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SYSK Selects: Are We in a Cyberwar? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey there everyone, it's me Josh, and for this week's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: s Y s K Selects, I've chosen a classic episode
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: on cyber war It's almost certainly hopelessly out of date
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: by now, but it is an interesting intro to cyber warfare,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and we learned that Chuck hates the words stucks net.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: So listen out for that kick back and enjoy this
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: classic episode of Stuff You Should Know. Welcome to Stuff
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of five Heart Radios How
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: with me is always a child to be Chuck Bryant.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: We call him an authority on UM, cyber security, the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Internet and everything about it. An expert. You would say,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: that's right. Hey, should we say hello to our our
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: latest celebrity fan who we just learned today that miss
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Kristen Bell, the lovely and enchanting and nerdy Kristen Bell.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Is she nerdy, very nerdy, like prides herself on. I mean,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: it doesn't surprise me that she listens to the show. Yeah,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: because she's on record as being a big nerd, which
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: is one reason I like her a lot. And she's
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: curating UM a newsweek page right, Yeah, like things she
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: likes or kind of one of those deals that they
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: do in magazines now and she listed us. That's pretty awesome.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: How about that? Thank you very much for that. I'm
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a huge fan of a party down which she was
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: in and other stuff that she's been in forgetting Sarah Marshall,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: how's it going? And her You gotta see her sloth
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: video online that she did on the Ellen Show. It's
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: pretty funny, highly recommended. Okay, so that's all I got.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: That's all the sucking up I'm gonna do. Should we
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: say hi to another fan, slightly less famous but pretty cool? Yes? Sam?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Do you want to give a little a little backstory?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Giving some backstory here? Sure? We um. We had a
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: live Um tribute event here in Atlanta a couple of
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: years ago, and at the event was a little, uh
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: teenage fan named Sam teenage you mean like just post tween. Yeah, like,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and his mom brought him and he's a big fan.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: He's just like really sweet kid. Mom was very sweet, sweet,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: very nice family. Flash forward a couple of years we
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: got to south By, Southwest there Sam again, apparently mom
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: drove him to Austin to come see our life podcast. Yeah,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: they weren't there to see. I've spoke to mom afterwards
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and was like, so, what else are you guys gonna see?
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: She's like nothing. We're going back crazy. I was like,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: what else did you see? She's like nothing. They came
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to see us. So then we were like, all right,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: we gotta think of something for Samy because he's proved
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: his metal And Sam wrote in and and sent his
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: resume and like all the reasons we should put him
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: to work, and it's just like, dude, if the future
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: is secure, if kids are like Sam, for I'm not
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: worried about a thing anymore. Yeah, So we we racked
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: our brains and we found out there's like a surprising
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: amount of adult only tasks that we do, like at
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: any given time, and we're like, all right, we have
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to we have to figure out something that's age appropriate
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: for Sam. That's right. So long story short, I was
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: getting kind of thin on podcast topics. I put Sam
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: on the case and he sent me like a stellar,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: stellar list with reasons why we should do these and uh,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: this is the first one. This is one, and he
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: had a lot of overlap on once we had already
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: recorded it aren't out yet, so that just goes to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: show you that Sam is like he gets the show right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And uh so, as Sam's picking these out, we're gonna
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: let you know if this is a Sam one. But
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: this is going on in the summer, we're gonna call
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: this the Summer of Sam. That's right, Sam's choice. All right.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: So that's the longest intro ever. That wasn't even the intro. Man, Well,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: let's get to cyber worse. Then, let's bossy. Well, you know, Chuck,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: have you ever been to Bellingham, Washington? No? Okay, I
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: have not. Have you been to Washington? Been in Seattle?
