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U.S. Military's Hackers
definate writes "Wired is running a story on the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or JFCCNW. A multimillion dollar military task force used to attack the electronic infrastructure of their opponents."
From the article:
"JFCCNW"??? That's a terrible acronym! That's the worst thing I've heard since PCMCIA!
How about something a bit more catchy, like the League of Enduring Electronic Technicians? Or perhaps the Paramilitary Worldwide Network of Electronic Defenders?
Let's help out our country...please post your suggestions for acronyms below.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I am involved with this group. Unfortunately, there isn't much else that can be said (or that I can tell you) about it other than it has been around for quite a long time (under different names and acronyms of course) and that I can finally tell people who I work for and what I do.
an army of one's and zero's
_+_+__+_+_+_+_+_+_+++
when i moo u moo - just like that
I wonder if there will be restrictions on security patches during war-time?
"I've got to tell you we spend more time on the computer network attack business than we do on computer network defense because so many people at very high levels are interested," said former CNA commander, Air Force Maj. Gen. John Bradley ...
IOW, folks in the Echelons Beyond Reality love the idea of Matrix-style hacking of an enemy network because it's sexy and cool (even though they probably have no idea what real hacking entails) and aren't interested in the boring old-fashioned business of securing our own networks from attack. Okay, guys, here's a quick quiz: of the following possible combatants, which one has the most to lose in the event of an enemy hacker penetrating its computer security?
a) al-Qaeda
b) China
c) the United States
d) North Korea
Think fast!
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
From TFA:"There are some tremendous questions being raised about this," said Dietz. "On whether they (JFCCNW) have the legal mandate or the authority to shut these sites down with a defacement or a denial-of-service attack."
According to TFA, the main task of JFCCNW is to bring down websites that don't portray America in good light.
It is going to be more of a PR-damage limitation excercise than anything else. And a good way to spend millions of taxpayer money.
Iran captures three CIA agents
science fiction slowly becomes reality.
the article refers to the JFCCNW as being the "... most formibidable hacker posse. Ever."
... so maybe the editors need to take anothNO CARRIER
looks like www.jfccnw.mil is offline
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Dear Habib,
My name is Akmar and I have just inherited $3 million, but it is stuck in a US bank account....
hack a day
Don't tell me - they are going to remotely deploy WinXP Service Pack 2 on the enemy's network?
Masterful...
b3 4ll j00 c4N B3!
J01n t3h 4RmY! T1s 133t!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
How about Worldwide Online Operations Team ?
...a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets.
Not anymore
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
He said they may also be able to set loose a worm to take down command-and-control systems so the enemy is unable to communicate and direct ground forces, or fire surface-to-air missiles, for example.
These things are connected to the internet?
Freedom's Special Computer Knights
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Couldn't we just /. them into submission?
From TFA: Rita Katz, an expert on Islamic terror sites and director of the Washington, D.C.-based Search for International Terrorist Entities, believes a website that posts an execution should be taken out immediately. No matter what the implications are for free speech or other nation's laws, she said. (emphasis mine)
Coming soon - non-Evangelical-Republican == Terrorist.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Command Line Soldiers!
This looks like a scary, but inevitable, development. The internet is becoming too important to this country's economy. Perhaps the private sector can keep the Internet safe, but they need more vigilance and more tools to handle fast-evolving threats. The minute the government feels that the net has become a national security vulnerability, they will take steps to become the defender of that infrastructure.
.mil computers to DDoS offending servers of phisher, spammers, etc.
Perhaps the day will come when the government deploys
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
is a good offense. Also, if you know how to attack, you also know how to defend.
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Homeland Agency for the eXecution and eXtermination of Our Rivals?
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
And everyone keeps complaining about chinese or russian militaries using hackers.
Geeks in uniforms. Isn't best Buy already trying this?
These things are connected to the internet?
...
No, but their printers are.
You'd be surprised how useful online resources in unexpected places are. Even Coke machines have processors
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
People of America's New [Internet|Information|Intelligence] Commandos
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
ID4 proved a worldwide millitary operation can be coordiated using only morse code.
"I'm not high, just stupid" --JY
You may also want to check out NSA's annual Computer Defense Exercise (CDX). Story here.
Just sell them Windows.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Ah - any government effort that starts with "Joint" is destined to produce nothing but paperwork and studies. Just as Private industy folks recognize the term "Cross-Functional" as a death sentence. I have no doubts that the leadership of any J**** project has a general idea of what they need to say to continue to justify funding. But the likelihood of them actually producing something worthy of said funding is slim to nothing.
Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, JFCCNW
Man what a painful acronym, however it's being disregarded for most of the article and replaced with :
Computer Network Attack, or as some military personnel refer to it, CNA. "I've got to tell you we spend more time on the computer network attack business than we do on computer network defence because so many people at very high levels are interested," said former CNA commander, Air Force Maj. Gen. John Bradley
Which is funny since the DoD was targeted:
last year nearly 75,000 times with intrusion attempts.
So what do they really have as a mission for this group?
Verton said the unit's capabilities are highly classified, but he believes they can destroy networks and penetrate enemy computers to steal or manipulate data.
Nice, a govt funded agency with little regard for the institutions it's supposed to protect (free speech and due process) or other nations sovereignty and the apparent mission plan of 13 year old script kiddies everywhere. Where's the story?
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
I like your sig! :)
For anyone interested, here's a link to a hearing (not sure if it's the one referenced), that gives some insight into the broader goals of the the strategic command that this hacking force falls under.
Mark A. McBride -- OmniNerd.com
I guess the day is fast approaching when I can plug in my Ono Sendai deck and really get iced. Here's to hoping they don't "ice" me for being a liberal agnostic atheist/ideological terrorist.
Why am I on Slashdot? I'm bored. Why am I bored? I'm on Slashdot.
A US military directive recently recomended all computer based intelligence personel run UNIX via the MAC OS for security reasons. I have a friend who is a low level Army guy and they all use Apple Mac PowerBooks in the tanks.
This seems a bit like a "my gun is bigger than your gun" contest with Russia. A little over a week ago there was this article: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/10/04 28238&tid=172&tid=123&tid=95&tid=218 and now we have the "no no no, the US is better" article.
I was involved with this group in the late 90's and I can tell you that without a doubt, this group is far from the uber-elite team of unstoppable intruders that the article makes it out to be. It's pretty much just a group of smart geeks who have legal permission to use tactics that are otherwise considered illegal. Nothing to see here...move along.
Massive Soldier Force of Technology - MSFT.
"In simple terms and sans any military jargon, the unit could best be described as the world's most formidable hacker posse. Ever.
I've got a picture of R. Lee Ermey giving somebody shit for going into army 'hacking'...
"Hacker core?! You gotta be shitting me private! You're not a geek, you're a killer!! "
As for "most formidable", I wonder how often it comes down to "join us, or be labeled a terrorist
Always assume that the enemy can, somehow, compromise any of your systems. The trick is to get those systems to fail gracefully into a safe condition. Usually, it is easier to get such a system if it is basically simple. The more complicated a system is, the more exploits it probably has.
In the 1980s my group used to spend a lot of time worrying about airport security. What would happen if someone, who knew the right stuff, did just the right thing? We came to the conclusion that the attacks we had to worry about would be 'way simpler but just as devastating. They would, of course, work only once but that's all that would be necessary.
It is obvious that someone should be figuring out these measures and counter measures. Just remember that the enemy isn't stupid and is probably thinking the same thing.
Anyway, if people wanted peace, why do we have (need?) a military?
Freedom's Special Computer Knights
They're French?? I thought they were American!
My theory: they are script kiddies, and they get given IP addresses by the CIA and from Echelon which they DDOS with a botnet, blocking terrorist's communications....
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
BTW, the best defense against a cruise missile is a net, placed in the flight path. Of course, first you've got to know the flight path.
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The real threat from hackers of this nature lies not in their ability to hack the command and control grid of the enemy, but in their ability to crash the opossitions economy. Every major war of the last century has been won by economic might, more than by brillant stategies.
What is the impact of crashing an enemy's powersytem? A catastrophic crash of a power grid with actual physical damage to the grid is not beyond the realm of possibility. How many billions of $$$$ a day could be lost by such an attack on the US? If an enemy brings down even a small part of the grid it can cascade and bring down the whole shooting match.
Other scary possibilities..... hack the SCADA control system of a nasty chemical plant. Release a toxic gas cloud and kill thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. Hack a number of oil refineries and knock them out of production. Watch what that does to the price of doing business.
Most of the admins on such systems will tell you that the systems have no external links.... but when you ask them if there is a DB from the SCADA LAN that communicates with the coprporate LAN, well every admin and security guru that I have asked that question of, has admitted that such a DB exists. And where such a communication path exists then it can be exploited.
The next globalr war, if it ever happens, will start with a wave of pre-emptive infastructure hacks.
