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Ex-NSA Chief Supports Separate Secure Internet
Hugh Pickens writes "Nextgove reports that Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the CIA, says the United States may seriously want to consider creating a new Internet infrastructure to reduce the threat of cyberattacks and several current federal officials, including U.S. Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander, also have floated the concept of a '.secure' network for critical services such as financial institutions, sensitive infrastructure, government contractors, and the government itself that would be walled off from the public web. Unlike .com, .xxx and other new domains now proliferating the Internet, .secure would require visitors to use certified credentials for entry and would do away with users' Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. 'I think what Keith is trying to suggest is that we need a more hardened enterprise structure for some activities and we need to go build it,' says Hayden. 'All those people who want to violate their privacy on Facebook — let them continue to play.' Clay Dillow writes that on the existing internet everyone does everything online anonymously, and while that's great for liberties, it's also dangerous when cyber criminals/foreign hackers are roaming the cyber countryside. Under the proposed .secure internet 'you may not be able to go to certain neighborhoods of the Web without showing your papers at a checkpoint — and perhaps subjecting yourself to one of those humiliating electronic pat-downs as well,' writes Dillow. 'Those who want to remain anonymous on the Web can still frolic about in the world of dot-com, but in the dot-secure realm you would have to prove you are you.'"
He learned everything from his time there.
Your security is not the issue.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
... I'd guess that users and admins will act like users on a "safe" internal network act. They'll assume that they can go back to using four-letter passwords, not have firewalls, etc. It'll make the attacks less frequent, but when they do work they'll be eminently successful.
Also, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I who liked the idea of having the government create a .secure domain seems to forget that the government's not exactly in charge of those decisions - they'll have to pony up $185K to ICANN and see if it gets approved.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
All those people who want to violate their privacy on Facebook — let them continue to play — we'll violate their privacy everywhere else.
Not sure how this will work if he means that it should be a broad public network. All it takes is one user to "bridge" the networks (log in on the secure network while being connected to the Internet, say via public wireless) and you're not much better off than today.
Sounds very soft-shell, a.k.a as "billions in the sea with nothing to show but some theater".
I think they also need a .kids so that there is a separate internet for kids. This way they don't have to use children as the excuse to censor the entire internet. Anyone who wants to access .kids should either be under 18 or be a licensed adult. Sex offenders of course would not receive a license.
Well goodie then, bit by bit they will demand more and more services to be moved to new "secure", until all is left on the old internet is unlawful sites. And by then it will be easy to argue for the prohibition of it and if that anyone is using it, then this person is a criminal. So thanks, but no thanks.
financial institutions, so will ATM's move back to dial up? What about on line banking? Will that need a VPN? a remote desktop setup?
It's funny how hard it is to let go of past models. The heart of the Internet model is, as the saying goes "a sphere", where every node has equal access to every other node. No clients, no servers, just equal connectors. Society as a whole (when weighted by money rather than head-count) keeps trying to reject that in favour of it being a fancy way to broadcast: a few large hosts running Wal-Mart-sized data centres, many clients on as dumb a terminal as possible. Efforts to democratize information flow are opposed as either unserious utopianism or outright crime. (They can't seem to find a statute forbidding Wikileaks that doesn't forbid the Times, but from the rhetoric, you'd never guess.)
When Hayden says that "users" 4th-amendment rights would be abrogated, he isn't thinking of all the users, not the big ones. Just the little ones. Which I think just models how Hayden sees society itself. Little folks don't have rights, just privileges.
Yup. This is just Clipper chip / Trusted Computing / HDMI / 'show us your papers' all over again, in new clothing.
"Core elements of our electric grid, of our financial, transportation and communications infrastructure would be obvious candidates. But we simply cannot leave that core infrastructure on which the life and death of Americans depends without better security."
Here's an idea, if a service being infiltrated can result in deaths, DON'T CONNECT IT TO THE FUCKING INTERNET
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It means that you are definitely not secure from your bank, should they decide to try and screw you.
