9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Greetings Troublemakers... welcome to Trouble. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 My name is not important. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 At 10:30pm on October 29th, 1969, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Charlie Kline, a student programer at UCLA, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 successfully sent the first digital message 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from one computer terminal to another via the DARPANET, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a top-secret research project run by the US Department of Defense. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The transmission of this single word, 'login' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was a pivotal moment in human history, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as it represents the official birth of the Internet. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it was from here that the first message was sent. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 A revolution began! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In the nearly fifty years that have followed, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 this invention has thoroughly transformed our world 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and come to dominate virtually all aspects of our lives. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It has restructured and rejuvenated capitalism, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by revolutionizing finance and transforming the globe 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 into a single interconnected marketplace. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It has provided new methods of interacting with one another 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and helped shape the ways that we receive and process information. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it has provided a place for people to upload terabytes of videos of their cats. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 This is pinky... he's a male. He's available for adoption. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 He's pet of the week. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Internet has also become the central pillar of a new form of social control 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 based around mass data collection and the construction of algorithms 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 aimed at better predicting and manipulating human behavior. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But while states and digital capitalists have used the Internet 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as a platform for mass surveillance and pacification, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it has also been a site of subversion 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and created new possibilities for decentralized attacks on the dominant order. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We've got a problem. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 What? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Someone synched a RAT to one of my servers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 A remote access tool – we're being hacked! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 On the front-lines of this war are hackers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... those who use curiosity, programming skills and problem solving 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to unlock closed systems and bend powerful forces to their will. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Over the next thirty minutes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 we'll share the voices of a number of these individuals 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as they share their experiences of defacing web sites, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 leaking emails, developing tools to thwart digital surveillance 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... and making a whole lot of trouble. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Hacking is one of those terms that I think has become a little bit nebulous. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I would define it as using technology in a way that wasn't intended, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by finding bugs and oversights in designs 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to make it produce results that were never supposed to happen. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Creative subversion of technical systems. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You take software and you modify it to get another result. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For example, accessing information on a system that you shouldn't be able to access. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Or making the system do something that it shouldn't be able to do 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – or that you shouldn't be able to make it do. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's a lot of different definitions of hacking, depending on who you ask. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 US criminal law defines computer hacking as unauthorized access 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to obtain information, transmitting destructive code, etc. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I mean, they've basically expanded the definition 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in their ongoing efforts to criminalize everyday Internet activity. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you ask someone like Richard Stallman, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 he'll tell you that it's really just a creative solution to a problem. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But hackers also do like to break into systems. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There are all kinds of systems, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and there's all kinds of access 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... and all kinds of ways to gain access. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Some hackers choose to fix and protect these systems. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They work for the government, Microsoft etc. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They call themselves White Hats. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're not even really hackers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're seen in the hacking scene as sellouts. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They do it for the paycheck... or maybe because of the flag. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But there are those, of course, who don't don't it for employment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They don't do it for a paycheck, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they do it for the love of solving complex puzzles. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For the thrill of breaking into whatever artificial borders 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that these people decide to erect. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Everything that's built can be broken. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I don't think hacking has changed all that much in the last few years. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 What really has changed is the scope of things that can be affected by hacking. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Before, in the 90's, most of it was just practical jokes 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 because none of it had a lot of impact on real life. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And in popular culture, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you start to have hackers appear in movies, in television series, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 where there's this whole figure of these hackers that have these super powers. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That can invade computer systems in any way, shape or form. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's a new virus in the database. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 What's happening? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's replicating... eating up memory.... uhh, what do I do? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Type 'cookie' you idiot! 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Then it gets a lot more popularized. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Since the dot-com boom at the end of the 90's, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 things now have a huge impact. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And everything tends to be connected to the Internet, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 or some sort of network. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 As digital information networks have evolved, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a lot of personal information is being stored. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Y'know, big data corporations and industries are relying on computers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... so hackers have access to this kind of information 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that these big companies have as well. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Hacking can be very simple and very complex. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But most times hacking is very simple. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 By supplying input in a certain way, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you're able to make the back-end system believe that what you're supplying 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is actually part of its own code. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Which, in a lot of cases, can give you full access to that system. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That's not just limited to computers or telecommunication systems. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We can really kind of apply this idea to all kinds of technical systems. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So, for example, something like social engineering 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is a human form of hacking. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Y'know, you can pretend to be somebody that you're not 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and ask another person questions about themselves 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in order to get them to reveal private information. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's possible that there is software 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in theory that doesn't have vulnerabilities. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But in practice, that's impossible to have. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If an application or a system performs queries to a database based on your input, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 you could possibly alter your input to be able to then alter the database query, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and possibly gain access to information that you shouldn't be able to. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Mostly what an exploit does, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 it's a small tool that you run to get access to a special sector 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the software you want to get. