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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."
... 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.
Linux just isn't ready for the desktop yet. It may be ready for the web servers that you nerds use to distribute your TRON fanzines and personal Dungeons and Dragons web-sights across the information superhighway, but the average computer user isn't going to spend months learning how to use a CLI and then hours compiling packages so that they can get a workable graphic interface to check their mail with, especially not when they already have a Windows machine that does its job perfectly well and is backed by a major corporation, as opposed to Linux which is only supported by a few unemployed nerds living in their mother's basement somewhere. The last thing I want is a level 5 dwarf (haha) providing me my OS.
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?
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
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."
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.
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.
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!
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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.
Fortunately, Linux bought t:he farm...
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
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)
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.
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)?
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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.