Slashdot Mirror
German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers
bad_alloc writes "Heise.de tells us about the German Bundeswehr's idea of recruiting hackers in order to 'penetrate, manipulate and damage hostile networks.' (Note: The following passage has been translated from German into English: 'The Regiment is stationed in Rheinbach, near Bonn, and consists of several dozen graduates from Bundeswehr universities. They're training at the moment, but the 'hackers in uniforms' are supposed to be operational by next year. This regiment officially belongs to the "Kommando Strategische Aufklärung" (strategic reconnaissance) and is commanded by Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. The Bundeswehr has not said anything to this regiment yet.' You can find the full article in German."
So why does a beer company need Hacker Kommandos? Is it because they're Beglium now?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
what with this being an english site and all.
This being slashdot and all, nobody would actually read the article anyway.
I would think most modern nations employ hackers these days. I'm sure much of America's hacking talent make a tidy salary working for the NSA.
From a handy Google translating robot: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2FMedienbericht-Bundeswehr-baut-Cyberwar-Einheit-auf--%2Fmeldung%2F127082&sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
The first sentence of TFA says that "not only will it do the security of IT systems but also carry out..."
Why does everyone focus immediately on the "black hat" side of the story, and neglect that the group is supposed to do BOTH sides, which in some ways, is a good aspect of ANY security team... just hopefully, your security team follows ethics.
And I imagine that the Bundeswehr is going to follow ethics as well, "no hacking friendly networks......... overtly".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Ahh, the German Bundeswehr. Of course! I was wondering what those guys were up to.
Who or what is the German Bundeswehr and why should I care?
Timmy, great article, by the way. 99% of your readers have no idea what it's about.
Why not have the hackers be the government? :)
http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Main_Page
That doesn't mean we need to encourage them.
... it would be nice if you could post a link to a full article in English, what with this being an english site and all. No, babelfish doesn't count.
Yes, we should ignore all foreign articles until they've been officially translated, even tho' translation tools are adequate to give you the gist of an article
I mean - it's not like there's any Germans who read Slashdot & will translate in the comments or anything is it?
My pics.
The Bundeswehr is recruiting hackers? I'm sure Bayern Munich will get the top recruits as they often do, though I'll keep rooting for FC Kaiserslautern (FCK). Football and hacking finally meet, and I'm in heaven.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
"And even if the cyber attack on Estonia in retrospect, not as a "war" browsed meanwhile shall any State which is a substantial electronic IT infrastructure operates, potential threats posed by cyber attacks seriously."
Jaja, aber Kartoffelbrei, ich bin mit der Fernsehturm verheiraten. I can fix it for you! Super hero acht klar!
Dieses hax0rs wollen siene gelÃck zu hax0r nicht-unsere aber others netwÃrk getesten. Jemand wollen SS uniformen zugaben before entlich der communist volk probieren sind!
Or well, maybe I leave it to the native germans after all.
I'm not impressed with their attention to details. For example, the Estonia situation they refer to as "a cyberwar that did not turn into a real war" was never even a cyberwar. This should be old news by now.
But, if they had done proper fact checking they would know that it was caused by a 15 year old Estonian kid on his own who was angry the government of Estonia moved a communist era statue to a secluded spot. It is sort of scary that there are reporters who still believe it was a Russian cyberwar.
That would be like people believing Columbine was a large-scale neo-nazi uprising, when in reality it was just a couple of disturbed/deluded 15 year olds with a chip on their shoulder, a copy of Mein Kampf, and too many hours playing Doom in god mode.
RE:German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers If it tastes anything like American Bundeswehr, they'll have a hard time keeping them.
If it's a major, huge, timely event, sure, fine. If it's some minor story about, okay, bundeswehr (who are they? why do I care?) recruiting hackers (because no other company/military/whatever the hell they are does that, clearly), then either translate it before submitting or wait for some English news source to pick it up.
Perhaps you could post a link to an English version of the article instead of just complaining that somebody else didn't?
No?
Perhaps you should just keep your whining to yourself then.
P.S. If you don't like Babelfish, vielleicht sollst du Deutsch lernen.
It's like Project Icarus all over again.
Actually, the constitutional safeguards still work in Germany, so it will likely be more like "no hacking anyone else's networks ever, unless we've already properly declared war and the bureaucracy is done approving the paperwork." (At which point the war is probably over anyway.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Where do I sign up? Can we keep it quiet?
Not that it will be really difficult keeping these pople out, but many networks have not been attacked because of lack of an attacker. One more group that fills the role and increases the need for working defenses. Incidentially, bad times for Microsoft as well and generally for systems without competent administrators. But then, a competent administrator was allways and likely will allways be a requirement for professional computing. C
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If I sign, will they give me that cool german helmet?
839*929
This just goes further to show that anything and everything normally considered a criminal activity can be chartered from the state as either "military" or "intelligence" and then glorified.
