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Military Appoints General To Direct Cyber Warfare
An anonymous reader writes news from The Guardian, excerpting: "The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare – despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace. The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland."
TFA doesn't seem to have any information on how General Alexander might be qualified for this position, and what his command will involve.
Here's hoping the guy actually knows something about cyber security, and isn't simply the management figure for actual security experts, or he could easily f*ck this up hard.
My other sig is clever.
I guess someone has never heard of DARPA.
http://www.darpa.mil/
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
What goes around comes around. The ARPAnet was military. Now perhaps it may become so once again. (With apologies to Ash Wednesday in the Catholic Church for the subject line.)
Yes, the military can (and probably does already) have their own network. However, damage will be done to our country via the regular internet. Imagine if, one day, all the bank accounts in the country went to millions of dollars or to zero? The military is, hopefully, going to take care of those kinds of scenarios. We need a central command to handle such attacks.
But, the real question is, could you tell it was a hack or if it just rolled over?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Right now, it doesn't matter. He apparently knows how to use people who know more than he does. To me he proved that when he took out the honeytrap site (stupid move, but whatever).
From TFA:
This is the key point. Unfortunately the Federal government is SUPPOSED to move slow. The unfortunate part of that is something like cyberwarfare will always outstrip even the ability of a state government (with the assumption being that state government is meant to move quicker to respond directly to the needs of it's people) to make policy governing its use.
Soooooo....*shrugs*
I'm kind of torn on this. Let the government grind slowly away at policy like it should, or enable them to make snap, on-the-fly decisions with far-reaching ramifications. No matter what you choose, it's the wrong answer.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
All that goldfarming has to stop.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Should his last name be Connor?
It's called SIPRNet. There are others too, JWICS, NSANet, and so on. They are internets (small i) in every way. However, they don't interact with the public Internet (big I). It is how they keep classified data separate. It seems to work quite well. At the very least there's never been a break in to them that has been revealed.
However, that doesn't mean there's nothing of importance on the Internet. It's not all just geeks chattering and LOLcat pictures. For example ATMs operate on the Internet these days. Heavily encrypted to be sure, but still. Companies make use of it for important business reasons. There are probably control systems for infrastructure on the net, and so on.
So, the government has an interest in making sure it work well. That would include being able to deal with a cyber attack. After all, protecting classified data does little good if the the infrastructure of the US is taken out. The government itself is only useful in so much as it can govern and protect the country.
Reasons like this are why things like AES exist. When the NSA was started, it was just a signals intelligence agency. Intercept communications, break codes, etc. While that's still a massive part of what they do, they were also instructed to work on securing the nation's computers. That was what lead to things like DES and AES. The government wanted businesses to have good crypto. Seems like they are serious too, AES has been analyzed for years, and remains extremely strong.
Same kind of shit here. They want to figure out how to protect important things on the regular Internet from attack. They are also probalby interested in counter attack capability. After all, other countries rely on the Internet too. Could be very useful in warfare.
Good defense starts with having lots and lots of contingency plans.
I am the very model of a modern Cyber General
I've information secretive and knowledge technological
I know my way around the tubes and quote the cryptological
From Adi, Bruce and Len to Ron in order alphabetical!
The Internet is a network of networks of computers. It's not a military playground, and just because DARPA were involved in the creation of it doesn't make it American property.
Anything of critical importance such as military kit, medical kit, power, gas, and water infrastructure should not be on the Internet at all.
The NSA is an intelligence agency, I assume this means their primary purpose is to collect information. They might hack into a computer, but that would be to the purpose of obtaining information. The military is supposed to conduct offensive operations. Things like breaking into computers running dams or the electric grid to disable them. Psychological warfare by breaking into Web sites and changing what they show. Spreading disinformation into enemy communication channels.
Basically, this is probably about doing low level nasty things when the situation doesn't call for an all out shooting war, and making sure an enemy can't trust his networked computer systems in case of an all out war. I'm pretty sure the US isn't the only one doing this.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I've been reading "cyberwar" by Richard Clark. He didn't have anything bad to say about the guy in the story, except that he was the only person willing to take a (pretty much identical) position, that Clark had himself vacated. According to the book the US is actually very very good at cyber attack. But he also says that businesses, he specifically calls out Microsoft, have lobbied extensively, not just to have the government look the other way from their bugs, and keep using their software, but to not regulate security for private business. DHS protects .gov, this cyber thingy protects .mil. No one protects .com and .org. None of the companies want to have security regulations placed on them (including power grid, and financial systems), and neither the previous administration or this one wants to force them. I'm generally against regulation and consider it a bad thing (tm), (its like my department noting they are going to hire more managers, again), but he does make a compelling case. The guys (apparently a very small group) he spoke with at blackhat apparently were persuaded as well, though they (and he) are worried about what sort of oversight is needed, to prevent privacy and worse abuses. Its all well and good to force ISPs to disconnect people detected to be part of botnets until they get their machine cleaned, but false positives that correlate strangely with unpopular opinions on the websites is a truly frightening idea. On the other side, who can argue that FDIC insured banks don't have an obligation to keep the insured money safe per the guidelines of the insurer?
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
"Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye."
The good old US of A is the leading spam generating country by May 24, 2010: http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso . It's got on the first place spam-wise in the world.
As far as I know the US army cannot act on the territory of the United States. But the spam is destroying our businesses. Colleagues have to spend a lot of time to deal with spam. Even filters do not help anymore.
It it the police, not army, who has to deal with cyber criminals. And also there is a role for Interpol and ITU.