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Isn't that where um Van Nostrin lives? Yeah? Or is
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it Oregon? Now he sees Washington? Ok um? So, uh
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: in Bellingham, wash Ington on June at the Olympic Pipeline
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Company a systems control and data acquisition system. There's systems
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: twice in there. Um, but a SCATA or SKATA system um,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: which is basically like a computer program that like can
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: make a valve turn or turn something off for mechanical
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: right from from digital binary instructions right. Um, This Olympic
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Pipeline Company system was operating on this this type of
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: program and UM something went wrong and one of their
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: pipes started leaking a lot, like millions of gallons of
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: gasoline UM and part of it erupted into a fireball
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: and killed three people injured many others. UM and they
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: went back and looked at it. They think it was
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: just a system malfunction. But the fact that this came along,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: this happened because of this system can troll, and it
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: happened in as the dot com bubble was starting to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: grow and like the Internet was really becoming a huge thing.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: UM people who are into cybersecurity now point to this
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: as evidence of exactly what somebody could do during a
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: cyber attack, even though they think this was just an accident, right, irrelevant,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: But they're they're they weren't like pointing to that as well. No,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: they don't think that had anything to do, but they
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: were saying, this is what it would look like if
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: somebody had wanted to attack, Like, this is what a
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: cyber attack would look like. Because it's not just the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Olympic Pipeline company that's using these systems UM. All over
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the United States, companies, law enforcement agencies, military banks, UM,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: public works, all of these things are all running on
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: what amounts to Windows. It's a simple that. Yeah, Microsoft
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: systems many of them, and um. As Jonathan Strickland wrote
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: this from tech Stuff the article, and as Strickland points out, um,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: a couple of things Microsoft has been uh kind of
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: chastise over the years for their security or lack of
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: security in some of their programs, and um. The other
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: thing he points out is the internets grew so fast
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and everyone got on board so quickly that it kind
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: of outpaced what we could even do security wise. It
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: was all of a sudden, Government agencies and power grids
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: and emergency services and weapons systems, water and fuel pipelines,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: all the stuff is running on on computers and a
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: lot of it through the Internet. And we don't quite
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: know how to guard against a cyber attack. No, And
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: apparently even as far as like the knowledge of how
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: to guard against cyber attacks goes, the United States is
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: is lacking, Yeah, compared to like China and Russia. UM,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: so we're kind of in this really weird position right
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: now where we've realized that all of the ponies are
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: hooked to a single basket of eggs and all it's
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: gonna take is a couple of black cat firecrackers to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: scare all the horses off. That's the best analogy I
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: can come up with. Did you just think of that?
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Or did you I just thought it that. My imagination
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: is back. I can tell you where time traveled to
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: awesome where I can't think. Okay, um, all right, let's
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: go back a little bit in time. I don't think
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: we need the way Back machine for this, because we're
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: just going to We can just like walk outside. Yeah,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: they'd be the waste of time for the way Back machine. Umn.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Some pretty smart people caught on early that hey, we
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: could be vulnerable to something like a cyber attack. So
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: let's look into this. Let's put a red team on it.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Red team is a our friends that act as enemies
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to try and you know how they hire these people
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to like break into your home. Yeah, those are red
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: teams basically, right, like um from Star Wars. Yeah, exactly.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: So let's get a red team. Let's let's uh name
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: it this mission something really cool out of a football playbook.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Let's name it Project Eligible Receiver. Do you know how
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: many times I had to look at that before it
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: finally sunk in what words I was looking at? Really
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: it is? It does look kind of funny. It looks
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: like eleanor Rigby when you glance at it, at least
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, it doesn't to me. I was
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: thinking more of like a radio receiver or something like,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I think it just means about football. No, it totally
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: just saying like I read this many times before, I
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, okay, so a lot of this is
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: still classified, so we don't know everything. But basically they
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: hired some hackers, which is what you do to test
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: your security, they being the Department of Defense. Yeah, yeah,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: depart of Defense saying hey, can you nerds hack into
