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Hackers, Cyber crime, and a New Kind of War.

2011-08-08 (said on 2011-08-09 — implied: date said in the video; uploaded -1 days later) · explainer · Hank · 3:52 · watch on YouTube

Topic: World affairs (also: Nerdfighteria, Internet & YouTube) · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook, heavy topic

Starting from the hack of the Your Pants forum, Hank argues that crime and war are on the cusp of a fundamental shift to cyber attacks (Anonymous, Russian mafia, Chinese hackers, Stuxnet), and worries both about the attacks and about ineffective, internet-harming legislation.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; since Your Pants was hacked Hank thinks about the apocalypse; anatomy of the attack on the forum; data lost

  • ★★ Hank says that since Your Pants was hacked he has been thinking about the apocalypse: script kiddies taking down the forum and the end of the world have surprising similarities. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Hank explains the attack: a hacker found a vulnerability in the vBulletin software running Your Pants and released an exploit, probably as a simple script, which script kiddies ran to own servers, steal passwords and send spam. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Hank says their white-hat security expert, Sam Rudd (as heard), stopped the infiltration before any user data was compromised, but a big hunk of the forum's content has been lost. — 00:00:42

00:01:11 — A fundamental shift in crime and war; Anonymous hacks the Syrian Ministry of Defense website (hacktivism)

  • ★★★ Hank says we are on the cusp of a fundamental shift in the way crime and war happen, so everyone needs at least a basic knowledge of cyber warfare and cyber crime. — 00:01:11
  • ★★ Hank reports that last night someone identifying with Anonymous hacked the Syrian Ministry of Defense website and posted a message of solidarity with the Syrian people, which he calls hacktivism rather than cyber crime. — 00:01:11

00:01:41 — What keeps Hank up at night: the Russian mafia's hacking revenues; Chinese hackers stealing intellectual property

  • ★ Hank finds it sort of weirdly cool that Anonymous can do these things, but says that is not what keeps him up at night. (hedged) — 00:01:41
  • ★★ Hank says the Russian mafia has a hacking team so sophisticated that it has revenues in the billions of dollars. — 00:01:41
  • ★★ Hank says Chinese hackers, maybe sponsored by their own government, have hacked governments and private corporations for years and stolen billions of dollars of intellectual property. (hedged) — 00:01:41 · China
  • ★ Hank jokes that the Russian mafia's hackers have collected so many credit card numbers that they can no longer sell them, as if criminals were saying they have too many and don't know what to do with them. (joke) — 00:01:41

00:02:10 — Stuxnet: four zero-days, destroyed Iranian centrifuges, probably US-led, its code now freely available

  • ★★★ Hank says Stuxnet, the malware he finds scariest, used four Windows zero-day exploits when no virus had used more than one, infected thousands of industrial computers worldwide but activated only against Iran's uranium centrifuges, which spun out of control and exploded while readouts looked normal. — 00:02:10
  • ★★ Hank says no one knows who built Stuxnet or took credit, but it was almost certainly a multinational project spearheaded by the United States government. (hedged) — 00:02:40
  • ★★★ Hank says releasing Stuxnet was like dropping a new kind of bomb along with its plans: its code is now freely available online and could be modified to break pipelines, shut down power plants or open dams. — 00:02:40

00:03:09 — Was it worth a new kind of warfare; legislation will hurt the internet and never keep up; no solutions; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank, not usually an alarmist, finds this scary: he is glad Iran's nuclear weapons program was set back significantly but doesn't know if it was worth creating an entirely new type of warfare. (hedged) — 00:03:09
  • ★★★ Hank also worries about the legislation meant to protect us: it will probably ruin much of what's great about the internet and will never be effective, since Congress will always be far behind the hackers. (hedged) — 00:03:09 · United States Congress
  • ★ Hank says he wanted more people to know about this but has no solutions; we must hope hackers are smart enough to know destroying the world is a bad idea. (playful, hedged) — 00:03:38

In the description and comments

  • ★★★ Hank says Stuxnet proved a computer hack can do real-world damage, and doubts that, having been done once, it can be stopped from being done again. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★★ Hank says that, unlike in traditional warfare, we often don't know where cyber attacks come from, and the right team could pull off an attack that destabilises the entire world. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★ Hank announces that he has started up his gaming channel, HankGames, again. — video description · HankGames
  • ★★ Hank explains that a 0-day exploit is known only to the hacker and close associates, and one for an operating system can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. — video description
  • ★★ Hank says patches that fix vulnerabilities often go unapplied, so exploits remain in use for years. — video description
  • ★★ Hank hates the prefix 'cyber' and uses it unwillingly because it became standard, since older newspaper readers and cable-news viewers are comfortable with it; he adds that he loves William Gibson. (playful) — video description
  • ★ Hank explains that to 'own' a computer or server is to take control of it, and that this is where 'pwn' comes from. — video description · pwned
  • ★★ Hank describes Anonymous as a loosely organised group identifying with weird values like anarchy and 'don't mess with us', who hack things that anger them. — video description
  • ★ Hank notes that the 42 in his 'Congress 42 steps behind' line is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference, common in hacker culture. — video description · United States Congress

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: cybercrime · cyberwarfare · Stuxnet · Your Pants

Also: Organizations: Federal government of the United States · Ministry of Defense (Syria) · Russian mafia · United States Congress

Groups: Anonymous

Concepts: hacktivism · intellectual property · script kiddie · zero-day vulnerability

Places: China · Iran · Syria

Products: Microsoft Windows · vBulletin

Policies: Nuclear program of Iran

Only in the description or credits: Cable news · HankGames · pwned · Sam Rudge · The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy · William Gibson

Also centred on cybercrime: They Hacked Me

Also centred on Your Pants: NERDFIGHTERS UNITE! (in your pants) · 200 People in Your Pants · This Video Brought to you by Nyquil

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