US Planning Response To a Cyber Attack

We've all heard of Google bombing; the US Government may be taking the expression rather literally. Planning is now underway across the government for the proper way to respond to a cyber attack, and options on the table include launching a cyber counterattack or even bombing the attack's source. The article makes clear that no settled plan is in place, and quotes one spokesman as saying "the preferred route would be warning the source to shut down the attack before a military response." That's assuming the source could be found. From the article: "If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nations critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source."

Comments

Bombs? That's ok...

[Black Parrot]

I didn't want those zombied servers anyway.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

A few bombings ought to move people off Windows.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[anagama]

Finally a reason (aside from erroneous child porn prosecution) to do something about all those compromised machines. If people thought the police might bust down their door to stop their computer from doing illegal things, they might think about being more responsible. Considering the damage an unattended compromised pc can do, it really is surprising that people don't face liability. If you keep a dangerous instrumentality on your property, and it causes damage to others, you are liable for that if the harm is foreseeable. Considering how the news has been peppered with these stories about compromised pcs causing people problems(*), the harm is now foreseeable.

(*) A total non-geek person I know brought up that AZ child porn case to me in conversation and mentioned she thinks her machine is probably compromised too.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[koreaman]

What porn case??

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[paeanblack]

If you keep a dangerous instrumentality on your property, and it causes damage to others, you are liable for that if the harm is foreseeable.

That is only true if all responsible parties are held to a reasonable level of accountability.

If you found out that your oven was, without your knowledge, part of a local arson ring, you'd be pretty upset a being held accountable for the neighborhood damages. You'd probably blame Kenmore for making such a thing remotely possibly in the first place, since it has no connection with how or why you bought the oven in the first place.

Until the hardware mfgrs, OS mfgrs, software mfgrs, and users are all held to roughly similar standards, you can't place all blame on the user.

To put things a different way:
-If 1% of your products cause widespread damage, then 1% of your users are idiots.
-If 5% of your products cause widespread damage, then 5% of your users need training.
-If 25% of your products cause widespread damage, then you are the idiot.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Alligator427]

Along the same lines, it has always irked me that (the government) has never considered approaching Microsoft about the severe security flaws to which it's software is subject. Certainly if the most popular operating system in the world were less morbidly insecure, botnets and the like but be far fewer between. After all, these botnets aren't being built out of *NIX machines, so we're really talking about MS software.

I think a certain amount of responsibility lies on the endusers shoulders insofar as they should be expected not to compromise their own machines, but when you get your brand new windows PC it is vulnerable out of the box. It seems to me like microsoft is selling a consumer product that represents a great potential for illegal/malignant misuse, that most consumers are largely unaware of beyond "If I don't install virus-protection software I will get adware on my machine".

I've always found it wildly absurd that no real authority has ever stepped up to microsoft and made them do something about the woeful state of their OS in terms of security. It seems like one of the best responses that we could have to such attacks it to force Microsoft to mend its ways, if at all possible. If not, at the very least, produce some kind of government-issued label as used in cigarrete boxes to indicate to the consumer that "this product is wildly insecure and if you use it, small children will vomit on your shoes". At least in that case you could pass some of the responsibility on the end user.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, 'bombs' - so very American...

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[flyingfsck]

A Class Action lawsuit about knowingly selling defective goods, would certainly be a good idea and would be just as truly American a solution as bombing all houses with compromized Windows PCs...

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[StikyPad]

True, but if 100% of your products cause widespread damage, you get a seat at the UN Security Council.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[innocent_white_lamb]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/15/23 55233

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[cryocide]

Your scenario is a little off, since your oven can't walk out of the house and burn someone else's house down. Let's try a more realistic scenario.

You buy a new drive-by-wire car. Then either of the following happens: You forego the option to park your car in a readily-available garage and a terrorist quietly breaks into it, or you simply take the car to a garage that you thought was reputable because of its professional-looking store front but was in fact a terrorist-run shop. Either way, they had their way with your car, installing hidden remote controls on the drive-by-wire system. Then they install a bomb using any available space, such as the empty body panels, inside the seats, etc. They can now damage or destroy any bridge they like, but you never knew what they did to your car, so you went on with life as usual. Then they did it to other owners' cars around town that were similarly vulnerable to compromise or social engineering.

Now for the best-case-scenario version of the outcome. We'll assume that the bridge is unoccupied, so there is no human life lost when they take your car and all the other zombie cars on their final joy ride, but the bridge is damaged and has to be closed while its structural integrity is assessed. Meanwhile, traffic has to be rerouted or stopped altogether. People can't get to work. Goods can't be delivered. The general population is afraid that there will be another attack, possibly trapping them in their neighborhood.

Now imagine that the cars were your computer and all the other zombie machines out there, the home garage was a simple NAT router or decent software firewall or the repair shop was a software package that contained malware, and the bridge was any major server or router that a decent-sized portion of the internet population relies on for day-to-day electronic transactions.

Do you really think it was the car manufacturer's fault that you left the car unprotected, or worse, you handed the keys to an untrustworthy mechanic because he had a professional-looking shop? While I don't think the car's owner should be held criminally responsible, I think they unknowingly forfeited the car when they ignored their responsibility to keep it reasonably secure. Don't be surprised if the government starts fragging driverless cars once they've identified them.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[IdleTime]

You are right! USA is a member of the Security Council!

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[wordsnyc]

Now imagine that the cars were your computer and all the other zombie machines out there, the home garage was a simple NAT router or decent software firewall or the repair shop was a software package that contained malware, and the bridge was any major server or router that a decent-sized portion of the internet population relies on for day-to-day electronic transactions.

Damn. For a minute there I thought you were working up a great analogy about neutering house pets.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[anagama]

That is only true if all responsible parties are held to a reasonable level of accountability.

That's where the key word "foreseeable" comes into play. The basic standard is that if a reasonable person could foresee the potential damage, a person who's property caused that damage will be held accountable. There's a lot of wiggle room in the words "foreseeable" and "reasonable person". Personally, I think there has been enough publicity about security problems that it is foreseeable that a PC could be compromised if no measures were taken to protect it. What constitutes "reasonable measures" is of course, open to debate.

Then of course, "reasonable person" has it's own issues. Are we talking about any idiot or do we expect people to do a minimal level of research for products they buy? I would argue it is the latter. If a person were to store a cistern of acid on their property, it would be reasonable to hold them to a standard of "reasonableness" that would apply to people who regularly deal with acid storage. If the cistern corroded, leaked, and destroyed part of a neighboring nursery's stock -- I think it's really clear the nursery could sue the person storing the acid if he/she didn't employ the standard means of protecting against leakage. Similarly, if a person brings a dangerous piece of electronics on to their property, and unleashes it on the rest of the world, should they not be held to a basic standard of care with respect to that machine?

Honestly, I don't know how it would play out, but it would make a very interesting case.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

-If 25% of your products cause widespread damage, then you are the idiot.

If 60-75% of your products cause widespread damage then I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU! [throws chair]

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[cheater512]

They could make all new computers give warnings on the packaging about the threat of a unprotected computer.
Then the user would have to be responsible for any damages.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[JonathanR]

People with Aero Glass Windows shouldn't throw...

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[c6gunner]

Well, for one thing, prosecuting every single person whose computer has been infected with a trojan would pretty much bankrupt the US, and put most of your population, including all of your politicians, in Jail. Might not be such a bad thing, really...

Anyway, it'd be pointless to prosecute these people is because the vast majority of compromised machines aren't even IN any western nation. Every script kiddie knows that if you really want a bot-net, you scan Asian IP's. When I was 15 I had 2,400 Korean computers running seti@home :) I don't think there's a single computer in that whole country that isn't infected with something.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[tsm_sf]

Your scenario is a little off, since your oven can't walk out of the house and burn someone else's house down. Let's try a more realistic scenario.

You buy a new drive-by-wire car.

You can tell right there it's going to be a good analogy.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the damage an unattended compromised pc can do, it really is surprising that people don't face liability. If you keep a dangerous instrumentality on your property, and it causes damage to others, you are liable for that if the harm is foreseeable.

The biggest problem is that a single unattended compromised pc can't do that much damage (and any damage it can do is as much the fault of the pc receiving the damage). It's only when you have tens of thousands of unattended compromised pcs that essentially unavoidable "damage" can be done (a DDOS attack is reasonably difficult to stop). But at that point there isn't really much you can do. Are you going to sue 10,000 people for running compromised pcs? Put 10,000 otherwise innocent people in jail because they didn't install a service pack?

I guess the only possibility left is to blame the software manufacturers (read Microsoft). This would be interesting, and I can't really predict what would happen. To use an analogy, if 10 people misprogram their fax machines to dial 911, you put the liability on them. If 100,000 people misprogram their fax machines to dial 911, you put the liability on the manufacturer of the fax machine.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Evilest Doer]

A few bombings ought to move people off Windows.

We can even have clippy riding the Blue Bomb of Death down to the bomb site while screaming "Ye-Haw!"

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[sumdumass]

Thats because the US made the council. Look at those added to it after it was made. they are the one who "get a seat"

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[sumdumass]

Yes, It the item is capable of causing serious damage or bodily harm, the manufacturer has an obligation to secure it from non intented actions.

Look at all the warnings placed on products. The have to tell you when something can go wrong and if installing remote control devices on something that can cause death isn't intended, they need to warn you that A, it can be done and B, how to avoid it. The warning labels on products attemtp to do just this. Imagine a picture of a person cutting a tree branch with a chain saw, now imaging them sitting on side of the branch that will fall and there is a circle with a red line though it signifing not to do this. I actualy saw this in the manual of a new chainsaw.

But it isn't that people aren't stupid in every case. It is that they don't have the ability to think every scenario thru. So even common sence for dangerous products need to be warned about or steps taken to ensure the product is safe enough not to be used in that way. Almost any comercialy made flyby wire has the ability to check the circut path and determin faults before it happens. Most of them use coded signals to transim the sensor reading and corections so that regular interferance cannot cause it to go haywire. We can bring your scenario to life in real life in real time with most comercial jets. Suppose a mechanic working at antlanta international airport was a terrorist and got through the background checks and all. He installed this same remote control device on a jet and caused it to take out the bridge. First, it is not likley to happen because the manufacturer took steps to test the integrity of the fly by wire system. They also took steps to check the autopilot systems too. And if they didn't, it wouldn't be "safe" to use. It would eb the naufacturers fault if it failed.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[DerekLyons]

A Class Action lawsuit about knowingly selling defective goods,

You'd have a hard time under the law proving that Microsoft knowingly sold defective goods.
 
You'd first have to show, under the law, that Microsoft (and by extention Windows) was responsible for providing for security in the first place. You'd have to prove, under the law, that Microsoft was responsible for the actions of the users (in clicking yes where the shouldn't) that cause harm, and was responsible for the failure of users to take proactive measures of their own (like installing Firefox and Zone Alarm).
 
It's not as trival or simple as the Slashdot community would like it to be.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

... or worse, you handed the keys to an untrustworthy mechanic because he had a professional-looking shop?

And of course you're such a smart son of a bitch that you know how to vet your mechanic to be sure he's free of any terrorist connections. And your TV and computer repairmen, as well as anyone else who might have unsupervised access to anything you own.

Kiss my ass -- you're nothing but an arrogant blowhard. Put your silly ideas back up your ass where they belong.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[RMH101]

throttle by wire is common: VW golfs have had this since 2000/2001 and i'm presuming so do all Audis/Skodas/Seats and probably many more. brake by wire's getting common and steer by wire's coming from Honda shortly...

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[CmdrGravy]

Yes, almost. I think a slightly different analogy might be this.

Imagine you buy a new Au-Pair, you take her back to your house and install her in new room and you're impressed by how pretty she is and how she seems to always do almost what you wanted her to.

In day to day use to start with she's fine, a good all round performer and you've certainly no regrets, you even consider writing a letter to her manufacturer expressing the pleasure you get from using her new curvier interfaces.

But at night, it's a different story. Whilst you're tucked up in your bed asleep your new Au Pair is brazenly walking the streets in the less salubrious parts of town. She is openly advertising her assets and happy to let anyone mount her who comes along so it's not surprising that a lot of nefarious types take cruel advantage of her accomodating nature.

This double life takes it toll, tired by her nocturnal activities she is sluggish and listless when you work her during the day. She is prone to random outbursts and a short temper but you simply attribute this to her foreigness and assume they always degrade like this.

All is going well until one day you get a knock on the door from the FBI who arrest you for the activities of your Au Pair who is now heavily involved in sabotage and espionage activities during the night.

I admit you're analogy is probably longer than mine ( which I realise is directly related to it's brilliance ) but none the less I think I have indicated perfectly how you be quite within your rights to sue the supplier of your Au Pair for the damage she has caused rather than take the rap yourself.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[CmdrGravy]

throttle by wire is common Indeed, I believe it's know as garrotting.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

huh ? i thought that microsoft owned the OS of the compromised PC,s as stated in the EULA so it seems to me that they would be liable and not the owner of the hardware as it cant do anything without an OS

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[walt-sjc]

It's time to start forcing ISP's do do something about the massive botnet's on their networks, and install technology to automatically identify and block hosts that are actively participating in a DOS or spam run. No, it's not cheap, and it's not easy, but it needs to be done. The amount of portscanning going on is incredible. Looking at firewall statistics, it's amazing to see how many compromised hosts pound on you day after day, weeks at a time. There was one such host that has been portscanning my network for nearly a YEAR.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[elrous0]

Jeez, as an American, I have to ask "Can't we have just ONE day where we DON'T blow anything up?"