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon system and afterwards we won't assassinate exactly, And
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the nerds were like, just watched this and it took
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: three days before the Pentagon even knew that they were
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: being cyber attacked by the Red Team, Like pretty successful
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and very sobering. Yeah, so um, they they h it
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: was I guess kind of an eye opener for the
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: d O D and they I'm sure used it to
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: step up security. Not fast enough though, because after this
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Red Team attack, um Operation Eligible Receiver, an actual attack
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: which they later came to call what was at Moonlight Maze. Yeah,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: this is one year after that the tests. A year
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: after UM, somebody launched an attack and it was a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I guess what's probably the most typical kind of cyber attack,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: where you insert some sort of software to basically spy
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and get files and gather data and download sensitive materials. Right,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: And apparently took two years before NASA, the Pentagon, UM
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and other agencies in the US government noticed that UM
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: accidentally noticed that this that they were being spied on.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Cyber wise, Yeah, they got data like strategic maps, troop assignments,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and positions. Not good, right, very scary. And they trace
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: it back to Russia. Doesn't necessarily mean that it came
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: from Russia in its origin, but at least that's where
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: they traced it to. Uh. And this is cyber warfare,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: like it's happening. It's been going on since the nineties
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, I mean it's not is a cyber
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: war coming, it's like, how do we prevent like a
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: cyber war from bringing us all down? Yeah, pretty much.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And it's apparently from looking into this, there's like two camps.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: There's like a gloom and doom camp where it's like, yeah,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: somebody really wants to mess things up. They're going to
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: be able to it's gonna be pretty easy. And the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: sunny optimistic camp is kind of like, no, you know,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: we know we're looking for now, Like, sure they could
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: launch an attack, but will we'll be able to stop
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: it in time for before we can do like a
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: lot of damage. Yeah, so we'll see, we'll lay out
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: everything for you can decide who's right, that's rights w
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: s K you should. So we've already mentioned that on
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the defensive side of things, the US is sorely lacking, um.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: But on the offensive side of things, we've actually done
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: this ourselves more than once. Um during the coast of
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: a war. Strickland points out, we used computer attacks to
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: compromise Serbian air defenses, basically kind of scrambling their information
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: so they had bad I guess coordinates. Well, just on
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the race our screen wasn't wasn't apt? Was okay? Or appropriate?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Did you see that one? So we did this, We
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: launched it and it and it worked. So, uh, that's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: a good thing, but it's also a bad thing if
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: you're like, was it Bush the first or Clinton in
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Bush the second? Bush the second in two thou three
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: in a rock and Clinton? Well, they were both like,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: we don't think we should be doing much of this
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: because a couple of reasons. A. It basically opens us up.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey, they did this, so we can do
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: it right back and be I think they could have
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: drained some banks of terrorist cells. And they said, we
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: kind of depend on the integrity of the banking system worldwide,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: like we don't want to start messing around with us.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: So apparently with with UM cyber warfare, it's very much
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: like UM. When you build that virus, it's out there
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: and it can be captured and studied and re deployed
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: against you. Yeah, so what they were saying with Clinton
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and Bush who were saying like, no, we're not going
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: to use a virus to UM to drain those bank
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: accounts because they could be it will eventually come back
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: on us, and our banking industry is not secure enough
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: to withstand something that we ourselves make. Because apparently the
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: US is pretty good at making viruses. I'm sure should
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: we talk about some of the different ways that this
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: can go down. Yeah, the Pearl Harbor attack, Yes, I
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: had the feeling strictly might A name this one himself,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: but it's not true. He went to a lot of
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: trouble to explain why it's called the Pearl Harbor strategy,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: and I think he could have just left at that.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: The idea here is that it's it's pretty much in
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: your face. It's a massive cyber attack where they infiltrate
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and then they sabotage systems. UM much like Pearl Harbor
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: was a big surprise and a big attack, wasn't I mean,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: it was sneaky, but it wasn't quiet by any means,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: right or stealthy. I guess the word UM. The other