However, military networks could be fortified against hacking, rendering this kind of formations almost completely useless (at least against military infrastructure): just design them utterly paranoid inside, like e.g. TOR, and establish procedures and safeguards against social engineering, by dehumanizing personal interaction over networks: forbid voice communication, limit and supervise use of free form text, especially emoticons, forbid all improvisations, shortcuts and workarounds on tactical levels IT (reroute any such thing to "special circumstances" staff, who would be required to have elevated level of healthy paranoia).
What's wrong with you guys? Looking at tags for many articles I am starting to think that this tagging system really doesn't work.
Yes, we should ignore all foreign articles until they've been officially translated, ...
And it's not as if this is specifically an English-language site anyway, is it? I mean, look at the URL -- ".org". Not ".us", ".uk", ".au" or anything nation- or language- specific. The URL clearly indicates that it's supposed to be a pan-national site.
(Yes, I know what the FAQ says. The URL sends a stronger and more direct message than the FAQ, however.)
bundeswehr (who are they? why do I care?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr In short, the German army/navy/air force/etc.
yeah you really want a gnome. Gnomes get the engineering racial.
All links are leading to German pages. No guarantees on the accuracy of the translation, especially the military terms.
German Bundeswehr's idea of recruiting hackers in order to 'penetrate, manipulate and damage
You get the 'penetrate, manipulate and damage' with Budweiser or any beer, but why hackers only? Carnage for all I say!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Great, now why wasn't any of this information in the story? :)
The constitutional safeguards still work? How exactly would the limits on the actions of the Bundeswehr be any different from the secret "Federal trojan" and other unauthorized methods which have been employed without constitutional authorization? Safeguards are a nice concept but you need people that are actually afraid of getting caught in them.
... it would be nice if you could post a link to a full article in English, what with this being an english site and all. No, babelfish doesn't count.
Can't read the German one? Bad luck, Bro.
1) Because it's common knowledge 2) If you didn't know, I've been told that idiots commonly use www.google.com to bolster their grasp of simple facts
So I'm not the only one who read that as Budweiser!
Incidentally Hacker is a brewery.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Report-claims-German-armed-forces-setting-up-cyberwar-unit--/112595
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
And .us would also not mean English-language as the the US has no official language.
And Hawaiian is an official language in the state of Hawaii.
-- SouNerd.com
I'll give it a shot. The page this article is from (heise.de) is probably the closest to a german ./ there is. The original article that is referred to in this text was published in the Spiegel (Translation: mirror), a well-known german magazine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Spiegel
The Bundeswehr is said to set up a "Cyberwar unit", which won't only protect the (army's or Germany's, not explicitly stated) own IT-infrastructure but is also supposed to carry out reconnaissance or manipulation "in opposing networks". ./ article) and is led by the Brigade General (whatever rank that is)Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. There haven't been any comments from the Bundeswehr regarding this report. According to the Basic Constitutional Law the German army is not allowed to carry out any functions/missions in the inland (meant is that they may not carry out police or secret service work, etc.... within germany) but there have been plans to abolish that restriction for quite some time.
According to information of the Spiegel, the troup is made out of a few dozen computer science alumni of the Bundeswehr's universities.
According to the Hamburg-based news magazine the "hackers in uniform" are still in training at the moment but should be fully ready next year.
The top secret (har har) unit is supposedly under the command of the "Kommando Strategische AufklÃrung" (like they said in the
While experts are still debating wether a term like Cyberwar is correct since there are neither killings nor injuries in such a war, there seems to be an agreement that the defense against such threats should be one of the duties of a nation's army. And even if the Cyberattack on Estland wasn't termed a "War" afterwards it's true that every state that runs a substantial IT-infrastructure is taking potential threats of cyberattacks seriously.
Americans mangling up random german words never fail to amuse me ;)
(Yes, I know what the FAQ says. The URL sends a stronger and more direct message than the FAQ, however.)
It's not as if 'US-centric' necessarily means English only. Other languages are spoken there.
Vieleicht solltest Du auch erst einmal deutsch lernen ...
Why does /. abound with pretentious twerps?
mod parent up, puhleeze! This is a prizeworthy contribution - I'm sure Chaplin, never mind the Pythons, would approve - and so rare on /. these days.
What about http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Report-claims-German-armed-forces-setting-up-cyberwar-unit--/112595 ?
The "Bundeswehr" (german military arm) is currently in the process of building a "cyberwar unit", which does not only protect it's own infrastructure from attacks, but also conducts reconnaissance and manipulation operations on foreign computers, respectively in foreign networks. According to information from "der Spiegel" (a german weekly newspaper), the unit consists of a couple of dozen computer science degree holders barracked in Rheinbach close to Bonn. Currently the "hackers in uniform" are still training, bound to be operational not before next year.
Organisatorily the top secret unit is part of "strategic reconnaissance" and is lead by brigade general Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. No comment on the report was to be had from the Bundeswehr as yet. According to the constitution, the "german defense army" is not allowed to conduct tasks within the country, although there have been plans to remove this prohibition for some time.