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... is getting enough of the "great" hackers the proper security clearances and compartmented accesses. You must be a US citizen, pass an SSBI Single Scope Background Investigation, FBI/DIA ivestigators contact scads of people you havent talked to in years as well as your current associates and their associates and the associates of those people as well - they go 3 nodes or more out from you. Add to that a Counter Intelligence polygraph - those are sometimes the biggest hurdles. If you try for NSA credentials, you get the joy of a Lifestyle Polygraph (the worst 6+ hours of your life, trust me on that). On top of that, getting people to move to Nebraska for some duty at Stratcom in Omaha is not all that easy a sell.
Fortunately not al the duty stations are in Nebraska, and not every hacker (used in the best sense of the word) fits the stereotypes. Its not like the movies.
There is one other source they forgot:
Contractors. Look at the big DoD contract companies, and look at the IT openings they have. Northrop Grumman (includes the old TRW people), Raytheon (includes the old Hughes people), Lockheed-Martin, Ball Aerospace (Satellite/comms guys), Titan, and a pile of smaller lesser known companies. Look at what they are hiring for. These are the only relatively secure IT jobs left in the US that are not under threat of being outsourced overseas.
Plenty of work if you can qualify for the security aspects and dont mind being reinvestigated and strapped to a polygraph every few years, on top of other voluntary restrictions you put on your freedoms in exchange for the security clearance (i.e. give up the recreational/illegal drugs, give up drinking to excess, give up gambling, and give up many of the vices the fringe of hackerdom has).
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
that network == internet.
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There was a hint of this group's existence during the first Gulf war. One of the reasons behind the Iraq's army total defeat was that the US crippled the communication network between Baghdad and the frontline. The story was that after the embargo was established, the US let a printer be smuggled into Iraq. Unfortunately for Iraq HQ, the printer was designated for Iraq Command and had been modified to contain and transmit a virus. The virus spread quietly throughout the network but lay undetected and dormant until the land war began. Then it started to take down the networks.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
that brought down al-jazeera.net when the US invaded Iraq? Remember the 2 week long denial of service attack and subsequent attacks after beheadings and what not?
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/030327/152/dwem2.html/
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
Hell, CNA also stands for Computer Network Assurance so I wouldn't be supprised if they're getting their wires crossed a bit (no pun intended).
As for the comments about more offense than defense, I wonder if this is because defense is probably done within programs moreso than offense.
Just my 2c.
I do security
Whats wrong with People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms? Is it that hard?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
"The Internet." The phone system is also a network, as is the power grid (parts of which are phone accessible, but not internet accessible). Railroads use networked communications to control switches. So does the ATC system. All can be hacked into if you can get access to the communicatons lines and know how.
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Perhaps the day will come when the government deploys .mil computers to DDoS offending servers of phisher, spammers, etc
.mil computers to DDoS everyone else
Rather than the days gone by when offending servers used
I got this whole Alice's Restaurant Flashback moment reading this. Sorry.
But back home in the 21st Century, am I the only one who sees this as a better-than-average recruiting effort on the part of the U.S. Army (at a time when their falling shy of their recruitment goals)? I'm guessing they are hoping scenes like this play out at recruitment stations across the fruited plain:
Wired Reader: "Um, I read how, like, the army is hiring and training all these 733t Uber-hax00rs to, like, simply own terrorist websites and shit...?"
Recruiting Officer: "Yup. Sign here."
WR: "So, like, do we get to wear baggy camo pants and high boots and put our hats on backward and shit...?"
RO: "Sure. Sign here."
WR: "Umm, so, does our brigade or garrison or whatever have, like, our own kewl insignia, like a fist holding lightning bolts or some rad shit like that...?"
RO: "Uh huh. Sign here."
WR: "What are we called, like, the '81st Cybernetic,' or the 'Electric Underground' or some cool shit like that...?"
RO: "Something like that. Sign here."
WR: "And I get to carry a gun?"
RO: "Oh, Yes. And we give you free bullets and coffee. Sign here."
WR: "Free Coffee?! D00d, I'm, like, so-o-o-o-o there! Where do I sign?"
RO (smiling): "Here, son. Sign right here."
Is there an a series of appropriate words to fit the acronym, WASTEOFTAXPAYERMONEY?
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
So is NRO.
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Just post the link/ip/whatever on slashdot :)
How about Forcefully Undulating Computer Killers with Totally Awesome Reconnaisance Devices in Zimbabwe?
The best part is they hired Hugo Weaving to head it up...