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: ones are pretty much stealthy. Part of a Pearl Harbor attack.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I believe UM could be a distributed denial of service attack,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: which is basically, you know, like when you UM try
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: to get onto a website or whatever, you're sending a
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: request to the server to let you on right now.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: If you assault that one server with millions of pings
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and it's trying to accommodate everybody as is appropriate and
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: apt UM, it'll basically they crash. Is the point you
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: can crash a server by hitting it with millions of
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: pings all at once, just slows it down to the
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: point either where it doesn't work or it crashes. Yeah,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and that's that's what anonymous likes to do with like
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: MasterCard during the whole wiki leaks thing when they was
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: a master Card or Visa crash. I cannot remember, um
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: remember when that happened. Though. It's basically just launching a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: bunch of server requests at a specific server in the service,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: like no, no, and this falls over? Is that why
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: people say ping? By the way, the ping um? Yeah,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I hate that. It's better than javastorm. I don't even
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: know what that is, drinking coffee while you're having a brainstorm,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: like let's go get coffee and brainstorm something javas to
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: people say that, Yeah, I don't say it. I've never
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: heard of that. That ping and meta or the three
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: things that I will never say. Epic maybe the worst
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: to call something epic. I don't mind epic. Oh man,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I hate epics. At least it's a real word, especially
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: epic fail. Well yeah, sure, okay, back to it. Viruses, uh,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: code red, slammer, nimda. These are viruses that Strickland has
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: mentioned that it spread very quickly across the Internet, and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: there's a couple of ways this can go down. You
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: can either, um, you can set a you can do
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: it immediately and release a virus. You can have all
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: these other computers deliver the virus. You can put sort
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: of like a delay timer on your virus for it
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: to go off in two years, automatically or manually whenever
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: you want to. It can be waiting for you to
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: hit the button and then latch the virus that way,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: or I think, um for the user of that computer
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: to do, like say control all delete, Well we'll trigger
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: it or something. Yeah, that's pretty scary. Yeah, I don't
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: don't press those three buttons all the time on my PC.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, Chuck. I think we should talk about
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: right about here is I think we're stucks net fits
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: in who stucks net? Say it? When we're stucks net?
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that is. You know it's stucks net?
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Is that in this? Yeah? It's the Iranian Um, it's
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the virus that the US and Israel unleashed on Iran.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: It's a perfect example of this. It is. You're right,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about stucks net. Stucks net. It's a
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: great name. It was offensive a cyber attack. Offensive been
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: two thousand and ten. They thinking maybe it was the
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: first one ever, the US launched like a strictly for
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: sabotage attack. Basically, they wanted to disable Iran UH Iran's
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: UH centrifuges so they could not enrich uranium. And they
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: did this through the UH, the new Air Force based
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: out of Texas, right, Texas in Georgia. Yeah, what's the
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Warner Robbins Robin's Air Force Space, Yeah, Robin's Air Force Base. Yeah,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: those two places are where they station. Yeah. And this
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: is the first all cyber unit. Pretty much pretty cool, right,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Their whole is it, Their whole task is to wage
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: cyber warfare, and I imagine to be defensive against cyber attacks.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: But um, I don't I don't know if they had
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to do with stuck stent, but they probably would have.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Um I think it was being developed before was ordained
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: in two thousand nine. Think it went back to two
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: thousand seven when it was started. But basically, the they
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: the CIA got their hands on centrifuges that they knew
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Iran was using, and they had just as many as
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Iran did of the same kind, and they studied it
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and they built this virus based on this configuration of
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: centrifuges running Windows and Siemens switches, right, yeah, and then
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: they build a virus to go infiltrate it. I thought
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: it was called Operation Olympic Games. It was, but the malware,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the virus itself is called Okay that's what I couldn't
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: figure it out, but you're right. It was called Operation
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Olympic Games. And this whole operation was this huge, sweeping, awesome,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: massive secretive basically imagine like the CIA. Do you remember
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Uncommon Valor? Oh yeah, okay, do you remember when like
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: they're training at that replica of the camp? Okay, the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: CIA did that with Iran centrifuges in the nuclear program,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and they figured out exactly how he worked, and then
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: they figured out the best way to break it. Was
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Gene Hackman bank rolling the whole thing. Oh yeah, he