It doesn't take a separate TLD to require signed TLS client certificates, and that is not the same as having separate wires.
Canada has separate wires for military, RCMP, and federal cabinet. Probably requires TLS client certs too, but I don't know for sure about that one.
Many banks run some variant of the "electronic body cavity search" before your computer can connect. It really only works if everyone who needs to connect has exactly the same hardware and software... not a problem for mortgage brokers who are issued a standard kit, but big problem for people from multiple different beaurocracies at different levels of government.
What makes you so sure that a "new, improved" government-only "Internet" would use TCP/IP? Seems likely enough you could spec special blessed and approved network hardware as part of the overall plan.
Prove you are you: Absolutely identifying a computer or other mobile device in no way proves who was using the device. That is, until we're all chipped and hard-wired into the internet. I think even the supreme court ruled recently that IP != a person. Neither is a login/password combo and for the same reasons. This is just another frivolous demand for cash from an already bankrupt government.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The west, not just America, needs MULTIPLE networks. In particular, there should be one for DOD, another for utilities such as Power, water, etc, and other for general commerce. The DOD and utilities should NOT be connected in any fashion with the general internet. In addition, the DOD one should be limited to friends, only.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ignore the privacy bit for a moment, because that seems to garner knee-jerk reactions around these parts, and look at the security bit.
There are a lot of transactions that need to be secure, yet would not qualify for the .secure network. For example: you could cram bank systems into the new network, but are you really going to allow every business that uses these financial systems on it (e.g. credit card transactions or trades on the stock market)? Even if you did, you would still end up with 'insecure' connections between the customer and the business. Or are you going to give every citizen a security token too? In that case, the ability to verify the identity of the user drops to nil since identify theft becomes an issue. Or people lending their identity to friends. Or people using loopholes in the system to create new identities.
Even a network which tightly restricts who could access it would face hurdles. Research labs attract all sort of riff-raff scientists and technicians. Some of those people will create bridges between the .secure network and everything else. Even if it is unintentional, because they are using the same systems to access secure databases as they use to access journals (and their goof-off resources). I'm not saying that it is impossible to stop that sort of thing, but it will be awfully difficult given the population involved.
Conceptually this sounds good as it would allow separate networks for stuff that should be secure from stuff that doesn't. I fear that the implementation will not work out that way as business now don't want to spend the money to separate things as it requires more hardware. You will also run into the why can't I access Google/Facebook/internet thing from this machine that is only connected to the scads system. In general companies are too cheap and their employees are too stupid to have real security.
Add to it the fact that this is coming from a government agency that is known for spying I am not terribly I sure I trust that the motives are entirely altruistic. It may be that they are (SELinux) or just a better way of keeping tabs on individuals.
Time to offend someone
Please, please can we not mention religion on Slashdot?
It's always the same. Religious people flaming atheists, atheists flaming religious people and agnostics flaming both sides. The universal argument? "I'm right because it's obvious and you're stupid for not agreeing".
we have to decide: is the risk to the current 'free' internet evaporating worth the benefits (few, but non-zero that they are) of a .secure concept?
is there any guarantees that the 2 internets will continue to be allowed to co-exist? will all people be able to choose (even at a per-app basis) which 'side' to connect to?
isn't the very idea of a 'multihomed host' (so to speak) who can connect to both, in *itself* a security risk? therefore, if you connect to .secure, you won't be allowed to connect anywhere else (is a logical conclusion of this, as I see it).