This, however, is merely a translation, "sans any millitary jargon" of what the Hacker unit leader actually said. the actual statement is given here, extant:
We call Ourselves Clan [JFCCNW]. Our unit is full of teh 1337 h4xx0rz. They will r0x0r terrorist computer network b0x0rz.... w00t. OMG we are teh 1337. We PWN all j00 who mess with teh |_|.5. We are the 1337est H4xx0rz. Evar.
have been known for calling them Worldwide Technical Fighters...
WTF?.. WTF?...
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
I think the Dark Warriors at Lackland AFB's Information Warfare Battlelab in San Antonio might have something to say about this article's BS/speculation rating, if they aren't already part of the joint task force. And unlike the joint task force listed, they seem to spend a good portion of their time actually building tools and technologies to defend networks.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
How about:
Constabulary Unit for Network Transgression Surveillance?
The fact that they have laptops does not mean they have networks.
...
Their laptops can be connected to the Internet and they can use regular email servers to email each other with encrypted messages.
Focusing on networks isn't going to help.
Now, what would help would be if they were using an OS that was built by a US company that worked with our government to install backdoors in the security system of that OS.
Failing that, our government would have to get crackers/hackers to focus on breaking into the OS used on those laptops or identifying the email servers used and cracking those.
Now, assuming that our government can spot the IP address of the laptop being used, that information can be used to trace the physical location of that laptop.
If you have the physical location of the terrorists
Cracking a laptop wouldn't be as useful as just getting the ISP's support in tracing the email packets. And in most cases, getting the ISP's support would be SO MUCH EASIER.
Even if they couldn't get the ISP's official support, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to get an agent hired by the ISP who could then drop a sniffer on the line.
But that doesn't sound as cool and high-tech as a cave full of geeks busily cracking away at terrorist networks.
But, even they use laptops and older desktops, they don't use permanent Internet connections. Terrorist cells don't use permanently wired networks backended to the Internet. They depend on "sneakernets": floppies, removable HDDs, and some emails. This is why encryption is so important to them; their data can fall into "enemy" whenever a cell gets caught.
For example, The JFCCNW would have had no way of accessing any of the data stored on the PCs hidden in the Afghani caves. Coalition troops had ship that stuff out to get it analyzed and translated.
What I've seen of hackers (both white and black hat) doesn't lead me to think they would do well in a military envornment. Does anyone know if there has been much problems with keeping the unit discipline?
I'm not just talking about the physical fitness stuff, I mean that most hackers seem to want to "screw with the system" a little. Maybe it comes from the same urge to reverse-engineer stuff, but the hackers I've seen tend to dislike bueracracy and "keeping your head down" to not stick out, which are things the military seems to have a lot of.
There are a couple of ex-mil. guys in my LUG, but they're the 'resposible sysadmin/programmer', with maybe a touch of BOFH syndrome.
I wonder if the military is recruiting hackers directly, or training their own people to be hackers?
How 'bout: United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
The only thing the enemy would need to employ to completely overwhelm and undermine this army of nerds would be..... a female.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
A good security expert would also be a good cracker.
-but-
A good script kiddie is not a security expert.False dichotomy.
Spending time learning how to crack a Windows system would NOT mean that you knew anything about real security.
Being able to exploit flaws does NOT mean that you understand how to build a secure system.
Again, any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
So we have our own jackasses to kick down their barns to "counter" their jackasses kicking down our's? There's not much progress in that.
Rather, hire more carpenters to build better barns.
attacking infrastructure is so lame, I think it should be outlawed similar to chemical warefare, etc
and Slim just left town :-)
When I was in the Army (82nd Airborne in the late 80s, early 90s), any "joint" training we did was always a laugh. We'd get Navy or Air Force observers along on an exercise and they'd call in "simulated" Naval gunfire or airstrikes...
But the kind of static fighting we saw in WWII, where the enemy is dug in and you have days to plan just where the strikes will be, and where you're always sure your forces are clear of those areas, is long gone. Everyone knew that then and it's more true now. What really happens is serialized: first the AF bombs the ememy's defenses to bits, the Navy does the same while tossing cruise missiles, and then AFTER that the Army moves in. Close air support these days is Spectre gunships and helicopters. Both piloted by Army-types.
"Joint" efforts are pretty meaningless, in my experience, and I'd predict this is likely to be the same
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
From the article's first sentence:
a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to
You can hack
whatever you want
at Alice's Restaurant!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The final nail into the coffin of this storry is: Well, we have all already seen the virus(es) that were obviously targeted to specific computer (with verbose target recognition conditions, I'd say it was ment for some DOJ computer) and we have seen silent-backdoor-opener-intruder viruses (the reason why we are spammed so severely). Now, how can anyone in their straight face say that they cannot control what their remote-controlled program agent is up to? If anything, you can always timebomb it, so that if TTL expired, little bastard erases or deactivates itself.