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: was there to get his son out. He he was
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: just staring at this menu of guns and silhouette that
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: he wanted to order. Remember that? Oh yeah, dude, that
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I thought that was so bad. That yeah, but that
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: was a huge, huge movie for like dude's our age. No,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I'm saying bad isn't like good? Okay, yeah, gotcha? Um
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: so stucks and net Olympic Games happened, and like you said,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: it was the first offensive cyber attack. Most of the
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: other ones have come in the form of UM sneaking
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: in and lying around and watching and waiting and spying. Well,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: stuck that had that too, was that the initial There
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: was a companion program called Flame that somehow. This is
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the part that's the biggest mystery. The m Iran's nuclear
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: program is not connected to the Internet, so somebody got
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: that in on thumb drive, infected their local system. UM
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and Flames sat there and basically just studied everything, told
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the US how the configuration was set up, and then
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: they built it, and then they inserted stucks net and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: basically it made all of their data looked like everything
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: was operating normally, but it was telling their centrifuges to
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: spin out of control and basically break themselves. It's like
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Oceans eleven when they built the Replica vault exactly showed
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the Replica video. There's nothing going on. So basically, the
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Pentagon has been watching a lot of movies pretty much
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: as skuld. But this is a hugely successful attack UM,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: if not at the very least for American cyber warfare UM,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: because it's supposedly set Iran's nuclear program back by at
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: least a year, if not more, and that this would
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: let us continue talk. Yeah, and I think it said
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: one of the aims was to make them feel stupid,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: and then they said it worked like they that they
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: done something wrong and that's why this these systems were failing.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: It's pretty scary, man. But the point is now is Okay,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: that's out there. Stuck Snut is out there for anybody
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: who can get their hands on it. And that's the
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: name of it. It's a great name, alright, stuck Snut
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: within with an X with a new guetas center. But
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it's out there, and the US is now basically just
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the the computer equivalent of Hiroshima was just launched by
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, and nice little set up there.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are comparing these days of the
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: early days of cyber warring to the early days of
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of nuclear bombs, and that there's not a ton of defense.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Not anyone really knows what they're doing. It's sort of
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: a chaotic mess that everyone's trying to get their finger
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: in the bie though. Yeah, and the other countries like China,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: believe Russia, who are apparently better equipped to defend against
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a cyber attech than the US. So basically the US
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: is really playing with fire. Well, and that's why Clinton
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: and Bush we're declining to use these is one of
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: the reasons where like, you know, this opens us up
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: to counterattacks and just may not be the smartest way
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to Like we wouldn't go out and just drop a
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: nuclear bomb on a country. Right, Oh wait did all? Right? Oops? Twice?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: What else you got? Let's see, Uh we talked about
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the system controls and UM data acquisition systems. Yeah, that
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: was UM. Basically that is the achilles heel of infrastructure
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and the United States. One of the reasons why we're
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: not set up to defend against UM a cyber attack
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: is because we are so connected to the internet. Yeah
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: everything is. Yeah. Iran North Korea, Yeah, not quite as
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: much because a lot of their stuff is off the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: grid just by default because they don't have the infrastructure
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: that we have. So just the robustness of our own
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: infrastructure is one of the one of its vulnerabilities as well. Yeah,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: that's a good point as far as defense goes to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I forgot about this stuff. Um. Strickland says that like
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the first step is education as far as educating consumers
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: over you know, antivirus software and how they search the
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Internet and stuff like that. So I give that a medium.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: But uh, this guy, Richard Clarke, he's a security expert.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: He blames things on companies like Microsoft too. He feels
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: like rushes through programs UM but for their fully security
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: tested because they want to make you know, they want
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: a few coins rub together by selling this stuff, and
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: the consumer doesn't want to wait, and the stockholders don't
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: want lots of testing because they want those new products
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: on the market. So it's a bit of a rough position.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And um, you know, private companies run most of the net,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not like this big government thing. So
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: he contends, Clark does that it's up to these private
