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Feds Move to Secure Net
An anonymous reader writes "eWeek reports:The Cyber Warning Information Network, a key part of the Bush administration's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, will use a secure, private IP network separate from the public Internet, according to officials. The government currently has seven nodes running, said Marcus Sachs, director of communications infrastructure protection at the Office of Cyberspace Security, in Washington."
Many companies have data centers in multiple locations with private lines connecting them. I would have hoped the government would have thought of this much sooner. Reminds me of a few months ago when they were saying the FBI has not been able to hire many computer experts because they could not pass the required physical tests.
I'd be interested to see how they propose to use this - ie is it completed closed, or are there specific hosts that have access to public and private. Inevitably there's always some host somewhere that comprimises this type of idea.
Since their interest is in securing the net as a whole, it's a pity they're not practising what they preach, and try and implement a secure solution over the public 'net. Would be a inspiration for other folks.
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
The Cyber Warning Information Network, a key part of the Bush administration's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, will use a secure, private IP network separate from the public Internet, according to officials.
TOP STORY: A single government branch sets up an internal network, separate from the internet. Tonight at eleven, find out what kind of routers they bought.
You mean they didn't already have a separate network? Well, I didn't think high of them anyway, but here's yet another reason why.
either they mean there gunna use 10.x.x.x or one of there many DoD class A subnets (i think they got 7 or 8), they do not need 16.7million * 7 ip addresses. this is why there's a global ipv4 shortage, cos the bastards at the DoD and other places own most of them.
from http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,922570,00.as
March 10, 2003
Feds Move to Secure Net
ByDennis Fisher
SAN DIEGO--The White House and the new Department of Homeland Security have begun in earnest the process of implementing the plan to secure the nation's critical networks--starting with extensive changes in the federal security infrastructure.
The most significant move is the development of a private, compartmentalized network that will be used by federal agencies and private-sector experts to share information during large-scale security events, government officials said at the National Information Assurance Leadership conference here last week.
The system is part of the newly created Cyber Warning Information Network, a group of organizations including the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office and others that have some responsibility for the security of federal systems. The private-sector Information Sharing and Analysis Centers will also be included.
The Cyber Warning Information Network, a key part of the Bush administration's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, will use a secure, private IP network separate from the public Internet, according to officials. The government currently has seven nodes running, said Marcus Sachs, seen on left, director of communications infrastructure protection at the Office of Cyberspace Security, in Washington.
Sachs, speaking at the conference here, which was put on by The SANS Institute, pointed to last week's handling of the critical vulnerability in the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent package as a prime example of how such back-channel communication between vendors, researchers and the government can help protect end users. Researchers at Internet Security Systems Inc., in Atlanta, discovered the vulnerability in mid-February and immediately notified officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.
The government quietly spread the word among federal agencies and, along with ISS, began contacting the affected vendors. After the vendors developed patches, the fixes were deployed quickly on critical government, military and private-sector machines before the official announcement of the vulnerability.
However, some in the security community say that until the CWIN is fully operational and proven, they'll continue to use existing methods.
"I would not have used CWIN for Sendmail. There are too many questions about something that has not been fully deployed," said Pete Allor, manager of the threat intelligence service at ISS and director of operations at the Information Technology ISAC. "I'd like to know who I'm transmitting information to and the rules for dissemination.
"My two biggest concerns are having private-sector information on a government network and if Congress withdraws the [Freedom of Information Act] exemption, there won't be any reason for private companies to use [the CWIN]," Allor said. While speculation exists, to date no bill has been introduced to remove the FOIA exemption in the Homeland Security Act.
As part of the plan to improve security, the CIO of each federal agency is, by statute, now accountable for the security of that agency's network. This is a significant change, considering the lack of responsibility permeating government security efforts.
"This is the first time this has ever happened," Sachs said. "It used to be that it was their job, but they just said, 'Yeah, I guess we're secure.'"