In short, not much to see here folks. Just another "join the navy" geek opera.
This may be the start of another ColdWar....,
With Russians claiming to be the best in the World ...,
and China, Korea not far behind....
Can the US keep up..., with all the problems with NASA
al-qaeda. The Us and china are huge. You can't destroy the entire country witha single computer hack. Oh, sure, you can make life difficult if you turn off power to new york for a few hours, but on the grand scale, that is really nothing.
NK is so far behind in technological development, that they probably don't have that much online yet. I don't see Kim pouring millions into buinding a massive backbone to give the slaves access to the intArwEb. It's possible that their military has a computer network, but I'm going to guess that it probably isn't hooked up to the outside intArwEb. Just a hunch, but I could be wrong.
al-quaeda is a very small group of people, which means that if you compromise the right computer, you might get all their vital information. They work in cells, but if you grab the data from someone near the top, you might get bin laden's phone number, along with the numbers of key cell organizers.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Please god say that isn;t really a valid perl script
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
An acronym is pronounceable as a word.
Those are just initials.
Thank God I don't run as root and that users can't delete their own directorys. Now then, could anyone please explain how it does that?
Maybe monday is making me retarded... but...
:)
isn't the Parent talking about a MILITARY Acronym? NOT Computer Industry acronym? Military don't care and SHOULDN'T care if the 'civilian sector' likes or dislikes it's acronyms.
The military has it's own language and terms that requires as much interpetation as geek-speak or any other 'foreign language'. I swear some people think I'm speaking klingon when I start talking military AND geekspeak
and my last note: I have memorized most computer acronyms. Does that mean I'm not a people?
Yes, it seems this works so well for things like ICBs, cruise missles, bioweapons, etc... I mean, if you know how to attach, you know how to defend?
We have learned from building massive weapons of mass destruction, that a good defense would be very deep sealed bunkers.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Federal Unary Computer Killers
With the following divisions:
Middle East
Internal Technology
Oversea's Fighting Force
and of course, where do they train....
Yahoo Operations University
Slashdot is their weapon of mass destruction and the editors have always secretly made this known!
Why else would they have military titles like Commander Taco and Commander Gravy.
<_<
>_>
run for the hills!
BAH! What do you know, you worked for Enron...
The Perl code in [Gob Blesh It]'s sig is a recursive delete.
Mod him down. Script Kiddie deserves no Karma.
In which case, the people deploying it would not need to know much about the system. Just how to identify the correct wires and how to splice the unit into them. In theory, any commo guy could do that, with a bit more training.
So that's what Mitnick has been up to.
Prison! Ha!
We've been socially engineered
Try running it. Don't forget to 'sudo'.
Burning the books of people critical of the United States is about the worst anti-American act I can think of. It is well known by now that to deny a person a voice is exactly what results in that person turning to violence to express themselves. Looks like the executive branch has found another way to turn more people into terrorists. Gotta keep the opposition supplied if you want the war to go on. ...
Guess it's a good investment: spend millions to create a situation in which you can ask for a budget of billions.
Just how does the military end up with such uninspired, soul withering, marginalized and obfuscated acronyms?
My understanding is that officers are usually tasked with creating acronyms for the projects they are responsible for. This would be in keeping with the fact that they have to do all the documentation and write ups on it. Now, we're living in a politically correct world where you don't want someone twisting your acronym up and side-banding your project with potty humor. And you sure as hell don't want to offend some female (women wield a startling amount of power in the military when it comes to decorum) officer who might have to say it.
So something as intellectually neutered as JFCCNW is actually the kind of acronym that a smart person would like to see in their dossier. Over time, as an officers dossier is reviewed, part of the whole "reading the entrails" to see if an officer is suitable comes down to how well they work within the bureaucracy, and to this end I've known officers who have been promoted for such things. It's a whacked planet.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
"Electronic Defenders" ?? from who ?? more like "Electronic Attackers" bud.
That's the worst thing I've heard since PCMCIA!
But PCMCIA has a funny expansion: "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms."
I have been saying since the early nineties that there is some sort of black-ops hacker team that the government funds. I would be seriously upset if my tax dollars wern't being spent on making sure that we had this sort of capability.
