Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

U.S. Military's Hackers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the lots-of-salary dept.

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."

42 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Worst. Acronym. Ever. by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. army's new slogan by poison_reverse · · Score: 5, Funny

    an army of one's and zero's

    --
    _+_+__+_+_+_+_+_+_+++
    when i moo u moo - just like that
  3. Restrictions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Restrictions? by Aeiri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  4. Revealing (and scary) line from TFA by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.
    1. Re:Revealing (and scary) line from TFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

    2. Re:Revealing (and scary) line from TFA by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

    3. Re:Revealing (and scary) line from TFA by mestreBimba · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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!

      --
      Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
  5. article correction by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

    --
    vodka, straight up, thank you!
  6. Primary tatic by SpongeBobLinuxPants · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  7. Bring down your enemy by rob_levine · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Masterful...

  8. I can see the recruitment ads now... by edunbar93 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  9. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How about Worldwide Online Operations Team ?

  10. SAMs? by lachlan76 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:SAMs? by Der+Krazy+Kraut · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  11. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by jwthompson2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  12. Slashdot them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Couldn't we just /. them into submission?

  13. We gotta protect you from IDEAS! by disposable60 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  14. The best defense by wiredog · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
    1. Re:The best defense by TheWizardOfCheese · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "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.

      --

      "The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
  15. Re:Script Kiddies in Uniform by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    --
    Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  16. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by KillerDeathRobot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Homeland Agency for the eXecution and eXtermination of Our Rivals?

    --
    Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
  17. Great by lbmouse · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  18. Re:SAMs? or Coke machines and printers oh my ... by mrseigen · · Score: 4, Funny

    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."

  19. Joint...? that sounds bound for failure by ajnsue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  20. Re:Script Kiddies in Uniform by Quixote · · Score: 5, Funny
    the main task of JFCCNW is to bring down websites....

    ... just like Slashdot ;-)

  21. This group uses PowerBooks by riversky · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  22. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by ggvaidya · · Score: 4, Funny

    Freedom's Special Computer Knights

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

  23. Ummm, yes by wiredog · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  24. The real threat.... by mestreBimba · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
  25. The Hardest Part by EQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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
  26. I wonder if these were the guys... by 0kComputer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  27. Beware the assumption that network means by wiredog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  28. Sarge, I Wanna Hack! HACK!! HA-A-A-A-CK!!! by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Funny

    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."

  29. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by __aamcgs2220 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  30. Outside sources... by Kjuib · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  31. Culture clash? by identity0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  32. Fatal flaw by RichardX · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  33. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  34. Mod parent down-malicious code in sig by JLavezzo · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  35. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by FinalCut · · Score: 4, Informative

    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)

  36. Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever. by Zemplar · · Score: 5, Funny

    you missed...
    National Electronic Research and Defense Service