How vulnerable are we to kill switches imbedded in America software holding us to ransom

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123269891#Comment_123269891

What does it matter to you what modern industries that pay so much taxes and provide employment use electricity for

Especially electricity these companies pay for, which due to green watermelons is already one of the most expensive in world

Should these industries be also outsourced to China where they burn coal, out of sight out of mind because we don’t share the same globe as them apparently /s

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058402620/how-vulnerable-are-we-to-kill-switches-imbedded-in-america-software-holding-us-to-ransom

It depends on what you think of as a kill switch and where it exists in a piece of equipment or program. Simply bricking a piece of equipment may appeal to the media.

The reality is a bit more complex. It can often be more effective to make equipment perform in an unexpected and highly destructive manner. (Stuxnet etc.) Software can be analysed or reverse-engineered with varying levels of difficulty. Reverse-engineering at a component level is a lot more difficult because there are often security measures taken by the manufacturers to prevent, or at least, reverse-engineering the ICs (chips). As for the Green fundamentalists and data centres, some of those would have difficulty in finding the 'any' key. This is a technological issue not a religious one.

A single kill switch is a bit simplistic because it would require a means to simultaneously activate it. This requires access and it is rarely going to be 100%. To be effective, it would require multiple kill switches embedded at a component and software level.

Regards…jmcc

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123269905#Comment_123269905

It matters to me because energy is a scare resource, impacting lots of important issues including our housing crisis and indeed the cost of energy that you mention. Wasting energy to service platforms that are really all about serving up adverts to kids and adults isn't a great use of that limited resource.

And data centres provide SFA employment.

LambshankRedemption

And data centres provide SFA employment.

I'm so sick of hearing that particular excuse.

"How to tell me you know nothing about what you are talking about without saying it". Well done.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123270841#Comment_123270841

He probably wrote his nonsense on a phone made in China while munching on avocados that came across the world, with electricity that partly came from UK (**** all wind today) and generated from gas that probably came from Norway

Routed over equipment built in US, programmed in India while wearing clothes made in Bangladesh

It’s a pitty that Green Luddites are not concerned enough about these things to do us all a favour and disconnect from internet and spend their lives toiling in mud spreading organic manure 💩

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123268115#Comment_123268115

When did the US give Israel the 8m lines of source code?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123266185#Comment_123266185

These ones:

https://youtu.be/Bsx8dOqNRYY?feature=shared&t=18

… at the end of the pointy sticks.

jmcc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123271253#Comment_123271253

Most Green fundamentalists have no idea about web hosting or the size of Ireland's web hosting business and the importance of Irish data centres. From memory, there are approximately 540K gTLD (.COM/NET/ORG etc) websites on Irish IP addresses. Not all of them are Irish. It is possible to change the country field for an IP address record so a website might be hosted in an Irish data centre while being apparently associated with another country.

Some of the talk about data centres focuses on the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Amazon, Google and Microsoft host significant percentages of the Irish market but they are not the largest Irish web hosters. There are more players in the business on the web hosting side of things. Irish data centres keep the costs down for Irish businesses hosting their websites and services in Ireland. Using data centre hosting is cheaper than investing in the equipment and bandwidth to run a hosting operation.

The web hosting business is complex and beyond the understanding of most Green fundamentalists who do not have the necessary technological knowledge to understand its issues. Websites are only the visible part of the iceberg. Data centres are used for more than web hosting. Ireland without data centres was a very different and far more expensive place. The web hosting side of things then was dominated by the ISPs and they certainly knew how to charge. The ISPs were replaced by Irish web hosters and the ISPs only have a fraction of the market they had twenty years ago. Eircom and BT were major players back then. The Green fundamentalists are no different to Chairman Mao and his technologically ignorant idea about back yard furnaces producing high quality steel.

Regards…jmcc

AndrewJRenko

I take it that you don't know Ossian Smith then?

plodder

I'd say it is very unlikely that the Americans have a kill switch in the F35 that allows them to just disable them at will. That said, it's impossible for anyone (including the Israelis) to be 100% certain of that. The other thing is that the maintenance regime for systems like that, does give significant power to the US suppliers over the longer term.

However, there was an incident [*] just over a year ago that didn't get the media attention it deserved, which strongly suggested that state level actors (most likely the US, Russia or China imo) are actively trying to get backdoors installed in Linux based software systems that end up being used anywhere from domestic internet controlled appliances to phones, to servers running in the cloud. These backdoors can be used for all kinds of surveillance and potentially as kill switches as well. This effort almost succeeded, and the level of sophistication and complexity involved and the random nature of the way it was detected, suggests similar efforts could already have succeeded imo, with these backdoors already widely deployed and just waiting to be activated.

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

Yellow_Fern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123268123#Comment_123268123

Nope. They are an allies. No way at all should we change them.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123287130#Comment_123287130

We are customers, not allies, and given they went straight from apartheid to genocide, they aren't fit to be either.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123264711#Comment_123264711

Yes the revenge of the pimply faced teenagers in the back bedroom! The reality is that with so much of software development being done via copy and paste from the internet these days there is a very real chance we just might kill someone, either back accident or deliberately.

We had Bob C. Martin (a.k.a Uncle Bob) talk to us a while back about this and there is certainly room for concern. It's a unregulated profession with no standards beyond what is commercially defined. And that can be from extensive testing and review to nothing! And yes it's very possible something written by a kid in the back bedroom last weekend could end up killing someone!

skimpydoo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123287130#Comment_123287130

Allies don't commit genocide.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123287213#Comment_123287213

Yet some people have no problem being customers of China, despite them being actually guilty of 3 genocides (Tibet, East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia). Even if I accepted that Israel were guilty of that claim, I would question why some focus on one and seem to have no issue with the other.

Yellow_Fern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123288359#Comment_123288359

In WW2 Allies did commit genocide. Look at what the USSR did and Israel is not committing genocide. Perhaps it is colonistic and repressive but Gazans are not being wiped out in any meaningful way.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123376291#Comment_123376291

Wrong

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/

Yellow_Fern

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123376355#Comment_123376355

The Civilian casualty ratio in the current war in Gaza is within 20th cen norms. I dont know how Amnesty measure genocide, but it is not based on numbers from what I can see. It if striking how western liberals have no issues when poor Arabs die in great numbers in Mosul, but in Gaza it is genocide. It seems, it is who does the killing is what matters to these people.

cnocbui

One characteristic of genocide is mass graves used to try and hide dirty secrets:

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-medics-killed-israel-ambulances-f34b6ecc985d9127265a400bd52c72b7

Israel is engaged in genocide. They bomb hospitals, slaughter medics, slaughter foreign aid workers in convoys whose movements they were informed of, target and kill journalists, harass and intimidate foreign tourists who witness atrocities by their military, use intentional starvation to kill Palestinians.

Israel has descended to barbarism.

sydthebeat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123376645#Comment_123376645

Hummmm

Your opinion or amnesty internationals??

Which to go by???

🤔🤔