I say no. the risks are not worth the benefits this idea brings. throw the idea out. thanks for thinking, but this idea has a net negative to us.
do.not.want.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
They would be separate for about an hour. Right away, somebody would figure out a way to connect them together thus defeating the purpose.
you mean... like some kind of internal network? with some sort of DMZ that separates it from the rest of the interweb? wow, i bet those gov IT guys never thought of that! i wonder where this guy got his IT degree from... oh wait. lul. and "certified credentials" ? you mean none of those gov websites require credentials? and here i was impressed by all the recent hacking of those servers that had happened.... guess I should have taken a better look into the matter! and yes, changing those pesky interweb adresses from .gov to .secure will definitely make things *much* more secure.
on a more serious note, how about we start listening to people that actually know WTF they're talking about instead of putting everything into a title. do we really think that just because he was the head of the NSA that he has god-like mental abilities? no. more than likely he simply has a quicker wit than most, a family with money/political ties and the ability kiss anything - no matter how brown it is.
I agree, it really is annoying to people like me who actually are right.
This proposal is not for a military base, it's for what would become a marketplace.
Actually, no, privacy and security are opposites. If you want total security, you need to live in a police state, and if you want total privacy you have to accept that someone can trivially take your life at any time (by, for example, walking into your house with a gun and shooting you).
Look at the UK; in an effort to combat crime they have cameras up everywhere in London. Im sure the cameras are effective in their task, but they also take away some privacy. The question then becomes, is it worth the cost?
I would be interested to know by what logic you think that more privacy gives more security.
It's the iGlove examinations that really disturb me. They don't even offer to buy me dinner afterwards.
Table-ized A.I.
You DO realize that in order to enter the Supreme Court building, or the White House, or the Capitol, you are required to "show us your papers", right? In fact, many high-security buildings in the district require it. And yet it has not become a mandatory norm across all parts of our society-- this seems to be a classic "slippery slope" fallacy.
So is the article talking about a separate physical network that is firewalled off from what we now call the Internet or is it just talking about a new top level domain that by policy requires domain owners to demand some sort of verifiable credentials for access to services on hosts that are pointed to by DNS entries within the new domain?
Unless it is a separate physical network with firewalls or other edge devices that require authentication and there is a mechanism to securely forward the credentials from the edge device to the internal host, you haven't crated any more real security.
Creating a new TLD on an existing "insecure" network that doesn't require authentication to access the physical network doesn't add any security. In this scenario anyone can still access the machines and it is up the owners of the machines to implement their own security. If the government (and others) can't manage security on their machines now, crating a new naming system for those machines isn't going to help.
Its the same in politics; the hope is that by discussion, at least perhaps we will all learn something, be it where we are wrong, or where our arguments are weak.
This proposal is not for a separate "Internet" as the headline states. It is merely for a separate top-level-domain. And all the servers on this domain would supposedly have super secure firewalls that are impenetrable and unhackable? Riiiiight.
.secure TLD will be any more secure than existing firewalls are just wishful thinking.
If this separate-but-not-really-SEPARATE "internet" is connected to the same wires as the regular internet then the hackers will still get in. Hell, all the servers that were hacked recently were supposedly super secure. Not a lot of good that did them.
If they want a truly secure, truly separate network then it shouldn't even be an "Internet" at all. It should have a completely separate set of wires. The equipment connected to these wires should be able to detect if the wires have been tapped into or if other unauthorized equipment is attached. It should have all new protocols, designed from the ground up for security and authentication rather than anonymity. In fact, every layer in the the entire IP stack should be completely thrown out and replaced with a secure system which, by law, can only be used on this new system. It will only be licensed for very specific purposes and no one else will be allowed to own this equipment or even have software that uses these protocols. Then, when you catch someone with this equipment or software, you know they are up to no good. The only way into the network will be by tapping in, which will be physically traceable, or by gaining physical access to a licensed terminal, which would be partially traceable but far more difficult to do.
Anything less than this is mere theater. Any claims that a
You DO remember going to the gate at the airport to see someone off, don't you? Seems rather slippery to me.
