Slashdot Mirror
USAF Considers Creation of Military Botnet
sowjetarschbajazzo writes "Air Force Col. Charles W. Williamson III believes that the United States military should maintain its own botnet, both as a deterrent towards those who would attempt to DDoS government networks, and an offensive weapon to be used against the networks of unfriendly nations, criminal groups, or terrorist organizations.
"Some people would fear the possibility of botnet attacks on innocent parties. If the botnet is used in a strictly offensive manner, civilian computers may be attacked, but only if the enemy compels us. The U.S. will perform the same target preparation as for traditional targets and respect the law of armed conflict as Defense Department policy requires by analyzing necessity, proportionality and distinction among military, dual-use or civilian targets. But neither the law of armed conflict nor common sense would allow belligerents to hide behind the skirts of its civilians. If the enemy is using civilian computers in his country so as to cause us harm, then we may attack them." What does Slashdot think of this proposal?"
No good can come of this.
A botnet is like a disease. Not a bomb. Deliberately infecting your own computers is a horrible idea.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
You hit the nail on the head!
A botnet's great strength is that it is dispersed. House it only on military computers and you cripple it. Put it "out there" in some form, though, and you risk having the CNC reverse engineered and the botnet might suddenly "belong" to someone else.
Bad idea.
Life is short: void the warranty.
"If the enemy is using civilian computers in his country so as to cause us harm, then we may attack them"
It might be found that the enemy botnet just doesn't respect political borders and will be using machines within ones own country. What happens then?
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Why would they need to install them on civilian PC's? The US Gov't, unlike a lot of botnet creators, has a hell of a lot of funding. They could just buy a bunch of computers specifically for the task.
Or, they could just take every computer that is upgraded/rotated out of a federal government facility and set it aside for this job.
Or the US Gov't could just add a program to all of their active computers that relinquishes their idle time to the botnet. Sort of a militant version of Folding@home. (Civilians could even opt into this one.)
Or they could do all of the above. They wouldn't need to touch a civilian PC to get a formidable botnet.
Star Pirates
The one where the superior military, that could crush its opposition anywhere they stood and fought, couldn't defeat an army that kept slipping in to the countryside?
The one where the "evil" greater power could be demonised every time they caused collateral damage or took reprisals on the people the weaker force hid behind?
The one where the great general George Washington brilliantly used geurilla tactics to make up for never having more than 17,000 men in the field at any one time?
The one where, soon after winning its largely guerilla war, they wrote the second ammendment to their constitution to enshrine the right to that kind of combat?
The one where the larger but distant power regarded the attacks on its own holdings as terrorism - the term just wasn't widely used yet?
It's ironic that a nation formed on, and celebrating in its constitution, the principles of armed insurrection, guerilla warfare and terrorism when it was the weaker power gets its panties in such a collective bunch when people do exactly the same thing that worked so well for it back again.
Remember: If you win and you're powerful enough to write the history, it's noble. If you lose, it's evil terrorism. Until it's decided, which one it's viewed as simply depends on which side you're on.
Patriotic Americans who allow the govt to install software on their machine to attack the enemy is all well and good...
And it makes the civilian population a legitimate military target. A little like hiding the missiles in the churches.
What?
And most (real, not the jingoist xenophobic crap that passes for it now) threats to national security are surrounded by innocent civilians who lack the "sophistication" (or are just scared sh*tless) to overthrow an opressive regime themselves.
Now, since we're not talking about injuring or killing people--just essentially jamming their net connection for a little while, and maybe messing up their computers--I'm much less concerned about "civilian casualties" of a botnet war. (That is, until the botnets send the robots to come kill us).
A hostile ant isn't biting you because it's mean, it's instinct since you've been perceived as a threat to the colony. Hostile antbites also don't result in millions of dollars lost when mission critical infrastructure is brought down.
Let's take some of your statements:
What the conventions actually say is that it's forbidden to perform certain acts. However, if one party commits such acts, it doesn't mean that any civilian population is then "fair game". Civilians are never "fair game".
The fact that some of the acts of one party are forbidden, doesn't mean the other party may commit crimes in response. Specifically, the Geneva conventions talk of proportionality: "Art. 53. Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations." Given furthermore the fact that Israeli's occupation of Gaza is illegal by international law in general, any action taken by Israel to keep Gaza occupied is in fact a crime (though not necessarily by the Geneva conventions, which only deals with very specific humanitarian issues).
Actually the Geneva conventions cover several aspects about war that have humanitarian consequences: the treatment of prisoners of war, the treatment of a population by their occupier, and so on.
It's the responsibility, not the discretion of the commander.
It's very true that no army ever respects the Geneva conventions. Israel, the United States and many other countries tend to profess how humane their acts of war are. Ofcourse, the harder they claim this, the more of a lie it usually is. (Collective punishment in Palestine, 10,000s of civilian prisoners of war without any outlook on a trial, but with rampant torture going on, the United States ofcourse has Guantanamo Bay, the en-masse destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iraq during both wars there, and so on). Regarding the statement you make about Hezbollah's declarations on multiple occasions, would you mind providing a reference to one such declaration?