;-)
I'm guessing that they are mostly civilians working for the NSA and CIA with close ties to the military. I'm saying mostly civilian, as the military doesn't usually attract people with multiple degrees in advanced technical subjects. They will work closely with the teams, though, providing military intilligence to augment what the civilian agencies provide. They will be set up in small 'fire teams', so when they need to go to work, they can be assigned to seperate specific targets. During peacetime they will be constantly practicing intrusion techniques on each other, wargamming various scenarios. I'd say that they won't be ex-blackhats, as they aren't very reliable. Probably young-ish college graduates with masters degrees that are very dedicated and focused individuals. (Think FBI or CIA agent in mentality: highly reliable team players, not hot shot hackers.)
I think it sounds like very interesting work. If any of them read this posting, contact me. I don't need to tell you how, because I'm sure you can find me...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
that the u.s. is the biggest fucking terrorist nation on the planet. You think they'd be happy brutalizing the people of iraq, causing fear and uncertainty in latin america, threatening the global economy with their insane spending and now this.. terrorizing other nations networks.
Whats the difference, they terrorize their own nation and people with with the "War on Drugs" lunacy. Is this a game for them ?
with carrots, flies, and ink-eradicators, of course.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
I am sure that it has already been registered with the Federal Acronym Registration Team
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
random small incidents from loosley organized groups.....
You will know this has happened when most of the lights in the country go out.......
Every major nation on the planet now has a cadre of hackers whose sole purpose in life is to probe, reverse engineer, and come up with exploits for the other nations critical infrastructure.
IMO the next major global war will start with a huge wave of hacking attacks. If you remove your enemy's ability to wage a long term war, in the begining of the battle, then you are a long way towards victory.
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acronym, n., A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.
Doesn't look like it needs to be pronounceable to be an acronym.
private sector keep it safe? bullshit. those bastards with their monopolies are gonna get bought out by media moguls and everything they dont agree with will be censored, especially p2p
JFCCNW is not an acronym. Oh sure, people love to say everything that consists of the first letter of each word is an acronym - but this isnt.
Acronym - a new word or pronounceable and hence memorable name coined from the first or first few letters or parts of a phrase or compound term (HUD for Housing and Urban Development).
About all JFCCNW does is take the first letter from a bunch of words. It is certainly not pronouncable, nor is it particularly memorable.
Not only are your acronym's funnier, but they are actually acronyms.
Or maybe this is pronounced Jiff-canoe ('jif? - k&-'nü)
RE:[a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets.]
well it is not a secret anymore. i read about it on slashdot & wired.com
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
until China (Population as of 2002 1.2 billion and growing) and India (who is expected to overtake China as the worlds most populous nation by 2035) decide they need more resources and space for their people.
Or if China's sabre rattling in regards to Taiwan ever turns into something more.
Yes long term wars are unpopular. So was WWI and WWII, yet somehow in the end, despite all of our isolationist policies, we became involved directly in long lasting wars. We do not have to start it, but a long drawn out multi national war is never beyond the realm of possibility.
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
I'm kind of surprised that noone has pointed out yet the existance of one division of JFCCWOTEVR led by Cmdr. Taco that harnesses the power of distributed monkeys for denial of service attacks.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It was a PCMCIA joke. Like TWAIN (Tool Without An Interesting Name).
:)
You hear that wooshing sound? That was...ah, nevermind, go and get your coffee
Well, it looks like the dudes at Cyberarmy and the Legions of the Underground have finally gotten their point across about cyberwar. I bet they regret it now.
Whoever modded this insightful is an even bigger asshole than the poster.
I went to college with a guy who came from the military. He stayed in the reserves during college. Once we graduated he wanted to be a network admin (of windows networks) and I became a programmer. This was about 10 years ago. Anyway, he wasn't making squat for money so I helped him get a programming job where I worked. He really did not use this time wisely. He fell into a maintenance role fixing old 16 bit apps.
Eventually I moved onto greener pastures and he stayed. At this point, we fell out of contact for the most part. Some time later he called me asking for help finding a new job. Turns out he got caught downloading warez at work and they fired him. The company was none too happy about it and it was his only job on his resume. Anywhere he went they called his previous employer and they told them what happened. So finding work was difficult. I couldn't help him at this point. So he decided to go back into the military as a last resort. Since he had computing experience now, he wanted to get into security and computing. He applied for a security clearance and I was interviewed as a long time friend of his. He got the clearance and now works in a group like one in this article. Needless to say, my view of some of these "hackers" is not that high....
> But PCMCIA has a funny expansion: "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms."
But has it a non-funny expansion ?
If you blow it up, they'll deploy a less effective secondary system (I'm sure they have vehicle mounted systems like we do).
If you can have them process bad data, they won't necessarily know that their system has been compromised and they'll have to keep reacting to the bad data (or miss the good data in the noise of the bad data).
