Defending Bitcoin - Luke Dewolf #611

Exactly

... that needs defending.

Ex-

So it makes a lot of sense.

So-

That's right.

Well, and then, I mean, again, I don't wanna jump around too much, but the, the traditional financial system has heaps of regulations.

Uh, and, and you wouldn't believe the number of people that work in cybersecurity at a bank.

So, so many.

And, and, uh, and so Bitcoin, well, there's a lot of great people working in the cybersecurity realm on Bitcoin, but it's not nearly the...

It, it would probably wouldn't even be the, the, uh, the same number of people as working in one regional bank.

So, but okay, let, let's, let's get, let's get into the, uh, the exciting examples here.

So this, this Stuxnet.

This was a worm, uh, a specific type of virus that can, can go and find its way around networks, that had one purpose, and that was to go and find the, the types of machines, the, the PLCs they're called, uh, portable logic controllers, that, uh, that run the Iranian, uh, nuclear centrifuges that they were using to enrich uranium.

And it was looking for a specific, uh, type of, type of program.

It was looking for a specific, uh, model number.

They, they knew what was going on, whoever sent this out.

Uh, spoiler alert, it's probably Israel, but that hasn't been confirmed 100%.

Um-So the, the attackers knew what they were doing, and what ended up...

What, uh, what is speculated is that, uh, they, they dropped a bunch of USB sticks, uh, into the, the physical area of these, these factories, and, uh, some maintenance technician, uh, plugged it into their computer and then suddenly the virus was in.

All of these computers were not connected to the internet at all, uh, but since someone was able to get a, a USB stick in there and, and, uh, get the, the virus going, they were able to, to, uh, breach the, the network of these centrifuges here and, and go all over the place.

Now the sinister thing what they did is they made it look like everything was normal, but what it did was it, it, uh, turned up the operating frequency of these centrifuges just enough that it would increase the, the failure rate over time.

And it's, it's estimated that hundreds of these centrifuges eventually failed, uh, early and it slowed down the Iranian nuclear program by, uh, a number of years before it was, was found out.

And regardless of what you think of the politics is this is very espionage level stuff.

It's, it's like, uh, uh, silently, quietly, uh, making it so that your, your enemy's systems aren't working the way they should and aren- and, and your, even your view of the truth is, is misled.