Malware "best practices"

[bmcculley at rcn.com]

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:10:17 -0400
>From: "Tom Buskey" <tom at buskey.name>  
>Subject: Re: Malware "best practices"  
[...]
>
>   Anyone read some of the Cyberpunk science fiction. 
>   Specifically by William Gibson?
>
>   In one of his stories/novels they want to get a
>   physical item out of a vault in the building.  One
>   group seeds a virus that affects the alarm and
>   security system.  Another affects the computers and
>   sends out mail saying there's Anthrax or something
>   like that in the ventilation.  The phone system is
>   activated to announce evacuation.  The alarms go off
>   along with lights.  Random doors get locked.  One
>   group then enters and releases a hallucigen into the
>   ventilation system.  There's panic in the building.
>
>   Today, phone systems are pretty much insecure.  Some
>   security systems use the same network as everything
>   else.  I wouldn't be surprised to see something like
>   the above in the next 5 years.

That prediction rings uncomfortably true.  Along such lines:

It's not for public attribution, but I recently attended a
briefing by someone from a government agency with the same
initials as the Culinary Institute of America (*) that
included a prediction that all hell would break loose in our
domestic cyberspace simultaneously with any attempt by the
Chinese to exploit nuclear distractions in Iran/Korea by
annexing Taiwan by force, as a means of distraction and delay
in our decision making and response.
(*) circumlocution to evade carnivorous traffic analyzers.

fifth generation warfare?  

If I were the aggressor, SCADA would be a prime target, along
with cyber backbones and critical industrial and commercial
segments.  Those spear viruses aren't just phishing for
identity fraud fodder or even financially exploitable IP, they
may well be gathering network target information.

We live in interesting times.  Hopefully not too interesting!

-lbm