Air Force To Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

meridiangod writes "The Air Force is fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even locations are unclear. So now the service is looking to restore its advantage on the virtual battlefield by doing nothing less than the rewriting the 'laws of cyberspace.'" I'm sure that'll work out really well for them.

Comments

They've solved their own problem

[yttrstein]

""[M]ost threats should be made irrelevant by eliminating vulnerabilities beforehand by either moving them 'out of band' (i.e., making them technically or physically inaccessible to the adversary), or 'designing them out' completely," the request for proposals adds."

Luckily for the Air Force, they don't actually have to do any work at all to make this happen, since it's been not only possible, but actually implemented since at least 1998, when RFC 2341 was written all about Virtual Private Networks.

Helpful Hint for the Air Force: Pay your private sector computer engineers more and you'll get the innovation you're looking for.

Re:Disconnect

[Kagura]

They actually are smart, and any computers accessing Secret information and above are NOT allowed to be hooked up to the internet or a network with access to the internet, EVER.

Re:Disconnect

[Dun Malg]

"hey, this memo implies the F35 can climb at over 330 meters/second."

Actually, there's plenty of that stuff around, and it's actually not necessarily classified, even if it's true. In the bad old days of the cold war, I asked the security officer in my Army unit why all this crap we were working with was classified SECRET and TOP SECRET when the same exact information was available to anyone purchasing a Jane's book by mail order. It was explained to me that it was not the raw information that was secret, but rather the positive verification that it was true that was being controlled. Most classified information falls into that category, really. Very little of it is truly secret, in that nobody without clearance knows it. I've seen quite a few pictures of "people and stuff at locations in Certain Southwest Asian Countries" that I know from personal experience would be classified SECRET or higher if they were government photos rather than casual snapshots taken by a yokel or journalist with a pocket camera. What the classification of the subject matter does is bar me (under penalty of waterboarding or whatever) from pointing out which pictures those are.