The internal structure of the government's security apparatus is also undergoing some major changes, officials said. The President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, formerly part of the Office of Cyberspace Security, is now part of the Homeland Security Council. But that may not be where it ends up. There are indications that the board may end up as part of the Department of Homeland Security.
not being overly experienced myself in design of infrastructure for critical and data sensitive systems, surely this thought of thing is not the newest idea in the book. I would have thought most agencies would already have "critical" and "secure" networks in place to deal with emergency situations like mass DDOS or vulnerability attacks especially with all the paranoia for the last 5 years odd about cyberterrorism..
The company I work for has had a 70+ node WAN with separate IP address space from the Internet for about 5 years, and before that a 6-7 node WAN running IPX.
This seems so utterly obvious that I'm completely mystified as to why this is a news-worthy article. Or is this just a joke?
Yipee! The feds have an 'intranet'. I hope I don't pee my pants with excitement!
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
1 Start a network for army
.....Rinse and repeat.
2 Open it to Universities
3 Open it to everyone
4 Watch while "terrorists" start to spread viruses on it
5 Start network for the Feds
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
I find it surprising that this doesn't exist already - surely this is something like a slightly shinier version of UK Government Secure Intranet which has been operational for some time.
Surely the US government has something equivalent...?
Now if terrorists want to attack american government, we can still download porn at full speed :)
The military has it's own private and secure data/voice network. They have their own private IP's and everything. Any time people working on the unclassified network need to move data to the classified network they have to use "sneaker-net" and make damn sure the data isn't infected with a virus. Perhaps this is what the Department of National Security is modeling it's data network after.
Wonder if they're testing the TIA project on their intraweb ;)
I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
You forgot:
6 (Warning: Unreachable code): Profit!
Also, they'll use decimal IPv4 addresses -- which would explain a lot about the Uplink game...
Uh, look up what SIPRNET and NIPRNET are... been around for a long long time...
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
How much is this NEW RRRRREVOLUTIONARY idea going to cost us?
And what are they doing about the OS they run in this new playground?
Guess I was the only one who read it like that... shew.
"Oh my god... the Feds are taking control of the net?! What the hell is happening? What about my pr0n?!"
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
finally starts implementation in US govmt networks - film at 11... :-)
Theyre gonna change the ip of all _7_ computers to 10.0.0.blah and unplug the modem. Wow.. a really innovative idea.. why didnt I think of that? Oh wait.. I did! Seriously though, even with a network completely separate form the internet, there will inevitably be a need to connect to the network from the outside, probably via dialup, and this will be the networks downfall. Even if this doesnt happen, all it takes is one person to install wifi, leave a modem connected, or decide they want to browse slashdot from one of these machines, and there is an entry point, which some skilled hac^H^H^Hidiot could gain access. Sure, disconnecting computers from the internet will help matters, but if this makes people complacent - 'Oh, I dont need to install the sendmail patch, 'cause I'm not on the internet!' (The logic of running sendmail on a non connected computer ignored at this point), then it would have been better to leave the possibility of machines being connected, and have people be more vigilant with patches.
Sorry, 11 minutes.
If this "fednet" thing is to be totally separate, they're not staying with IP version 4, are they? The article doesn't say as far as I can make out.
That's about the only realistic route a worldwide migration to IPv6 could take, I think - building an entirely separate infrastructure.
Then we can have that one and they can have the old one back!
These people employ some of the best mathematicians and engineers in the world, they ought to be able to come up with a good implementation.
Not to mention the fact that even a separate link is going to require some informataion-level security as you don't want every tech with a current probe to be able see your network traffic ...
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
If this "fednet" is to be totally separate, they're not going with IP version 4, are they? The article doesn't say.
That's about the only realistic route a worldwide migration to IPv6 could take, in my opinion - building an entirely separate infrastructure.
Then we can have that one and they can have the old one back!
everybody from outside who came onto their Unreal Tournament server kicked their ass.
7 nodes? What is this - an FBI LAN party?
And the nodes will be also connected to internet? If this is true, a worm that goes thru internet (i.e.if in some moment comes a sendmail worm and a company have a postfix in the dmz that receives and forward the main to the internal sendmail would be vulnerable also) could pass between the two networks, I remember how much damage do CodeRed2 and Nimda in not properly secured internal networks. In this case, if the networks are connected to the two networks, a worm could enter from one point and try to infect the other (at least email will be the common point between them.
