Slashdot Mirror
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.
If they were smart, they would disconnect their computers from the public internet. People can't access hardware they can't access.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
""[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.
How about no spoofing as a good start. No changeable MAC addresses and Client side certs.
I hope they don't overlook Rule 34.
Remember that the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion declared Twitter a terrorist weapon. God forbid they discover pen and paper. Or modulated farting, for that matter.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
In Cyberspace, there are no rules.
If you can imagine it, there's some government out to stop it being on the internet.
for an organization the size of the air force, and with the mandate it has, there is nothing laughable or overly ambitious about say, creating and implementing your own supersecure protocol, and supporting it within its subnet
and, if successful, watch it leave its military surroundings, be adapted by universities, then corporations, then the general public
kind of like the internet itself
somebody is going to do this at some point, considering the various shortcomings of our present dominant protocol suite
that it would be the military to do it first makes sense
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The only useful and meaningful thing they could do, is implement a secure internet protocol (i.e. with the missing session and presentation layers) and provide a good interface to the internet. Then the inherited insecurity of network protocols could be avoided from the beginning.
If it is done right, has advantages and is promoted and laid open to others, it might catch on and replace parts of the internet step by step. ;-)
Will probably not be faster than the IPv6 transition, but hey, they made the internet, why not make another one
Laws can not reach internet phenomena, they are too slow, and when they do, it doesn't matter anymore.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit
As usual, Penny Arcade predicted the future. (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/)
Technician: Our webs are down, sir. We can't log in!
Agent: Which webs?
Technician: All of them.
Technician: They've penetrated our code walls. They're stealing the Internet!
Agent: We'll need to hack all IPs simultaneously.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
actually there is a very simple measure ISPs can take to prevent many attacks.
and that is to prevent their customers from spoofing the source IP in their IP packets.
If governments (starting with the US) would pressure(force by law) ISPs to do this, it can be done with out much technological difficulties.
This anti-spoofing measure can be implemented on many levels, so that even if a certain ISP does not co-operate other ISPs could prevent its customers from spoofing any IP which does not belong to the problematic ISP. This in itself helps protect against IP spoofing.
Without IP spoofing attackers are more easily identified and blocked.
"If you're not blue, you can't come in."
Using color codes for internet traffic - brilliant!
"Hanson is also interested in finding ways to dodge electronic attacks"
Do a barrel roll!
and the us air force is no match for a mere 100,000,000 chinese children being forced to hack them using computers that probably still have turbo buttons?
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
From the article "Enabling Air Force servers to evade or dodge electronic attacks, somehow" Like they say ... the most secure computer is the one that is unplugged.
If you actually RTFA, you see that they aren't bonkers. Quite to the contrary. See this quote, for example:
"[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.
Yeah, absolutely. Remember that this is the military we're talking about. These are the guys who are the "customers" of stuff like the NSA's formally verifiable code project. These are the guys who still use 10 year old computers because those are hardened and tested to military standards. If they upgrade to 5 year old computers, the gain in speed will offset pretty much any performance penalty that security methods that don't fly in the commercial world because of said performance penalties, could cause.
These are also the guys who do a ton of things badly.
So it'll be interesting to watch.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Instead of letting them try to push us around, we the geeks can turn the tables and re-write government based on open source philosophy.
The plan for transition is practical, and folks like those running the Air Force will never see it coming until it is far too late for them to do anything about it.
and that rule is rule 34.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
* Making hostile traffic inoperable on Air Force networks.
...
* Locating and identifying once-anonymous hackers.
* Enabling Air Force servers to evade or dodge electronic attacks, somehow.
Use PKI over VPN to carry all Air Force traffic and reject everything else. The VPN solution would run on customized hardened nodes spread across the globe. These would provide multiple redundant paths and the ability to reject 'electronic attacks', 'hostile traffic' and 'anonymous hackers'
davecb5620@gmail.com
"Hey its just a series of tubes, how hard can it be?!"
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Wait until after business hours before you start that long FTP transfer. Anything over a hundred kilobytes can wait until night.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
So they want to simultaneously change the underlying network fabric in order to make their systems unattackable, and also be able to successfully attack any other system at any time? Does no one there see a disconnect between these goals?
First Rule: Don't talk about Internet
Second Rule: Don't talk about Internet
Third Rule: ???
Fourth Rule: Profit
by doing nothing less than the rewriting the 'laws of cyberspace.'
who will do the rewriting?
Air Force Po'grammers? :)
Eclipse PDE and Me
Most of the article seems to be sensible; improve the security of internal air force networks, etc. Can't argue with that. But here:
"You can control your own networks, rewrite your own laws," says Rick Wesson, CEO of the network security firm Support Intelligence. "You can't rewrite everybody else's."
Of course, the Air Force does have a way to rewrite the rules of the entire Internet, although it won't be free. They can get the US government to mandate a change for public networks in the US. That change might affect other countries, who would need to adopt the new standard in order to stay compatible.
A change that I'm expecting is the forced adoption of security certificates. Someday, all Internet traffic will be encrypted, and routers will not permit traffic unless it has been signed by a certificate that has, in turn, been approved by an authority. It's not hard to imagine that this would be proposed as a solution to stop crackers, pirates, paedophiles, spammers, and (of course) terrorists.