-Eric

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[kabocox]

Do you really think it was the car manufacturer's fault that you left the car unprotected, or worse, you handed the keys to an untrustworthy mechanic because he had a professional-looking shop? While I don't think the car's owner should be held criminally responsible, I think they unknowingly forfeited the car when they ignored their responsibility to keep it reasonably secure. Don't be surprised if the government starts fragging driverless cars once they've identified them.

Yes, it would be either the manufacturers or the governments fault. ;) How is a consumer supposed to know a "fake" garage that looks exactly like a "real" garage and performs the same exact service? I'd say it'd be upto the government not the manufacturer to secure against this. All the manufacturer could do is keep a database of mechanics around the nation and the car could automatically drive to any one of those mechanics for service without the owners knowledge. (That's how computers work.) Most of us would be pissed if our car left without us telling it to or using any gas to drive there. We'd notice that. Well, if car could only be maintained at one of the manufacturer's mechanics then it'd be on that party if one of their contracted third party mechanic was a long term terrorist cell.

I'm not on this BS blaming the user. We are just now entering an era where anyone can comment on the service of any company and anyone else can easily find those opinions out. How would I know if my local McDonalds wasn't a McDonalds but run by Dr. Terror and he's been feeding me mind control drugs/ads whenever I eat there? It's the same basic concept. I as individual can't "know." I'd hope that the FBI, CIA, or NSA stops Dr. Terror before I'm mind controlled (Ghost in the Shell anyone) to be either a mad bomber, sniper, or commit random acts of terror. If the government doesn't know or find out about Dr. Terror until after I or other mind controlled masses start causing mayhem, it's a bit late. That's our modern spyware, adware, virus pattern except replace government with "freelance" anti-spyware, anti-ad, or anti-virsus companies.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[cryocide]

Well, I suppose I should have used "free service" in my analogy in addition to "a professional-looking shop," since that's what most people get suckered into on the internet. It's not that people need to do background checks on the websites per se. They need to watch out for suspicious offers from people who don't have an established good reputation.

Free music? Free porn? Free versions of commercially-available games or even productivity software? That's like going to a shop offering "free brake job" out of the kindness of their hearts.

Yeah, the mechanic analogy wasn't complete. I'll admit that.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[Jonnty]

It looks like you're trying to bomb a small country...

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[mr100percent]

China used to behead drivers who broke the traffic laws, and displayed them in the city center. It cut back on car accidents and infractions.

A little drastic, don't you think?

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[IdleTime]

man, you are dumber than the average American. Read up on UN and the security council. USA did not create it, you moron,

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[sumdumass]

Really? How does it feel when a dumber then average american sets you straight?

The UN was formed by the allies who won WW2. The founding permenant memebers were Britain, China, the Soviet Union, the United States and eventualy france. This was decided before the UN or the security council officialy existed. Those countries made the security council and the US is one of them. They made it so they are on it. getting a seat indecates a priviledge of being allowed, this isn't the case with the countries I mentioned.

And I would suggest that you read up on the UN and the security council so you don't continue looking like a moron when correcting people. Maybe after you do that, you can also look into the coruption that the other countries have brought to it and then you can try to give it some viagra to fix it's impotence problem. If there ever was a poster child for abortion of an entity, The UN would get the job.

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[IdleTime]

LOL here is one with reading problems..

He said that USA created it. No, it was not USA but as you said several countries. DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[sumdumass]

No there isn't a difference. Briton created it, russia created it, USA created it, It is all interchangable. It is materialisticly the same. Or are you implying that without any of the other countries, it never would have been created?

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[aliquis]

No, blowing things up is that you do in a civilized country. ... or wait ;)

Re:Bombs? That's ok...

[aliquis]

Why would I be responsible for what someone else does? 100% BS in all cases, blame the one who actually did something wrong, it's not wrong to run Windows.. or well, a little maybe, but only to yourself! :D

botnet

[TheSHAD0W]

I wonder what their response would be to the attack of a botnet. Carpet bombing, maybe?

Re:botnet

[Cyberax]

Nuclear arms, of course :) The ultimate solution for spam and cyberattacks.

Re: botnet

[Black Parrot]

> I wonder what their response would be to the attack of a botnet.

Good thing the story isn't on a DoD site, or Slashdot might get some retaliatory cruise missiles.

Re:botnet

[tomhudson]

Hey, its one way to get rid of spammers ...

Quick, everyone add a bunch of anyone@pentagon.mil and someone@whitehouse.gov addresses to your posts for spam address harvesters.

Re:botnet

[ghstomahawks]

Of course not! Our government would release a counter-virus to infect the computers that attack, in effect hijacking the botnet for it's own purposes. It would then launch a massive distributed computing effort to aid in the creation of one collective government database containing all the information it has about any citizen. This of course would make all the information available to the poor souls whose computers were "recruited" to the effort.

*wild applause*

Re:botnet

[CRCulver]

Wasn't the Internet designed to work around nuclear destruction?

Re:botnet

[Kpt Kill]

en
int fa0/15
shut

Re:botnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Originally, yes. Due to the current economics though, multiple redundant locations are... redundant and gotten rid of for cost reasons.

Re:botnet

[Anonymous Coward]

All your DDoS are belong to us.

Re:botnet

[Nasarius]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#The_ARPANET_a nd_nuclear_attacks really. But rather than a "cyber attack", I'd be much more concerned about a fairly easy, inexpensive coordinated attack on the physical network infrastructure.

Re:botnet

[msobkow]

Sadly enough, they would be just that stupid. :(

Re:botnet

[mrbluze]

Depending on the location of the computers, it might be a carpet bomb, or a bunker buster if it's a teenager's PC in a basement somewhere, or if they run on expensive computers running *nix, a cluster bomb, or if it's a server farm, they might use napalm with agent orange...

Re:botnet

[mrbluze]

.. or a nude bomb if the attacker is spreading porn, or a great big armoured bulldozer to dig up a worm attack, or a bunch of soldiers with spears and shiny metal shields and stuff if it's a Trojan, or a firetruck if the enemy runs a firewall...

Re:botnet

[Deanalator]

The security on botnet nodes is normally pretty weak, so is should be feasible to just crack that node, and see who is connected to it.

Re:botnet

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd ask MS to invoke the EULA clause that allows immediate revocation of license followed by self-destruction via the integrated TNT computing module (TCM).

Re:botnet

[Shihar]

You joke, but I think people are missing the fact that bombs can stop many attacks. If for instance a nation was able to launch some massive attack that was crippling the Internet, in this world of zombied computers can't simply block everything. A true Internet crashing attack would take hundreds (thousands?) of people to pull off and you likely might be able to at least localize them to a single nation. If you felt that that nation state was directly responsible, you might very well decide to bomb an entire nation's infrastructure to the point where no one has Internet access.

The level of destruction on a nations infrastructure you would have to inflict would be horrific, but it might very well be justified. Taking out the Internet for the US, Europe, and some of Asia is just as bad as physically blowing up their power plants and cutting power. Such nations would be entirely justified to respond as if a foreign air force was bombing their infrastructure and respond in kind.

All of that said, I am a skeptic that anyone could do more then make the Internet hiccup for a few minutes before proper defenses got things running relatively smoothly again. The Internet is a pretty robust system. It will take more then a Windows Vista upgrade to make the Internet unsecured enough to be taken down.

Re:botnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine setting off an EM pulse over South Korea and knocking all those Winboxen offline. Could be a blessing in disguise, as it would force the country to rebuild its IT infrastructure and they could get away from all that ActiveX bullshit.

The only downside I can see would be total loss of electricity and infrastructure.
Oh, what the hell, It's a small price to pay for freedom(TM)

Bombs away!!

Re:botnet

[Hoi Polloi]

This is why I make sure all of my zombie systems are physically located in US government facilities.

Re:botnet

[maxwell demon]

Of course that would result in future botnet software hardening the computers they run on against other attacks.

Re:botnet

[maxwell demon]

You joke, but I think people are missing the fact that bombs can stop many attacks. If for instance a nation was able to launch some massive attack that was crippling the Internet, in this world of zombied computers can't simply block everything. A true Internet crashing attack would take hundreds (thousands?) of people to pull off and you likely might be able to at least localize them to a single nation. If you felt that that nation state was directly responsible, you might very well decide to bomb an entire nation's infrastructure to the point where no one has Internet access.

Given that cutting all connections to that country would have the same effect as far as the internet is concerned, but has no direct ill effect on any non-internet related infrastructure of the target country, I can't see how bombing could be justified even in that case.
But maybe I'm just not thinking American enough ...

Re:botnet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear arms, of course :) The ultimate solution for spam and cyberattacks.

Of course "the Internet was developed to survive a nuclear attack", according to Wikipedia's History of the Internet)

Re:botnet

[toleraen]

correction:

en
conf t
int fa0/15
shut

Re:botnet

[kv9]

If you felt that that nation state was directly responsible, you might very well decide to bomb an entire nation's infrastructure to the point where no one has Internet access.

if only they had a way to control this "cyber" attack from anywhere on the planet. some sort of globally interconnected network of computers. if al gore invents that, america is *fucked*.

Re:botnet

[Shihar]

Read what I wrote. I already addressed that any attack would come from a bot net. For any sustained attack though you can't just leave your bot net on autopilot. You would need hundreds of people to control such a bot net. The point is not to take down the bot net, but to take down the controllers. Wiping out a nations power and telecommunications infrastructure would be an effective way of doing this if all else failed.

Re:botnet

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now...
call to UK ISP call center

call center: "tech support how my I help you today"
caller: "my internet will not work"
Call center: "okay what is your operating system"
caller: "windows XP"
Call center: "what is the problem"
caller: "everything is just really slow and the internet will not open"
Call center: "okay let me check a few things"
Caller: "okay"
Call center: "you need to unplug your computer now it has been compromised"
Caller: "what?"
Call center: "UNPLUG THE COMPUTER"
caller: "okay hang on"
caller: *massive crashing and then dead air*
Call center: NOOOOOOOOOO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IT WAS IN A BOTNET THE POOR WOMAN HAD NOT IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON

they really need to stop this bombing

Re:botnet

[Shihar]

You can't just 'cut' a nations connections. Even if you nailed all of the obvious connection, they certainly have satellite connections. Hell they could even use old fashion modems. It is impossible to remotely take out a nations entire communications grid, which is exactly what you would need to do in order to cut off bot net controllers from their bots. I rate it pretty unlikely, but for a truly determined attacker who has expected getting his communications remotely cut, the only option left might be to physically wipe out that nations communications infrastructure.

Like I said, I rate it as a pretty low likelihood. I doubt that any bot net could do any real "OMFG the sky is falling" damage for more then a couple of hours. That said, I won't lose any sleep at night if my government draws up targets it would need to hit in case someone did manage to pull of such an attack and sustain it.

Re:botnet

[Randseed]

This bears some elaboration. Even if you knocked out an entire region's infrastructure, so long as they have ANY -- and I mean ANY -- communication to a system on their (bot)network, they can still launch attacks all over the place. For instance, you knock out my entire country's network, and I make a modem call to some wanker in another country and send a 256 byte command out there. It authenticates it, then goes and blows your system to hell. The necessary thing is to secure your damned systems. Period.

Re:botnet

[Deanalator]

That would also kill interoperability between controllers, and reduce the number of infections on the machine, which would be a good thing. Also, by fixing many of the commonly used vulnerabilities (weak passwords in RDP etc), the user has a much higher chance of catching on.

Also, hardening machines is harder that you might think :-) If we had worms that hardened as they reaped, that might even be considered a service. Most worms that I have looked at on the other hand attempt to kill AV, logging, and often times create backdoor users, shares, or open simple control ports. If the attacker started enabling security measures and auto updates etc, they put themselves at a very high risk of losing the box, and not being able to get back in. Also a good thing.

Re:botnet

[SkyDude]

Nuclear arms, of course :) The ultimate solution for spam and cyberattacks.

Naw, just like termites and bacteria, spammers would survive a nuking.

Re:botnet

[Shihar]

I think we are arguing the same thing. Nothing short of the systematic destruction of a nations entire communications grid can stop a bot controller from launching an attack. You can't just 'block' them. You would need to go out and physically destroy every single link to the outside world. Now, in practical terms, you probably don't need to be completely thorough. Even if a nation still has a few lines of communication open, that doesn't mean that the bot controller is in any position to get to it. Further, for an Internet pwning attacking you would certainly need more then one bot net controller. You would likely need hundreds or thousands of controllers working together. This is why an infrastructure attack could actually work, if you were vicious enough. If you can knock enough people off, you can probably get a handle on the situation.

Of course, it pretty much goes without saying that tearing a nation limb from limb should be a last resort. We should probably start by... you known... securing our computers. A few patches tend to be cheaper then mobilizing enough airplanes to wipe out the communications infrastructure of an entire nation.

Re:botnet

[dotgain]

correction:
en
conf t
int fa0/15
shut
exit
wr

Re:botnet

[Agelmar]

I think (or at least hope) that you misinterpreted the GP. Let's say, for instance, that it was determined that the botnets were being controlled from Africa (hopefully you could narrow this down a bit more, but for the point of illustration, bear with me). In 2002, there were only 6 IXPs in all of Africa - today, I think it is more, but it's not huge. If you bombed these six sites, you would essentially take Africa offline. Now I certainly don't mean to justify such an action, or say that it is appropriate or would be even effective, all I'm saying is that I think the GP meant that by bombing a few sites, you are basically doing what you call "cutting all connections" (aka "bombing a nation's infrastructure").

Re:botnet

[dodobh]

Unless of course, the controllers are using relays of zombie PCs distributed globally.

Re:botnet

[Johann Lau]

Nuclear destruction was designed to work around you.

