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US Cybersecurity Plan Includes Offense
z4ns4stu writes "Shane Harris of the National Journal describes how the US government plans to use, and has successfully used, cyber-warfare to disrupt the communications of insurgents in Iraq. 'In a 2008 article in Armed Forces Journal, Col. Charles Williamson III, a legal adviser for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency, proposed building a military "botnet," an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines. Williamson echoed a widely held concern among military officials that other nations are building up their cyber-forces more quickly. "America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere," he wrote. ... Responding to critics who say that by building up its own offensive power, the United States risks starting a new arms race, Williamson said, "We are in one, and we are losing."'"
Who needs a botnet when you have a labotomized group of internet hooligans who only need a target worth harassing?
"America has no credible deterrent, and our adversaries prove it every day by attacking everywhere,"
Well that's just it you can't build a razor wire wall and laugh as people cut themselves trying to get through it. It seems to me the first mistake to be made is to treat a digital front as if it was a front in an actual war. All you're doing it guarding secrets most often, or sometimes vital services. Best way to protect them is physical separation from civilian networks. I know my friend who does communication translation for the military works on a network where they mirror a hand full of sites (wiki among them) every week and host them in house simply because having the network connected to the internet at large is just to risky.
You know what's a better idea? Leave those damn servers alone and let everyone see for themselves what a nutjob your enemies are. Bringing their servers down won't bring the poor sod in the video back to life, but it might make sure that next time you have something tangible to act on (like invading a "rogue" country) other countries will root for you.
To me, this is reminiscent of our arms race with the Soviet Union. Military officials were convinced that the Soviets were always one step ahead of them the entire time, even though the only time they got to a technology before us was the launch of Sputnik, which wasn't really a military achievement anyway (we were all decades behind spy satellites or something like SDI). If they didn't think the Soviets were building something better than what we had (which would have been supported by their intelligence gathering) they never stopped using that argument to support large standing armies and rapid technological arms buildup.
And when the USSR collapsed, we learned that the entire time they had been at least two steps behind us.
My opinion is that our infrastructure is in such disrepair that if hostile powers had the capability of cyperterrorism, they would have to practice extreme restraint not to use it to put the entire nation in a blackout for a month. If that means they're waiting for a combined-arms assault, then offense is not going to help us when our "military botnet" doesn't have any electricity to run on.
The recent scare about cyberterrorism causing blackouts in Brazil, only to find that those blackouts were more likely due to natural causes in a poorly maintained electrical grid, supports my point.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
A job for Bill Gates, smartest man in the world. Only he can catch Osama Bin Laden and keep the world safe for democracy. Isn't this all sounding like the story line to a bad movie?
...proposed building a military "botnet," an army of centrally controlled computers to launch coordinated attacks on other machines.
Dear Terrorist:
I am a Jihadist in Nigeria with $10 million and if I put it into a bank, those infidel Americans will freeze it. If you send me $5,000 to open an account in the Cayman Islands, I will put you in for half!
Or the other one:
Dear Terrorist:
Do want a LARGER penis? With a LARGER penis, you'll be more of a man and be able to take out those infidel Americans! Buy V1@gr4 from us! We will make you BIGGER and STRONGER! Allah be praised!
or:
Make BIG MONEY selling AK-47s from home! Make even more with IEDs!
Kill Americans!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
In ten or twenty years USA won't be a country worthy of attacking
You must be too young to remember - that was a popular 70s meme, with the US being the new Roman Empire on its way to an accelerated collapse.
Don't count the US out until you can count 10. Maybe the reason for its endurance is that the US is really never just one nation of one people.
;-)
:-P
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Mr President, we must not allow a script-kiddie gap!
A military botnet? No problem; just throw all the federally owned computers in to another one, I'm sure Conficker doesn't mind sharing...
No country would start a war with the USA. Not now or in twenty years. Just look at the USA's "defense" budget compared to the rest of the world _total_.
They're like "that survivalist guy with a whole basement full of guns, ammo, grenades and a rocket launcher or two". It'll be suicide to go up to his house with a BB gun and shoot at it.
If anyone wants to hurt the USA they'd have to do it more sneakily - so there's no obvious target for their nukes, cruise missiles, bombers etc.
Same goes for this "cyberwarfare" thing. A massive concerted attack from your country against the USA will just get you bombed.
The US media likes to make noise about China/<bogeyman of the day> launching cyberattacks on US servers. The fact is, if the Chinese Gov was really involved, the US Gov will just call the Chinese ambassador in, and say: "Hey stop that now". But really which government is going to do that? If my government wanted to start a war with the USA - cyber or otherwise, a real act of patriotism would be to shoot the idiot leader(s) who came up with that idea.
The attacks are mainly from a bunch of script kiddies or criminals. If the US Gov is really serious about reducing the attacks they should just go follow the money/control channels, and jail the people responsible if they're in the USA (won't surprise me if many are actually from the USA- after all Sanford Wallace is in the USA, and the BlueHippo thing was in the USA ).
Don't count the US out until you can count 10. Maybe the reason for its endurance is that the US is really never just one nation of one people.
Discussions of exceptionalism aside, you must find the term "homeland" (as in "Homeland Security") as inappropriate (even funny) as I do.
It's "das Vaterland".
Just saying.
First: American news outlets generally avoid graphic scenes. Other news organizations may report more explicit content, but I think you're confused.
Second: Any rational, independent-thinking person knows there is a considerable difference between filming action between armed combatants on a battlefield, and the producing a video of the execution of an innocent, helpless, non-combatant hostage. Furthermore, in the first situation the video is a by-product of the main action. If anything, knowledge that the battle is documented may inhibit excessive violence. In the second situation, the video is the primary aim of the action, and because the nature of the video is to cause terror, it encourages greater inhumanity in its actors. But then again, you already knew that.
The hypocrisy and filthy double standard here is in those who would equate the actions of nameless, faceless terrorists with those of the US military. While they are far from perfect, all branches of the US military bring court martials against those in their command believed to have committed atrocities. There are those who would argue that little has resulted from them, (and they would mostly be right) but that misses the point: No terrorist organization holds (or attempts to hold) itself to nearly the same standards that the US does. No member of al Quaida has ever faced a disciplinary hearing for bombing a mosque, market or school. No insurgent has ever been indicted by his own organization for intentionally targeting innocent civilians. Far from being despised, they are called heros. But then again, you already knew that.
There are times the US should listen more closely to other voices in the world. Just not to yours. Quite frankly, I wonder why you think the US should give a damn about your opinion, or the opinion of people like you. Not because you think differently, or because we're evil, or we don't listen to our neighbors, but because you obviously care more about your anti-American agenda than you do about dialog. But then again, you already knew that.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
You say it's inexcusable that it's their own damned fault that they get viruses. So you propose restricting internet access to give them what they want by taking it away.
The fact is, if the Chinese Gov was really involved, the US Gov will just call the Chinese ambassador in, and say: "Hey stop that now".
And then he could reply: "no, and stop bothering us or we'll just start devaluating your currency so much, you're gonna be ruined".
You were speaking about the huge size of the US defence budget, yet it won't help much if most of your equivalently huge debt is owned by a foreign country.
It might be a wee bit early to go claiming endurance.
The US has been a superpower for less than 60 years, and has existed for less than 250 years.
The Roman Empire, which you mentioned, and most of history's other great civilizations, were around for rather longer.
Seriously? You really think it's a wee bit early to attack the idea that the US will be of no consequence within two decades?
The Roman Empire, as I mentioned it, was in comparison to our stated decline and decadence in the 70s.
I never said - nor even got in the neighbor of saying - or predicting - how long the US would endure. All I said was that I question less than 20.
If you're gonna snipe, pick words, concepts or sentiments that I actually express as a target.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
When I saw "offense" I envisioned a couple crackers in Eastern Europe getting a drone launched Hellfire missile up the rear. Oh well.
No country would start a war with the USA. Not now or in twenty years. Just look at the USA's "defense" budget compared to the rest of the world _total_..
Um, wake up we are at war on several fronts.
We have organized entities trying to kill us. ( perhaps not overly effective to date, but that isnt the point )
We have organized countries trying to crush our economy.