To some extent, it might even work! Spam would be harder, so would piracy. Certainly, the days of mass piracy on TPB would be over: online piracy would move to VPNs, which would have to be small, as large ones would be easily detected by traffic analysis. Spammers and crackers would need to steal valid certificates, which could be difficult, as users would most likely rely on their TPM to sign packets for them. The real disadvantage is that Internet users would not be anonymous, which has many unpleasant implications.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
I'm not sure which old story to refer to here.
The guys who cracked PlayStation3 in a couple weeks?
The various top DoD and White House officials who took classified computers home to play with?
The various spooks and spook wannabes who dumped sensitive stuff into voicemail boxes, or Yahoo mail, or whatever it was, off their crackberries?
Security remains only as good as the control over the folks who have access.
"Now, before leaving the controlled area for the day, please look into this bright light..."
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I have no doubt that the Air Force has the resources to, with suitable leadership and direction, implement seriously secure systems. They have serious secrets to protect, and don't need to fall for the "But $HORRIBLY_INSECURE_SOMETHING is a best of breed industry standard(tm)!" stuff.
That said, though, their "Rewrite the laws of Cyberspace" idea gets a giant WTF. With a lot of security improvements, the task is difficult; but the way forward is relatively clear(ie using PKI for everything, auditing the hell out of stuff, etc. are time consuming and nontrivial; but well understood). Ideas like "dodging rather than blocking attacks" just seem meaningless. The whole plan seems to be:
1. Heretofore unimagined security magic.
2. Air Force Computer are secure.(profit)
Maybe they actually have heretofore unimagined security magic; but they don't want to talk about it; but the whole thing seems dubious.
And if you actually believe a politician is going to do anything he says, you are an idiot.
Its not so crazy that they would replace TCP/IP with something else fairly similar for their internal use.
Aren't we sentencing some guy for logging into Windows computers from over in Europe that had no pass and ran the Windows Operating System? Maybe we should stop playing all these games and have Microsoft rebuild their operating system correctly as not to have hundreds of thousands of zombie computers online. How many of those Zombies run Apple or Linux? What's that you say less then 1%, or perhaps the answer is none at all? The government built the internet but can't secure it? We need 500 different anti virus programs because one specific operating system is incompetent at security? Send the users to jail you say because we can't stop kids from ignoring laws? Who woulda thunk it?
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
"Blue" in the military means "friendly". It comes from military maps, where unit symbols depicted as color blue are friendly forces and unit symbols in red are enemy forces. For example, if you look in just about any book about the American Civil War, you will alway see by convention that United States forces are blue and Confederate forces red. I belive this convention has been adopted by NATO.
So when he says "If you're not blue, you can't come in.", I suppose he means that they will have some sort of positive identification to determine who the requester is and if a connection is accepted or refused.
Newton, sick of all those apples falling on his head, is planning to rewrite the laws of physics to make gravitation a repulsive force.
Empires grow and crumble, and the Turtle Moves. Gods come and go, and still the Turtle Moves. The Turtle Moves.
maybe they want to stop skynet from being built.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I would expect that all of an ISP's addresses should be in the block(s) they received from ICANN. If something on their sub-net is generating headers with foreign addresses, then they ought not to route it.
That doesn't work because the low bid always wins. What would be better would be if the government shifted from a bid system to a fixed bid system. ie: This job is for $50k, this is what we want, now tell us how you are better than the other guys. That would be 100x more effective, but also 100x more time consuming because then they would have to READ EVERY PROPOSAL, not just the two lowest ones.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
of course, what if the van had no doors to open for the question to be asked?!? would they go down a chim chiminey chim chim charoo? i grow wheatgrass on my van roof, and no passenger doors and no cargo doors were made. Only have the front cab window and a Sun roof with a grill/cremation furnace underneath. do your worst, USAIRSDMCFFRIFAAFBCIABATFECES!
They could always use CONS over TP4 and CLNP over TP0 like those Eurocommies wanted to back in the '80s.
I knew my OpenNET/DECnet skillz would come in handy again. Just let me at them AUI connectors...
Why, no one has ever thought of that before..
The Air Force excels at just about everything they do. But for the past decade or two, their Achilles Heel has been computing technology because it moves faster than anything else they're used to.
The Air Force is a very old organization and although they can generally respond to most anything quickly, overall change tends to happen very very slowly. Not long after I enlisted in 1998, there were rumors that the uniform was going to change from the classic camouflage pattern to a kind of pixellated-marble look. Based on what recent photos I can find, they're still only about halfway through getting the new uniform out to everyone.
Also, I know for a fact we're still flying some planes with vacuum tubes in the autopilot computer even though upgrades for all airframes have been around since at least the 80's. Most of the technical manuals that I used to repair avionics were between 25-40 years old and still had technical errors in them. (We weren't able to make corrections to technical manuals any more than you'd be allowed to make pen-and-ink corrections to a federal law.)
Computer use only became common in most squadrons about 10 years ago and even then, they were not really used for the correct purposes. Some captain would get the bright idea that somebody should use a spreadsheet program instead of a paper form for some menial task, force everybody to use it, ignore the pleas from his subordinates that it tripled the effort required to perform the task, and then make up some elaborate report for his commander about how he just saved the Air Force $358,000.
