Slashdot Mirror
Crackers Cause Pentagon to Put Computers Offline
Anarchysoft writes "As many as 1500 Pentagon computers were brought offline on Wednesday in response to a cyber attack. Defense Secretary Robert Gates reported of the fallout both that the attack had 'no adverse impact on department operations' and that 'there will be some administrative disruptions and personal inconveniences.' When asked whether his own e-mail had been compromised, Gates responded, 'I don't do e-mail. I'm a very low-tech person.'"
I recommend a less-crumbly type of snack, like carrot sticks or celery. Dip is right out.
...that the hairdresser's hair is the one with the ugliest haircut.
this is probably the most boring sig in the world
Actually, this makes Gates sound stupid but as a general rule don't put sensitive information on computers connected to the internet. The best security is not having the damn wires there in the first place. At the top levels of government, where nation-states are trying to install spyware, intercept and decrypt your packets, and otherwise penetrate your defense, maybe having one of a thousand aides sneakernet it is a good solution.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Another slashdot meme in the making?
"I don't do $technology, I'm a very low-tech person."
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Scene: Secretary Gates's office - dawn
A PERSISTENT BEEPING breaks the stillness.
SECRETARY GATES stumbles in from an adjoining room, bleary-eyed. Another all-nighter of trying to keep the world safe for democracy.
SECRETARY GATES: What the blazes is it now?
He picks up his Big Red Phone.
SECRETARY GATES: Gates here. What is it?
TECH #1: Sir! This is Collins at Central. We've got a situation -- massive DOS, widely distributed. One of the worst yet.
SECRETARY GATES: Damn! Tell me it's not--
TECH #1: Bad news, sir. It's your brother.
BILL GATES: Mwa ha ha ha!
SECRETARY GATES: Curse you, Bill! What infernal scheme have you cooked up now?
BILL GATES: By making Windows insecure and ensuring its worldwide adoption, I now have an army of millions of zombie computers at my disposal! I will instruct them to PERMANENTLY destroy your computer network unless you pay me... <pinky>one hundred BEEEELLYON dollars!</pinky>
SECRETARY GATES: But... you already have billions of dollars!
BILL GATES: Yes, but Mother always liked you better, so now I'm overcompensating. Top of the world, ma!
JAMES CAGNEY'S GHOST: Cut that out!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I could think of a million important questions to ask in a situation like this if I were a reporter:
"What specific systems were attacked?"
"Do we have an idea as to who the attackers were? Al Queda? The Chinese?"
"Were any intelligence reports lost? What steps are being taken to ensure the safety of individuals whose data may have been compromised
etc, etc, ad naseum....,
Instead, we get a single insipid question pondering the Secretary of Defense's private email habits and his moderately disturbing technophobic response. Sheesh.
The dude who pulled this off was black! But The Man will never give credit for something this big to a brother.
How ya like dat?
At least when something goes wrong with a sealed message sent over the sneakernet, you'll know that something has gone wrong.
Encryption isn't common in the current internet. And it is possible for someone to copy data and leave hardly any trace that it was copied.
"Copyright infringement isn't theft." Is copying another state's secrets theft if the original copy of the secrets is still in the original computer?
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
The $600 hammer was explained thusly: A box of miscellaneous parts, including some very expensive high-tech items and some cheap low-tech ones (like hammers), was shipped. By the accounting rules, each item is assigned an identical part of the shipping and processing costs. So the hammer cost like $10, plus $590 in processing, while there were $5000 items in there that also had $590 in processing assigned to them. Some idiot soldier opened the box, saw the invoice, and called his congressman.
Shouldn't it be the other way around?
There's nothing of substance in the article.
My guess is this was related to the MPACK issue, but us nerds knew about that over the geekend.
Employees whose computers were affected could still use their 'handheld BlackBerries'. OMG that means hackers compromised the Desktop Blackberries
"Drawing closer to world domination, keystroke by keystroke."
And why is the ability to use email now a yardstick for someone being capable to do their job? I flew aircraft, using email was totally irrelevant. Nor is it a critical skill for a shopkeeper, a gardener, a fireman or a million other tasks. Sure, they can all use it if they wish to do so, but it does not affect their ability to do their job. I commanded large groups of people and I didn't need to use an email to do it. Lots of information had to be written down but an email was NOT an acceptable format for a set of orders, an intelligence assessment, a personal report on a subordinate or a request for leave. In my environment, you had to be able to write correctly and accurately, using a big boy's pen. Yes, it could be typed, using a traditional typewriter or a computer, but it still didn't need an email to do it. For security reasons, the vast majority of the computers that I used were either standalone or on very limited networks. The email facility, if used at all, wasn't always high up on the list. You probably work in something connected to computers, hence your interest here on /. You are probably interested in technology and other geek pursuits. It might be important to you, but that doesn't make it important to others.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
If you're a member of the military with some rank, shouting is a much more effective mode of communication. I imagine Microsoft producing specialized keyboards for the military, such as the MS Multimedia Sergeant Keyboard, which defaults to caps lock being always on.