I thought about this a bit. this is MY proposal (from some random internet guy; but one who's been around, online, for quite a few decades).
what we need is true end-to-end encryption and that will get us all the 'secure' we need. it would not be a bad idea to insist that all non-encrypted protocols be aged out and replaced with SSL carried user-protocols (mail, file transfer, remote console, DNS, all the basics).
oh, there's one other tiny little detail. NO one can spy on the end-to-end connections. no MitM, no wiretaps, no opto-sniffing, no none of that [sic]. promise and ensure that all world citizens have protected (as in 'their rights, as human beings') end-to-end private communications. tapless and secure. to me, THIS means secure.
what they want is exactly the opposite. no encryption and nothing BUT tapping us (DPI, etc). they will know the identity of each networked station but this will not add to privacy OR security for anyone.
recognize this, people. do not give them this 'divided internet'! really bad idea. lets, instead, change the debate BACK to private communications and the right to not be listened to, monitored and surveiled.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
the concept of a '.secure' network for critical services such as financial institutions, sensitive infrastructure, government contractors, and the government itself that would be walled off from the public web
ohh you mean a VPN right? yeah we've had them for a while now
it will grow with time and then the same problems will exist again.
What we need is the idea that managing access to networks is important.
Use your own CA, use big (maybe even one time pad) keysizes, make firewalls restrictive, make it mandatory that all systems are are managed by an experienced administrator, use TCPI, make encryption mandatory, and educate all employees to do it the right way or ask for help. Educated everybody in controlling the access to documents correctly (no: oh, lets just make it readable for all philosphy). Create a climate in which the IT deparment listens to what the users want to do instead of defining that they dont want anything complicated.
Oh. You say that costs a lot? Yes, that costs a lot. but it solves the problem. The steps which you need to verify that somebody whom you communicate with on the "internet nr.2" are exactly the same ones you need to verify that you are talking to the right person on the normal internet.
Were these guys asleep in the last couple months? Seems to me that we have all been publicly reminded that computer networks aren't secure, and that some are very not secure because their owners are asleep at the wheel. So what to do about that? Of course! Pretend the problem is people pretending to be whom they are not, and carry on pretending that you can secure a network against that. Give a load of taxpayers money to some buddies to build a new 'secure' network, instead of legislating and regulating the owners of the current network components and asking them why they didn't secure their shit better. Can they not understand that there is no way for a server to tell which person it is communicating with, especially if that person deliberately lies? Only human beings can fairly reliably recognise other human beings. You can't make computers that can do it, they are much less clever than people.
Korma: Good
Hasn't this guy learned anything from his time at the NSA?
There's a difference between privacy through anonymity and privacy in general. Presumably such a network would use well-designed cryptographic algorithms and protocols to exchange information. It could leverage existing technologies, such as SSL/TLS or IPSec. The data, in transit, would still be secure. The difference is twofold:
Honestly, this approach makes a lot of sense to me. Maintain the current anonymous Internet in its full glory. You would continue to use it for most things! However, if you want to bank, purchase, or administer, both you (the client) and the server site (Amazon, Bank of America, etc.) have the option to push that transaction onto an encrypted and attributable infrastructure.
Now, the same suite of Internet problems will still exist on the secure domain, but that extra de-anonymizing information goes a long way towards addressing them. If you are attacked by a bot on the secure network, you know who is infected. You can send them a notification and rapidly suspend or deny their secure network access. If someone is probing your site for vulnerabilities, you also know who it is, which may harm the white-hats (not that solutions couldn't be worked out), but will certainly hinder the black-hats. These are all good capabilities that I want my banking sites to have!
So do I want a completely-deanonymized Internet? Hell no. It'd be inefficient (traffic-wise) and it would cost me several critical rights. However, I would love to elevate all critical and financial assets to an elevated attributable domain. There is no good reason they should inherently have to accept anonymous traffic, nor should each of them be independently responsible for (in their own manner) establishing client identities.
You DO realize that in order to enter the Supreme Court building, or the White House, or the Capitol, you are required to "show us your papers", right?