Re:botnet

[sumdumass]

I doubt they would need to go that far. Most nations have few lines going in and out for the internet. Of course some have alternatives like satalite and so but the magor players will be were the backbones enter the country. A couple bunker busters in some strategic locations and the backbone to these countries are cut. Even the US can be cut off by doing this. Of course the size of the number of conections will be larger.

Don't think of it as pulling power in every house, think of it as cutting the entire block from the power grid. the electicity only comes in the city or a few different ways. Same with the internet. I remeber a router went down in chicogo (150 miles away) a while back and I lost my DSL for a week while they were replacing it and rerouting. This was in 98-99 or so.

Re:botnet

[skinfitz]

The fact that spam exists is proof that nobody really important uses email.

Re:botnet

[IAN]

correction:

en
conf t
int fa0/15
shut
exit
do wr

Re:botnet

[rwwyatt]

Actually, It will probably be a mass goatse!

Re:botnet

[prizrak]

You should have posted as anonymous, you never know who might be reading your post...

Re:botnet

[toleraen]

Correction:

en
conf t
int fa0/15
shut
end
wr

Re:botnet

[Adambomb]

But...But....

You can't hug your children with nuclear arms!

Re:botnet

[jo42]

Hit Redmond, since that is the original (Windows) "source" of the attack, neh?

Re:botnet

[dotgain]

*sighs*, reaches over and yanks the cable out of Fa0/15.
(probably getting Fa0/14 by mistake, if this thread is anything to go by)

An option...

[yourexhalekiss]

That's an option that the Feds have that the average whitehat doesn't: calling in airstrikes against the DOSer.

Re:An option...

[MBrichacek]

What's next, the Department of Cyber Homeland Security? Although this is obviously an important issue, is counterattacking truly the best idea? Perhaps there should be better systems in place to protect against these attacks instead of "fighting fire with fire"

Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Space cowboy]

In the event of a massive cyberattack against the country that was perceived as originating from a foreign source, the United States would consider launching a counterattack or bombing the source of the cyberattack, Hall said. But he noted the preferred route would be warning the source to shut down the attack before a military response

There's a lot wrong with this. Off the top of my head...

Any sustained attack on network infrastructure, on the scale that they're talking about, is almost certainly going to be a distributed attack. Botnets have no patriotic allegiance, their locality is a function of machine vulnerability (eg: N. Korea's dependence on Active-X), not politics.

If I'm crafting an attack, I don't have to even tell the truth about my IP address, TCP allows the sender to specify a (fake) IP address. Obviously I won't get any replies, but I don't care if I'm simply out to cause damage

Geolocation of IP addresses is pretty much a black art as well - there's far too much variability by IP address to try and localise to the precision needed for bombing the source. My hostip.infowebsite only attempted to locate to the /24 netblock, and even then only managed ~50% accuracy.

Not to mention that it's a pretty big precedent to set... At least they're talking about talking, before bombing; the problem is that if you make a threat to bomb someone, you have to be prepared to carry it out. Countries can't afford to be seen to be bluffing when it comes to things like this, the impact on future negotiations is too high.

Simon.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[CRCulver]

Botnets have no patriotic allegiance, their locality is a function of machine vulnerability (eg: N. Korea's dependence on Active-X), not politics.

South Korea has a problem with banks etc. relying on Active X. North Korea has little computer use to speak of.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[thePsychologist]

Let's also not forget that the general public understands much less about a cyberattack than a good ol' fashioned physical attack. Hence, it's much easier for the government to tell the public that they were in severe danger because "the internet was in danger" or whatever obfuscationt they'll use, when in reality they were pinged fifty more times than average. This is really just another reason to take out the guns, and we all know they're having a difficult time justifying military action these days.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[zoomshorts]

They are hiding their computer acumen. They puchase the same technology as anyone else does. Through the SAME channels.
OPYN

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[i_should_be_working]

So, what you're saying is, this is a good way to get the US to bomb itself?

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Miseph]

What you're forgetting is that WE have blackhats too. The idea isn't to stop the botnet, because we can't do that nearly as fast as 'they" can open up a new one... if we could, botnets wouldn't be a problem in the first place. I think the idea is that if a botnet/virus/whatever is used to "attack the internet" (a notion that I believe to be intentionally broad, much like "attack the country", not necesarily to justify doing whatever we want, but so that we aren't pigeonholed by a narrow definition), then we are going to "attack", with whatever force and technique seems most reasonable (ie. we don't drop bombs on the homes of bank robbers, nor do we send a couple of uniforms armed only with 9mm pistols and handcuffs to arrest government sponsored death squads) the people behind it. If that means back hacking, packet tracing, following convoluted money trails, reverse engineering, traffic analysis, or whatever else we can think of to find the person(s) responsible, then so be it.

Military action might be unlikely if the attacker is, say, a 15 year old kid writing trojans that let him simultaneously crash hundreds of major network hubs as some sort of "practical joke", because once found they would probably just arrest the kid and give him 20 years in federal "pound me in the ass" prison. If, on the other hand, the same thing were done by a team of Chinese black hats for the purpose of undermining our infrastructure in the moments before launching a surprise attack on Taiwan and the US fleet protecting it, a SWAT team is going to be in a little over their heads.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[StikyPad]

North Korea has little computer use to speak of.

So you're saying they've mastered miniturization now?

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Space cowboy]

Whoops - indeed you are correct.

Simon.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Splab]

The ultimate attack on our infrastructure would be to do a reflected DDoS from the BGP's around the world, and let the US bomb the hell out of the internet core infrastructure.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[mpe]

At least they're talking about talking, before bombing; the problem is that if you make a threat to bomb someone, you have to be prepared to carry it out.

You'd also better be prepared so whoever you threaten to both put their own military on high alert and seriously consider that they make any kind of "pre-emptive strike" they are capable of if it even looks like you are going to carry out your threat.
Hence you really don't want to threaten anyone who can either actually attack you or sucessfully defend themselves against your attack.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Tim C]

Geolocation of IP addresses is pretty much a black art as well - there's far too much variability by IP address to try and localise to the precision needed for bombing the source.

Sourceforge suggests a mirror based on geolocation of your IP address. It always suggests a German mirror for me, despite the fact that I'm in London and there's a mirror in Kent (100 miles away).

Bombing based on geolocation of IP addresses isn't going to happen any time soon (not that that would be the source for their bombing target anyway, even the US military isn't that indiscriminate)

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Dolda2000]

If I'm crafting an attack, I don't have to even tell the truth about my IP address, TCP allows the sender to specify a (fake) IP address. Obviously I won't get any replies, but I don't care if I'm simply out to cause damage

I can't say that I have much in the way of statistics to back this up with, but I'd imagine that the vast majority of ISPs out there would refuse to route such a packet.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[pilkul]

A couple hundred computers of high-ranking officials do not make much of a botnet.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Geolocation of IP addresses is pretty much a black art as well - there's far too much variability by IP address to try and localise to the precision needed for bombing the source. My hostip.infowebsite only attempted to locate to the /24 netblock, and even then only managed ~50% accuracy.

<evil laugh>

hostip.info geolocated me to within a mile, based on my /8.

(Of course, my /8 is 18.x.x.x, aka MIT.)

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[C0y0t3]

I really doubt the US military would try to use the return IP addr of a series of packets to aim a missile in retaliation to a distributed DOS attack. They are just stating they have the authority to retaliate by force, if deemed necessary.

So don't even think about it, Osama!

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[lxs]

Just wait and see the awesome revolutionary power of an entire nation armed with ZX81s!!!

They'll have you evil imperialists quaking in your expensive leather shoes.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm crafting an attack, I don't have to even tell the truth about my IP address, TCP allows the sender to specify a (fake) IP address. Obviously I won't get any replies, but I don't care if I'm simply out to cause damage

I can't say that I have much in the way of statistics to back this up with, but I'd imagine that the vast majority of ISPs out there would refuse to route such a packet.

It's well known that only the most conscientious ISPs check to see if outgoing packets have a source address which is in their own netblock.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

... federal "pound me in the ass" prison.

Oooohh, you sound sooo butch when you talk like that. Do you say other things to make you sound hip to the kiddies on the playground?

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly relatively less computer use in North Korea but more than most people think. A recent issue of The Economist had a story about internet usage in North Korea. They installed a nation-wide intranet in 2000.

Re:Military action is unlikely to be a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence you really don't want to threaten anyone who can either actually attack you or sucessfully defend themselves against your attack.

Aha -- you've stumbled onto the reason we attacked Iraq instread of North Korea.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Another act of war without a vote by our cowardly Congress. If Jefferson were here he'd have to vomit.

Re:Great

[gravesb]

Responding to an act of war without an act of Congress is perfectly legal. And I think you don't understand Jefferson, who believed that the Constitution should be re-written every generation or so to keep up with the times.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you dearly misunderstand if you believe a man such as Jefferson would ever condone such over-responses and blatant aggressions by the United States.

We have become the terrorists of the world. Our terror campaigns in the non-conforming Muslim worlds has stricken fear in the hearts of billions. We are hoping by our threats and prior acts of terrorism that people will be terrified into conceding and conforming. Join the Christian, Capitalist society of be annihilated, there is no room for other systems is the message our government is sending.

I certainly abhor this message and am ashamed to be an American now. I hope someday soon I can change this opinion again.

On a similar note, I also detest the uppity Euro trash that seem to think all Americans agree with our government and try to pretend they understand the foundations. They are the most ignorant bunch of them all. It's racism for the 21st century. Europe has always been overly close minded about many things though.

Re:Great

[ThoreauHD]

Mr. Jefferson actually said governments should be overthrown- not the Constitution that they were founded on. You have to start clean or pretty soon all you have is a document that takes the fire out of the fireplace and puts it in your lap. Law is there to control the government, not control the People. Read up on American history. Or any history for that matter. America is founded on this, and are successful because of it.

Re:Great

[gravesb]

"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40 "Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396 It surely seems that Jefferson had no problem with a complete re-write of the Constitution. He understood the founding fathers had no idea what was going to happen in the future, and so people should have no problem altering the Constitution to adapt. However, they shouldn't ignore the Constitution; they should amend or re-write it based on a republican ideal, as the first one was.

Re:Great

[Achromatic1978]

Responding to an act of war without an act of Congress is perfectly legal.

This is a new one. So, tell us all, what 'act of war' justified our invasion of Iraq?

Re:Great

[gravesb]

Actually, the original discussion had to do with responding to a cyber attack of such intensity that our infrastructure was threatened. I would say that would be an act of war. As far as Iraq goes, there was an act of Congress authorzing it.

bomb ourselves?

[Anonymous Coward]

what if the source was on U.S. soil in a major city?

Re:bomb ourselves?

[gravesb]

Probably just send in the FBI.

Re:bomb ourselves?

[LoverOfJoy]

If the source is in the U.S. then we have other options.

Re:bomb ourselves?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Gitmo Bay

Re:bomb ourselves?

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, hope they don't end in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a &rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=zWi&q=us+to bacco+police+waco

yes...

[macadamia_harold]

We've all heard of Google bombing; the US Government may be taking the expression rather literally.

And it has as much to do with an actual bomb as an Aqua Teen Hunger Force advertisement.

spoof

[brenddie]

So if we can spoof enough IP's we can get the USA to bomb any country of our choosing.... interesting.

Re:spoof

[ghstomahawks]

What about a certain ranch in Texas ....?

Re:spoof

[Sponge Bath]

What about a certain ranch in Texas ....?

Whoa now, what do you have against hookers?
A haw haw haw haw.

Re:spoof

[flyingfsck]

The ultimate Shashdot effect - route the next article link through a Washington DC address...

Re:spoof

[Anonymous Coward]

Expect the secret service to be at your door in the next 24hrs.

Re:spoof

[lmpeters]

There are no computers at Crawford Ranch. A few minutes after Bush was inaugurated, the computers were found to contain spyware, and he had them sent to Gitmo.

Note to the clueless

[Henry V .009]

Now you can call in U.S. airstrikes against anyone you don't like by zombifying their computers. Hell of a lot more fun than DOS'ing IRC channels.

Easy response...

[Junta]

iptables -I FORWARD -s -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -s -j DROP

Replace with favorite firewall appropriate commands.

MUCH quicker, cheaper, and probably more effective than trying to blow up the source.

Re:Easy response...

[jmauro]

Won't work if the pipe you're trying to use is flooded with useless data, since you're not actually stopping the attack at the source and your bandwidth is limited. You've only prevent them from getting into your network, not actually stopping the DOS which is kind of the point.

denial of service

[oohshiny]

Well, this has some great potential for denial of service attacks by forging the source of a cyber attack.

Re:denial of service

[TubeSteak]

Well, this has some great potential for denial of service attacks by forging the source of a cyber attack.

The practical joker in me can't wait until someone forges an attack using the WhiteHouse.gov IP.

OTOH, I suspect that the NSA & DoD aren't that stupid

Re:denial of service

[r_jensen11]

Odds are they'd fuck up and use whitehouse.com instead....

Re:denial of service

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this has some great potential for denial of service attacks by forging the source of a cyber attack.

Damned rights -- Nukes, the ultimate DoS attack.

Re:denial of service

[Anonymous Coward]

.... mmm you never know.

Today, thousands of "packet kiddie" groups...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Pledge support to the U.S. government in support of the war on terror, ushering in a new era of legalized DDoS in the name of Freedom!

I always knew the day would come when I could be an e-privateer, sanctioned by the U.S. government!

w4 c0rps pledges utmost support and 200,000 bots -- irc.gamesurge.net #w4r

It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of ip

[Anonymous Coward]

All that matters is what their intelligence tells them. If the intelligence points to North Korea being responsible for the attack, regardless of where the actual attacking machines are, then they'll get bombed. The bombing isn't meant to stop the attack directly, but rather indirectly. If the blackhats are doing it for money, and they money source is cut-off, do you really think they're going to keep at it?

tilte confusing, google has nothing to do with it.