While I was in the service, the Air Force never really caught on that you had to hire and train smart people who know about computers if you wanted to make the most of them. Some squadrons took young administrative airman fresh out of tech school and sat them down in front of the admin console and said, "All right, it's your job now to make sure this doesn't break." This is very uncharacteristic of the Air Force as you normally need at least several weeks of training before you can be trusted to mop the floor correctly. But when a commander has something that needs to be done and he doesn't know how to do it, it's not at all uncommon for him to assign someone to it while implying that they should be rather quiet about it.
Others units farmed out network administration to government contractors like Lockheed Martin which wasn't any better because most of their employees are old military retirees who thought they were going to get paid more as a civilian for doing the same thing they did in the military and ended up being wrong on both counts. (Got seven stripes and an MSCE? Then they're hiring!)
I guess this long-winded point it that it doesn't surprise me that high-level Air Force officers are saying, "Hey, who says we can't control this thing? We're the Air Force, after all." They're used to having fine-grained control over everything in their view and a high degree of security surrounding it.
In other words, the Air Force is still nowhere near where they need to be in terms of network security. The only encouraging part of this is that they finally realize it.
Don't like hacker attacks? Unplug your modem! Wait, does anyone still remember modems?
Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
That sounds like a noble cause. It surely beats watching Sally Struthers blather on about how we have to help feed them.
The AF can deal with someone in a nearby van, but not easily deal with someone anonymously using a free wifi connection in Europe that is bounced through 5 different servers. Even if they were able to completely track an attacker, how do they deal with multiple international jurisdictions?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
There go my plans to connect to Cheyenne Mountain's WOPR computer to play Global Thermonuclear War! I guess they want to play Tic-Tac-Toe, instead?
I think I can expand on your idea. While I know the idea of ICANN and the US Department of Commerce controlling the root servers is unpopular with many, I think the following senario is the kind of situation where it would be beneficial.
ICANN assigns blocks of addresses to ISPs. If an ISP is letting "customers" originate (spoof) addresses that are not part of the ISP's assigned block, then ICANN could just refuse to route (or resolve) any traffic from that ISP by decertifying its assigned address block, unless the ISP cleans up its sub-net.
Historically ICANN has had a *very* light hand, but somebody needs to be the responsible adult on the playground and ICANN's control of the address space is as good a place as any to do it.
Whatever they do, don't do what the Russians did in last nights episode of Spooks. Those fiendishly clever Ruskies planned to launch a cyber attack on Brittan, to do this thay are going to tap into an undersea fiber optic link and cause a massive DOS attack against the UK commercial sector. MI5 came up with a counter-plan: bounce a zero-day-attack off the fiber link to the submarines communications and navigation system. To do this they would need the subs 'Remote Access Protocols'.
.. on computer ?) and steal the 'protocols' off the computer, copy them to CD and get out of the building.
..
.. :o
To do this MI5 blackmails the head of the FSB into sneaking into the Russian Embassy (where the nuclear access protocols are kept
They duly implement the plan, and on screen at MI5 headquarters, they see, the primary firewall and then the secondary firewall being disabled followed by the control screens on the sub going garbled and all the lights going out
In episode one, al-Qaeda is planning to detonate a bomb with the support of Chechens with links to Russia
Spooks Episode 2 Series 7
davecb5620@gmail.com
lameness filter forced me to munge the layout
RFC1149a - Standard for the transmission of flash memory on avia
Network Working Group_____________ TubeSteak
Request for Comments: 1149a__________LOL WTF
3 November 2008
A Standard for the Transmission of Flash Memory on Avian Carriers
Status of this Memo
This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of
flash memory in avian carriers. This specification is primarily
useful in Metropolitan Area Networks. This is an experimental, not
recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Overview and Rational
Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low
altitude service. The connection topology is limited to a single
point-to-point path for each carrier, used with standard carriers,
but many carriers can be used without significant interference with
each other, outside of early spring. This is because of the 3D ether
space available to the carriers, in contrast to the 1D ether used by
IEEE802.3. The carriers have an intrinsic collision avoidance
system, which increases availability. Unlike some network
technologies, such as packet radio, communication is not limited to
line-of-sight distance. Connection oriented service is available in
some cities, usually based upon a central hub topology.
Frame Format
The flash memory is packaged, inside a small waterproof container,
and formatted to FAT32. The waterproof container is attached to the
back of the avian, between the wings, as a backpack. The bandwidth
is variable and limited by the carrying capacity of the avian.
Upon receipt, the backpack is removed, the flash memory extracted
and checked for physical and liquid damage.
Discussion
Multiple types of service can be provided with a prioritized pecking
order. An additional property is built-in worm detection and
eradication. With time, the carriers are self-regenerating. While
broadcasting is not specified, storms can cause data loss. There is
persistent delivery retry, until the carrier drops. Audit trails
are automatically generated, and can often be found on logs and
cable trays.
Security Considerations
Security is a problem during normal operation, as flash memory
has a non-trivial and intrinsic value. Special measures must be
taken (such as data encryption) when avian carriers are used in
a tactical environment.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The headline here says 'rewrite the rules of the internet', whereas the Wired article talks about 'rewriting the rules of cyberspace.' Subtle difference here.
The internet exists as it is--fundamentally an IP-based network connected in all the ways we know about, routing, addressing, etc.