How about the Non-Operative Obsolete Battalion?
Country n' Western.
That's why they call 'em computer cowboys, son.
I cracked their Human Resources db and got their list of employees (yes, this is all of them):
- 1) David Lightman
I don't think we have much to worry about.2) Tron
3) Jobe Smith (aka.Lawnmower Man)
4) Cosmo (don't ask)
5) Austin Millbarge
6) Emmett Fitz-Hume
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
So it's a good bet these guys aren't just sitting at a desk playing nethack. Some of them are probably special-ops types with additional computer training. I can easily see operations where we'd drop in sabotage units via aircraft or submarines, and hose entire infrastructures by accessing them locally, just like the Serbian incident. Keep in mind that in modern air defense systems, often multiple units are connected in clusters, sometimes relying on just one radar dish per 3-5 missle units, all connected electronically. Hose the radar, and you've fucked the entire cluster. And while military communications networks usually aren't connected to the Internet on the battlefield, they ARE becoming more and more computer dependant. So it wouldn't be improbable to imagine some of these guys tracking down the right coax cables connected underground to a command and control bunker somewhere, then attaching a vampire tap to access the network.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I am a low level Army guy (Gunner) in the 1st Cavalry. We don't use Powerbooks in the tanks because shiny/bright colors make us targets.
We actually use hardened CP/M machines running a modified version of Windows 3.1. These feature a dual Dragonball CPU setup for redundancy and use a special TRIMARK backplane for the bus. Back at command they use ENIACs with modified EMARK (ethermark) connectors tied into the DB2 back-end for managing field operations.
Cute. Hats off to you.
I wonder how many people actually ran that?
Humorless sig goes here.
you missed...
National Electronic Research and Defense Service
acronym: a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also : an abbreviation (as FBI) formed from initial letters
This is the War Room!
Best Slashdot Co
And did anyone else immediately hear "United Network Command for Law Enforcement" ??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
...we use punctuation. We also capitalize the letter 'I' when it's used as a noun.
Beotch.
brought you the war on terror.
"military task force used to attack the electronic infrastructure of their opponents."
This will be great if we ever get another leader here who has the balls to "defend America" against an enemy who can afford an electronic infrastructure. Oh wait they said attack, not defend.
I miss the good old days, when we were the good guys, or at the very least tried to be.
C.
"Doctor, it's not the voices I hear in MY head, but the voices I hear in YOUR head that really frighten me."
...this is slashdot after all!
Command Line Infantry
Farking Secret Computer Knerds.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If it's phone accessible, then it's likely to be accessible over the Internet thanks to voice over IP.
I wonder about this man. I think he cannot be trusted. His lack of knowlage about this issue is relative to the amount of security covering it up. It just fits to good....
We all dance, we all sing.
-The Streets
Pretty much anything you can plug in and break by non explosive traditionally military means seems to fit their definition. Like when ChoicePoint was 'hacked' and it turned out that they were defrauded of assets just like any other scam cyber or not.
lol that joke must have went over my head. Like I said... maybe monday has me retarded :) I still don't get it but ah well.
wich one would win it?
"suck my cock" or "suck my aol cd"
im cumming x1000 just thinking of it
See, you have the wrong viewpoint to be associated with this U.S. administration. "Preemptive intervention" means that to defend, you've got to attack.
I would like to welcome our new military overlords
I thought it was Technology Without an Interesting Name...?
Then compare that to the number of compromised Apache systems.That may be so, but it still takes the carpenter to build the barn.
The jackass cannot. He can only break it.Why would he assume that? I can see him designing a barn without paying much attention to fire control, if fire control was not a stated requirement. But a jackass wouldn't even be able to get the barn built.That's possible. But it still gets back to needing a carpenter because the jackass cannot build the barn.Nope.
First - you'd have to identify which sites were used by the terrorists. How do you do that?
Well, you'd have to know some terrorists or terrorist supporters and monitor their communications.
But since you know the identities of those people, why go to the time/expense of training elite military cracker teams? Why not just have an agent work for the ISP feeding the site that those people use for email?
One agent with a sniffer at the ISP can do a LOT more than dozens of crackers in a cave.
And that is the problem we're having with our current Intelligence operations. We are spending time and money on electronic means rather than getting PEOPLE into the sites where they can find the information.
The terrorists are not restricted by that. Since they don't have unlimited funding, they have to use people in critical junctions. Which is why a few of them were able to crash planes into our buildings.
