full-disclosure - Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows

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Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:30:13 -0400
From: Jason <security@...enik.com>
To: "J. Oquendo" <sil@...iltrated.net>
Cc: Chad Perrin <perrin@...theon.com>,
	"pdp \(architect\)" <pdp.gnucitizen@...glemail.com>,
	Gadi Evron <ge@...uxbox.org>, Casper.Dik@....COM,
	full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk, Crispin Cowan <crispin@...ell.com>
Subject: Re: 0day: PDF pwns Windows

J. Oquendo wrote:
> Crispin Cowan wrote:
> 
>> This is a perfectly viable way to produce what amounts to Internet
>> munitions. The recent incident of Estonia Under *Russian Cyber Attack*?
>> <http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3678606> is an example
>> of such a network brush war in which possession of such an arsenal would
>> be very useful.
>>
>> Crispin
> 
> One would presume that governments across the world would have their
> shares of unpublished exploits but with all the incidences of government
> networks being compromised, I don't believe this to be the case. What
> happened in Estonia though was nothing more than a botnet attack on
> their infrastructure
> (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199602023)
> not an 0day attack.
> 
> 0day's defined as "unpublished exploit" wouldn't do much in a
> cyberwarfare theater as country against country as the purpose of such
> warfare would LIKELY be to disconnect/disrupt communications. In the
> cases of industrial/country vs. country espionage it might (likely) will
>  be more effective for the long haul but in the short term, 0days will
> be useless in this type of "cyberfight". Think about it logically, you
> want to "disrupt" country X's communications, not tap them. You'd want
> to make sure their physical army had no mechanism to communicate. You'd
> want to make sure financially you would cripple them. Not worry about
> injecting some crapware onto a machine for the sake of seeing what their
> doing.
> 
> Reconnaissance is usually something done beforehand to mitigate your
> strategy. Not mitigate what's happening after you possibly sent 1Gb of
> traffic down a 100Mb pipe.
> 
> 

You present a valid position but fall short of seeing the whole picture.

As an attacker, nation state or otherwise, my goal being to cripple
communications, 0day is the way to go. Resource exhaustion takes
resources, something the 0day can deprive the enemy of.

Knocking out infrastructure with attacks is a far more effective
strategy. You can control it's timing, launch it with minimal resources,
from anywhere, coordinate it, and be gone before it can be thwarted. The
botnet would only serve as cover while the real attack happens.

I am more inclined to believe that botnets in use today really only
serve as cover, thuggish retribution, and extortion tools, not as
effective tools of warfare. No real warfare threat would risk exposing
themselves through the use of or construction of a botnet.

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