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."
what with this being an english site and all.
This being slashdot and all, nobody would actually read the article anyway.
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.
http://www.aaronrogier.net
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.
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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...
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 ;)