But, if they are only connected between them and NOT connected to internet (neither by mail), they are not solving the problem with this, only isolating some critical (?) part of the network so worms like this one will not infect their window shares and things like that (at least, until a worm that combines several ways to spread enter there)
And ask them if they run a vuln version of sendmail, can i use "secret-gateway.mil.org" then?
7 nodes - another 10 yrs they'll have a big enough botnet to launch a DDOS attack !
Well they did when I worked there. But some of my cow-orkers used to program their user id and pw into the function keys on their terminals. So I guess the security is only human. (Flashes id card with picture of micky mouse).
Did you hear the joke about CIA sending Iraq Generals bogus SMS? Hard to do when there is bugger all mobile coverage in Iraq.
I thought the point of the internet was to be so vast as to be unstoppable...
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Its all part of a cunning plot by cigarette man to put all the p0rn on the net someplace we cant get it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Have you ever thought what if the internet would be 24h/24h under surveillence? If there would be only Msoft, Sonies, Hewlets all over our screen ... etc. etc.
;-) //yeah ... I know ... nice dreaming
What if then we would start make our own network, with our own rules. The slashdotters and those alike are not few in this world, and I suppose a lot of us, if not most, got enough from rules over rules, comercial stuff, comercail stuff...
A kind of OurNet...
I have always been frustrated by the biggest technology issue facing the military or any large organization: deployment. The SIPRNET has been around for ages. However, in all the places I have been assigned, nobody at my level ever has access. This is ridiculous because I have always worked where the proverbial rubber meets the road. VPN, Fortezza cards, and all this is not new, nor revolutionary. The issue is plainly logistics, sustainment, and training. Logistics is an issue because you have to field the equipment. The government already runs scads of custom applications many requiring dedicated computers. If you are able to field the equipment, it will be very difficult to maintain and upgrade because the channels for doing so are often convoluted or repair facilities are hundreds of miles away. Sustainment is a pain because the military is not designed (for the most part) to be stationary. When a large deployment happens, you are lucky to have a telephone let alone Internet capability. Finally, training is always a big problem. Right now most users cannot even perform the most basic computer tasks. As it all revolves around dollars when it comes to manning and training, I find it hard to believe that enough is going to be vested in empowering the end user to have access or know-how. In the end, it will end up where all good ideas end up, only being used at levels above reality by people who already have access to all matter of secure everything. I don't see it getting to the end user any time in the near future. To me this is an operating system issue, if you don't ingrain this crap at the OS level, there is always going to be problems. From sensitive data left in the swap space, to unsecured file systems, and ineffective data destruction utilities, there are dozens of pitfalls for truly running a secure network. Throwing tons of third party applications on top of it is a huge mess. Secondly, the government has become over-reliant on using the Internet. At least for the military, occupations in fixed facilities should mirror operations in deployment situations. The only solution for the military is satellite or high frequency radio. Access to these solutions at the speeds necessary for Internet transactions is years away and very expensive. I won't believe a word of any of this until the Department of Defense stops using Telnet and other insecure software for their day to day business. Way too many personal transactions are conducted via Telnet un-tunneled and unsecured. I have seen this first hand many times and as recently as yesterday. I am tired of the good idea factory coming up with solutions from behind their $3000 dollar oak desks when at my level the IT and security is crap and my personal information is strewn all over who knows where.
For all those saying I can't believe the Feds don't have a separate network -- golly gee yes they do and have had such separate networks for years. What the Feds are doing is auditing which systems are connected to which networks. If it was originally assumed that the public Internet was safe enough, those assumptions are being checked. If it is decided that those assumptions were wrong, that a system is threatened, it is moved to a private internet. Considering the size of the Federal government it should surprise no one that history, changes in the internet and other factors should justify such an audit. Its not like private companies don't do the same thing on occassion. The difference is this time politics are involved. Its a way to wave the flag and see we're doing something for homeland security. Three years ago, the press would have ignored this.
a less obvious joke?..