The thing is, there's no reason that the Air Force (or anyone else) couldn't create their own, entirely incompatible version. Start with something that has guaranteed QoS, hard-wired source addressing, encryption at the equivalent of the transport layer, content-metadata in the packets (or equivalent to packets--it doesn't have to be a packet protocol at all), etc..
If you need to connect it to the internet, create a tunneling protocol, or a translating switch. Make it different. Make it incompatible. Make it rigid in its requirements. You CAN create a secure network, but not if it's based on the same technology that makes up the existing internet.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
"You still have the problem of how to run www.af.mil in a manner open to the public, as well as the public sites for many military bases, while still securing them"
...
A contradiction in terms. You can't secure *.mil, at least in my understanding of the term. Never mind in technological terms just keeping track of the information. For low level mil traffic and public access, continue to use the InterTUBES.
"Still, wouldn't you LIKE to find out who's sending you spam/phishing attacks/etc... so you can, if nothing else, impolitely ask them to stop at 0100 in the morning?"
Any such attacks are usually from some compromised desktop in JP. Once the VPN filters it out, I don't want to see it. The VPN node keeps such logs. Putting a 'secure' system on the Internet with only a username and password for protection, is dumb as dumb can be
HPDIA0200W Authentication failed. You have used an invalid user name, password or client certificate.
davecb5620@gmail.com
It could start with the need to do business with government. The government could adopt protocols and standards that are more secure than the ones we are [ab]using now. And then, just as with digital TV in the US, an announcement is made saying "as of Aug 2009 if you want to do business with the US government, you will have to start using these protocols." Suddenly, software makers have motivation to supply the next versions of their email software that works with the new government email protocol standard and on and on.
People know SMTP sucks. The trouble is getting that ball rolling for change. Who could individually start that ball rolling? The biggest spender of all time, of course, the US Federal Government.
"Yes, I'm sure every potential recruit would just love to have to install a VPN client to go check out af.mil."
..
Pretending to be dumb is no excuse for a slashdot subscriber. Like the potential recuit isn't in du' Army yet, as such the recuitment site would have to be on du' InterTUBES
'Hey dude, how can I get onto this FaceBook from this here 'secure' computer'
davecb5620@gmail.com
Why do these stories keep getting put on slashdot? Wired is god aweful reporting to begin with, and they make EVERY military related story into some stupid diatribe article. One day they are laughing that the Air Force allows users to surf the web, the next they are talking about how the Air Force is some draconian government gestapo crushing freedom because it blocked social networking sites. These people are tools...I mean for christ's sake there is a huge picture of Neo stopping bullets at the top of the article. The Air Force could discover the cure for cancer and these assholes would write a story about how they are killing millions of cells in humans.
I mean seriously...the DoD only has the largest enterprise network in the world. The DoD was a big part of the Internet even happening in the first place. I think it is pretty assinine to point and laugh and take quotes from the non technical people and further warp them by putting them out of context. Wired is pathetic.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
If the RIAA can rewrite the laws of cyberspace, why not the Air Force?
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Because the military's decision making machine is seriously stupid.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Leave it to these guys to thinking THEY should be the ones to rewrite the internet...I have not read the article, but if the title holds true, and the USAF thinks its time to make some changes to
better track internet usage, then don't think whatever you come up with should be implemented...that is what the IEEE is for no?
I am a Liberal.
I believe in the Constitution which contains the right to bear arms and seperation of church and state.
I believe in the United States of America, not Jesusland.
When the American Right stops trying to destroy the First Amendment, which incidentally comes before the Second Amendment, I will consider it.
Until then, you're welcome to relocate to a country more amiable to your theocratic oligarchy: I think Iran would suit you nicely.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
In World War I one of the countermeasures the Russian's used against the possibility of a German invasion was to use a different gauge of railroad; the rationale was that the German's wouldn't be able to support their troops without rail, the German trains wouldn't be able to run on Russian tracks, and therefore they wouldn't be able to sustain an advance.
This practice cost the Russians a vast amount of trade revenue due to the inefficiencies of the system, and in the end it was all for nothing.
The Germans, not being morons, allowed the Russians to advance into German territory and then pulled the same trick on them: surrounding and destroying forces who had effectively cut their own supply lines by advancing past the end of their own rail lines.
So yes, on the one hand, making your system incompatible with the "enemy" system may have advantages, but it also has dramatic disadvantages. You won't have the benefit of the rest of the worlds security research, you won't benefit from the advances on more popular systems, and you won't be in a position to be aggressive with your resources because you'll have the same problems working on other people's networks as they'll have on yours.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I believe that the DoD's network for secure (TS, S) information - Sipernet - actually does run on the Internet infrastructure. It doesn't behave the same way as normal traffic and special devices are used at the end points that connect to the Internet to disguise the traffic.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Well unlike any other institute that has threatened to re-write the rules of cyberspace, they're probably that institution with the largest amount of (nuclear and conventional) weapons that has threatened to do so. So does that give them the right? :-p
...in bed
Oh wait, nevermind...
Isn't this a simple issue of isolating a few "clean" networks and essentially NAT'ing them, denying access to any external address (at the BGP level, the way Sprint recently blocked Cogent)? Anybody coming in from elsewhere will have to VPN into some time-sensitive opening (see below). Done and done.