We could do SO much better by spending $1million on recruiting more mid-eastern agents and sending them to tech support school and setting them up a "sleepers" in the region's ISP's than we will ever do with a cave full of geeks with Matrix delusions.
Hey does any of this hacker stuff work against box cutters?
I think we could use something like that considering the attacks in the past.
"I'll bust his head in!" -M. K. Gandhi
I'll believe it's not an acronym when you can tell me what it is. It's not an abbrev., so if it's not AA, what is it?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Rodents of Unsual Size? I don't think they exist. Yep.. another shameless Princess Bride quote.
Quite honestly, I've never heard somebody call "Housing and Urban Development" hud. HUD is Heads Up Display. Wouldn't you be confused if someone came up to you and said "Yeah, there's so much new HUD going on around here these days."
a unit called the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or NAMBLA
I think you only hear it in reference to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Likewise, "HUD" in that sense is really only used "inside the beltway" and by commentators on federal government stuff (yawn).
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Interestingly enough, it's not actually either:
2
The word TWAIN is not an acronym. It comes from a quote from Rudyard Kipling's "The Ballad of East and West" - "...and never the twain shall meet...". It is meant to symbolise the problems of connecting scanners and PC's at the time. The upper case was used to make it more distinctive and this gives it the appearance of an acronym.
A contest was held to find a potential meaning for the acronym but eventually, none were used. "Technology Without An Interesting Name" was one of the entries and has been adopted by popular culture.
(Source: http://www.twain.org/ )
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=93885
Gaaahhh, I had almost successfully purged those memories with liquor and pr0n. Curse you!
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
U.S. Military hackers - is an oxymoron... almost as funny as "Military intelligence"
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com
According to the Chicago Manual of Style's FAQ, it's an initialism:
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
Okay, now does anyone else agree with them? I'm fine with calling it that if there is consensus...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Attack when you're strong
Defend when you're weak.
Simple, yet effective.
How about M.C.N.U.G.G.E.T.
Millitant Chicken Guerella Guys Enlisted Together
-Foxxz
UBER - Undercover Bureau of Electronic Ramifications
DOOM - Department Of Online Moderateration
NERDS - Network of Electronic and Retroactive Data Secruty
IRAA - Internet Reconstruction Agency of America
- space and global strike
- intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance
- integrated missile defense
- combating weapons of mass destruction
You have no idea what you're talking about!Second, who cares if there's consensus or not? If what he wrote is correct, he's right. Consensus doesn't make something right or wrong, just accepted.
That should be: Command Line Infanty Team. I would know, I'm the commander.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
... the worlds biggest ddos kiddie group!
I am a United States citizen. As a citizen of this country I enjoy several freedoms that I may occasionally take forgranted, and at other times I may even feel go too far. These freedoms are what I value most about my country and what I would like to export to the rest of the world. These freedoms include the Freedom of Speech, the Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Religion.
It bothers me that our country would in any way shape or form interfere with these rights no matter where the people are from - regardless of the position their own country has on these issues our country should never - ever interfer with anything that approaches free expression of these values!
I know war is "different." That sometimes we need to interfere with the enemy's communication to their people in the field. That today this may mean that the military requires "hackers" to work the internet - or that the NSA may need to have supercomputers that "read" the traffic on the internet. But that does not give us carte blanch to hack or DOS websites that say even hateful things about the United States.
When we interfere with these things we are attacking the very things that we stand for. That is wrong.
I have a serious problem with orginizations like the KKK - but even they still have the right to express their views - even if it is venom! The same really has to go for Al-Queda if we are going to "practice what we preach."
I've served my country. I did so precisely because I believe in the freedoms that we have. In all honesty, I want the world to share these freedoms. If I didn't, I would have never served.
Say what you want, but we have to tread lightly when we interfere with freedom anywhere on the globe (and in cyberspace too). If we don't, we are not the people we think we are.
JFCCNW would technically be considered an initialism, not an acronym...
Yes, and when it comes to language, being accepted makes something right.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm talking about rules of style, which have no place here on slashdot. Discussing them is, however, somewhat geeky when viewed from a certain point of view -- such as mine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
or the National Online Operations and Battle Services
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
"The best defense is a good offence"
-Mel, the cook from Alice
How about calling it "SlashNuke" and hiring the slashdot crowd to do the actual hacking?
I am actually kind of suprised you haven't heard of HUD as "Housing and Urban Development"
While I have heard of HUD as heads up display - I'm pretty sure the Housing and Urban Development expansion of the acronym predates any existance of Heads Up Display.
It's always interesting to see how different backgrounds can effect the interpretation of language.