Task Mangler
It's hacker, okay? Hacker. When someone is able to write code to get a computer to do something awesomely good, that person is a hacker. When someone manages to get a computer to do something is awesomely evil, that's also a hacker. If someone builds a spice rack for Gandhi, or a spice rack for Stalin, they're still both carpenters. Trying to frontload the term with your own moral judgment is just a little too newspeak for me.
vk.
Now, every other person online will mock him for not knowing how to use email, and being "low tech".
There is no reason why a person should use such new technology, when most of you probably spend all your time sitting of furniture you have no idea how to build (most have no idea how to build a chair that lasts a week), spend a life inside a home with no understanding of architecture or even the most basic ability to alter your surroundings, no ability to fix a broken toilet, repair a frozen refrigerator, fix a broken washing machine, or just replace a window in your house with a new one. And these are things that people live with from their early childhood, unavoidable parts of everyone's lives."Low tech" so to speak.
But when a person doesn't use email? OMG ROFL ROFL ROFL WHAT A DUMBASS NEWB.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
What could someone like that gain from personally using email?
Actually, I wonder how many CEOs use email.
That's the question.
;-)
The CIAs and NSAs operations are totally secret, maybe they attacked a cybertarget before, and that's the just a counterattack. That's a widely known strategy to control the media. The public thinks their countries computers are attacked by evil guys from whereever because they can't link that event to the secret event done by their own secret service before. So the (counter)attacker looks more wvil ("Hey, why do they hate us???") and the government can use this to raise the fear of the people. Also the computer guys from the services can demand more money for defense of the countries networks.
You shouldn't believe everything the secret services (of any country) make public. Especially when they make something public
I love it when they get it wrong.... It was 1500 accounts, not computers. Get the story from a real IT news source.
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
He seemed perfectly fine letting people talk about secret military matters on their insecured wireless crackberries.
About CEOs, based on rumors and wild speculation, I've heard that Michael Dell does indeed use email, and does it pretty much directly. This is why he has to change email addresses pretty frequently, whenever it becomes known to the wider world and they start sending him hatemail / penis enlargement ads / technical support questions.
In contrast, some other CEOs have catchy, widely-published email addresses, and I can only assume whole staffs of people to read their Inbox and sort the wheat from the chaff. Sam Palmisano (CEO of IBM) used to have an address that was like "sam@ibm.com" or something like that. I thought it was kinda cool, but then realized that anyone sending an email there, thinking a CEO is actually going to read it, is on as much crack as someone who writes to their Senator and doesn't realize that it's going to be read and filed by some unpaid summer intern.
Anyway, although I've never gotten to use them, most of the big corporate email suites (Exchange, Notes, etc.) have features that allow for 'delegation' of people's email boxes to secretaries and assistants. So an executive can have their own address but route all the mail coming into it to an assistant, who can sort through and pass stuff along appropriately. And that's for executives that do any of their own email.
Doubtless, at the very high end of the power ladder, there are people whose time is just so valuable that it's wasteful to ever have them sitting and typing at a keyboard -- it's cheaper to have a well-paid executive assistant actually read, summarize, note the desired response to, draft, and present for approval the responses to, all incoming messages. Whether most CEOs do that I don't know (I suspect not too many, anymore), but I bet that a lot of high-ranking government officials do it that way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The hammer in question was Platinum. Because only platinum does NOT produce sparks [of fire] when struck against other metals in a flammable environment.
The congress critter who displayed the hammer for all to see conveniently failed to mention it was platinum.
Now since platinum looks more or less like highly polished steel from a distance, people took it as ripping off..
The military may be an idiot in many ways: Paying contractors and money? I don;t think they are that dumb.
And the toilet seat incident? It was a bolt-down toilet for a transport plane with ability to prevent automatic regurgitation when the plane does a hoop-a-hoop (throwing poop on crew is NOT advisable in war].
Yes, the military was overcharged. But not to the degree you think. The contractors overcharged by 15% on platinum and 12% on toilet seats.
And the military got the money back.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
How did they know it was pasty white guys?
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
Just FYI, I would guess that the 'I don't use email' statement is mostly tongue-in-cheek, with a mode of truth (e.g. his secretary handles most of the actual process.)
As a student at Texas A&M University (where Dr. Gates was president until 6 months ago,) he communicated with the student body regularly via email, and in fact that was how I first learned of his nomination as Secretary of Defense.
Although obviously offtopic, it is an interesting thought, maybe Slashdot should have a tag for different countries as well as for the States. I'm probably gonna get modded down for agreeing with an offtopic post... ugh....
ugh...
I have waaaaay too many memories of supervisors saying "I never said that." Of course, I still have supervisors who want every encounter face-to-face, ostensibly because they feel that email is impersonal. Guess which supervisors have rather flexible memories when it comes to what they did and didn't say to me?
I'll even type up what we discussed right after the meeting and pass it by them to "make sure I understood," and they just reply with "see me." But I push for written records as often as I can. Only weasels and illiterates hate email.