[deft]

At first I thought the US government might be using it's PageRank power to make terms like "nuclear threat" bring up URL's like iran.gov (or whatever their whitehouse.gov correlary might be). In fact it was just a weak attempt to use the word bombing twice and mislead.

Instead, the US is just aknowledging that attacks on it's internet infrastructure can be responded to just like physical attacks.... by military attack.

Is anyone suprised that if one place was pinpointed as the source of the attack on any countries infrastructure it might be a target? I'm not. The net is more important than some buildings at this point.

The only thing I'm suprised is to expect any attack to be from one place... I'd expect it to be distributed. But thats ok, we have bombs for that too. ouch.

quicken the disolving of the union.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait tilll some 13 yeare old makes us bomb a charity site in the ukraine.
You think this is a bad thing?
It all goes to hasten the secession of the northern states from the inbread war mongering oil states.

Re:quicken the disolving of the union.

[bendodge]

Be realistic; the NSA/military people aren't idiots. If they have enough tech savvy to set up a massive internet spying program, yet can bet they can figure out where an attack is really coming from. (Maybe their spy program would help them find out....hmm, sounds like what it was made for!)

And it is trivial for them to get some intelligence of their target before bombing. While I don't support many of the NSA's actions, you people give them way too little credit.

What if the source is in the US?

[Professr3]

I know the USA has at least as many stupid computer users as the rest of the world - what happens when an all-USA botnet starts attacking our own infrastructure?

Re:What if the source is in the US?

[AmberBlackCat]

If this is serious then I suspect they would only actually bomb a place they were looking for an excuse to bomb anyway. Maybe an oil-rich nation. If it happens in this country, I suspect they'd fight it by enacting CAN-SPAM 2, which will eliminate botnets by forcing all American citizens to surrender DNA samples.

Re:What if the source is in the US?

[Professr3]

Meh, wasn't redundant when I posted it.

Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[thestudio_bob]

Uhh... woudln't just be easier to bomb the source. It's not like we don't know where Micro$ofts head quarters are.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[fuego451]

I was thinking the same thing. Or, perhaps a super-computer to track all M$ machines/networks that could bump them off the tubes at the first sign of a problem.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[Kalriath]

Uhh... woudln't just be easier to bomb the source. It's not like we don't know where Micro$ofts head quarters are. I am so sick of hearing this type of crap that Microsoft (what, you can't spell "s"?) is responsible for every single piece of botnet or exploit on the internet. You know, Linux/Unix machines can be "rooted" as well - to the same or more devastating effect...

However, like with /([A-Za-z]?)nix/, Windows can be quite secure in the hands of one who knows what they're doing. In my 10 years of using Windows, I've never had a virus or trojan infect a machine under my direct control. Any virus would fail to pass the ISA Firewall (yes, that's MICROSOFT's Firewall software) as the antivirus (granted, third party) would block it from being retransmitted to the requesting machine. Client machines are on a completely seperate subnet behind a Sonicwall firewall (though even a cheapo device can achieve this same result), and outbound SMTP is allowed ONLY to the Mail Exchanger on the other side of the firewall. This setup is not really all THAT hard to do... if you wanted to save money you'd swap the ISA for a Fedora/Debian/Ubuntu/Insert Distribution Here (Solaris?) machine with maybe Squid or something, but the net effect is the same - the client machines are SAFE.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[flyingfsck]

Never? Wow. Are you sure the ethernet cable is plugged in?

Jokes aside - viruses isn't a problem anymore. The problem is spyware.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that Microsoft makes just as much money selling their wares to ignoramuses as they do to knowledgeable users like you. For decades, and until very recently, they've been happy to just pocket the money and ignore the consequences of marketing their products to users who have no clue as to how to safely manage a computer.

They've been cynically raking in cash as if they were some schmuck selling professional fireworks to 5-year-olds and then watching them blow themselves up. Other OSes may have been like selling the same dangerous fireworks, but at least they weren't luring little kids to buy them.

Microsoft is largely responsible for what has happened to their customers.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[Kalriath]

I read Slashdot, so I'm preeeetty sure the ethernet cable is plugged in. 'course like I said, I don't visit dodgy sites (or when necessary I boot up Opera, which supports almost no extension technologies that I'm aware of - try installing spyware on THAT!) I don't get spyware myself because there are products designed specifically to prevent spyware from being able to install - utilising these does a VERY good job at preventing crap from getting in there. Bear in mind folks, even Firefox has been proven to have critical bugs that allow information disclosure (remember that one where an overrun would occur and Firefox would give scripts access to your system memory - well, as much of it as Firefox could get to? They fixed it, but the same could be said for MSIE)

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[flyingfsck]

Yup, I think the email virus/trojan problem is pretty much solved. However, the internet browser vulnerability problem still requires a lot of work. At home I only run Windows once a year to do my taxes, but at work all desktops are Windows based and then we all need to install Cygwin to get any work done - duh...

Using Linux, I am quite spoilt, being able to click on anything with wild abandon. There is no good reason why Windows cannot be made to be equally strong. IMHO it is simply a lackadaisical attitude at MS that is the cause of the internet crapware problem.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[thestudio_bob]

"...They've been cynically raking in cash as if they were some schmuck selling professional fireworks to 5-year-olds and then watching them blow themselves up."

Seriously, that's one of the funniest and most accurate analogies I've read on /. in awhile.

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[thestudio_bob]

I am so sick of hearing this type of crap that Microsoft (what, you can't spell "s"?) is responsible for every single piece of botnet or exploit on the internet. You know, Linux/Unix machines can be "rooted" as well - to the same or more devastating effect...

However, like with /([A-Za-z]?)nix/, Windows can be quite secure in the hands of one who knows what they're doing. In my 10 years of using Windows, I've never had a virus or trojan infect a machine under my direct control. Any virus would fail to pass the ISA Firewall (yes, that's MICROSOFT's Firewall software) as the antivirus (granted, third party) would block it from being retransmitted to the requesting machine. Client machines are on a completely seperate subnet behind a Sonicwall firewall (though even a cheapo device can achieve this same result), and outbound SMTP is allowed ONLY to the Mail Exchanger on the other side of the firewall. This setup is not really all THAT hard to do... if you wanted to save money you'd swap the ISA for a Fedora/Debian/Ubuntu/Insert Distribution Here (Solaris?) machine with maybe Squid or something, but the net effect is the same - the client machines are SAFE.

Cool, thanks I'll go out and tell my grandma to get right on that.

I don't think anyone is saying that windows CANNOT be made secure, I think the point it, it takes some kind of super-genuis like yourself to figure it out. If that wasn't the case, then the world would have a lot less zombie machines and C1AL15 and V1a6ra sales would tank. Am I wrong?

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so sick of hearing this type of crap that Microsoft (what, you can't spell "s"?) is responsible for every single piece of botnet or exploit on the internet. You know, Linux/Unix machines can be "rooted" as well - to the same or more devastating effect...

Yes Unix machines can be, but the sad fact of the matter is, these days they're not.

So...Go fuck yourself, Mickeysoft fanboy!

Re:Uhh... woudln't just be easier...

[pizpot]

Hmmm. If windows is so safe, how come a hair salon computer I setup 2 years ago is now back on my work bench with bios viruses? Both the mobo and hardrive are infected as far as I can tell. I did this: unplug hardrive and boot. Now the bios is locked (frozen and won't do anything but show the boot image). I imagine this will not be easy to fix. IF ONLY I HAD linuxed them up like I did his other computers. Oh well.

Bring 'Em On

[Doc Ruby]

I can't wait for Bush and his Pentagon to protect us from cyberwar. After all, the Bush doctrine of using one attack on us to justify attacking someone who hadn't attacked us, distracting us from the original attacker, is really paying off.

Besides, with cyberattacks on both US government and civilian targets raging for years without either the FBI or military doing anything effective to protect us, they're bound to show nothing but improvement, right?

Re: Bring 'Em On

[Black Parrot]

> I can't wait for Bush and his Pentagon to protect us from cyberwar. After all, the Bush doctrine of using one attack on us to justify attacking someone who hadn't attacked us, distracting us from the original attacker, is really paying off.

Hey, current thought among the Bush administration and the neocon "thinkers" that got us in to all this, is that if you blow one war you should start another one so you can try again.

Re:Bring 'Em On

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Fuckhead.
I was flying in Saudi in a USAF aircraft when the Iraqis shot at me. Tell me they didn't provoke it? Youre fucking revisionist history is as disgusting as the genocidal terrorists you're indirectly supporting.

Re: Bring 'Em On

[StikyPad]

Perhaps. It's equally likely that Iraq was a son's attempt to show up his old man, despite the fact that H.W. (at least in retrospect) knew better than to go into Baghdad. As Stewart observed, the intelligence of the Bushes seems to take a dip with each generation.

What's the old quote? Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity...

Re:Bring 'Em On

[Doc Ruby]

Fuck you stupid warmonger bitch. You aren't even brave enough to use a Slashdot ID, and you're some tough warrior? Maybe you did fly a USAF plane in Saudi (Arabia, illiterate Coward) and got fired on. Provoke what? Your mission (if it did even exist) was to keep them bottled up. You're saying we invaded Iraq because they shot at you over Saudi Arabia? That's a new one, I thought it was WMD, or Niger uranium, or spreading democracy, or some other bullshit lie you fucked up fascists spout like a flaming oil wellhead.

Just shut the fuck up. You assholes have been fucking up the whole world for at least 3 years. Just put down the gun, step away from the ledge, and let the adults clean up the bed you and your triggerhappy Republicans have shit.

You're dismissed, killbot.

Re:Bring 'Em On

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Troll

I easily dismiss with simple logic the bullshit warmonger claims of an Anonymous Coward who delivered only vulgar, obnoxious insults and assertions, and my post is the "Troll". Right, That's the precise military strategy of provocation and blame the people fighting back to attack them that got us into this Iraq War. TrollMods apparently love it so much that it's their entire way to deal with other people now. A losing strategy.

Re:Bring 'Em On

[Grimbleton]

But wait... if you weren't THERE in their airspace, how would they have shot at you? Hm?

Terrorists....

[Anonymous Coward]

They hate our freedoms.net!

Now what fun is that?

[AmazingRuss]

...and how does it boost the weapons production portion of GNP?

Bombs solve all problems, and require very little forethought to use. Everyone is impressed by large explosions...virtually nobody is impressed by iptables rules.

Re:Now what fun is that?

[Yetihehe]

You haven't seen those REALLY big iptables rules, have you?

Re:Now what fun is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Atleast 75% less lines with OpenBSD's PF, less bloat and better results too!

Instead of physical bombing

[gravesb]

I would rather see cyber counter attacks. Yes, a lot of the targets would be innocent bots, but the counter attack could be as simple as taking them off line. If you remove enough bots, the attackers either have to give up, or begin to use bots closer to their own computers, until eventually they would have to use their own computers. Taking that many computers off line through cyber attacks is not something to be undertaken lightly, but if the incoming attack is sufficient to have a significant negative impact on infrastructure, then its probably justified. And maybe, if we start having massive cyber battles that this seems to imply, maybe Joe Public will stop clicking install this now banner ads and allowing his computer to become a bot. But probably not.

Re:Instead of physical bombing

[nickull]

I think their plan is to just re-route all incoming USA bound HTTP traffic to myspace. ;-)

Re:Instead of physical bombing

[flyingfsck]

Sure, but smart bombs flying through the windows http://www.google.ca/search?q=flying+windows and hitting the PC Screen would be so much more cool...

Slashdotted:No more submissions to .gov/mil sites

[NZheretic]

To Commander "Taco"
Please cease and desist linking to site xxx.mil ( reacted ) or whitehouse.gov or else we will bomb you.

Signed G.W. Bush.

Scene from the War Room

[mbstone]

General, the bombers are ready to go and the cruise missiles are fully fueled. And our intel group has pinpointed the source of the attack. It's coming from 127.0.0.1 .

Re:Scene from the War Room

[StikyPad]

Just another reason to stick with AMD.

Re:Scene from the War Room

[Splab]

Good one!

Re:Scene from the War Room

[Anonymous Coward]

The attacks are coming from WITHIN THE LAN, I repeat, WITHIN THE LAN. Run for it!!!

problem solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoof the attack from an ip block that originates at the pentagon; government bombs the 'source' of the attack. Buh-bye pentagon. The people rejoice.

I can't wait!

[pair-a-noyd]

The dribbling idiot DumBya is going to put a cruise missle up the ass of these scumbags that pound my email accounts with penny stock crap and ads for penis pills!

Yay! About time!

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Anonymous Coward]

No, North Korea won't get bombed. They have got nuclear weapons, but they haven't got any oil.

You can be quite sure, even now before the attack has started, that the intelligence will point to Iran being responsible. In fact, it is most likely that Iran will be have to be bombed before the cyber attack starts, in order to preempt it

Attack the source?

[bizitch]

.... well you can kiss Redmond, WA goodbye ;)

Re:Attack the source?

[subl33t]

You sir, deserve to be modded up.

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we may have learned not to trust the "intelligence" coming out of this administration (well, at least the selective kind a certain person in the White House has deemed as a reasonable basis for attacking a sovereign country). If what you are saying is the correct response, it damn well is going to be easy to get one country to bomb another country inadvertently by faking the "indirect" source of a network slowdown. This is all dumb anyways - the Internet is designed to be robust. And it is just a network. If some "rogue" nation or group of individuals comes up with a way to make a serious impact on the Internet, the solution is technical not funding Halliburton.

But what if...

[OriginalArlen]

...the network fights back? Huh? D'ye ever think of that? And then it'll launch all the old ICBMs, oh yes, and then androids will stalk the smoking ruins hunting down and shooting the last holdout remnants of the Republican Party.

