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Cyber Storm II Set To Begin
mr sanjeev notes that Computerworld is running a story about Cyber Storm II, set to run from March 11th until the 14th.
The exercise will test the security of the US, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, and Canada. The organizers' goals are to test preparedness and responsiveness in relation to real-time threats. The previous Cyber Storm test identified "eight specific areas in need of improvement." We recently discussed the details of the tests themselves. From Computerworld:
"Security experts said the first Cyber Storm event last year improved participants' understanding of who to call in the event of an attack, but did not identify specific vulnerabilities in the nation's computer systems. 'What they're trying to do is highlight the inefficiencies in the process,' according to Marcus Sachs, deputy director with research group SRI International's Computer Science Laboratory. 'They're not really looking for technical solutions.'"
Why do I not feel like anything was learned from the previous go round "http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080306-pentagon-attack-last-june-stole-an-amazing-amount-of-data.html"
I'll be wearing my cyber-mackintosh and a cyber-umbrella. Also cyber-wellies.
Friend, it's all a PR exercise. In the next seven months, we're going to be hearing about every possible type of attack. If you were to judge the state of the world by the media coverage in the coming months (thanks to a lazy, complicit press), you would think that every other human living on earth is a satanic terrorist, looking to kill your babies.
History books will look back on our current confluence of Terrorism and War as a type of madness. It will judge harshly the weak-hearted "leaders" who used fear to govern.
One thing, though: The past seven years has certainly changed my opinion of the Second Amendment. And I choose to extend the "right to bear arms" to the "cyber" type, including the best crypto I can find. Maybe not to use every day, but to keep for the inevitable.
You are welcome on my lawn.
In my Amiga 3000. Was pretty cool, at the time.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN.
I still feel I forgot something.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
...invite these folks? http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/03/07/china.hackers/index.html Never mind, they don't need an invite.
Brief, to the point, and insightful. I wish I had mod points. Thanks!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Everyone knows sequels suck, I'm waiting for the third edition.
To do *real* break-ins. Yours might get lost in the noise of the 'test'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
OK, co-incidence but still annoying.
It is not a PR exercise (well, maybe it is, I haven't read TFA), these types of scenarios are used all the time for crisis testing. I used to help run part of a major multi-national's crisis team, and the main goal in table-topping various disaster scenarios is not to drum up some mass paranoia, or even to exercise more likely minor events. The goal is to come up with something large enough to involve all, or most, members of the team. Too often people are tasked with a crisis function on top of their "real" job, and it is something they will hardly ever be called upon to perform. So you pull them together, give them a scenario, and basically you role-play it. The idea is that they need to become familiar with their specific role, what the other members roles are, and the decision-making and communication structure. Afterwards, you assess how it went, and make suggestions for improvement. We did this all the time. It generally had nothing to do with terrorism (weather or infrastructure failures were more likely scenarios, but sometimes terrorism, crime or political instability were used).
If it had nothing to do with PR, it wouldn't have even been mentioned to the press. When's the last time they reported on a fire drill or internal audit?
Could it make sense to hide some arbitrary data (string of random letters lets say), on a secured network, and give authorisation for anyone anywhere to attack this network, attempt to obtain the letters?
First one to get the letters gets USD500 000; with an extra USD500 000 if they can describe how it was done sufficiently for other people to be able to reproduce these steps. (So, half a million for succeeding, half a million for communicating how they succeeded).
Every time I see articles about Cyberstorm it brings me back to the old Cyberstorm strategy games. I wish they still made those (or something similar).
:)
On a side note, if these games teach us anything it's that Cyberstorm 1 will have been a heckofalot better than 2
Sir, there are plenty of hackers who are entirely motivated by greed. Most of those, probably have nightmares about being shot if they talk about what they do every day, that earns them good money without working hard. If they're the type who don't have nightmares then sir you should be worried. Those Are the type of people who Enjoy their work, breaking the law, and have no qualms about staying hush hush. It didn't take long for organized crime to realize the potential of the internet, and depending on how you count the score they're taking a couple billion, to tens of billions each year from the people who earned it, to the people who knew how to steal it.
of course, this practice is just pr, and most of what's been done has done almost nothing about the crimes being committed online, or ways to stop them... this is all just practice preparing for what if scenarios that pale in comparison to what's really being done. exploits that install rootkits that can't be detected, neither while it's being installed, nor while it's running, not even by the best of anti virus or anti rootkit technology... that puts the data in places that can't even be read much less submitted to anti virus/anti rootkit vendors... really quite scary stuff.
I am in the process of trying to figure out how to submit just such a rootkit, right now I'm running dd with special options so it can read and write the whole cd-rom, then i have to figure out how to submit such a large file, i can use the unix split command to make them 19 mb a piece so i can e-mail it through gmail, but that's a lot of work... might be easier to find some place to upload it, that i could give a password to dl it from there... but dd is getting stuck at 133 MB even though i know the disc has more than 200 mb of data... k3b was only able to extract 3 of the 4 tracks... the 4th one is 'incomplete' but that doesn't prevent it from installing a rootkit on windows.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
~ RKBA
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
If they break into a chorus of Moon River, something definitely got past the ring of protection.
I would mod you funny, but I used all the points yesterday. Dangit.
At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
hehe :)
Thank you, RKBA.
I think the thing that made me take so long to realize the importance of the Right to Bear Arms was my lack of imagination when it comes to what "Arms" can mean.
Living in a big city, it was easy for me to see why wider availability of cheap handguns might be a problem. Now that I look at "arms" more broadly, I can see the importance of that right.
You are welcome on my lawn.