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."

Comments

Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[TripMaster Monkey]

From the article:

Military leaders from U.S. Strategic Command, or Stratcom, disclosed the existence of a unit called the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or JFCCNW.

"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.

army's new slogan

[poison_reverse]

an army of one's and zero's

Restrictions?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if there will be restrictions on security patches during war-time?

Re:Restrictions?

[Aeiri]

You don't just call in sick and not patch it just because its war-time. Heck its war-time right now and I am seeing Microsoft release patches left and right.

On the other hand if you are imaginging an situation like world war, and you are worried about your stupid windows having no patches, then here is a tip - get a life, find a bunker.

I don't think you got the point of his post...

I think what he was trying to say was, since the military has a team of hackers, will the US restrict security patches during war time so that the enemy can't have secure computers, and make it easy for the military to attack them electronically.

Revealing (and scary) line from TFA

[Daniel Dvorkin]

"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!

Re:Revealing (and scary) line from TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

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


Are you kidding? The Bush administration's attention to details like computer security is EXACTLY why we caught Bin Laden!

Oh, wait.

Re:Revealing (and scary) line from TFA

[LnxAddct]

Well considering the levels of encryption that al-Qaeda and North Korea use and the number of laptops that are found in many terrorist hiding areas or even in the place where the terrorists responsible for 9/11 resided, I wouldn't scoff at the value of having access to their networks. It is a known fact that terrorists use PGP encryption and it's creator has written a few times about his feelings on this and distributing it for free. In the end he has always, thankfully, decided that freedom for our privacy outweighs any evil intentions that others may have. (That is an extremely rough paraphrase)
Regards,
Steve

Re:Revealing (and scary) line from TFA

[mestreBimba]

You miss the real threat. The real threat is not in taking down an enemy military's command structure, but in disabling the whole country's infastructure and subsequently crashing the whole economy.

What is the economic impact of hacking a nations power grid and bringing it down? Crashing the process control on oil and other chemical refineries. With the correct techniques you can bring down the power grid, the phone system, cause toxic chemical releases.... the list goes on and on.

In economies where most process control is now digital and the in place protection for such SCADA networks rely on security through obscurity, the ability to bring a nations economy to ruins is not far fetched.....

Think bigger!

Script Kiddies in Uniform

[Flywheels of Fire]

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.

Re:Script Kiddies in Uniform

[ScentCone]

Script Kiddies in Uniform

I don't think you'd want these people using all of their resources to attack your network. Script kiddies, they're not.

And a good way to spend millions of taxpayer money.

Yup, because the bad guys are doing exactly the same thing. And you'll never have a better bunch of people to work on countering that sort of stuff than the people who have done a stint entirely focused on causing damage elsewhere. Who would you want taking a new job working on infrastructure protection: the kid right out of IT school, or the guy who's been working without any distraction or budget tightwaddedness who's just spent the last two years thinking up every way he can to crack and damage networks, content, databases, and more?

Re:Script Kiddies in Uniform

[Quixote]

the main task of JFCCNW is to bring down websites....

... just like Slashdot ;-)

article correction

[Triumph The Insult C]

the article refers to the JFCCNW as being the "... most formibidable hacker posse. Ever."

looks like www.jfccnw.mil is offline ... so maybe the editors need to take anothNO CARRIER

Primary tatic

[SpongeBobLinuxPants]

Dear Habib,
My name is Akmar and I have just inherited $3 million, but it is stuck in a US bank account....

Bring down your enemy

[rob_levine]

Don't tell me - they are going to remotely deploy WinXP Service Pack 2 on the enemy's network?

Masterful...

I can see the recruitment ads now...

[edunbar93]

b3 4ll j00 c4N B3!

J01n t3h 4RmY! T1s 133t!

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Worldwide Online Operations Team ?

SAMs?

[lachlan76]

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?

Re:SAMs?

[Der Krazy Kraut]

All that stuff don't neccesarily have to be connected to the internet. They could always bring some specialists behind the front lines who hack it on site or set up a relay of some kind so it can be accessed from behind the front lines.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[jwthompson2]

Freedom's Special Computer Knights

Slashdot them...

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't we just /. them into submission?

We gotta protect you from IDEAS!

[disposable60]

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.

Re:We gotta protect you from IDEAS!

[disposable60]

I deplore those sites as much as anyone, but ugly as they are, apart from the evangelizing, they're not that terribly different from rotten.com, stileproject.com or the _Faces of Death_ videos that have been around for a couple of decades.

Mission creep is the normal tendency of agencies assigned to protect us, especially given an opportunity to dress it up in moralizing sanctimony.

We're certainly ones to talk, the way we flood the planet with games and movies about violent and bloody vengance, or just bloody violence, for entertainment's sake. Or is it OK if it's done in order to make a buck?

Shut down the ones over which you have legitimate jurisdiction. Agitate the proper jurisdictions to shut down the others.

Ooh!

[Esine]

Command Line Soldiers!

National insecurity & militarization of the ne

[G4from128k]

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.

Perhaps the day will come when the government deploys .mil computers to DDoS offending servers of phisher, spammers, etc.

The best defense

[wiredog]

is a good offense. Also, if you know how to attack, you also know how to defend.

Re:The best defense

[gnuman99]

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?

Re:The best defense

[TheWizardOfCheese]

"The best defense is a good offense" is just a trite saying - it's not handed down from God or anything, you know. Of course there are many cases where aggression is the winning policy, but history also contains many contrary examples. Defense can be the best offense at the tactical, operational, or strategic level - wars have been won without winning a single battle.

