Comments inline below.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Dave Aitel <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dave@immunityinc.com" target="_blank">dave@immunityinc.com</a>></span> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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Of course, the Al Qassam team says they are not Iranian, etc. But
their choice of targets, methodology of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMVtP1CbOM" target="_blank">proportional
response</a> (a very nation state concept), hatred of the
"Zionists", and high quality PR-grade English would indicate that
they are. Also, Leiberman says they are, and he, unlike me, gets
briefed by DIRNSA.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Given that Senator Lieberman is (tautologically) a politician, the fact that he receives those briefings does not necessarily imply that his public statements are at all factual (much less that the IC has reached the correct conclusion). I'm also not sure that their blog and Pastebin use high-quality PR-grade English, although it might make things easier on some of us if they did.</div>
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The trick really is that the next step up from DDoS is "Saudi
Aramco"-style rming of an entire bank. But that's a step the
Iranians (and dudes, correct me if I'm wrong :>) don't really
want to take. If we do see that happen, my guess is that we'll see
it against a very small bank initially, as a proof of concept. Then
the scary times start.<span><font color="#888888"><br></font></span></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div>The next step up from a DDOS isn't "rm -rf /all/your/base" - there are a number of intermediate steps that can be taken short of that, should QCF (or, well, anybody) decide to escalate. As Arrigo points out, there are interesting data dumps that can happen. Wikileaks has shown how big of a deal the .gov/.mil people can make from those sorts of disclosures (and .com too, to be fair).</div>
<div><br></div><div>Also, obligatory relevant XKCD (there's ALWAYS a relevant XKCD): <a href="http://xkcd.com/932/" target="_blank">http://xkcd.com/932/</a></div><div><br></div>-- <br>Kyle Maxwell [<a href="mailto:krmaxwell@gmail.com" target="_blank">krmaxwell@gmail.com</a>]<br>
<a href="http://www.xwell.org" target="_blank">http://www.xwell.org</a><br>Twitter: @kylemaxwell<br>