Re:But what if...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, when you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad...

I think....

[Derek Loev]

I think that we're all reading too much into this. The article is basically saying that if somebody is going to attack the US in a way that would be damaging to the country that US is prepared to retaliate...by any means necessary.
I'm not sure if I agree with everything in the article but it is the Government's job to protect this country and there are a lot of businesses and people that demand on the internet. If some outside source could mess with this it would be devastating to the economy and the country...

Re:I think....

[Erwos]

Exactly. Like it or not, war to protect economic interests is something that's happened time and time again in the past, and will probably happen in the future, too. And it's not just an American concept, either - remember how Europe reacted when the Egyptians nationalized the Suez Canal? "Sit back and take it" is a sure way to just keep getting taken advantage of - that's why you have a military in the first place.

Playing this off as some sort of "OMG the US is so awful and war-mongering!" is foolish and naive. If someone pulled a stunt that brought down the Internet for a European country (say, France) and caused billions of dollars of damage, you'd better believe a limited military resolution would be on the table - with the citizenry supporting it, too.

Re:I think....

[oracle128]

Hey, what's with all this rationalized "defending our country" crap? I thought this was the "abuse 'Republicans' and Windows users" thread? Oh, wait, that's what every other Slashdot story is for.

Re:I think....

[mapkinase]

This is fundamentally wrong.

1. The damage of previous DoS attacks does not justify killing people. Nobody died.
2. This is a dangerous continuation of the monopolar world with US as the global policeman.

let the sleeping giant lie

[iphone-shuffle]

Do you remember the game "America's Army"? http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/579/579289p1.html In the early 1940's, Japan learned an important lesson - "let the sleeping giant lie."

Re:let the sleeping giant lie

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I saw that movie.

Re:Slashdotted:No more submissions to .gov/mil sit

[my_haz]

If OP doesn't get mod-ed (+5 Funny), then there is no hope for /.

Obligatory

[codeshack]

I say we nuke the site from orbit.

It's got a whole new meaning now, don't it?

Re:Obligatory

[EGSonikku]

It's the only way to be sure ...

Hell Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, the Bush doctrine of using one attack on us to justify attacking someone who hadn't attacked us, distracting us from the original attacker, is really paying off.

Actually it really has, because there hasn't been a successful terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11.

By taking the fight to the enemy, and being proactive, Bush has done a good job of protecting Americans.

Re:Hell Yeah

[EGSonikku]

I have a magical stone that protects me from tiger attacks. I have been using it for years and not one attack!

This proves it works.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Doc Ruby]

The real way to look at it is that there was a successful terrorist attack a year into Bush's responsibility. And since then, Bush has achieved so many more terrorist goals than any little terrorist could on their own that there's little need. Including killing thousands more Americans, destroying our military, bankrupting our treasury and our morals. And most especially destroying our freedoms and sense of security by sowing massive terror every time Bush shows his face in public.

If there had been another planebomb, you'd use that to justify Bush getting even tougher. Just like you're surely cheerleading Bush's current escalation in Iraq. You zombie Republicans are so predictable.

No one believes that gibberish about fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Except maybe you, Anonymous Dick Cheney Coward.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Millenniumman]

Where can I buy one?

Re:Hell Yeah

[DogDude]

Please don't forget the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis that the US has slaughtered for no particular reason. They're not any less human than Americans.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

And most especially destroying our freedoms and sense of security by sowing massive terror every time Bush shows his face in public.

Diagnosis: Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Please seek medical help immediately.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

You zombie Republicans are so predictable.

Works both ways friend, works both ways.

Re:Hell Yeah

[FatAlb3rt]

sowing massive terror every time Bush shows his face in public

Seriously, save the drama. Between this and the zombie comment, it's just a troll.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Doc Ruby]

I haven't forgotten, and they're of course a huge crime. I'm just talking about the direct lunacy that the Iraq War is better for Americans than no Iraq War. Of course Americans unleashing (and doing) the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, along tribal/sect lines, is a victory Osama could never have expected to achieve on his own.

If a responsible president had spent our Iraq War effort in Afghanistan - and Pakistan, and probably Saudi Arabia, and a few other real "terrorist harbors" - with the enthusiastic cooperation of the rest of the world that was with us on 9/11/2001, probably we would have by now converted the jihad that Osama peaked into an overall foreign policy problem about as "hot" as is, say, neonazism. Instead we're fanning flames at least as perilous as the fascist and Communist threats we faced in the 20th Century. And taking the rest of the world along with us.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Doc Ruby]

Anonymous Chucky Krauthammer Coward, you're among the most insane of the gibbering fools who sent us to war. I ran into your buttbuddy Kristol around Christmas last year, and opened his eyes to the adventures awaiting him in war crimes trials. So imagine my pleasure getting the chance now to be the first in your little bubble to tell you that Bush is hated by Americans. 58% want his presidency over immediately, which is well over 15% more than voted against him just a couple of years ago. We spell that "impeached" in America. I don't know what you nazis like to call it in your delusions, but when you notice he's gone, you'll at least know why.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Doc Ruby]

Impeach Pedro.

Re:Hell Yeah

[lordkamon]

I.Q. Should be a requirement to vote, let alone stand in office.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

You're less human, Frank.

Re:Hell Yeah

[kabocox]

If there had been another planebomb, you'd use that to justify Bush getting even tougher. Just like you're surely cheerleading Bush's current escalation in Iraq. You zombie Republicans are so predictable.

No one believes that gibberish about fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Except maybe you, Anonymous Dick Cheney Coward.

Um, the only reason that the US is where we are at today is because "every" freaking major war except the civil and revolutionary wars were fought over there on their ground. The EU would is just now getting back to par with the US. They had to rebuild after WWI and WWII. It's been along time since we've had anything similiar. When we get into "war mode" in the US, we send the boys over there. We don't hide the women and kids in bunkers and perpare all the males to fight the invading forces. I think that we've been reacting to 9/11 in alot of negative directions. I don't know if the entire mideast military conflict thing is positive or negative. We needed to get some feeling of revenge out of our system. Did beating up those two countries get the collective feeling for revenge for 9/11 out of our system? I've run into more than a few that would have liked us to have nuked the mideast. That would be stupid idea, but feeling of anger at the mideast was there. They didn't care about terrorists; they just wanted all those that were causing this mess gone by the quickest possible means. (Actually a part of me feels that way, but I'd ban our "media" like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC rather than the measures that we did take.)

Re:Hell Yeah

[Doc Ruby]

"Taking the war to the enemy", or "offense", is not itself a bad strategy by any reckoning. What matters is the enemy. The less attached is the enemy to its home territory, either logistically, ideologically, or any other way, the less effective is that strategy against them. There's absolutely nothing keeping terrorists fighting us "over there" except that it serves their interests. Especially when "there" is Iraq, a country where the Qaeda that actually attacked us had even less access (and wanted it at least as much) as in the US, where they lived, trained and went in and out at will for years.

People who want "all those that were causing this mess gone by the quickest possible means", who wanted to kill hundreds of thousands or millions of Arabs, are completely demented. Though criminally misled by Bush/Cheney framing Saddam for Osama's attacks, they were led eagerly to that wrong belief, while many people saw right through the bait and switch. And those people wanting the war were also even crazier to think that attacking one of the most inherently unstable countries in the world by destroying its unifying tyranny (that the US had been instrumental in creating, even supplying its military with WMD against its own people) would create more stability was completely insane.

No, many Americans have always wanted war all the time, because Americans have had to fight it "here" only a couple of times: the Revolution and the Civil War. The sacrifices Americans make, even when substantial as in WWII, are always much less than any other country has ever suffered in war, and almost always (except for WWII) limited to classes of Americans from which most Americans can exclude ourselves. That's why we've been running wars fairly continuously since we won independence. And after winning the Cold War, without any significant competition to keep us in check, and having been devastatingly attacked by an apparently puny enemy, many Americans wanted blood. Not just as revenge for the attack, but because they felt we could get away with killing a country now that we'd worked so hard to get the Soviet enemy out of our way. At the top of that bloodthirsty heap was Bush/Cheney, ravenous for Iraqi blood for all kinds of corporate/military reasons (mainly centered on oil). So when they defined "there" as Iraq instead of Afghanistan, their voters (and many others) stampeded after them.

So now, by abusing its meaning, and redefining "there" to suit an arbitrary agenda undermining our security both by distracting from the real target and by creating an even bigger problem in the new target, Bush has actually created inhibitions to the otherwise worthy strategy of "fighting them there rather than here".

How can you possibly not know whether "the entire Mideast conflict thing" is positive or negative? What more do you need to see to realize that it's abominably negative?

Re:Hell Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

You said:

How can you possibly not know whether "the entire Mideast conflict thing" is positive or negative? What more do you need to see to realize that it's abominably negative?

I think it goes like this:

The Bushite Republicans are warmongering, unthinking, callous, hateful, delusional assholes (or misguided followers of same).
The war's opponents, many of whom are progressive Democrats, are (reasonably) against this misadventure.
"The truth must be somewhere in the middle", says the "reasonable centrist".

So, if we are to be "reasonable", we must pretend the war might have been a good idea, if the world had different parameters or some shite.

I swear, the country's gone nuts thanks to Bushites bringing out our latent sadism. Waking our dumb asses up is taking far too long... and "centrism" is popular these days, despite being proven a stupid position, as it's so obvious that one side of the debate is grounded in reality, the other anchored in delusion.

Just my opinion. I wish I had a solution.

Re:Hell Yeah

[kabocox]

How can you possibly not know whether "the entire Mideast conflict thing" is positive or negative? What more do you need to see to realize that it's abominably negative?

Well, we've seemed to mostly have cooled down from the 9/11 bit. Would we still feel a collective anger out for blood if we didn't go invade those two countries? I'm really more pissed that we are going end up bringing our military back and long term the conditions over there won't have changed. I'd be more interested if Iraq or Afghanistan had asked to be admitted to the US as a state. Either of those two countries joining the US as states would have been really good things taken in the long view. Well, end up bringing our military back and over the next 20 years or so Iraq will be the nicer version of Vietam that we constantly complain about. When I say positive or negative, I don't mean just economically expensive. I mean did we do actually anything useful while we were over there? We won't really be able to answer that until 20 years down the line, and even then we'd be split on the issue.

Re:Hell Yeah

[Doc Ruby]

Yes. You're describing how Republicans use the Overton Window technique. They use the natural tendency of masses of people to usually favor a center somewhere between opposing extremes of ideas. When Republicans have seen their ideas at or beyond the limits of public acceptance, they have promoted even crazier ideas, just to drag the window towards the crazy ones, thereby towards theirs, even including theirs. And, owing to the limited size of the window, thereby excluding some previously acceptable in the other direction in the spectrum.

The way to fight the Overton Window is to force those promoting the real target for inclusion to also reject the newly proposed extreme that makes them look "moderate". That action neutralizes the movement towards the new, synthetic extreme, by making even its related ideas exclude it, isolating it for rejection. If they do not reject the new extreme, they must then be associated with it, and risk getting excluded with it.

It's clear that a corollary technique is to demonize those relatively (to the newly proposed extreme) moderate ideas opposed by the Overton workers. Excluding those ideas forces the window away from them, thereby towards the other end of the spectrum, where the idea targeted for acceptance finds itself closer to the center of the window. The black & white depiction under the False Dilemma fallacy is an extreme example of this overall technique.

OMG

[Elektroschock]

What are they spending the billions on? I see why libertarian propaganda is so common in the US.

Bomb MIT

[Infonaut]

More targets.

Redefines...

[DimGeo]

... Internet Exploder... Click that link and you and your entire fraking town are history.

Re:Redefines...

[Anonymous Coward]

What the motherfucking fuck is fucking "fraking"?





Fuck.

Re:Redefines...

[identity0]

Don't worry, despite its scary name, the "Electronic Pearl Harbor" won't ACTUALLY be as bad as the movie.

I see it now

[aschoeff]

Both the RIAA and the MPAA manage to insert sufficient language into some unrelated bill (ala what they tried with the Patriot Act) that authorizes preemptive strikes against p2p networks, saying that they could serve as massive distributed attack vectors against our nation's cyber-infrastructure.

Flip forward a few weeks. I wake up on a typical Sunday like today and start up Azureus. Within a couple of minutes, a tomahawk cruise missile is launched from a regional military installation.

The upside of my imminent demise is my last minutes will be spent mellowly and obliviously perusing mininova, seeing if anyone uploaded a torrent for that one episode of The Daily Show I missed last Thursday.

If only I had stayed up past 10PM that night, I would never have brought this on myself.

Re:I see it now

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

My wife didn't like it, but I knew buying that missle defense system was a good idea. She'll see the advantages when I show her you can cook any food in 4 seconds by holding it in front of the radar dish.

oh really - this is just hilarious

[toby]

When you're a country with a hammer, everything looks like a snowglobe, eh?

Solid evidence

[Wolfier]

Is it just me, or does anyone think that using a cyber attack as a basis for physical retaliation would make it too easy to fake justifying evidence? Electronic evidences are easy to fabricate and hard to disprove.

If US can produce gigabytes of logs "proving" that someone in another country is attacking their computers, would that give them the right to physical military actions, in the lack of other form of evidences?

Re:Solid evidence

[aadvancedGIR]

Well, maybe they would have to send someone to the UN to show an ADSL modem and tell the security council that their attackers have hundreds of thousands of similar ones.

Don't fear!

[renoX]

(sarcasm) The USA has a very good intelligence service, they will for sure find the correct location of the attackers, look how good they were to locate WMD recently!

Re:Don't fear!

[Mixel]

Target lock, one-two-seven-point-zero-point-zero-point-one. Confirm.

