Tag: adversary

What if…

consider-the-following
Copyrigt FOX

What if Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden,…  had WHS tamper-proofing technology?
Would the US be prevented from spying?  We are not in the business of getting our military technology by copy-cat and espionage of our allies, I hope. They need to prevent their secrets from leaking, both to their and to our enemies. However, any others who spy on the above countries would have less success if WHS technology would be in place.

What if China had our tamper-proofing technology?
Would we be prevented from spying?  Maybe.  I doubt that puts us back a lot, I think our technology is ahead.  It may put back some other countries. China may have slightly less motivation to speed up the arms race.  Good for the Chinese people, good for us.

What if Russia had our tamper-proofing technology?
Would we be prevented from spying?  Could be.  A small price to pay for other countries spying on Russia having a harder job. Russia may have slightly less motivation to speed up the arms race.  Good for the Russian people, good for us.

What if Iran, Iraq, ISIS…
I can’t see where that would cause real suffering for us, nor for anybody else, them included.

What if organized crime had our tamper-proofing technology?
We make code hard to reverse engineer, or to tamper with; we don’t make code easy to hide.  (The bad guys depend strongly on hiding their stuff.)

What if the US would use our tamper-proofing technology?
what-ifFewer secrets would be lost through reverse engineering. There would be less fear software sabotage.  Our defense technology wouldn’t really be more potent, but it would last longer until it is outdated.  Cyber-criminals would need to work harder on any software that has been protected with WHS technology.  Less profit for cyber-criminals will certainly not cause more crime.

What if software producers, movie producers had our technologies to protect their copyrights? There could be more revenue where it belongs, and less revenue for stolen copies.

North Korea says: No, We Didn’t Hack Sony.

Recently a new cyber crime story gets reported every week. This week’s news on cybercrime is about an attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment, among other problems making movies publicly available, and creating substantial damage.

Cute dog and girl, most likely from movie.
Picture from linked web page., most likely from movie

An important aspect of most cyber crime is the fact that hacks usually cannot be attributed to the real source. Just because a computer was attacked by another computer, maybe in North Korea or maybe somewhere else doesn’t confirm the real source. That computer may itself be an innocent victim and may have been used by another computer in some other part of the world. There can be a chain of tens and more computers. Even aunt Emma’s computer may be part of such a chain. Therefore it is a very bad idea for most people to start counterattacking cyber criminals by themselves.

This attack is different from old fashioned cyber-crime in what it tries to do. It is not simply stealing some money were the loss of the victim matches the gains of the criminal; it is not simply leaking credit card numbers. The loss to Sony is “strategic”: The loss for Sony isn’t what is gone and has been stolen. The loss in this case is directly hurting Sony in its ability to do further business. As of today, such crimes are common place in newspaper talk about state-actors, cyber-“terrorism” and in hype like cyber-“war”. What is new and unusual here is that such losses are inflicted on normal, commercial business enterprises.

Adding several layers of protection could significantly minimize the risk of such attacks. Obfuscation of your code as provided by White Hawk Software can be one of these protective layers.

For more about this incident see: