US Military Uses Spam, Internet Explorer

chundo writes "CNN reports that the United States government has been secretly encouraging the defection of senior Iraqi officials via email. Iraq is responding by shutting down some of their internet gateways to prevent these emails from getting through, forcing the US to find alternate means to deliver the message. Maybe they should have enlisted this guy - emails from him keep showing up in my inbox no matter what I do." This story about the growing military network bandwidth crunch shows the U.S. military trying hard to get every soldier online, all the time.

Comments

Re:Wtf ?

[silvaran]

"All you need is Internet Explorer," says Doug Barton, the director of technology for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, based in Gaithersburg, Md.

The "bandwidth crunch link".

Re:With all that spam....

[goldspider]

LOL!! Why do I never have mod points when I need them?

Re:Wtf ?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this related to Internet Explorer ?

Looks like they've provided SSL-replacement plug-ins for IE that do real encrytion with bi-directional authentication.

Re:Bandwidth crunch in the Marine Corps

[Anonymous Coward]

"The flaw in this is that none of what's being advertised can be done on the stated timelines," says Frank Lanza, CEO of L-3 Communictions (LLL ), which builds a wide variety of communication and networking systems for the military. "The danger is that people believe it can be done." Lanza's fear is that a lot of the new NCW equipment and its capabilities are being oversold in their current incarnation.

In a military program? Nah! couldn't be!

Re:Is the US government stupid?

[shyster]

Actually they're telling them to report to the UN.

The message includes instructions to the e-mail recipients to contact the United Nations in Iraq if they want to defect.

Re:Islamic Spam

[Guppy06]

"RE: Pictures of Alah! Download now!"

Actually, that one will get you in trouble. You're not supposed to have pictures of holy people/things/etc. For example, nobody is quite sure what Mohammed looked like because the artists of the time weren't allowed to paint his face.

Re:Is the US government stupid?

[jesdynf]

One word.

Rubberhose.

Re:Wtf ?

[vtechpilot]

I would guess that the reason you need Internet Explorer is that the system uses ActiveX controls. ActiveX controls can be wedged into a webpage and they can be programed to do lots of good stuff like open secure sockets to remote hosts and display encrypted information and other goodness. Where Internet Explorer comes in is that it is a vehicle to deliver the ActiveX control to the user. The only trouble I see it that a careless user could easily forget to delete the control off the system and leave it behind on an unfriendly machine for Soviet spys to find and exploit.