You DO realize that during the Cold War one of the propaganda points made by the US government was that US citizens could go just about anywhere in their country without some police state thug demanding 'your papers please?' right?
And how exactly is 'showing your papers' supposed to make those buildings secure?
Nahhhh - I always just dumped my girl friends at the front entrance to the air port. What's the point in going to the boarding gate, watching her sniffle and cry, just so I have to be sad as I walk back to the parking lot? Nope, not for me. Last minute arrival at the front gate, "You're gonna be late, Girl, git your shit and git!" No sniffling, no wet shoulder, nada.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Do they mean a PKI, with certificates?
If so, .secure will go down like a lead balloon.
See: Email encryption (S/MIME etc) -- do you know anyone who uses it? In the unlikely event that you do, can you say they're not a huge nerd? Hell, I work as a security specialist and I don't use it because it's too hard.
Also see: DNSSEC -- even the big network operators are having difficulty deploying it, let alone anyone else.
And the https system for web certificates, which only "works" because it's fundamentally insecure (every browser trusts a huge list of CAs, any one of which can sign a certificate for any site, which is all that's required to impersonate the site -- and that's before we get into mixed content and all the other problems). .secure will require usable, secure authentication over the Internet, and that's *hard*.
The two internets should never meet. If your machine is set up to use the WWW.net, .com, .org, or whatever - then it should be incapable of connecting to .secure. And, vicey versey.
Have we forgotten that there should be an air gap between infrastructure and the web?
Oh wait, I forgot about all that nonsense about cyberwarfare against our electrical grid, and other infrastructure. Seems we never learned that lesson, so how could we have forgotten it?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Your first paragraph needs to be beaten into the head of the article authors, and perhaps Mr. Hayden himself. What kind of confusion of ideas could proliferate so far that we now consider a TLD to be a "network"? And how would you even audit every site in an entire TLD for security? (Wait, that one's easy. By paying the registrar out the wazoo for it.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
The U.S. has separate wires too, known as the SIPRNet.
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
Shin. It is "sh", more than "s".
The letter is symbolic of "shekinah", which is often translated as "Holy Spirit".
Of course, there are those that will sell you Will and Desire - naming it the "spirit's higher calling". Trust me - if something really pertains to the spirit, it is usually a rebuff to one's wishes.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I thought they already had a secured network -- SIPRNET?
Or do they just want a spam-free network?
Oh, maybe they mean NIPRNET -- why not let the banks and such on that?
Or maybe it's just that these bozos don't like sharing the ball OR the sandbox with anybody else and they want their own for just them and their good friends.
If you want total security, you need to live in a police state
And even then the so-called "security" might not even work.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
With all the available options, why is there even a discussion of "critical" systems being on the publicly available Internet?
They want a service that THEY do not have to pay for (or pay only a fraction of its cost). That way, their projects can get the "security" check box checked without paying the real cost.
This is what happens when politicians who know nothing about security or network infustructure make high level design decisions.
Securing the wire always has and always will be a lost cause. Just click the little require secure connections only button in all of your operating system (IPSec) and you have yourself your secure private network.
There is no reason to segment traffic. On a large network you can expect someone on the network will eventually be compromised by an insider or determined advasary. Given this reality physically separate network must not be relied on to convey any security at any time.
All it means is you don't see a bunch of botnets launching blind attacks 24x7. It means important infustructure on a "secure" network becomes as complacent and vulnerable as the machines behind corporate firewalls. It is human nature. Without constant pressure it will happen. If you are tired of the random hits use IPv6.
Never trust the wire.. Just don't do it. It is always stupid and you will always be burned by it.
A few other points needing to be made:
If the content of your communication can not be private good luck with your "secure" network.
Federated authentication systems tend to induce weaknesses in server authentication. Imagine everyone on earth was using openid or had the same password file. You could login to any computer you wanted with your credentials.
This means:
The material which authenticates you as a person can not also be used to authenticate the service you are consuming as everyone has access to the authentication system. Even if your credentials are never exposed your authentication provides you with no assurances with regards the service you are consuming beyond an unbound trust anchor.
I was thinking the same, I'm sure I read they had already built one. Why don't they just run off a copy if they need another? OK, give it a misleading TLD if you have to for marketing purposes.
Korma: Good
You can still do this, you just have to get a pass from the airline and go through security. You can also meet someone arriving.
Same flaw in argument as the original article. Starting from the computer does not identify the user. Even if you made the person submit DNA every time they logged in some would go around collecting people's DNA and keeping it in the fridge for when they needed to anon.
Korma: Good
Saying that a network which requires credentials linked to your identity "would do away with users' Fourth Amendment rights to privacy" is ridiculous. The only thing that the Fourth Amendment says about privacy is that the feds can't search your stuff without a warrant. What the devil does that have to do with when you choose to visit a site which won't work with you unless you reveal your true identity?
Extra, Extra! Read all about it! Gub'ment proposes new security technology for shops and inns, called "refusing to do business with you unless you tell us your real name." Union of patent medicine peddlers objects that it breaches their "right to privacy!"
There is a time when what you have said of Will is true, and, specifically for you, an interval soon to come when it ceases being true. (and maybe a time when it is true again, if the Joy of Matter lies at the end of the aeons). This is not the place to speak of such things, nor are we in Daath where such things are neither spoken of or ignored. The request to address you despite this comes neither from my Will or my Desire (for certain values of my acceptable to majority consensus in western civilization).
Who is John Cabal?
This proposal is not for a military base, it's for what would become a marketplace.
Exactly what I was thinking. Let the government clean up their own house first before they tell us how to run the net. First the government sponsored Internet ID proposal reported here on slashdot, now a closed net. What could possibly go wrong with that.?
As long as Joe Q. Public needs to log in there, it will always present a target for hacker attack, and identity theft. It's just moving the burden of securing the network to the average user who must now guard their credentials and certificates as closely (or loosly) as they now guard their passwords.
This might work for government agencies, but when every shopping site jumps on the bandwagon the net as we know it will be headed the same way as usenet.
There isn't that much of the government's business that should require proof of identity in a democracy anyway.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Hasn't this guy learned anything from his time at the NSA?
Sure he has, all people are equal, it's just that some people are more equal than others.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Simpson's Nelson has some advice here. "Ha Ha". .Gov: "Hi. We'd like a .secure TLD." .Gov: "Sudo give us .secure Now to combat pedophilic terrorists and people who photo people in Apple stores."
US
ICANN : "Sure. $185,000 please."
US
"I can do that, Yes ICANN."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Anonymous individuals aren't the problem. Anonymous businesses are the problem. Most of the troubles we have on the Internet come from web sites which purport to be from some legitimate business, but aren't. Malware, spam, etc. all eventually involve some online business.
This is a consequence of ICANN's squishy-soft regulation of registrars and weak enforcement of WHOIS data quality rules. More recently, corrupt CAs have become a problem. The companies that collect money registering the identify of web sites are failing in their responsibilities.
All we need on the client side is good ISP ingress filtering, so that corrupted clients can't use an IP address other than their own. (All you can do with a fake IP address is send junk, since you don't get any of the replies.) Then, DDoS attacks can be tracked and blocked.
We sorta have decided. We're getting divided and conquered.
The smart liberals, of which several inhabit slashdot, know it is not worth it. But alone we are not enough.
The "innocent" masses, who just want to check their email and post a picture to their wall, Like this stuff. "Click Here to keep Terrorists Away! * (*Doing so means agreement with the implementation of the following 147 pages of policy.)