Roger alpha one.

*radio noise*

Come in alpha one..

*radio noise*

Come in..

What a way to dispel a myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well some of the world thinks your a crazed bunch of war mongers, but this story, erm, never mind...

What do you bet we'll get stories about Cyber attacks from Iran. This sounds like a war machine trying to make another war, since the last ones not going so well.

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[Original Replica]

This sounds like a war machine trying to make another war,

True, it sounds like a part of a modern "Operation Northwoods". http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1 This could be an even better reason to invade/bomb/disappear someone than terrorism.

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[smoker2]

Well some of the world thinks your a crazed bunch of war mongers, but this story, erm, never mind...

I was going to go down that road, you beat me to it.

How about :
Is there any excuse you don't need to give your arms contractors some extra work?

Why don't you follow the lead of the rest of the "civilised" world, and just sell your tech. to the most warmongering (but least developed) customer you can find ?

Hell, just give it to China, they own your asses anyway !

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you bet we'll get stories about Cyber attacks from Iran. This sounds like a war machine trying to make another war, since the last ones not going so well.

If that happened everyone would know for certain that there are no Iranian nuclear weapons.

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[Khyber]

You mean that after we supplied them with weapons, training, and more from the 90s, they still can't get a fucking real war happening? Fuck Iran and anyone associated with them. Hell, North Korea has a greater chance of being a threat to us since they're on coastal waters with no damned countries in the way. Iran's going NO FUCKING WHERE.

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[Andrewkov]

This sounds like a war machine trying to make another war, since the last ones not going so well.

Oh crap, it sounds like they are planning to attack Canada!

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[inviolet]

Well some of the world thinks your a crazed bunch of war mongers, but this story, erm, never mind...

You say that like it's a bad thing.

In fact, the best conceivable arrangement of world affairs is to have:

• a single uncontested superpower
• that everyone believes is a crazed warmonger
• but which is actually a massively productive, voraciously consumptive economic force
• that rarely* ever actually resorts to violence

In this arrangement, the world will be kept at peace, and stimulated to industrialize, with a minimum of actual violence. The false perception of America's warmongeriness will tend to restrain other would-be bullies... didn't you read Sun-Tzu?

If the world thought America to be a bunch of peaceniks, it would take all of five minutes for the first invasions to start. Starting with Taiwan.

*I say 'rarely' as relative to world history. America is the first uncontested superpower in history that has not immediately invaded all its neighbors in an attempt to feed itself by military conquest.

Re:What a way to dispel a myth...

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you bet we'll get stories about Cyber attacks from Iran. This sounds like a war machine trying to make another war, since the last ones not going so well.

That reminds me of the funniest line I've heard in the past two weeks -- "Of course we've learned from the mistakes we made in Iraq; we won't make them again in Iran."

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Poppler]

I think we may have learned not to trust the "intelligence" coming out of this administration

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

NY Times - U.S. Presents Evidence of Iranian Weapons in Iraq

The article does mention that the claims about Iran "[are] bound to generate skepticism among those suspicious that the Bush administration is trying to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq and, some political analysts and White House critics believe, is looking for an excuse to attack Iran." Beyond that, it appears to be the same sort of echoing of administration propaganda (conveyed by unnamed intelligence officials) that we saw in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

Bullshit

[Joebert]

the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack

I call bullshit.
If they're confident in having a cyber counterattack, there would be no need to worry about anything that would warrent a counterattack.

They have nothing, it's a bluff.

re:

[Kynmore]

It sounds like something from a William Gibson novel. Only difference is our government isn't a corporation.

These people need to remember what their jobs are.

[Sj0]

How about they actually work on a plan to prevent ACTUAL attacks from HARMING US CITIZENS AND SOLDIERS?

You know, seeing as that's what the present danger to the nation actually is?

It's all well and good to think of ways we could possibly be attacked while our people aren't dying every day, but right now, these people should be hung as traitors for wasting time and taxpayer dollars doing anything OTHER than finding the best possible way to protect our soldiers abroad, and our people at home.

Web Services and DoS attacks?

[nickull]

If I wanted to launch an attack, the most effective type would be a Denial of Service type attack against critical infrastructure targets. These are the hardest types of attacks to guard against given the attack is not about compromising the target, just rendering it useless for others. There are some steps that make sense (recgonizing a DoS attack and instantly reconfiguring the firewall to drop all packets form the attacker), but a large scale attack from multiple roaming sources might be impossible to mitigate in a timely manner. Also - most defenses like the one above are based on the assumption you know where the packets are coming from. Most DoS attacks masquerade their true IP addresses and spoof others so it might be able to trick the defense into actually taking malicious action against a legitimate source. I also worry about some of the web service extensions currently under development in various standards bodies. Using certain flags like the Web Services Reliable Messaging Nacks (basically stating that they explicitly did not receive a message the endpoint was expecting), a smart attacker could trick a huge number of WS-RX endpoints into sending back messages to a single IP address. This smurf style DoS attack could be orchestrated by using smaller SME's with less than mature IT systems to attack larger targets without even compromising a single SME machine. Given the WS push to get businesses to adopt, I find this a bit worrying. I've raised this as an issue in the past.

Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[cheros]

I mean, not every end user chooses to be infected, and it's not like it's easy to get a machine secured whilst online before it gets infected. I'm not quite sure that a warhead on the house is the best way to deal with a part of a botnet.

If you really want to take about liability you'll have to start with a company that sells you a car without brakes, thus creating a huge market for brakes, and is now starting to supply the brakes themselves. Whilst still leaving them out of the original car.

Replace car with "Windows" and brakes with "decent security" and all of a sudden they're wonderful and creating shareholder value and carry no liability for their actions whatsoever whilst charging to the hilt for the privilege. Maybe taking decent action against them may help - it's going to be cheaper than bombs unless some White House friends are in need of tax funds again and need some rebuilding projects to camouflage the handouts.

Yes, I'm a cynic. Live with it.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[cheater512]

People dont choose to get infected however they do choose not to do anything about it.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[FLEB]

I mean, not every end user chooses to be infected, and it's not like it's easy to get a machine secured whilst online before it gets infected.

Windows, right? It's easy.

1.) Remove Internet connection.
2.) Install.
3.) Turn on Windows Firewall.
4.) Reconnect Internet connection.
5.) Download updates, install any security software you may wish to use depending upon your uses.

If you're behind a NAT with other secure computers, you don't have to do 1 or 2. Ditto (I believe) if you're installing from an XPSP2-slipstreamed source (is the Windows Firewall on immediately once network connectivity is available during the XP+SP2 install process?).

Now, for people who don't know how and are installing XPSP1 or below, this isn't intuitive, yes. But I put forth that most people installing XP from scratch would either be people who know what they're doing, or people who are reinstalling because of problems, and should have researched the process.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[ArcherB]

1.) Remove Internet connection.
2.) Install.
3.) Turn on Windows Firewall.
4.) Reconnect Internet connection.
5.) Download updates, install any security software you may wish to use depending upon your uses.

Great idea, except that the copy of XP that I and many others have did not come with SP2... that's why it's called a Service Pack... because it wasn't originally installed. Also, as I'm sure you know that Windows did not have a firewall installed until SP2. Anyway, it's really friggen hard to turn on the Firewall that came with SP2 until you connect to the Internet and download service pack 2!!! (And Yes! I have heard of people that have gotten their PC's infected in the time it took them to download SP2)

(of course, I'm speaking of people like my parents who used to have one computer that is connected directly to the cable modem... which for some reason is how the cable company recommended it be installed! Don't worry, I fixed it for them.)

Sorry, I don't mean to come down on you, but I read this over and over and it kills me every time. (install Windows that does not have firewall, turn on firewall, connect to web, download firewall, install updates...)

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[FLEB]

The firewall was installed before SP2, but not turned on by default.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[hobo sapiens]

Windows Firewall? Are you serious? Windows Firewall? Surely you jest.

Not that Parent doesn't make a valid point, since there are a number of *good* free firewall programs out there. Try Zonealarm, Kerio, etc. But don't use Windows Firewall.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[X0563511]

What's possibly even more funny, is when my father had issues with his DSL.

The end result of the troubleshooting with the DSL provider (sounds like horizon...) was that every device on his LAN had a class A IP address, and no firewalling and/or NAT. I'm still not sure how that managed to happen.

Yes, just imagine a network-attached storage device, a printer, a PC, AND a wireless router... all having their very own WAN IP addresses and full range of ports for the kiddies to play with. That got fixed REAL quick when I came over.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[FLEB]

I didn't say it was a good long-term solution, but until you get the patches all up to date, and when all you're doing is installing the OS, it'll keep you free from RPC exploits and other outside-in attacks.

Re:Don't you think that's overkill for MS users?

[cheros]

I don't think so. They don't buy "Windows", they buy "a PeeCee" that happens to use the Net and plays some games. Pretty much like not everyone who buys a Skybox is a fully qualified RF engineer - you just want a box that does the job.

Ergo, some of them don't even know they need AV. The good thing is that now virtually all boxes come pre-installed with some anti-virus, but it's still not explained to the end user why they need it (although that starts to improve) so when the short license expires they don't renew.

It's a combination of doom-overload (not the game :-), ignorance and basic product deficiencies.

All IMHO, of course, but I've seen if often enough. 3 months ago they spent a fortune on a new PC and now it needs money again for some license thingy - no. And presto..

Iran

[Sodki]

And I bet the source of the attack will be Iran. Nice strategy.

I doubt if he'd say please.

[ThatsNotPudding]

Or spell commander correctly.

So wait...

[grasshoppa]

Who do we bomb if the attack is coming from a botnet in our own US of A?

Re:So wait...

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, using a proven WWII strategy, the gov could intern all MS Windows users.

Re:So wait...

[aadvancedGIR]

Next MS ad:
"No one has ever been executed for having chosen a Microsoft product ...yet"

public wifi

[mpoloks]

so you are telling me they may bomb an airport with thousands of innocent
because of one bad guy using the public wifi network?

creates a new meaning for wifi hotspot

They'd Bomb Redmond?

[John Hasler]

> ...an actual bombing of an attack source.

Wouldn't it be less messy to simply call out the Washington National Guard?

How about take zombies offline?

[doormat]

Work with ISPs in the US, Canada and Europe to take zombied computers offline. They'll get a letter or phone call telling them that their computer was part of a zombie network that was attacking DHS or whoever, and that they wont be allowed back online until their computer is cleaned. Most people only have one choice for broadband (DSL or Cable), and they'll have to go back to dialup (where they wont be much of a threat in terms of dDOS) if they dont get their act together.

Its like when a cop pulls you over for having an unsafe vehicle, its about time that ISPs start patrolling their userbase and send letters/call their users to notify them of their infection.

Re:How about take zombies offline?

[basshedz2]

>> Most people only have one choice for broadband (DSL or Cable)

Whilst this may be true in the US it is certainly not true in the UK. I have a massive choice of broadband providers (both ADSL and Cable) and, since the advent of Local Loop Unbundling, the different providers have a lot of autonomy over their services (they have their own network equipment in the telephone exchanges).

Re:How about take zombies offline?

[pantagruelo]

From my wide acquaintence of all sorts of modern media I am of the learned opinion that the best method for taking zombies offline involves a blunt object well-suited to hitting them with. Baseball bats are very good. Some people prefer shooting the zombies but I think overreliance on bullet-based solutions to zombie infestation only weakens the defender for when the inevitable lack of bullets or space to properly aim for the head arrives. Only a fool brings his Desert Eagle .50 to a baseball bat fight. I am willing to consider other methods than baseball bats however, remembering the old adage that when all you have is a baseball bat everything looks like a zombie head. Arguments that machetes, samurai swords, and Common Lisp are the best tools for killing zombies will be considered with an open brain.

Re:How about take zombies offline?

[mightypants]

At the Uni where I work our net ops crew has some spiffy snort rules and various logwatchers that sandbox machines behaving in
suspicious ways very quickly. Since the WIFI and ppp are both LDAP authed, they can identify the user and notify them via email
(they also get www only to a page telling them they're blocked). I'm pretty sure that none the stuff costs any money (except, of course, hardware) and it does a very good job of slapping down anybody who is behaving virally.

if ISPs did something similar, they would probably realize an overall performance improvement anyhow since the tubes wouldn't be clogged with all the spammers fruits.

US Planning Response To a Cyber Attack

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I know, I saw it on television tonight...
This is called 'Skynet', and only a hacker called 'John Connor' can stop it

Standard hacker defences won't work

[flyingfsck]

If the Feds launch a B52, then I think a tin foil hat ain't gonna help. Even an asbestos suit won't help much.

Re:Standard hacker defences won't work

[StarfishOne]

"Luckily there are plenty of other Tor exit-nodes" ;-O

Re:Standard hacker defences won't work

[maxwell demon]

Destroying a country will get quite easy. All you have to do is to route a massive attack on US infrastructure through Tor exit nodes in that country. The US military will then finish the job for you.

Infrastructure?

[Spy der Mann]

...undermining the nations critical information infrastructure

NO!!! NOT CABLE TV!!!! *cries*

How about this?

[Spy der Mann]

Instead of dropping nukes, drop free, registered copies of Windows Vista. The problem will take care of itself.

Re:How about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that go against the Geneva Conventions somehow?

Much better than paper reports

[kocsonya]

When you want to bomb a country (which, accidentally, has lots of oil for example) you don't need to rely on bogus reports of secret stashes of WMDs, satellite photos of firetrucks described as mobile bioweapon labs and all that stuff that becomes embarrassing later. You simply claim that there was a cyber attack and fire the nukes. The traffic logs of the target country are dispersed as ionised vapour, the logs on your side are whatever files you can put on your drive and nobody in between keeps track of every TCP packet getting through. You can say whatever you want - it's your word against a plasma cloud and a big lake of molten earth. Even if you miss the target and bomb some other place (Budapest, Bucharest, Iraq, Iran, Geneva, Genova, Delhi, Dili, who knows the difference, them terrorists speak funny all the time and they are everywhere anyway), it's just a question of running a 's/old_ip/new_ip/' over your "log" files.

