Like many, I've been reading about the deviousness of the xz exploit and understand it would give the author the ability to run arbitrary code on machines that had it installed.
Had this gone unnoticed, over, say, the next 12-36 months, what could have occurred if a maximally malicious actor did their worst? (assuming a variety of motivations - e.g. desire to attack rival state(s) a la stuxnet, greed, pure vandalism, other)
I suspect without additional exploits to get through other security layers on critical infrastructure, things like launching nukes from silos/submarines, running carriers ashore, mass deleting icloud/google drive/onedrive would be out of the question. (that's a guess).
It's not known who's responsible, nor their motivations, but at least in theory, what are some of the worst cases that could have happened had the exploit gone unnoticed?
Had this gone unnoticed, over, say, the next 12-36 months, what could have occurred if a maximally malicious actor did their worst? (assuming a variety of motivations - e.g. desire to attack rival state(s) a la stuxnet, greed, pure vandalism, other)
I suspect without additional exploits to get through other security layers on critical infrastructure, things like launching nukes from silos/submarines, running carriers ashore, mass deleting icloud/google drive/onedrive would be out of the question. (that's a guess).
It's not known who's responsible, nor their motivations, but at least in theory, what are some of the worst cases that could have happened had the exploit gone unnoticed?