Dammit, I gotta get going - Since "Book" seems to have been taken by FaceBook, I need a new second noun. Call it VoteForum. (Look! Prior Art! I hope...) If we move Voting SOCIAL, the suddenly our friends in .Gov will be faced with 30% turnarounds in single elections because the *real americans* will have thrashed out the issues.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
This might work for government agencies, but when every shopping site jumps on the bandwagon the net as we know it will be headed the same way as usenet.
There isn't that much of the government's business that should require proof of identity in a democracy anyway.
So, I can't imagine very many people who are going to want to get their porn in a .secure domain.... and that's STILL an awful large piece of the 'net...plus various other things, I dunno that a .secure would necessarily see the end of the normal 'net as we know it today.
encryption is nice, but its not the answer to everything. the major issue is in fact, bugs. and you can't easily prevent bugs.
there are operating systems and security measure which are VERY good compared to what 99.9% use today, but they're not applied because there is no commercial gain yet.
anyhow, the point of their push for a 2nd internet is not security. it's control. Don't get that wrong. it has little to see with life critical stuff.
Internet last time I checked was just a commonly recogised way of routing ip packets.
I think they security is whatever protocol you choose to use on top of that.
I hear that ssl Is a popular choice these days. Does suffer from being 'open source' rather than a nice secure private protocol you can buy but seems to be quite popular.
A completely separate (air gap, and no wireless, no shared programs or data) device from your "insecure" Internet computer. I see very little chance of this happening. The first unwitting member of a botnet who signs in to the "secure" Internet with their magical "secure" credentials will immediately un-secure it for everyone else.
Why not create your own "LAN" on top of the internet using VPN connections? Why would this need a separate network? Are we that worried about DoS attacks on VPN connections? And why go with a single network, whilst you may have different roles to different institutions?
The idea of a non-anonymous sub-network is certainly an interesting one, and you could argue that it does have many benefits over providing credentials to each and every site (for each and every protocol). Proof of citizenship (e.g. with a digital ID) would be the most likely candidate for access. You could think of schemes where one could just prove citizenship and be anonymous to most instititions, but where you could be identified (and banned) by your own government if you have been proven to abuse/attack the system.
I'm not saying that I would be in favour of this - but it is certainly an idea worth mulling over. It would be pretty tricky to implement on top of most operating systems and applications since they haven't been build with VPN's like that in mind (e.g. because on most systems it would require system priviledges to set up a LAN).
This is NOT the internet. The internet will still exist in its current evolving form.
This is a national network that supports limited tasks and offers zero privacy.
The govt constantly monitors.everything on this network.
The big question is - Why didn't we start this 10 years ago?
The concept is good, but there are some points that will surface in the next five years.
1. It will support federally guaranteed monetary transfers up to $5000
2. It will be a free (no subscription) connection to 99.9% of all US households
3. It will be devoid of commercial advertising
4. It will support all tax and commercial financial transfers
Once there were mountains on mountains
And once there were sunbirds
to soar with
And once I could
never be down
Got to keep searching
and searching
Oh what will I be believing
and who will connect me with love?
Wonder who wonder who
wonder when
Have you sought fortune evasive and shy?
Drink to the men who protect you and I
Drink drink drain your glass
raise your glass high
Or is it really
"No reason to get excited,"
The thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that,
And this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now,
The hour is getting late."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Or, as some of us like to call it, a target.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And now you spend your Saturday alone posting on slashdot.
There is a huge difference between showing my papers in order to get into a high security building and going out with a friend to a restaurant for lunch...
just throw up a VPN that required authentication to access and make sure the critical servers are only accessible through the VPN.
your critical servers could be behind locked down links which only allow VPN traffic and everything else could be authenticated through crypto.
there would still be attacks and the sites would probably end up even more insecure once the admins decide that "sure the network is secure so we don't have to worry about security" and any botnet herder or virus writer would probably be able to harvest a million throwaway private keys for accessing the network making the whole situation even less secure than the current situation where admins at least don't think "someone else" is handling the security and they know the internet is a dangerous place where you can't trust anything coming from the client.