Ingenious!

AFT China, North Korea ... CARMAD

[OldHawk777]

I know acronyms, but it should be expressed with government terms
Cyber Attack Response Mutually Assured (CARMA) Destruction/Terror/ ... [CARMAD, CARMAT ...] I am sure there will eventually be more
than one cute acronym for US.

Oh, I strongly believe it is About Fucking Time (AFT) that China,
North Korea, Russia, France, Iran, Ireland, Austrailia, Japan ...
others understand we are prepared and deadly serious about making money
for the wealthy and will totally fuckup friends and foes alike for
any virtual attack on US.

DAMN, I mean, everyone has (or is getting) nuclear weapons it ain't
like we can scare other nations/politicians/dictators/... with MAD or
anything less-than a strong CARMA-D/T/whatever defensive response.

Re:AFT China, North Korea ... CARMAD

[Achromatic1978]

Speaking as an Australian who is now living in the US, what in the name of blue fuck do you have to point to Australia as fucking up your internet infrastructure, or is this just another delusional rant?

Re:AFT China, North Korea ... CARMAD

[iminplaya]

Maybe because they're part of the "Cult of the Willing"? You're not getting "ginned up" for a fight, are you? :-)

Re:AFT China, North Korea ... CARMAD

[Achromatic1978]

Willing is a subjective term. You think opposition to the war in the US is bad? We had upward of 80%+ polling that they wanted nothing to do with that little exercise, but our PM chose to go ahead anyway, all beaming (literally, ridiculously) with pride when Dubya called him "his deputy sherriff"! And after all the screams of interference when an American (your Consul General "here" - must stop calling Australia here!) offered commentary on the Australian federal elections, he wades right on in and says a vote for Obama is what the terr'ists want?!? Ye gods.

Re:AFT China, North Korea ... CARMAD

[iminplaya]

We had upward of 80%+ polling that they wanted nothing to do with that little exercise, but our PM chose to go ahead anyway...

And he was re-elected, too.

...all beaming (literally, ridiculously) with pride when Dubya called him "his deputy sherriff"!

Did he give him a bullet to keep in his shirt pocket?

"There once was a deputy called Fife,
Who carried a gun and a knife.
The gun was all dusty,
And his knife was all rusty,
Because he never caught a crook in his life."

Sorry, man. I can't help myself these days. I would still move to Australia the first chance I get. What's Broome like?

Re:Slashdotted:No more submissions to .gov/mil sit

[giminy]

I doubt the actual message would be grammatically correct. Maybe the hypothetical Bush grammatical incorrectness combined with the Slashdot grammatical incorrectness and they cancelled out, conjugating all verbs properly. At least he mispelled 'redacted'.

Reid

Re:tilte confusing, google has nothing to do with

[TubeSteak]

Is anyone suprised that if one place was pinpointed as the source of the attack on any countries infrastructure it might be a target? I'm not. The net is more important than some buildings at this point.

The only thing I'm suprised is to expect any attack to be from one place... I'd expect it to be distributed.

I expect that their goal would be to take out whatever node is controlling the attack (ie the botnet owner's house).

But I don't see how useful that is, since modern botnets have a distributed command and control structure. They no longer need to be run from an IRC channel.

And even if they nuked whoever is running the botnet, the botnet's attack won't stop until they figure out how to break the encryption* & issue a shut down command.

* http://lists.sans.org/pipermail/unisog/2006-April/ 026261.html

Do what?

[aguenter]

"...or an actual bombing of an attack source."

Anyone else find this oddly disturbing?

Forget pushing towards advancements in security, why not just tackle this problem like we do all the other, ya know, "real" ones. Where our citizen's lives are in actual mortal danger.

What's next? Blowing up a European town for anti-American graffiti?

Whatever happened to an eye for an eye? Though, I'm personally the type of individual that finds this "payback" part of human nature to be self-destructive, but someone pulls a hair from your head, and you turn around and shoot them in the face? Brute force is technology's retarded half brother, and shouldn't fight tech's battles.

In today's news

[AlphaLop]

Mrs Ethel Strauss was sitting at home chatting on AOL with her Niece in the United states when 2 ship deployed missiles slammed into her apartment in downtown Athens today. According to authorities Mrs. Strauss apparently had her computer infected with a variety of malware due to her lack of Geek-Fu, one of which caused her computer to participate in an attack on US Internet assets.

The U.S. State department issued a formal letter of apology to her family and a Department of Homeland security spokesman said, "This unfortunate incident just serves as a reminder to all terrorist's, We don't care how many poor old people we have to blow up in pursuit of you, so knock it off already."

american diplomacy

[Anonymous Coward]

only america would talk about bombing runs on compromised computers, killing innocent people. no wonder your the most hated nation in the world.

Re:tilte confusing, google has nothing to do with

[YrWrstNtmr]

The only thing I'm suprised is to expect any attack to be from one place... I'd expect it to be distributed.

Any single attack will be from one place/person/country. They/he may use distributed means to do it, but it will originate in one place. Spam, for instance. Yes, it comes in via multiple paths/zombies/botnets...but any 1 specific spam originates from one dude or company. The trick is finding that one dude. And that's what the DoD is trying to do.

The Best Assassin of the World: US Goverment

[WS Tu]

1,At first, get an second-handed NoteBook from eBay

2,Pretend to be friendly to your foe, then get into where he live and do not forget set up the machine & network.

3,Back home (better not near your foe) and ssh to the machine as root

4,run "ping -f *WhiteHouse.gov" or ATTACK on some other place

5,The Tomahwak would got there very soon.

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[IdleTime]

And you believe this because?

How easy do you think it is to get hold if the 'evidence" presented? No very difficult no. But, the article mentions nothing about nuclear devices.

beautiful

[crassico]

I must say, and someone else must have said it before... It'll be plain beautiful if U.S. start a war against blackhats... better than next-gen consoles... can't wait for it, da*n.

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[killjoe]

I think it's obvious by now that this administration will start a war with iran before bush leaves the white house. The the only people who can do something about this is the US population but we don't seem to give a flying fuck because idol is on and Anna just died and we are dying to know who is going to raise the kid.

Not really...

[nowhere.elysium]

Well yes, it sounds like a Gibson novel, but the *pertinent* difference is that if your governement were a corporation, they'd be a damn sight more accurate at pinpointing and destroying any relevant threats, and they definitely wouldn't be in anywhere near as much debt as they currently are. Plus, they'd use railguns, instead of nukes.

Re:Not really...

[Kynmore]

Mmmm, railguns.

Dunno bout bombs

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno bout bombs, but in the spirit of going too far, I could always drop an atomic bum.

On some sick level...

[Chabil Ha']

I'm curious what the preemptive strategy would be?

Well, where ever the attack originates

[sizzzzlerz]

you can be sure Bush will attack the wrong country.

Attack detected from "localhost"

[rbarreira]

Soldier: General, Sir! We have an incoming attack, which has been traced back to the address 127.0.0.1!

(General calls the president)

General: Commander in Chief, I require your authorization for launching a DOS attack on 127.0.0.1 immediately. We are detecting a massive packet bombing originating from that address!
President: Do you even need to ask? Ping the hell out of those bastards!

(General confidently hangs up the phone and, from the comfort of his armchair, pushes the "DOS attack order" button)

Soldier: Sir, the power of the attack has increased tenfold in the last few minutes!

(General presses the redial button on his telephone)

General: Sir, the attack is increasing. We have positive confirmation of the the attacker's geographical coordinates! Requesting permission for an airstrike.
President: Sure, and please use those shiny new bombers we bought last week!
(General immediately presses "Airstrike" button)
General: Orders tak$#"#"!F%!%#"$"#4A$"#$"# NO CARRIER

then the bad guys can point the gun

[johnrpenner]

| In the event of a massive cyberattack against the country
| that was perceived as originating from a foreign source,
| the United States would consider launching a counterattack
| or bombing the source of the cyberattack

so if i was a bad guy in country Y, and i wanted to launch a military strike
on country X -- all i would have to do is setup a botnet with a source of
control in country X, and the USA would do its damage for me... yikes!!

2cents

Re:then the bad guys can point the gun

[pizpot]

| bombing the source of the cyberattack or call the local police and cut the wire to the building. Or send a black helicopter or agent in a car and do it for them. Duh, why risk bombing children??? Hello?

Advice to planning a cyber attack on the US.

[mpe]

Ensure you make your attack from a country you'd like the US to bomb. Alternatively there's the following "won't bomb" list: China (PRC),France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russian Federation, UK.

Nuke the spammers!

[AndroidCat]

Yes, at last!

Bomb the geeks!

[mattpointblank]

It took me about 8 attempts loading this page, fighting this error:

"503 Service Unavailable

The service is not available. Please try again later."

I was paranoid they got /.!

Home based attack.

[Acidictadpole]

If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nation's critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source. Wireless laptop from inside the Whitehouse anyone?

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Hoi Polloi]

Is anyone really surprised that Iran would get involved in events taking place on their border, by a hostile nation's army, and involving a sympathetic cultural group (Shiites)? Last time there was a war on their Iraq border they lost about 1/2 million people. If someone else was occupying Canada I doubt we'd sit back either.

Like SQL Slammer?

[addie macgruer]

So in the event of another worm causing a DDoS, like say, SQL Slammer (author has never been identified), which reached it's peak of infections in about quarter of an hour (75 000 hosts, fairly evenly distributed worldwide), what exactly would you bomb? Would you even have time? The fix must surely be, to run only essential services by default, to patch as soon as possible once vulnerabilities are found, running varied implementations of standards-compliant software, user education, and strangulation of malware authors with a garrotte.

Well it beats being drafted...

[farker haiku]

Where do I sign up for this war?

Robin Williams' take on the subject

[dingbatdr]

"We in the United States are a simple people. But piss us off and we'll bomb your cities."

A Cyber Attack?!

[Wass Ammattayou]

I put on my robe and wizard hat.

Yes, but which source?

[_Shad0w_]

What worries me most is their ability to actually work out the source of the attacks, rather than the machines the attack happens to be comming from.

Although I guess nuking the machines off the face of the planet is one way of stopping them. I have to admit there have been times I wish I could do it.

let's take a guess based on previous response

[Locutus]

hmmm, after the last attack, they collected fingernail clippers from passengers on airplanes and people who entered government buildings, national monuments...

A cyber attack you say? They'll probably start collecting USB thumbdrives from people entering those same structures and probably add Starbucks and cyber-cafes to the list. ;-) Then, 5 years later they'll figure out it isn't a good idea to be running Microsoft Windows on all their computers. Just a guess.

LoB

Re:Slashdotted:No more submissions to .gov/mil sit

[Anonymous Coward]

xxx.mil? Whoo-Hoo! That sounds like one military site I want to make sure I visit!

Cyberhooie

[Gangslangmang]

Since it was the US probing its own networks from south Korea I guess well have to bomb ourselves.

Bombing always helps

[kronocide]

There is no problem in the world that can't be solved with a sufficient number of bombs, right?

Re:Bombing always helps

[flyingfsck]

Yup, that is the American way. At least, it worked consistently since WWII.

Oh, I am not so certain about that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the last 4 years, the DOD has moved a number of systems to Windows and the Navy is a HEAVY user of windows. As more systems move to Windows, I would say that the average *hat has an increasing chance of calling in airstrike.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cluster bombs?

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's your excuse?

obvious

[eli pabst]

A "cluster bomb" obviously.

Peter F. Hamilton

[caller9]

Reminds me of Pandora's Star. He went into some interesting descriptions of DoS and brute force attacks as part of the action. In many cases though, the people with money, or the Sentient Intelligence machine, far outclassed government or citizen systems.

What was kind-of creepy is the speed and agility that a machine would have in dismantling cyber security constructed by apes. Also people with implanted circuitry could be messed with if their hardware was downlevel.

Pretty unrelated, but still totally awesome.

So runnimg Windows really is dangerous now-a-days.

[chris_sawtell]

So running Windows really is a matter of life or death now as opposed to a mere 5 year jail term. Forgive them $DEITY for they know not what they propose doing.

Vlad. Putin's just hit the nail smack on the head!

The internet....

[Khyber]

... can be knocked out with a few badly-used but well-placed microwaves. Gimme a fucking break about bombing. Hardly anything is hard against radiation damage on terrestrial ground.

botnets survive nuclear distruction

[drewzhrodague]

Wasn't the Internet designed to work around nuclear destruction?

Right, but what we get now, are botnets that work around nuclear distruction!

Re:botnets survive nuclear distruction

[Faylone]

Oh, that's simple, they'll just destroy every point on the planet to make sure there aren't any left.

You forget something

[Khyber]

Federal prisons are generally fucking cakewalks compared to state/city prisons. Get your ass put in for 50 weeks of regimented inmate discipline and talk to me after you come back, buddy.

Re:You forget something

[Anonymous Coward]

The tone of your comment makes you sound a little bit butt-hurt.

Oh, I can see it now.

[WrongDecision]

The stealth bombers are scrambled, they're given the final coordinates to program into their smart bombs... then one of the navigators calls back, "Wait a minute guys, isn't that the White House?" Needlessly plagarized from that famous movie quote, "the call is coming from inside the house."