Time-sensitive opening: create a giant honeynet on the entry-way IP blocks which host the VPN. The VPN firmware/software would determine which IP:port to connect to with one-time "password" (OTP) generators like SecureID ... hell, you could even use the physical SecureID keychain for this part, thus gaining two-factor authentication. Connecting to the wrong one results in getting blocked by the entire VPN network for 10 minutes. Too many failed authentications on a OTP generator will result in that generator being revoked or frozen, just like your online bank account.
How does this not solve the problem? You're relatively immune to DDoS attacks, a strong enough level of security ensures only privileged accounts gain access, and facilitating access lists should be as secure as their physical equivalents.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Yes, but... if you can think of the internet as a hierarchical tree instead of a web. People think of it as peer-to-peer like a web. But it is really subnet-backbone-subnet, both physically, and logically (DNS). All ISPs have to physically feed into a higher level link until you reach the tier-1 providers which put it on the backbone. Then the tier-1s have to resolve at the 13 root name servers to know where to send it. At each level of the tree, each subnet gets gate-wayed/routed to the higher (or lower) layer. Each level of subnet should have discrete sets of blocks of ICANN assigned numbers right down to the neigborhood dsl-exchange.
So, ICANN could, at least theoretically, make "being connected" conditional on a provision that would flow from tier-1 down to the neighborhood ISP -- "you only resolve and forward out-ward traffic if its origin headers match the assigned block(s) of the origin subnet(s)". If a subnet starts spewing spoofed packets, the next higher tier (up to tier-1) disconnects them until they agree to fix (or filter) the problem. ICANN then rides herd on tier-1 to keep it enforced.
Leave rule 34 intact!
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I would mod it to +32,768.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Or perhaps today's protocols can be tailored, to make military networks "technically or physically inaccessible" to malicious traffic. "We'll start with blue," says Information Directorate chief Donald Hanson, using the military term for friendly forces. "If you're not blue, you can't come in."
WHat a great idea. We could call it a "firewall" or something.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
A contradiction in terms. You can't secure *.mil, at least in my understanding of the term. Never mind in technological terms just keeping track of the information. For low level mil traffic and public access, continue to use the InterTUBES.
Bastian fortress hardening - you're not looking to protect the information on it in the traditional sense, you're trying to prevent anybody from compromising the machine to either change the information on it or use it as a gateway for further hacking.
Once the VPN filters it out, I don't want to see it. The VPN node keeps such logs. Putting a 'secure' system on the Internet with only a username and password for protection, is dumb as dumb can be ...
The VPN isn't, by itself, going to be filtering out phishing emails. And we've graduated from username/passwords some time ago.
I don't read AC A human right
No Nazis from the Nuremburg trials ever made it to South America or the US.
I'm sure that the air force has all of our best interest at heart. At least they think they do, or they might think they do. Or that is, er. Come to think of it maybe I will live in that bunker in Montana after all.
Today is an ephemeron, doomed to the crypt of yesterday.
The Air Force must have completed the rewriting of the rules today at 1:00 PM. That might be the answer to why there are no new stories on /. since then.
I couldn't have said it better.
Except I am neither liberal nor conservative. I am an American patriot and believe in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I also believe in capitalism and separation of church and state.
But, I will never again vote for any republican since they began their campaign to destroy the foundations of American democracy and switch the country to capitalistic dictatorship and the military industrial complex.
I have NO fear of Obama. And contrary to the neocon rhetoric, I have no doubt he will uphold the principals of democracy, unlike the last 2 douch bags he and Biden will be replacing shortly. I am also a gun owner and support the right for all Americans to form Militia to defend our land and freedoms.
Actually it's the neocon side of the isle that will seek to take our guns from us. Dictatorship is easier when the masses cannot shoot back.
Bush & Cheney have done more damage to the country and world than should have been allowed. I hold all republicans and their supporters guilty of high treason for this. Now they have 2 more whacked out fruit cakes, John McBush & Sarah McCheney they want in there to continue the destruction.
Isn't it obvious that McBush & McCheney, as people, are just as stupid as George W. Bush? Cheney is not stupid, he is just pure evil.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." George W. Bush
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
I see far more first amendment attacks from the American Left than I do the American Right.
Internet boards, like this one, are filled to bursting with posters who bash on Religion, especially the Big C, with the heat of a thousand stars.
The reverse is not true. Most of the Atheist bashing I see is confined to odd little corners of the Internet, such as forums dedicated to fundamentalist worship of one flavor or another, or the 42nd page of the newspaper.
In general web surfing I'd say the religion bashing posts outnumber the Atheist bashing posts by a ratio of about 10,000:1. No I'm not exaggerating for dramatic effect.
When the American Left starts embracing the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution as strongly as the 1st then I'll consider joining.
This isn't to say that I'm comfortable with the hysterics of the "Religious Right", it's just that I don't find the hypocrisy of the "Sectarian Left" any more pleasant or rational.
The USAF has the big advantage that they're not trying to grow their web traffic. If nobody on free mail services can talk to them, no problem. If executable downloads don't make it through the mail filters, no problem. If every incoming document gets run through a conversion to ODF to strip any funny stuff, no problem. If every incoming image is rendered and recompressed at the firewall, no problem. If their users's machines need a dongle to authenticate, no problem. If their servers have to run NSA Secure Linux or LynxOS or EAL4 QNX, no problem. They can take a hardass attitude if they want to.