How do YOU define war?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What about what PLA leaders have published in regards to Information Warfare and ("Informationized Warfare")?
A good starting point is Unrestricted Warfare. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare for links to a PDF version.
--
"This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origins—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It requires in those situations where we must counter it a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training."
John F. Kennedy
USMA Graduation Speech, 1962
If you haven't noticed, during that period of time the US *HAS* followed in the steps of the Roman Republic. Not precisely in lock-step, but close. I hope that there's enough play that we escape the horrendous Marius vs. Sulla civil war, but the democracy of the country has declined severely during this period. The presidency has become more imperial. The orders of the president are less subject to question. Etc.
OTOH, now that the US has defeated it's last major enemy (Russia....for some reason China doesn't count. Probably because they defeated us financially without our even noticing it. They own so much US debt they could sink us totally if they ever wanted to take the hit. But they probably won't. I did say there was a lot of play in the model.) the country seems to be collapsing. It's not for lack of military spending, either. We waste more money on the military than most countries spend. (I don't count all military spending as waste. But lots of it is.)
There are differences. E.g., the computer games that are our substitute for the arena, don't actually injure anyone. And they encourage a level of direct participation rather than mere voyeurism. If we go to virtual reality, this level of engagement will increase. But that isn't what killed the Roman Republic. The excesses of the arena happened mainly after the transition to the Empire, though they'd certainly been building up during the later days of the Republic.
What we have is the decay of the power of the common people, and the concentration of power into the hands of a few aristocrats. One of the basic tools of that in the US is the division of political parties into two, and an election system that practically guarantees that the winner will be one of those two. That means that anyone sufficiently wealthy can purchase the loyalty of BOTH candidates before the election. Since there are only two real contenders, it's not even a gamble. And the bribery laws have sufficient loopholes that anyone who is knowledgeable can bid for the vote of an office-holder. It's dangerous for the inexperienced, though. This serves to concentrate power in those who are wealthy enough to buy both sides, and, after them, the politicians and, after them, those with enough money and skills to "convince" the office-holder.
This has long been a problem, but it's become much worse since the 70's. And one of the vehicles of this was a decision by the FCC that networks weren't required to offer equal time to all candidates.
It's possible that the net could reform this, but my bet would be that the laws are instead somehow changed to provide more benefit to those currently in office. And to maintain the expense of campaigning.
It's quite possible that there won't be any dramatic assassination followed by a usurpation as was involved in the shift from the Roman Republic to the Empire, but that didn't really change anything. That merely consolidated changes that either had already happened or were already well in motion. (Note that at first the Imperial mantel was not hereditary, an Augustus initially had to share power with two other co-rulers.)
We've come a long way towards the transition in a shorter period than I had expected. We certainly did it a lot faster than the Romans did. But the signs of the collapse are writ large for those to see who can.
OTOH, the Imperial period of Rome wasn't a bad period for those who stayed out of politics. (Well, and weren't enemies of Rome.) The politics got a lot bloodier, but the lot of the common folk didn't become much worse until quite a bit later.
However, it's worth noting that the Imperial period of Rome was considerably shorter than the Republic was. And it wasn't invaders that destroyed Rome, they merely delivered the final coup, it was internal dissension. Various powerful groups fighting against each other without regard for law or custom striving for ultimate power. If you don't see the roots of that in the here-and-now, you're being willfully blind.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's not what I said. I said, and I quote, "It might be a wee bit early to go claiming endurance." You said, and again, I quote, "Maybe the reason for its endurance is that the US is really never just one nation of one people."
The US is far too young to have shown much "endurance" and certainly too young to need explanations like because it "is really never just one nation of one people."
If the US makes it, in recognizable form, to the magic thousand years that all the big empires seem to aim for, THEN you can start looking for the something special that the US has and all the others lacked.
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. China would only hurt themselves if they tried to start dumping their US treasury holdings, and of course since they peg the yuan to the dollar they would kill their exports. In any case the US is already devaluing the dollar tacitly.
And the US defense budget would have no affect on the strength of the dollar. That is just rubbish.
Please take some time to read up on current events before spouting off your uninformed nonsense.