When THIS administration (tm) will be informed that the Fednet is working, all US providers (Aol included) will have to switch on this network!
Don't be fooled! If we let THIS administration (tm) continue the way it does, United States of America couldn't be called a democracy anymore (that's what a lot of people in US and in Europe already think)
Go easy on the terrorist word,
if you keep tossing that word around
freely applying it to everyone, pretty
soon domestic protests will be labeled
terrorist gatherings and other bad
stuff might result. I don't condone
releasing worms but its not terrorism.
I'm not terrorized when my web logs file
up with code red, just irritated.
I notice in the article that the Feds et al. were notified of the sendmail security flaw before the official release. Um. Not that I have anything against the FBI perusing my pr0n collection (Leanna Hart -- Locker Room.avi is quite good if y'all are listening), but this scares the fuck out of me.
Sachs, speaking at the conference here, which was put on by The SANS Institute, pointed to last week's handling of the critical vulnerability in the Sendmail Mail Transfer Agent package as a prime example of how such back-channel communication between vendors, researchers and the government can help protect end users. Researchers at Internet Security Systems Inc., in Atlanta, discovered the vulnerability in mid-February and immediately notified officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.
The government quietly spread the word among federal agencies and, along with ISS, began contacting the affected vendors. After the vendors developed patches, the fixes were deployed quickly on critical government, military and private-sector machines before the official announcement of the vulnerability.
The government currently has seven nodes running, said Marcus Sachs, director of communications infrastructure protection at the Office of Cyberspace Security, in Washington.
Let me guess:
192.168.0.1
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0.4
192.168.0.5
192.168.0.6
192.168.0.7
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
Cyber Warning Information Network (CWIN) looks to be an expensive, slower, and less effective version of CERT.
.org sides, i.e. Eric Allman) and CERT was contacted. CERT alerted various Unix, Linux and BSD vendors that a new sendmail security fix was coming and to get ready to package it. Sendmail shared their fix with vendors and everyone announced a fix at roughly the same time. Thanks to the hard working people at CERT. Nobody played "I'm fixed, screw the rest of you" or other selfish self-centered games.
These is the group that "handled" the recent announcement of a new sendmail vulrenability. Except what they did was this: ISS, a info-security company looking for browie points reported to Office of Cyberspace Security at the White House and Homeland Security, who told FedCERT which passed that along to military and federal government IT people. Except all they could do was turn off sendmail, since a fixed wasn't yet available!
Then Sendmail (.com and
So the DHS made three phone calls (or emails) and spent the rest of their time writing up press releases about their great job, so the "press release == news" media could spout how great and cyber-aware DHS is. Though ISS, Sendmail Inc./ Consortium, and CERT did all the real work.
isn't a private WAN such as this more susceptible to a "single point of failure" attack? Or have they thought of that?
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
I talked to some computer people working in Swiss banks last year. It turned out they have a private network in parallel with the internet.
...
Every worker has two computers. One for the bank stuff and the other for internet/ordinary stuff.
The internal network has very limited connections to the internet (necessary web-banking connections, but not more). Don't count on Sendmail bugs to get you in here
Contrary to popular belief, most federal agencies don't have steamer trunks full of cash in the basement, in case they need to buy some more $900 toilet seats. Just putting a PC on everyone's desk with a LAN connection is either a still a goal or a recent accomplishment at many agencies. There are a substantial number of closed Internets that are used for handling classified or mission critical information. Generic Internet access is still classified as not being mission critical, even though the government is rapidly becoming more dependent on email and services/information delivered over the web.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I heard a story few years ago while taking a networks training course. We were talking about packet order and the fact that it's not guaranteed. The instructor mentioned that you could probably expect the order to be maintained if you specified the route and were the only thing transmitting, but still, it is not guaranteed.
Someone in the class had worked on a secure network project where all the routes were static, but when they did load testing the packets would arrive out of order. This worried them (as it should) and they looked into it. It turned out that the routers (switches?) they were using would "cheat" when they detected backup and would send packets to ports off the static routes.