On the other hand, professional military people are inherently biased toward offense, not merely because of their training, but because they tend to be aggressive people by nature (self-selection.) Sometimes this has caused them to serve there countries poorly. Two examples will suffice:

1) Convoy
Britain learned by bitter experience during the 16th through 18th centuries that the surest way to reduce shipping loses due to enemy action was convoy. Convoy was effective even when there were no escorts! Yet by the advent of the first world war, this knowledge was somehow forgotten or neglected. Individual captains with fast ships did not want to participate in slow convoys which they believed would make them more vulnerable. The navy approved of this view because they preferred to spend their resources actively, in a futile scouring of the endless seas, rather than passively, in protecting what was really important. Merchantmen were allowed their freedom, and the result was nearly disasterous: the U-boat campaign of the first world war came much closer to starving Britain than did that of the second. The situation was only retrieved by implementing convoy.

2) Battlecruisers
A famous example of "offense is the best defense" gone wrong. The idea of a battlecruiser was a ship with the armament of a battleship but the speed of a cruiser, maximizing the tactical qualities of movement and firepower. As this was achieved by reducing armour, the resulting ship was cheaper as well! It was a very popular idea with the naval theorists. But the battleship was a system, in which guns and armour functioned together. As Jutland demonstrated incontrovertibly, a battlecruiser could not survive in an environment with battleships, but it was not as useful for screening fleets as the several smaller cruisers it replaced.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[KillerDeathRobot]

Homeland Agency for the eXecution and eXtermination of Our Rivals?

US Military hackers...

[northcat]

And everyone keeps complaining about chinese or russian militaries using hackers.

Great

[lbmouse]

Geeks in uniforms. Isn't best Buy already trying this?

Re:SAMs? or Coke machines and printers oh my ...

[mrseigen]

TERRIST A: "This coke is warm"
TERRIST B: "My morale lies in tatters on the open road, for without the crisp cool taste of Coca Cola I cannot plot these evil acts."

Joint...? that sounds bound for failure

[ajnsue]

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.

This group uses PowerBooks

[riversky]

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.

Re:This group uses PowerBooks

[Salo2112]

Because using Windows on the internet is like riding a bicycle into a firefight.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[ggvaidya]

Freedom's Special Computer Knights

They're French?? I thought they were American!

Ummm, yes

[wiredog]

If you don't know the characteristics of those things, and how they are use in an attack, then you don't know how to defend against them. And how do gain that knowledge? By building and testing icbm's, cruise missiles, bioweapons, etc.

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.

The real threat....

[mestreBimba]

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.

The Hardest Part

[EQ]

... 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).

Re:The Hardest Part

[Mz6]

You hit the nail right on the head.

As a contractor living and working at Offutt AFB in Nebraska, this is by far the hardest part. If you can obtain a security clearance for some of the top level accesses, you are almost guaranteed a job especially for things such as this. Defense companies will pay top dollar for those people that have/can obtain clearances and will pay huge referral bonuses if you can refer friends to jump on board as well (up to $10,000 depending on that person's clearance).

I was lucky enough that I was able to intern with a Defense contractor in Nebraska who paid for all my clearances, my schooling and once I graduated I was offered and accepted a full time position.

The only downside is that your work is based on contracts. Many Defense contractor companies have high turnovers rates because their employees will jump on with the company that is either prime or a sub-contractor on a specific contract.

I wonder if these were the guys...

[0kComputer]

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/

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[QuantumRiff]

Whats wrong with People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms? Is it that hard?

Beware the assumption that network means

[wiredog]

"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.

Sarge, I Wanna Hack! HACK!! HA-A-A-A-CK!!!

[RobotRunAmok]

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."

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[__aamcgs2220]

How about Forcefully Undulating Computer Killers with Totally Awesome Reconnaisance Devices in Zimbabwe?

Re:JFCCNW

[Craig_P92669]

Sadly, the best geeks will never make it to this group because of the pushup requirements.

Outside sources...

[Kjuib]

have been known for calling them Worldwide Technical Fighters...
WTF?.. WTF?...

Culture clash?

[identity0]

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?

Fatal flaw

[RichardX]

The only thing the enemy would need to employ to completely overwhelm and undermine this army of nerds would be..... a female.

Re:Top Secret?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Call me a skeptic but that sounds a little far-fetched. Figuring out exactly where a printer was going to be sent within the Iraqi government would be very difficut. Making sure that the printer got plugged into a system that also had access to the military command & control systems would also be a stretch. Then there's also timing - you wouldn't want the virus/worm/trojan to trigger too early or it could be detected & removed. But it would also need enough time to do its job effectively, which would be very difficult to calculate ahead of time unless you knew EXACTLY what systems to target, how to get into them, etc. Either you would have to determine the date/time to start the war far enough ahead of time to put together the bogus printer, ship it to Iraq, and let them install it, or the printer would have to be regularly checking with the outside world for a message to trigger the payload. The first approach would again be unreasonable. The second would depend on this system having access to the outside world and this behavior could be detected. Besides, what happens if the printer or the computer it's connected to happened to be powered off at the appropriate time?

Personally I'm more inclined ot believe the story told by a former member of the British SAS in the book Bravo Two Zero. It describes how SAS teams were sent into Iraq in the days before the war started. Their mission was to identify and destroy communications lines. The Iraqi's realized that radio could be intercepted so they relied on land-lines quite a bit. So destroy the land-lines and your command & control infrastructure is screwed.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Mod parent down-malicious code in sig

[JLavezzo]

The Perl code in [Gob Blesh It]'s sig is a recursive delete.
Mod him down. Script Kiddie deserves no Karma.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[FinalCut]

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)

SlashCommand

[RedLaggedTeut]

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.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[jotok]

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 :)

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[Zemplar]

you missed...
National Electronic Research and Defense Service