Mission critical

[AlHunt]

This week's massive but unsuccessful denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the Internet's root DNS, which targeted military and other networks, did not rise to the level of requiring response, but made the possibility of a massive Internet collapse more real than theoretica

You know what? If DOD, or any government agency, is depending on internet for any mission critical activities, then it's being run by a bunch of morons who need to be replaced anyway.

What qualifies as a "major cyberattack"?

[c0d3h4x0r]

"If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nations critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source."

Don't e-mail spammers qualify under that vague definition?

(I hope beyond hope that the answer is "yes".)

MODOS

[Anonymous Coward]

That would make the GBU-43/B the mother of all DoS!

Oh oh!

[MBHkewl]

This is even worse than the war on Iraq, which we're still waiting for the US gov to provide the evidence of WMD -- the reason why the war started...

Will evidence be provided (forged?) when there's an attack by a Botnet? Or a "response" will be launched immediately?

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[KORfan]

I seem to recall that North Korea likes to put vital facilities underneath mountains, making them hard to bomb.

DDOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots. Goodluck bombing all the 10,000 locations from where the attack is originating. Actually with this current regime you never know....

Re:I predict...

[symbolic]

I predict that the so-called "attack" they're discussing will occur before Dubya's term is up. I predict that they will identify Iran as the source. Further, Iran will deny it (of course), and thus, refuse to do anything to stop it. Of course, this leaves the US with only one option. Does anyone smell another 9/11 in the making, or is my imagination just running in overdrive?

BOMB......

[4g1vn]

THE SOURCE! That is a powerful statement.

Sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

A few JDAM's from 50,000 feet would scare anyone with a brain. I like it!

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[sumdumass]

I think it is a little backwards saying this administration is trying to start a war with Iran? I mean Iran has been tryingto egg a war on for quite a while now. So if anything this administration is looking for reasons to gain support on taking them up on it. And BTW, Iran's president is the one who is doing it, but he is being held back by the "ruler" of iran. My mind just drew a blank on his name or postion but the president position in Iran or more or less a figurehead position like the queen of england. Except he has more power. But in no way is it simular to the american president position.

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[sumdumass]

lol.. yep, and durring that last time Iran was trying to take over Iraq. So no it doesn't surprise me at all that they are attempting to make sure we fail so they can walkin and take over. You have a good point there. But i don't see were canda fits in.

money-making scheme

[adrianmonk]

1. Install Windows XP (or whatever M$ product), get infected by a virus
2. Your computer attacks some critical US target, and the US military bombs you and your computer out of existence
3. Profit!!! [*]

([*] from life insurance)

Second dumbest thing ever

[Alex Belits]

I am not sure what is the dumbest thing in the world. But whatever the dumbest thing is, it is closely followed by the idea of battling network infrastructure overload and poor computer security with bombs.

Unless they are going to bomb Redmond, where the problem originated. Then it would be awesome.

Too many movies

[Ace905]

Yeah.... this is pretty much the epitome of American policy makers watching too many retarded hacker-movies. They think that as they're being hacked, some guy is going to be sitting in a warehouse - typing his ass off, for 20 minutes to 3 days straight - all the while connected to their server and going deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the Gibson.

That's... pretty much the only way you could 'bomb' them or... notify them of an imminent bombing. Somebody really should consult common sense before they make these ridiculous and embarrassing 'announcements'.

---
ridiculous and embarrassing

Re:tilte confusing, google has nothing to do with

[DerekLyons]

Instead, the US is just aknowledging that attacks on it's internet infrastructure can be responded to just like physical attacks.... by military attack.

Yep. And it should be unsurprising that the US treats the internet like it does aircraft, ships, other infrastructure, and the persons of its citizens - threaten them and you risk retribution.
 
And before the tinfoil hat brigade starts it's anti-Bush rants, I should point out that these explicit policies go back at least as far as Teddy Roosevelt - and the roots go all the way back to the Barbary Pirates in the early 19th century.[1] (And cyberwarfare work goes back the start of the dot-com era - back in the Clinton administration.)
 
[1] Thats what "the shores of Tripoli" refers to in the Marine Corps Anthem.

Bye bye world

[Arimus]

Given most hacking these days involves botnets etc to hide the point of origin any attempt to 'map' the source of the attack is likely to show every country with anything more than a piece of wet string as a potential source of the attack - should make for an interesting target review:

Airforce General: Where is the target Mr President?
President: The world
AG: What?
P: You heard me. Target the world now.
AG: Yes Sir
P: And don't forget Canada or California
AG: Yes Sir

Thirty minutes later.... bang.

Re:

[skinfitz]

Only difference is our government isn't a corporation. Yes it's just run by them.

Problem?

[skinfitz]

So... scan around .mil networks for wide open PC Anywhere machines with default passwords, compromise those machines and launch a cyber attack from them.

Watch as the US Military nukes itself?

From a macro level...

[XB-70]

The Feds need to look seriously not, just at who is attacking but why. I surmise that there has been a serious slippage in support for the United States in the last decade. This issue is at the core of the problem and, if addressed, might go a long way to alleviating both terrorism and cybercrime. On the other hand, I'm not naive enough to think that uneducated assholes won't try to compromise or cause damage to major servers for sleazy, so-called 'idealogical reasons.

Total Protective Solution for the US

[lordkamon]

If the US Government were smart, I know I am stretching it... they would follow China's suit. Create a damned firewall. I am all for helping building the Border Wall, sign me up. I'll even donate some cement. Unfortunately you're so afraid of everything you'll end up blowing up your own country. Fortunately the wall will keep it contained. You are the US what do you have to be afraid of... panic zealots

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is on.

FUD

[RMH101]

windows firewall is fine. it doesn't monitor outgoing traffic, but you don't need this. various third party firewall all bring their own bugs and foibles to the party...

Re:FUD

[hobo sapiens]

But monitoring outgoing traffic is important. Especially in the context of this discussion. A cyber attack like this one uses Zombie PCs to crapflood a server (in the case a DNS server). If you don't have a way to block outgoing traffic, then your PC could easily be utilized as a zombie.

Plus, XP firewall doesn't actually stealth every port. It stealths ports from half open scanning, but doesn't stealth ports on full scans. To put it another way, it doesn't totally hide your system on a network.

I don't know, you personally may have good results from using Windows Firewall. But given the cost of firewalls like Zonealarm, why not get one and have better protection? Yes, these could theoretically introduce some problems. But then again, so would any security software. But the reality is that you have to run something and you have to weight risks against benefits.

When all you have is a hammer...

[hoover]

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail ;-)

Re:I predict...

[rahrens]

I think it's your imagination running in overdrive.

If you've been reading the papers recently, US military sources have identified explosives and parts of exploded IED's as having their origin in Iran. That is a much better reason for going after Iran, and one that is easier to prove and garner International support for than what you propose.

And what do you mean by "Does anyone smell another 9/11 in the making..."? 9/11 was planned, instigated and carried out by forces commanded by Bin Laden, not the US. You may have been referring to the invasion of Iraq, which was planned and carried out by US forces...

There's no place like home

[liak12345]

The US today carried out a lightning assault against the invaders with IP address 127.0.0.1. There were no survivors.

Somewhere in a meeting room someone utters

[miltons_stapler]

"I could write a program to automate the network analysis and bombing command sequence". Humanity ends the next time Brittney forgets her panties.

Seems somewhat pointless

[t00le]

Unless the .gov has the ability to black hole routes it seems like a complicated task. Let's presume the attacker has a Windows zombie network, which could easily be slowed to a crawl by simply using packet generators setting non-default IP options. Sending a few thousand per second is very doable on any moderately speedy machine, however someone having a bot army of tens of thousands present a problem, which simply is to large to quickly resolve.

One thing that would work is to have interfaces into all backbone providers (US maybe north America) that would allow blocking/shunning at the source of the attacks. It is much easier to code automatic shunning on events (with human oversight) versus acting on each source address manually.

Users cant be totally to blame

[Skuggi]

Sorry guys, but for example I have a 62 year old aunt, and if I wasn't her nephew, she would probably have a dell running windows xp compromised to hell and back and still thing she was running fine. She didn't even want a PC but her work made her get one as they now do all communication over e-mail. Normal users especially the older population are easily tricked by simple pop-ups and don't even realize it, but who goes after those companies?

For the record my aunt and uncle have become rather proficient with their PC use and are running Ubuntu 6.10, so yes a person can be taught, but did their business offer any kind of training? Nope, I had to do it, and if I didn't and they had gone the "normal" route, then odds are good, there would be one more machine propagating worms across the net.

need cyber counterstrike?

[zuhaifi]

A primary group must responsible for analyzing the need for any cyber counterstrike

Re:Fucking Douchebag

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Flamebait

Anonymous Coward calls me a douchebag, and my reply is "Flamebait". No wonder these retarded fascists are getting their asses kicked in every war they start in America's name.

Real games

[zuhaifi]

This is a real online games

How the next war would begin

[chord.wav]

Step 1: Pull the plug on some mayor back bones
Step 2: State in public that this attack was perpetrated by some evil dictator formerly sponsored by CIA
Step 3: Nuke that country
Step 3b: ...
Step 4: Profit!

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[Hoi Polloi]

"durring that last time Iran was trying to take over Iraq"

Did you read the link? "The war began when Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980..."

The Canada reference was just to make up an analogious situation.

Converting your neighbors to Mac or Linux ...

[BrianRoach]

Converting your neighbors to Mac or Linux users just became a whole lot more important.

- Roach

yea....

[chumpie]

I dont understand....we have the people with the intelligence to set up a damn good defensive wall. On top of that we have the people who know how to make seekers. You have an un-named asian country that look for kids with a natural gift for computers and training them to be hackers. The families get compensation for letting there kids go with them. This is dangerous, and something needs to be done to increase our defenses on-line. The entire world uses the internet that was created and maintained in the US. There should be an entire devision in the government that makes sure it stays safe. The UN has already in the past asked the US to turn control of the internet over to them, the answer was "No." and I agree with that. But what this artical is talking about is dropping a real bomb on the " target". What if its a Zombie computer? and we just blew up an entire building in ohhhh i dont know maybe south Korea? This is a flawed Idea. online attacks need to be meet with online attacks or an internationl team of Cyber cops that have the ability to go in to most countries to investigate leads. Not dropping live explosive devices on the place. Again I state we have the ability to do something about this online. Most laptops come with cams installed right? a program that can access the cams take snap shots following the line or retreat of the said "hacker".( such a garish term) or how about the people who are network savvy join together to protect what is ours? a civilian group comprised of on-line net savvy individuals working as a group to Thwart these attacks. there is no law against that! But a explosive device for something like this is not going to work. Its to easy to ghost and spoof, too many variables come into play then. innocent people will get physically hurt. One last thing...they are not bots they are peoples computers! Just call them what they are because they are talking about a physical reaction to a cyber cause * these are just my initial thoughts.*

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[sycodon]

I was wondering how far down I'd have to go to find a post from some slug turning this into a Iraq/Iran issue.

my kingdom for a mod point

[toby]

If some outside source could mess with this it would be devastating to the economy and the country...

You mean even worse than the inside interests who are short sightedly and selfinterestedly devastating it? Sheesh. Donate some of your excess naïvete to The United Way...

Re:It doesn't matter where the attack in terms of

[sumdumass]

Iraq's invasion was a defensive posture. You know like Israel and now the US has done. Of course germany claimed this too when starting what became WW2 so it does have it's merrits as well as abuses.

Kuwait, was paying Iraq to defend it from Iran who it percieved as a threat also. This is also the reason we gave Iraq arms and why we defended kuwait durring the first gulf war. There is more to it then just this though.

The Iran-Iraq war was a direct result of the US pupet government being thrown out some 40 years ago and the actions of the new Iranian government. Although the article present a hoistroical point of view, It doesn't present enough to know what the hell was really going on.

Re:Fucking Douchebag

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, your comment and the AC's comment was flamebait. Don't reply to people who can't discuss these issues with a level of civility.

On the other hand, it appears you're not really all that interested in discussing anything in a civil manner yourself. Here's a hint: throwing around loaded terms like "fascists" isn't a way to have an intelligent debate. Also, calling people "retarded" is just bad form.

I look forward to you expressing your opinion in a more intelligent manner. Can you do it? I'll be waiting.

Re:I predict...

[symbolic]

We will not agree on what happened on 9/11 until there is a full, completely objective and impartial investigation into *everything* that occurred on that horrid day. Too bad that can't happen - most of the evidence was conveniently destroyed, and there are way too many very serious questions that will (probably) never be answered (truthfully). It is our *patriotic duty* to question what happened (relentlessly if necessary).

Now you understand why I feel the way I do about Iran.

Re:I predict...

[rahrens]

Sorry, if you are intimating that the US had ANYTHING to do with the destruction of the Twin Towers, you've been drinking too much of somebody's Kool-aid. I don't doubt that parts of the US intelligence community probably had information that could have stopped the attacks, but as an employee of the government for over 30 years, you'll have a damn hard time convincing me that anybody drawing a paycheck from Uncle Sam was in any way deliberately involved in that, or deliberately let it happen.

I'm as much a patriot as the next guy but you'll never convince me of that.

Re:I predict...

[symbolic]

Your 30 years of government employment does nothing to reduce or change the suspicious nature of what happened. It hasn't done anything to answer any of the lingering (and very serious) questions about what actually happened, nor has it done anything to return all of the evidence that was (rather conveniently) destroyed.

Re:I predict...

[rahrens]

My thirty years makes me much more knowledgeable about government employees and what they are likely to be involved in than you are.

I think you're engaging in partisan political bickering with these allegations, which will never be proved because there isn't anything to them. As I said, any allegation that attempts to show an employee of the US Government to have been knowingly engaged in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

You can question the motives, actions and competence of the Bush Administration itself all you wish, but you'll never convince me that any career government employee had anything to do with it.