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Rewriting "the laws of cyberspace" is for wussies. to save on my heating bill I rewrote the laws of thermodynamics.
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this is so much of a pledge to rewrite the internet, so much as its toplevel brainstorming by folks who just dont know that much about the technology behind the internet. if its a wardog pondering, then the idea of 'dodging' and the concepts he implies sound vaguely related to tor routing. i think more than visions from leaders, the af is going to need to do some serious recruiting to find some very savvy sysadmins and network people, most of which are already purchased by fortune 500's. this is challenging, as most of the admins i know are rather opposed to joining the war machine agenda.
Good people go to bed earlier.
You seem to have confused people exercising their first amendment right with attacks on the first amendment.
Criticism of someone else's speech is not an attack on the first amendment. Geographically restricting free speech, on the other hand, is.
No, instead they exclude the non-Christians, do their best to game the rules to punish them, and actively try to suppress their education and rights. Once you stop your stupid Creationist backdoor indoctrination campaign, leave women's bodies to themselves, stop butting into my bedroom and entertainment and start acting like good neighbors THEN I will stop bashing 'Christians'. Every time I have debated religion with a lay 'Christian' I have always known more about the true teachings of Jesus than they have, they only know the hate and vemon spat from the pulpit and pushed by their local conservative politicos.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
In general web surfing I'd say the religion bashing posts outnumber the Atheist bashing posts by a ratio of about 10,000:1.
That should tell you something. By and large, people get bashed for pissing other people off, and best practice for pissing people off is interfering with their lives. Atheists, agnostics etc. do not have holy rules they believe they have to bugger mankind with, except agreeable basics such as the Golden Rule. They get bashed less because they deserve less bashing - according to those who bash.
Or do you prefer to believe there is some web-wide troll conspiracy going on that limits or directs anyone bashing impulses?
Now will you explain how bashing is an attack on the first amendment, rather than the exercise thereof?
blow your mind already
Wow. Can I have your weed dealer's number? That must be some great shit!
"But this one goes to 11!"
Ok, so based on my experience with the Air Force the rules will be as follows:
1. kiss you superiors butts, even when they tell you to do something wrong
2. do crappy work - and bitch about it a lot
3. work sloooow
4. after steps 1-3 your superiors will tell you that you've been doing it wrong (nevermind the fact that they told you to do it that way), and you need to start over
5. Thank you boss for the opportunity to do it 'the right way' this time
6. start again, then someone else gets tasked with the project despite your objections
7. you tell the new guy to go to step 1, and continue until project completed
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Apparently you never listen to talk radio then.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Signed integer limit is +32767.
32768 is only possible in the - domain!
There's the "heat of a thousand suns" I referenced in my previous post!
I personally think that the Religious Right is far too active in U.S. politics. I won't argue that point.
Whatever our personal feelings it seems there are enough of the Religious Righties that they hold some sway in this representative Democracy that we have here in the United States.
Are you advocating silencing, or disenfranchising, a significant percentage of the citizens of this country to further what you personally believe? How does this make your behavior superior to theirs? Merely because you attack different targets or use different arguments?
I'm a lay Christian and I'd be happy to debate with you. Of course you'd then have to give up the "Every time" hyperbole at the start of that sentence. My email is available in the header of every post, feel free to contact me.
That's because you visit more atheist-friendly websites than religious websites. People prefer to express their opinions in like-minded company; thus you see more anti-religion post on your pro-atheist websites.
On this comment page, there are at least two anti-atheist posts. That is for a single story. Twenty slashdot stories a day, 500 posts per story makes your 20 000 posts to cover that. So you claim that almost every post made on slashdot is anti-religion? Or does slashdot have a different ratio because it is a particularly pro-religion website?
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Some of the workers responsible for governmental, critical security are well trained, seasoned and dedicated. I would not discount their abilities one little bit.
Interesting but I see no links to any documentation that I can can read to validate this. Is it theory or truth? ...or a fun thing to say? Anyone can make an accusation.
This is the first time I hear this. Surely it would (or should) have come out when the father or the son was campaigning (or Jeb).
Anyone have something on this?
For the record: I am not American and am not taking sides here and am not really up on all the information on the Bushes. (or is that Bushs?)
I hold all republicans and their supporters guilty of high treason for this.
While I agree with a lot of what you say, I think you're overstepping a line here. Find the scumbags who've actually done something wrong, and hold them responsible for their wrongdoing. Charge them with treason if they've committed it.
But don't hold innocent republicans, or those who innocently vote republican, responsible. At least not if you value the rule of law.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I hate neocons just as much as you do, and I lean more left than right (so the republicans wouldn't get my vote, were I eligible to cast it) but I will defend them here in spite of that, so that someone will defend me when I need it.
I'm hard core atheist and every blog I post on knows it. I've received more crap from atheists than the few uberChristians. All I do is point out their hypocracy and whammo, they lose their nut.
For instance, I'm not excluded from any blog at all, no one actively tried to suppress my education or rights or those of my daughter or her children. You list a line of talking points that don't stand up on scrutiny and I seriously doubt your every time statement. Sounds more like pompous self-aggrandizement than truth. Also, the 'true teachings' statement is similar to that made by religious bigots because they 'hold the understanding'. I live in Bible belt country and rarely hear local conservative politicos spit hate and venom.