While experts are debating worldwide wether such a term as "cyberwar" is correct or not, because in such a war there are no dead or wounded, there seems to be agreement that defending such threats is the duty of the armed forces of a country. Even if the cyberattack on estonia cannot be said to have been a war in retrospect, every nation that runs any substantial electronic IT-infrastructure takes potential threats by cyperattacks seriously. (pem/telepolis)
Yes, we should ignore all foreign articles until they've been officially translated, even tho' translation tools are adequate to give you the gist of an article
Quite. After all this being the Internet, it's not like it interconnects any networks all over the planet, or if /. had been around for any amount of time and had drawn English speaking people from all kinds of places.
So let's stick to articles from the US or (very occasionally) Air Strip 1. After all all other people must hate freedom as shown by their willingness of living outside of the US (and speaking funny languages with weird characters that aren't even proper ASCII).
I mean - it's not like there's any Germans who read Slashdot & will translate in the comments or anything is it?
Now that's just crazy talk.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Vieleicht solltest Du auch erst einmal deutsch lernen ...
Are we going to get faulty spelling flames in German now?
No?
Yes.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Why is it, you Window fan boi's are always late to the party, and then you keep trying to put Balmer's ugly ass in our face? In the Linux world, We prefer this over yours and Balmer's work.
the best hackers are still freelancers. Is hacking going to become an act of war in the future?
If that's the case, the freelancers are going to send us all back to the dark ages.
They won't stand for cyber-terrorism by the world's armies.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This guy screwed the translation seriously up, here is the correct one:
The Bundeswehr is said to set up a "Beerwar unit", which won't only protect the (army's or Germany's, not explicitly stated) own brewing infrastructure but is also supposed to carry out reconnaissance or manipulation "in opposing beerworks".
According to information of the Spiegel, the troup is made out of a few dozen brewing science alumni of the Bundeswehr's universities.
According to the Hamburg-based news magazine the "brewers in uniform" are still in training at the moment but should be fully ready next year.
The top secret unit is supposedly under the command of the "Kommando Strategische AufklÃfrung" and is led by the Brigade General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. There haven't been any comments from the Bundeswehr regarding this report. According to the Basic Constitutional Law the German army is not allowed to carry out any functions/missions in the inland (meant is that they may not carry out police or secret service work, brewing, Hax'n roasting etc.... within germany) but there have been plans to abolish that restriction for quite some time.
While experts are still debating wether a term like "Beerwar" is correct since there are neither killings nor injuries in such a war, there seems to be an agreement that the defense against such threats should be one of the duties of a nation's army. And even if the beerattack on Estland wasn't termed a "War" afterwards it's true that every state that runs a substantial brewing infrastructure is taking potential threats of beer attacks seriously.
"This being slashdot and all, nobody would actually read the article anyway."
It's easier, in this case, to just wait for Godwin to show up.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yes, yes, we all should google things we don't know. But it's not really common knowledge--I just asked 5 intelligent, educated people, and none of them had any idea. But hey, now you can feel even more superior!
And was there really any reason not to say "German military"?
What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
Trilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
Bilingual.
What do you call someone who speaks one language?
American.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Bundeswehr is an established word which describes German armed forces. It is used in many languages not only german. And this word is in Oxford dictionary too.
It is similar to Sputnik, for example. Not that uncommon for any language to use foreigh words, you now...
Ok, I can crack a WEP network in under 30 minutes, does that make me qualified?
If you get your own "Das Keyboard" in the Bundeswehr -- I'm all for it.
Seriously, do you know if any government hires new grads or security professional from foreign countries? Usually you need to be a citizen of that country and have Top Secret security clearances, but do I have anyway some hope (in Italy there isn't anything like this, yet, and besides this I don't want to work in Italy)?
You can contact me at billsmith@mailvault.com
mod grandpappy up puhleeeeeezzzzee!
The German Bundeswehr hacker regiment has just taken over all the servers of the French Armée de Terre.
We do need a protection of our websites and services, but not by a small secret army unit.
What we need is training the civil police in every country, in every city, in every village all over the world to take care of vandals, extortionists, etc. by an organized international effort. With the participation of the programmers' community.
Instead they invented the wheel again, a small isolated secret unit. Instead of the global work, which is indeed to be done, they do nothing and cover it up by a pseudo-news.
"This being slashdot and all, nobody would actually read the article anyway."
It's easier, in this case, to just wait for Godwin to show up.
You people are a bunch of fucking Troll Nazis! Worse than Hitler! Feed me! I eat Godwins for lunch!
Vieleicht solltest Du auch erst einmal deutsch lernen ...
"Vielleicht" has two ls
Pot, meet kettle.
A German spelling Nazi. What an unexpected development.
You could always read the English version in the UK edition... http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Report-claims-German-armed-forces-setting-up-cyberwar-unit--/112595 It's a pretty good translation
Sollte wohl niemanden ueberraschen, da man ja nach ``de Joden'' zu einem neuen Feind gehen muss. :-)