’s uranium enrichment
plant in the town uranium enrichment
facilities are very secure facilities
it’s not like they’re connected to the
internet you can’t get your code in and
out of them that way so one of the ways
that I was able to get into the facility
was via USB key so it was able to infect
USB keys and then somebody would bring
USB key with them into the secure
facility not realizing was infected plug
it into a computer inside and then that
computer inside would be infected we
don’t know definitively who is behind
Stuxnet but it’s very clear that’s a
nation state and its nation states that
had something against Iran and it’s
likely that it isn’t a single nation
state remember as well with cyber
warfare that the sort of barrier to
entry is quite low if a country wants to
do something like build a nuclear
missile that’s actually quite difficult
but when you talk about something like
cyber warfare it’s actually quite cheap
and quite easy for a country to develop
a cyber weapon and that cyber weapon can
have equivalent effects you can have a
cyber weapon potentially shut down the
power grid for example on the whole East
Coast
New York is out Wall Street is up all
your banks are out you can’t even
withdraw money you know you can imagine
people panning starting and people
trying to get cash you can’t get cash
ATMs aren’t working then things like
your water waste containment plants
aren’t working its no clean water it’s
going to be a run on stores stores
potentially aren’t even operating your
credit card is not going to work at the
store you’ll be absolutely mass panic if
you can blind the US military if you can
shut down our GPS and our computer
networks our military is basically
unable to function and it can take days
or weeks to get those systems back up
and running they can do tremendous
damage they can defeat your armies your
police your Air Force is by simply
blinding them by taking down their cyber
systems I think that’s a huge risk that
we face
with cyberwar I always think one of the
most effective ways to fight against
cyber is to find the computer and the
operator and put a bullet through both
of them
[Music]
Oh
the tone for warfare in the 21st century
but the 21st century has also seen the
rise of another kind of warfare warfare
that lets nations and loners do battle
without guns or bombs these days the
biggest threat we face may be a rogue
actor with a laptop and a desire to
wreak havoc cyber warfare is probably
the greatest challenge that we have as
far as our nation’s national security is
concerned we have an advantage over
every other form of competition with
possible allies except one and that
cyber warfare and when you see the
potential of what a successful cyber
attack can achieve its enough to make
you a deeply concerned this is going to
be the new battlefield an unseen and
visible battlefield where teams of
hackers from various nations will duel
in 2010 a computer virus named Stuxnet
demolished a secret Iranian nuclear
weapons plant hackers at Symantec
Corporation unraveled its mysteries
what makes that different was it didn’t
just stick to the cyber world it
actually breached and caused sort of
real-world kinetic damage
nothing that we had ever seen before
so stuff that just begins running all
around the world onto Windows machines
everywhere what it was doing was it was
also looking for something else and
we’re looking for these things that are
called PLC’s or these small computers
that control things like factories like
the power grid what you see here is the
code that is put on for the PLC and this
the normal process code was obviously
turns the PLC on or off and controls it
when we first got the code
it’s literally zeros and ones you know
it’s sort of unintelligible it was only
later that we were able to determine
that actually this code would targeted
specifically Iran’s uranium enrichment
plant in the town uranium enrichment
facilities are very secure facilities
it’s not like they’re connected to the
internet you can’t get your code in and
out of them that way so one of the ways
that I was able to get into the facility
was via USB key so it was able to infect
USB keys and then somebody would bring
USB key with them into the secure
facility not realizing was infected plug
it into a computer inside and then that
computer inside would be infected we
don’t know definitively who is behind
Stuxnet but it’s very clear that’s a
nation state and its nation states that
had something against Iran and it’s
likely that it isn’t a single nation
state remember as well with cyber
warfare that the sort of barrier to
entry is quite low if a country wants to
do something like build a nuclear
missile that’s actually quite difficult
but when you talk about something like
cyber warfare it’s actually quite cheap
and quite easy for a country to develop
a cyber weapon and that cyber weapon can
have equivalent effects you can have a
cyber weapon potentially shut down the
power grid for example on the whole East
Coast
New York is out Wall Street is up all
your banks are out you can’t even
withdraw money you know you can imagine
people panning starting and people
trying to get cash you can’t get cash
ATMs aren’t working then things like
your water waste containment plants
aren’t working its no clean water it’s
going to be a run on stores stores
potentially aren’t even operating your
credit card is not going to work at the
store you’ll be absolutely mass panic if
you can blind the US military if you can
shut down our GPS and our computer
networks our military is basically
unable to function and it can take days
or weeks to get those systems back up
and running they can do tremendous
damage they can defeat your armies your
police your Air Force is by simply
blinding them by taking down their cyber
systems I think that’s a huge risk that
we face
with cyberwar I always think one of the
most effective ways to fight against
cyber is to find the computer and the
operator and put a bullet through both
of them
[Music]
Oh
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