Signed integer limit is +32767. 32768 is only possible in the - domain!
He went long.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's recently dawned on me that there more than seven continents taught to you at school, which are N. America, S. America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica. In fact, there is an eighth: the Internet. Consider: the empires that colonized the Americas knew about them for years before there was serious Europeanization (E-ization from now on, because it is so hard to spell out.). Once they started becoming seriously interested in expanding into the Americas, they reacted in the following ways: they first began settling the regions and using what they could to be more efficient. Second, they vilified the natives, decrying what they learned was necessary to survive and the culture that sprang from it as barbaric and savage. Third, they imposed their culture on the natives, forcing them to submit to their laws until everything that was native was now part of Europe. Anything they keep is seen as a novelty. I see this happening with the Internet. People have known about it for a long time, but haven't really cared about it. Now it's becoming more and more necessary for them to operate within it. So, in recent years, they have begun using what we have had, like e-mail and online news sources. Now they are saying our websites are bad, like the article on CNN. In it, the author implies that our culture is savage, cruel, and callous. Now again, they have begun imposing their laws upon us, barging into our 'continent' and claiming it is theirs because we aren't responsible enough. By the time they realize that they are wrong, it will be too late; our culture will be long gone. I propose the following: we, as a culture, begin mass-migrating to another medium, or we fight for our lands and keep out the intruders. I vote for the latter. It is not their right to steal what is ours, nor is it their 'responsibility' to use it the way it was 'supposed' to be used. But don't listen to me. Think for yourselves, before it is too late.
... and I am an Anarcocapitalist. I believe that there's no government you can design, that authoritarians of either the Communist-type or the Fascist-type won't eventually turn into their own tools of oppression (always, of course, "for everyone's benefit")
I know it sounds extreme, but if you're a fan of the work of Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman, I suggest you have a look at the work of his son, David Friedman, which extended his father's work to its natural conclusion.
And in any case... whether you want a return to the limits of the Constitution, less government overall, or no government whatsoever, I suggest you check the link in my signature.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I give as I receive and this crap about the poor Christian minority being oppressed when my experience is exactly the opposite is the kind of thing that really pisses me off. I'm sorry but being punished for playing a game because it "encourages witchcraft" (Magic when I was in High School). Being told that I can be put in jail because of the salient material I choose to view or objects I choose to purchase (porn and vibrators) because they don't agree with someones 'morals', etc. The thing that really pisses me off the most is the attempted control over women's bodies. If it weren't for the availability of late term abortions my brothers and I wouldn't exist. My mother had an extremely high risk pregnancy with my older brother, to the point where the doctors wanted to abort him and tie my mothers tubes. If she hadn't had the option to abort the pregnancy if her life were threatened then she would have been forced to follow their advice. By having the option available to her there are three more generally good souls on this planet who try to be assets to their country and community.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Does this mean that when i try to access their servers i will no longer be greeted with:
"Hello Professor... would you like to play a nice game of 'surf pron'?"
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Really, have you not been paying attention? The fundies are trying to dismantle science and replace it with thinly veneered proselytizing about their creation myth. Palin is on the record as saying she is against all abortions including in the cases of incest, rape, or the health of the mother and she gets cheered loudly while saying it. I would call that seriously suppressing the rights of your daughter. I have zero problem with most Christians, they are generally good people who try to lead decent lives. It's the more vocal minority that has gotten heavily involved in politics and tried to control how I live my life that I detest.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
>how do they deal with multiple international jurisdictions? Extraordinary rendition?
Next week: Fat guy tries to rewrite the law of gravity? Mortgage broker tries to rewrite the law of diminishing returns? Nobel prize for Average Joe who successfully rewrites the law of averages? I'm inclined to think that this is more: "Tarzan rewrites the Law Of The Jungle" (before consulting the tigers).
I think you're missing the GP's point. Turning the other cheek, and actively loving those that despise you has more effect then you may think on those you mention that try to restrict others agency. Calling them names and embittering relations only increases the void between the two camps; no side has been entirely innocent, both have at one time or another been the persecuted or the persecutors.
"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Know thyself. -- Delphic Oracle, 8th century BC
I've never persecuted Christians or people of any other religion. The 'worst' thing I have ever done is try to keep their views out of schools and the workplaces I have been a part of. I am perfectly willing to discuss religion in a non-antagonistic manner outside of work hours. As I said my personal experience living in a battleground state is that there has been a lot more attempts by the religious right to control people than the other way around.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Noted
Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and many others saw the need to overstep certain boundaries to set foundational principals for the new colonies.
And some republicans have had the balls to come out and denounce publicly that they do not approve of what their kind are doing. I have no animosity towards them. These are the real patriots. Others that are just fine being led around by their noses and told what to do and think, are just mindless sheep.
But I do have issues with those that fervently defend Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, James Baker, Rumsfled, Robert Novak, Rove, Rice, Jeb, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neocon scum. These public figures should be the ones facing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They have disgraced us all. Their followers are the ones that would be better off just shot out of a cannon and into space.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
You make it sound as if I was accusing you; I wasn't. All I wished to emphasize is that pointless bickering between the two "sides" does nothing, we can't wait for the "other" side to change before we start being decent human beings. I believe that is what the Anonymous Coward #25619735 meant; though in a slightly less inflammatory tone.