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 A lot of exploits and vulnerabilities are discussed publicly 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and being used in the wild. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If you pay attention to lists like Full Disclosure or Security Focus, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they'll tell you some of the latest tricks that are being used. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Of course, those are the ones that are already publicly known, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and that the vendors have already released patches for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... but a lot of companies don't always patch. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're not as on-top of it as they'd like to think that they are. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For example, the Equifax hacks a couple of weeks ago 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 was running outdated versions of Apache software. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Most people don't really do updates regularly. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So most people will actually get hacked by something very simple. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Denial of service attacks 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... basically coming up with ways to create an enormous amount 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of traffic to your server, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to the point where it can't continue to provide those services. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's such a thing as Distributed Denial of Service attacks, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 where that traffic is coming from many places at the same time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The most serious techniques are what they call 'undisclosed vulnerabilities', 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 what they call a 'zero day.' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When someone discovers a vulnerability, and instead of reporting it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – which is the White Hat way – 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they continue using it privately. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And they don't report it publicly, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 so that way for anyone to really adequately protect themselves against it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think a useful way to think about this is 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that the Internet is a really hostile place. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It was never designed with privacy or security in mind. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 State actors and corporations control the entire thing. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And so when you talk about their ability to exploit it 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... I mean, to me, so many of the basic services that we use 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on the Internet are exploitative 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 without thinking about a hacker getting into it, or malware or something like that. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 State actors like the US government 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have the ability to observe all Internet traffic in real time, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 collect it and store it, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and then use it later at their discretion. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And they work very closely with the digital capitalists 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – facebook, google and all these other entities 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – who are already storing that information anyway. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Internet has long been a tool used by social movements 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of various political stripes, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 both as a means of disseminating information 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and a fertile ground for recruitment. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Back in the 1990's, the anti-globalization movement 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 arose alongside the open-media publishing platform, Indymedia, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which allowed for the virtual coordination of many localized fronts 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the global fight against neoliberal capitalism. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I need 50,000 people. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 50,000? You're gonna have to give me some time. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And drums. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You want drums? OK, I can do that. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And what about the Italians? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Italians? Man, they're stuck on the border. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They're gonna be with you tomorrow. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And the black bloc? 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The black bloc are already there. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You're gonna see black and red like there ain't no tomorrow, kid. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You just sit tight. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 These days, social media platforms like facebook 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have given rise to a new form of online activity known as 'clicktivism', 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in which likes, shares and the signing of online petitions 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 have become a popular way for liberals and so-called 'progressives' 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to project an image of ostensible participation 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in campaigns centered around a variety of social justice-related issues, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and often masking their lack of participation in real world struggles. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Real change requires real action. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 That’s why I always share political articles on facebook, whenever I see them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But not everyone has been lulled into this comforting delusion 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of how social change works. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 On both sides of the political spectrum, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 groups and individuals have continued to use the Internet pragmatically, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 both to spread their ideologies and coordinate their IRL activities. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Anonymous is a decentralized network of hackers and activists 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that exist in places like IRC and Twitter, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and anyone is free to become Anonymous 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and start their own operations within the network. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's kinda similar to the black bloc tactic used as cover and collective identity. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I'm doing ten years in the fence for computer hacking charges 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 related to my involvement in Anonymous. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I was hacking police departments, military contractors 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... defacing their websites, releasing their emails and databases to the public. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 One of the bigger targets was a company known as Strategic Forecasting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – Stratfor – which is a private intelligence firm 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 made up of mostly former State Department and CIA agents. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We took down their website. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We went on donation sprees with all their clients' credit cards, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and gave their email archives to Wikileaks. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And Wikileaks pubished them, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 showed that they had been spying on activist groups 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on behalf of corporations like Dow Chemical. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Groups like Anonymous got really really famous defacing websites. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Other groups attacked police websites, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 getting all the data they have about current police members. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 There's also groups that were blocking huge institutions, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like credit card companies or banks. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If they block their transactions, they lose money. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So there's a bunch of stuff you can do with hacking. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Anonymous, they were really famous for 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 really getting that kind of popular participation in a hacking movement 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that really didn't mean you had to be an expert to use it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You could download a piece of software, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you could just run it on your computer 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you would enter in the target URL 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and you could begin to participate in what was effectively like a virtual sit-in. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Now as far as Anonymous, or hacktivists in general 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 playing a role in revolutionary movements... 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Anonymous was very active during Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In general, an overall revolutionary strategy 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 benefits from a diversity of tactics. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Multiple attacks converging from all angles, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 including street protests, to smashed windows, to hacked websites. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So Anonymous, y'know, revealing scandalous personal information 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 on individuals associated with a company that is the current target of protests 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – timed well, it could be very effective. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It's a really interesting concept to me. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And a lot of people who are members of Anonymous 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 use tools that I work on every day. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And I hope they will use them for good. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think the unifying idea is just using anonymity to achieve some end. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And doing it with other people. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And I think that that speaks to some of their internal contradictions too, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 because they're not unified by a political ideology. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Members of Anonymous fight with each other about that. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And I think when you have no political ideology motivating work like that 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 – work that has the potential to impact the whole globe, and has before 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 - it can be really dangerous. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 We of Anonymous declare total fucking war on antifa, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and all who support their criminal and violent actions 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 towards innocent civilians. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I've seen Anonymous operations go after people 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in a kind of y'know, right-wing, Pizzagate-type style. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 You know... I mean it originated on 4Chan. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Historically, the hacker community has been very inclusive. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 When everything started, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 nobody really knew who was on the other side of the line. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Everyone was just green text on a black background. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 With that said, there is a lot of sexism in tech generally, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and I'd say that the people who are recruited from places 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 like Reddit and 4Chan are like, y'know, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 your typical tech bros. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Every community on the Internet, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and every sub-community within those sites, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 whether it's 4Chan or Reddit or whatever, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 has a dog in the fight in gamergate. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Gamergate and 4Chan, and the origins of the alt-right, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I think are one of the most obvious confirmations 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of something that many of us who are radicals already knew 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... which is that toxic masculinity, misogyny, whatever you wanna call it, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 is an incredibly dangerous and violent force. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And it never ends there. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Beyond the origins in 4Chan, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I don't really know exactly where a lot of these young men came from. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 I imagine that it's probably not any more interesting 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 than they are a result of late-capitalist alienation. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 But I think that they started out with, y'know, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 just like your garden variety misogyny. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And then actual literal fascists went to their forums 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and whispered fascist poison into the ears of these impressionable men. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And because they already were prone to violence and bigotry, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 then it was just the natural conclusion. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Doxxing is the practice of exposing information about your opponent 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that they'd rather have kept secret. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Typically, doxxing happens from information 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 that is already somehow readily available 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... maybe just a little bit hidden. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 If someone is doing their activism under a pseudonym, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 attackers will search for any connection 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to their real physical persona and put that information online. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And then whoever the target is, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 all the people who wanna go after that target 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 will work collectively to terrorize them. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The result of it can be, y'know, something like 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 getting 50 pizzas delivered to your house 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... or it can be a SWAT team showing up in response to a fake bomb threat. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Protection against this is best done by 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 compartmentalization of your online activities. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So keep your activist activities and your regular activities separate. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Use different email accounts when you sign up for services. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Doxxing's also been used by hacker collectives 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 to expose lists of police officers, members of fascist organizations... 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 A lot of people were doxxed after the Charlottesville rally 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 out of just public open-source knowledge, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and had to back-track on their beliefs 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and actually had to go out in public and offer apologies. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 In June of 2010, a malicious computer worm 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 called the Stuxnet virus was first discovered 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 by a small Belorussian software company, VBA32. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 It was soon shared with cyber-security experts 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 at Kaspersky Labs, in Moscow, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and Symantec in Silicon Valley, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 who quickly realized that it was unlike any virus ever seen before. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Far from your run-of-the mill malware, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Stuxnet was a sophisticated weapon, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 comprised of millions of lines of code 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and believed to have been jointly developed by the cyber-warfare divisions 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 of the American and Israeli military. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Its target was the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, in Iran. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For Natanz, it was a CIA-led operation. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 So we had to have agency sign-off. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Someone from the agency stood behind the operator and the analyst 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and gave the order to launch every attack. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 For months, the virus had lain hidden 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 within the plant's Programmable Logic Controllers, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 machines that are commonly used to regulate and control 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 a wide variety of industrial processes. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Running commands that were completely untraceable to workers in the plant, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Stuxnet targeted centrifuges for sabotage, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 causing them to explode, seemingly without cause. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The virus was only discovered due to an error in an upgrade patch, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 which allowed it to jump out of the secured military facility 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and onto the world wide web 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 …. otherwise we would have never even known it existed. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Israelis took our code for the delivery system and changed it. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Then, on their own, without our agreement 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 they just fucked up the code. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Instead of hiding, the code started shutting down computers 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 ... so naturally people noticed. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Because they were in a hurry, they opened Pandora's Box. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 They let it out and it spread all over the world. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 The Stuxnet virus set an important historical precedent, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 as it heralded the beginnings of a dangerous new chapter in modern warfare. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 Still in its relative infancy, state-led cyber military campaigns 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 are now being conducted under conditions of total secrecy, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 shrouded from public scrutiny, or even knowledge. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And given the widespread incorporation of digital systems 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 into all aspects of industrial civilization, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 from electrical grids to emergency management systems 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 and even missile launch sites, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 the potential consequences of these types of attacks 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 could lead to truly catastrophic loss of life. 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 And while states have been the first to reach this stage 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the development of offensive cyber warfare, 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 corporations and other sub-state actors are already charting their own courses 9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000 in the militarization of digital systems.