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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."

34 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Just asking. by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 4, Funny

    So why does a beer company need Hacker Kommandos? Is it because they're Beglium now?

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    1. Re:Just asking. by Neoprofin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So I'm not the only one who read that as Budweiser!

  2. Re:That's great and all, but... by andy1307 · · Score: 5, Funny

    what with this being an english site and all.

    This being slashdot and all, nobody would actually read the article anyway.

  3. Is this really news? by blool · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Is this really news? by arogier · · Score: 5, Funny

      But NSA hackers don't get spiffy uniforms. If a cyberspace world war breaks out Das Keyboard might become a documentary as opposed to just... a keyboard.

    2. Re:Is this really news? by Nathrael · · Score: 4, Informative

      NSA hackers don't, but USAF hackers do. The Air Force has it's own "Cyber Command". There even has been an article on /. about that some time ago iirc.

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  4. IT Work by snowgirl · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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".

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    1. Re:IT Work by Yvanhoe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because there are other white hat units. Having a unit made in order to carry out black hat operations is News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters.

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    2. Re:IT Work by Jens+Egon · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

      Because in general, the military is not exactly known for it's humanitarian altruistic approach. Most military define security by going into the enemies home and screwing them there.

      Which is why the majority of soldiers in the "Democratic" Republic of Congo has AIDS.

      I hope our German friends have better security than that.

  5. Re:The German Bundeswehr by clarkkent09 · · Score: 2, Funny

    German Armed Forces. It's a reasonably well known term even in the English speaking world not to mention that it only takes a second to google it and it can be inferred fairly easily from the summary as well. Now, linking to an article in German without any kind of English translation, that is pretty dumb

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  6. Re:That's great and all, but... by tpgp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... 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?

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  7. Sweet... by uvajed_ekil · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

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    1. Re:Sweet... by Steemers · · Score: 2

      The Bundeswehr is german military.
      Did all you beer and football confused people not pay attention in school, or was the second world war only lightly touched upon?

  8. very informative! by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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."

    1. Re:very informative! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 3, Funny

      The rest of the article is rather uniformative though..

      (emphasize by me)

      Well, it's about military, so uniforms shouldn't be a surprise ...

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  9. Re:That's great and all, but... by aliquis · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  10. German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers by agrippa_cash · · Score: 3, Funny

    RE:German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers If it tastes anything like American Bundeswehr, they'll have a hard time keeping them.

  11. Re:The German Bundeswehr by aliquis · · Score: 2, Informative
  12. Re:That's great and all, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:The German Bundeswehr by brezel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    being proud of you own ignorance sure makes you look like a hero!

  14. Re:The German Bundeswehr by nephridium · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ok I wasn't clear. From Wikipedia: "The Bundeswehr has 200,500 professional soldiers, 55,000 18-25 year-old conscripts who serve for at least nine months under current rules [4], and 2,500 active reservists at any given time." So 20% of the soldiers are still obtained from the "normal" population (and some of them will stay to become professional soldiers).

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  15. Re:That's great and all, but... by Petrushka · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... 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, ...

    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.)

  16. Re:That's great and all, but... by Faylone · · Score: 4, Informative

    bundeswehr (who are they? why do I care?)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr In short, the German army/navy/air force/etc.

  17. Manually translated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Bundeswehr is reportedly assembling a "Cyberwar-Unit", which additionally to protecting the armed forces' IT infrastructure from attacks, is also supposed to scout and manipulate other computers or "adversarial networks". According to information available to the news magazine "Der Spiegel" the troupe consists of several dozen alumni of the universities of the Bundeswehr in computer-sciences and are stationed in Rheinbach near Bonn.

    The "Hackers-in-Uniform", as the Hamburg-based news magazine ["Der Spiegel"] called them, are currently in training and the troupe will be reportedly fully operational the next year. The strictly classified unit is subordinate to the Kommando Strategische Aufklaerung (Strategical Reconnaissance Command) under command of brigadier Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel

    The Bundeswehr has issued no statement to the report. According to the Grundgesetz [German constitution], the German self-defence forces are prohibited from assuming interior tasks. There are, however, plans to abolish this ban.

    While experts are arguing world-wide, whether the term cyber-war is actually correct, as there are no casualties, there seem to be a consensus, that the defence of such threats is one of the task of the armed forces of a country.
    Regardless, whether in retrospect the cyber-attack on Estland is counted as a war, or not, every nation, which has a substantial IT-infrastructure, is taking the potential threat of cyber-attacks seriously.

    All links are leading to German pages. No guarantees on the accuracy of the translation, especially the military terms.

  18. Re:That's great and all, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  19. Re:Wait what? by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly when has the "Bundestrojaner" been actually used without authorization? No, seriously, I'm curious now.

    And how's it any worse than, say, the USA? You can find plenty of cases where the FBI planted a trojan or a keylogger on a _suspect's_ computer, which is all that the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to do. The difference is that in Germany there has been a whole debate about it and it's been shot down on constitutional and privacy grounds repeatedly, while in the USA nobody even bothered wondering much about it.

    Let me repeat: the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to only be used with a court mandate, only for a limited time, and only on the computers of people suspected of terror activities and the like. Plus a court is supposed to establish (as per the german supreme court decision) that the use does not pose any danger to a person's other rights, among which their freedom. It'll be interesting to see if they can use it at all then, but at any rate you can't use it, say, to intimidate your opponents.

    But seriously, how's that any worse than what the rest of the world already does? It seems to me like the USA just shipped such suspects to Gitmo for some waterboarding. I'll take a court-approved keylogger instead if I'm ever suspected of anything, thank you very much.

    And then you have cases like the NSA spying on its citizens without any court approval or legal mandate.

    Basically if you think that a law which sets clear limits is actually worse than no law, well, you're naive.

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  20. I wouldn't buy a parser from you by Dr.+Hok · · Score: 5, Funny

    So I'm not the only one who read that as Budweiser!

    Incidentally Hacker is a brewery.

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  21. English version of article. by Dj · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Report-claims-German-armed-forces-setting-up-cyberwar-unit--/112595

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  22. Re:That's great and all, but... by Tellarin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  23. Re:That's great and all, but... by Niedi · · Score: 5, Informative

    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".
    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 ./ 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.
    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 ;)

  24. Re:That's great and all, but... by Fred_A · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

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  25. Re:That's great and all, but... by mcvos · · Score: 3, Funny

    Vieleicht solltest Du auch erst einmal deutsch lernen ...

    Are we going to get faulty spelling flames in German now?

  26. Re:Important issue missing in TFA by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2, Funny

    Do you want the Stahlhelm or the Pickelhaube?