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: companies who own the Internet's infrastructure to really make it
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: more robust in a defensive sense, right, which is good
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: in one sense, because then you have a dollar amount
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: in the form of lost profits attached to UM a
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: security breach, right, so company is going to try to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: protect it UM, which is good. Yeah, But at the
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: same time it's like, yeah, if you're putting out products though,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and you have competition and your competitors products are safer, UM,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and you're just rushing stuff to market and you're gonna
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: lose out ultimately pretty bit the same economic forces. And
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Jonathan also points out to that, you know, a scary
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: way this can be implemented is as a one two
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: punch with a physical attack. Yeah. So, I mean, this
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: is the one that wakes me up in the middle
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: of the night is a cyber attack is launched and
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the electric power grid is shut down, and gas lines
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and waterlines start going haywire, and then all of a
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: sudden incomes the Red Dawn team parachuting in. Well, that's
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: what we did to a Rock in two thousand three.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: We sent a cyber attack that messed with their UM
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I guess their air defense systems, and then we invaded.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: So that's happened before we've done it, doesn't surprise me. Yeah,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: cyber war, we're in the midst of it. We're in
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the midst of it. Pretty crazy stuff. Get your what
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Norton anti virus that'll just solve everything. Yeah. Education, education,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that's all. That's the only thing, that's all we can
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: do to prevent cyber war. UM. If you want to
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: learn more about cyber War and read this article by
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. You can type cyber war one word in
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: the search bar how stuff works dot com and will
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: bring it up, I said Jonathan Strickland, which means it's
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: time for a listener. May all, it's time for a
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: lot more than that. Uh. I'm gonna call this beer
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: and Fire. Hi, guys, I'm a professor of history and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: a long time act of your show. I use a
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: podcast in my college classes to talk about how we
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: use history and entertainment. I'm writing about the Great Chicago
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Fire podcast, especially as it relates to my research. See.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: I study the history of alcohol, and I teach a
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: class on the history of beer. Uh. Pretty cool. We
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: study the economic, social, and cultural history of beer, and
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: we make beer in class into weekly beer tastings. What anyway,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Aside from the stuff you mentioned the show, the Chicago
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: fire is important because it wiped out about three quarters
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Chicago's breweries. Something like eighteen breweries were destroyed by the fire.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Of course, people still wanted beer. Uh. Chicago and the
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Upper Midwest has was populated about a lot of Germans
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: at the time. This gave birth to the beer industry
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: in Milwaukee before the Great Fire. Milwaukee was a beer town,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: but not a major supply center. Schlitz especially as a
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: good example of how the Milwaukee beer industry reacted to
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the fire. Joseph Schlitz, the founder it, first donated thousands
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: of barrels of beer to Chicagoans and the weeks after
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the fire. Been Sensing an opportunity, he then opened a
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: distribution point in the city. After all, there were still
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of thirsty Chicagoans, he opened Schlitz Tide saloons.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: By the eighteen eighties, he was selling about fifty thousand
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: barrels of beer in Chicago alone, which is about seventeen
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: percent of their total. And the slogan, the slogan for Schlitz,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the beer that made Milwaukee famous, came out of this period,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and it's because of the beer sold after the fire,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: so that's where they got the name. By nineteen two,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Schlitz was the largest brew in the world, a title
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: it would trade back and forth with Budweiser until the
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. And he goes on to point out that
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Blats and perhapsed followed similar trajectories stucks net, stucks net,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: and UH. The Chicago brewing industry sadly never recovered from
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the fire, although beer drinking remained steady. And I don't
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: have Professor Beer's name, so we'll just call him Professor Beer. Oh,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I'm sure he'd appreciate that. Yeah, I'm sure that's what
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the students call him. Thanks, Professor Beer. Yeah. And if
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: you want to write in, I'll say your name on
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: a later show. Okay. Um. And if you teach, especially
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: something interesting or you stuff you should Know? To hell.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: If you teach, we're always interested in hearing that. We
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: want to know about it. Okay. You can tweet it
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast, put it
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, or
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: you can send us an email. The Stuff podcast at
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: at our home on the web Stuff you Should Know
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
• 29:14
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• 29:17
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• 29:20
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