The exptected behavior was that the receiver would bounce the packet back as destination unknown. But this could buy the equipment precious milliseconds and the conjestion might clear.
A cute solution, but not very secure.
into meatpackers, for the Godless greed/fear based payper liesense bullshipping industrIE.
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IIRC, it is called GOVNET.
Will this be an extention to SIPERNET or a new network?
Hope they use IPv6, that way you also get the ecomomy rolling. New OS, new Routers...
(I Know modern OS and Cisco 12.2 IOS run IPv6, but most gov router still run IOS 9.x and the DoD will not allow Win2000 Active Directory on Servers.)
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Wireless excepted, air is still the best firewall.
I'm claiming prior art. (Also see Parent)
So what will a whole new system do for us telecommuters?
I'm REALLY looking forward to it.
A certain government agency has already implemented a new security policy a week or so ago. Good? No. Those of us who telecommute in my company and program offsite have already been having numerous issues since the new policy went into effect. We are required to log into our company's servers to run our programs, but unfortunately doing so requires connecting through a certain agency's network. We have ridiculous time-out windows now and it's awful trying to stay connected. Now I can't even connect to work at all. Wonderful. Guess I must be a hacker because I use telnet, X11, FTP and have had to connect multiple times in a short time period thanks to the new wonderful (and completely ridiculous) timeout.
Mark everything as "unfair" in metamod. That will reduce the credibility of the "good" moderators (those who mod down trolls), giving the points to others who would use them for "evil" (upmodding trolls).
It's all about decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Do your part! Embrace metamoderation as a trolling weapon!
... but what the hell does their addressing scheme on a PRIVATE NETWORK have to do with the Internet? Since the two are never going to be connected, it seems to me that they can use whatever IP's they want, without any impact on anyone else.
Sean
The last time the feds had a LAN party, a bunch of undesirables came and took it over for themselves. I wonder what will happen this time?
They already are. People have been arrested (though, in the cases I heard of, not held) merely for wearing anti-war tee-shirts.
Practically speaking, the Star Chamber has been recreated. That was the imposition of the English monarchy that habeus corpus was specifically created to stamp out. People being arrested without their name being released, without being allowed any outside contacts, and held indefinitely without being charged. Flagrant constitutional violations, but all actions taken by our government.
In *most* of the cases I've heard of there has been decent reason for the person to be arrested. But not for the violation of their rights. And in more than one of the cases I have not been able to determine any reason. (This doesn't mean there wasn't one. The information available it *intentionally* fragmentary.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Here's a guy who got arrested for wearing a peace t-shirt! >>
They already have it. Existence of SIPRNET(Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) is unclassified. This isn't really news, so they are building another one? Big deal.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And then we'll be able to see what John Aschroft really thinks about naked statuary pr0n.
On the other hand, VPN over Internet can be very secure and far cheaper. Not VPN using OpenSSL on Linux boxes, because both OS and the relatively big library could have buffer overflows or some other low-level bugs. But it's easy to build a layered system that will be extremly secure. Say, hardware routers that decrypt and check signature on every incoming packet in hardware before looking at it otherwise. And then AFTER that, a Linux box that does a santity check on what comes through the router, just in case.
Ok, all find and dandy. But let's not forget to advise them to user wireless APs and cards. We believe in modern goverment, right?
If you're building a seperate internet, you still need routers.
:)
Or maybe I don't get the joke
In America, you disentangle metaphorical planet earth, in Soviet Russia, metaphorical planet earth disentangles YOU!!
umm.. if it's a completely separate network from the internet.. how is it going to have ANY effect whatsoever? I mean they won't even be able to look at what's out there! Am i missing something here?
Reinard
> "Boffins"? Isn't that WW2 era British slang?
> or is it still current?
Both... at least in Australia... which FOLLOWS
British culture & politics eg GW2 (Gulf War 2)
to this day.
Looking for opportunities in Australia? BBB
BBB = Better Be British... at least, it helps
Also, this network may not be very expensive - most of the traffic is likely to be email or occasional software distributions, and just about everything except a major Windows patch can run fine over a 56kbps frame connection.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster
than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes
up, you'd better be running.
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