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NSA Chief Wants Internet Partitioned For Government, 'Critical' Industries
GovTechGuy writes "NSA chief Keith Alexander, also the head of the US Cyber Command, told reporters that he would like to see the creation of a secure zone on the Internet for government and critical private sector industries such as utility companies and the financial sector. Alexander has repeatedly emphasized the dramatic nature of the cyber threat facing American networks and his comments were a further sign that the Pentagon does not think the war against foreign hackers can be won. Alexander denied the military has any role in safeguarding civilian networks currently, but didn't rule out the option in the future."
This idea of a nationwide secure network has never made much sense to me. Creating a secure network in a small organization is pretty easy but creating one that links many public and private enterprises sounds like a disaster. Gaps will inevitably appear but worse it creates a real target for someone who wishes to create harm.
The public statement is just a political maneuver, to help with the real goal: killing the open Internet. The free and open Internet is a nightmare for them, because it allows all sorts of people to communicate and do things without being monitored. It is bad for business (which is what the US Government is really interested in protecting) and bad for the politicians who bankroll the NSA.
First they'll set up a new network for "critical infrastructure," which you can only connect "certified" devices to, and then you'll start to see things...like suddenly your bank will require you to use that new, secure, not-open network. Then new and popular music will only be made available on that network. Then videos, games, books, and so forth, until eventually the Internet falls by the wayside, as forgotten as Fidonet, even if it even remains in existence. You will only be allowed to connect certain computers to that network, running certain software, and of course, you will not have any sort of root access to your system.
Palm trees and 8
Paranoia.
What else would a person working on a secured network need to access?
Depends what you mean by "secured". Speaking from experience ... the military runs a separate network, but provides gateways / proxies for external net access. At one point I was tasked to work on web development for the internal network, and I found external internet access to be invaluable as a reference - especially since a lot of the programming was in ASP, and I only had experience with PHP. Without it, I would have had to create a purchase request for an "ASP for Dummies" book, get the funding approved, wait a year (ok, maybe 3 months) for it to finally arrive, and then spend 3 times as long digging through it as it took to just punch a search into google every time I wasn't sure about something.
That's just one example - there are plenty of other legitemate reasons to have internet access on an otherwise secure network. Of course, as I said, it depends on your definition of "secured network". If we're talking about the control systems for a nuclea power plant, then yeah, it might be a good idea to have an air-gap.