Know thyself. -- Delphic Oracle, 8th century BC
The first rule of the Air Force Internets is - you do not hack the Air Force Internets. The second rule of the Air Force Internets is YOU DO NOT HACK the Air Force Internets. Third rule of the Air Force Internets is if you get hacked, power down, the hack is over.
I mean, Montana has an AFB in it, along with 6 Air Force bases in nearby states. There is no place anywhere in Montana that isn't relatively close to an Air Force Base. That's a great plan for getting to a place where "The Man" can't hit you. *grin*
Can anyone explain how commenting on USAF attempting to solve a problem by redefining it to suit its own purposes by pointing out (humorously, which doesn't seem to be at issue) two other instances if it doing the same (and failing, also apparently not at issue) is off topic?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I take it you're from the Sarah Palin school of Constitutional interpretation, where extremely vocal criticism by the press or private citizens/organizations amounts to a violation of the first amendment. Or you're just throwing this statement out there, without offering any support for it.
You might have heard recently about how Elizabeth Dole called out Kay Hagan for attending an event hosted by a group called Godless Americans (among others, but none of the other groups were mentioned in Dole's attack ads). The implicit message here is that atheism is so horrible that having any association with an atheist group is counts as a black mark against a person's character and suitability as a member of Congress.
This is the Elizabeth Dole campaign, an sitting congresswoman. She's the wife of a former major party candidate for the presidency of the United States, not a "fringe group on the Internet."
Reaching back a bit, there is the infamous quote from George H. W. Bush when he was campaigning for the presidency: "... I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
People campaigning for public office today usually have a little more tact than that, but anti-atheist sentiment is not at all a fringe phenomenon, on the Internet or elsewhere. It's not uncommon at all for people to make comments about atheists, that if were said about Jews, would be called out by everyone as rank bigotry.
I wouldn't expect a non-atheist to see it though. We've been conditioned as a society to recognize the injustice faced by certain minority groups, but atheists usually aren't such a group, so a lot of the derogatory commentary about atheists might not even register as something potentially offensive. But it's definitely out there.
Is this post meant to be ironic? People who bash religion are not attacking the first amendment, they are making good use of it.
Are you advocating silencing, or disenfranchising, a significant percentage of the citizens of this country to further what you personally believe?
No, he's pointing out that they're wrong. He's saying that they should stop pushing their religious agenda, not that they should not be allowed to push their religious agenda.
If you look at the seminal works in computer security you will see that a lot of the most significant early ones were reports for the Electronic Systems Division of the Air Force Systems Command.
I don't know how much damage has been done to either or both of USAF and NSA by incompetent and technically illiterate managers and politicians since those days but a spy agency with expertise in cryptographic algorithms is not what you need in overall charge of the thinking about systems security. An organisation where systems must be usable by people overloaded with work in a high stress environment is more appropriate than one whose mission is to spy on foreigners and die rather than give up any information.
I would cite SELinux as an example in support of my argument. It is fine in theory but so hard to use in practice that the usual advice is to disable it if you want to get any work done. This fits the spy agency thinking that it is better for the system to be inoperable than for there to be any possibility of information leakage. That is totally unacceptable to anyone who needs to get a job done.
Having had my little rant, maybe I should read the article...
Really? Thank you. I'll see if I can find a copy.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Nowhere in the Constitution do the words "seperation (sic) of church and state" exist. From Wikipedia (a convenient, but by no means the only source)
"The phrase SEPARATION of church and state is generally traced to the letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptists, in which he referred to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as creating a "wall of separation" between church and state.[3] The phrase was then quoted by the United States Supreme Court first in 1878,[4] and then in a series of cases starting in 1948.[5] This led to increased popular and political discussion of the concept."
The First Amendment guarantees freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion. Nobody is forcing anyone to adopt any religion. Theocratic oligarchy???? Big words for someone who can't spell "separation"
I'm one of those American Right people you speak of, however I think we're so far off on the horizon you can't see us clearly. You see, we're being obscured by all those people to the Left of us that are constantly trying to take away the First and our guns. We usually blame the Left for all our ills, but I guess the problem is that our view is just as obscured as your view by that huge mass of selfish people in the Middle. Oh and the Second is more important than the First: You don't need to yell if you're armed, or as Roosevelt said "Speak softly and carry a big stick."
Taliban controlled Afghanistan was an example of an armed society without the First Amendment.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
"The VPN isn't, by itself, going to be filtering out phishing emails. And we've graduated from username/passwords some time ago."
The email system would only accept email from identifiably PKI certified senders and while this one uses PKI certificates it hasn't yet graduated off the InterTUBES, as in I can still send malicious packets directly to the server, which if the current infrastructure were adequate then the US Air Force wouldn't be:
".. fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even locations are unclear.. "
Netperger Syndrome: an obsessive compulsion to argue with total stranger over the InterTUBES
davecb5620@gmail.com
The public is not particularly useful at identifying suspicious behaviour. Call your local PD sometime and ask how many tips they get that are useless.
Besides, the enemy happens to know everything the public knows, plus has the benefit of planning the op in the first place. There's a reason national defence plans aren't public, even if they "might" help the public help back.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)