Instead of this backward approach to government security being firewalls and this and that, lay out a different network, complete with its own fiber and connections. Think of it like re-creating the old Arpanet, where the public does NOT have access, and the only connections come from places with real reasons to be connected. The places with real need for security would not have ANY connections to the normal Internet, no gateways, no dial-up, NOTHING that others could use to access it remotely. The CIA, FBI, and a core military connection might be connected on this new network, but if you want REAL security, don't let ANYONE even try knocking on the door.
At no time should an employee even have access from home, unless the person has such a requirement for that access that dedicated fiber links to the home for that very reason is considered valid, and with that access, the home should have 24x7 security to make sure the location itself is not compromised. Even then, you would have dedicated machines at the location for one network or the other, with no connections between the two, no wireless on the machine(s) that are on the secured network.
Lock it down, don't give the "keys" to anyone, and anyone that does have home access to such a secured network should have the connected machine monitored 24x7. Why be stupid and risk security via VPN when there is a chance the VPN itself may be compromised? Why take the risk?
It just seems to me if you're going to talk tcp/ip, use the same pipe, adhear to current rfc's, your network will be no more secure then it is today. The wheel already works (securely if you want), its the hamsters powering it that are broken.
That said, if you need to secure a private network use a private pipe. Secure the "human" access via physical protection, and train your hamsters.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
So do I want a completely-deanonymized Internet? Hell no.
You are in luck! It's just a legislative fiction. In the real world, impersonating someone else on the Internet is very cheap and 100% effective. One only needs to steal credentials, which is VERY hard to detect, since nothing goes missing. The size really matters here. Anything with a million members will be breached within weeks and will remain breached for the rest of its existence. A much smaller network with carefully selected participants may be able to remain secure. This just seems like a trivial hurdle for criminals to overcome.
You can go anywhere in the country without papers. You could, right now, get on a bus and travel 3 states over, then jump on a train and go somewhere.
You cannot, however, enter the pentagon without authorization, and Im not sure when the last time you could was. Nor can you enter a private building where management has decided to hire security and implement metal detectors, without authorization.
And how exactly is 'showing your papers' supposed to make those buildings secure?
Im not a security expert, but I would surmise (knowing some people in that field) that the government has a list of people that it wants to keep close tabs on. For example, if you had escaped from a prison, I imagine that it would be rather difficult to get into a secured location-- you would have to get in without giving your ID, which rather complicates getting in when the elevators are locked down. There is also some screening that takes place in order to get an ID; and if something DOES go down, they have a better idea of who you are.
Regardless, my threshold of "starting to worry about police state" is when they start trying to stick cameras all over DC, or having permenant police checkpoints. Metal detectors and security guards in international trade buildings doesnt really trip my "big government paranoia" alarm.
Of course, only one side has the backing of science, logical reasoning, and in general, fact. Claiming all three arguments are equal is disingenuous.
Great Intellect...
Sounds like a single-point-of-failure scenario.
You may wish to revisit your premise.
Nor can you enter a private building where management has decided to hire security and implement metal detectors, without authorization.
Unless you present at the door and security just lets you in, believing you belong there, or you gave them some legitimate-sounding explanation of why you want to enter....
That may put you in a better position -- once the security guard lets you in, the owner/employees can no longer claim you were trespassing; since the guard allowed you in, you have essentially been invited/authorized.
If you just walk into a private building uninvited, with no security guard, with no permission or sign inviting you in, you're breaking the law anyways.
Having a 'metal detector' and guard at the door is not what makes trespassing a crime.
Three letter TLDs are fine; use .sec, not .secure, if you're really going to do this.
I decline your offer because you have no idea what you are talking about.
First off, I don't mean to be an ass, you just seem to be ignorant. There is something called DNSSEC that not only exists, but is part of IPv6. Considering that you do not mention DNSSEC, and that both it and our current TLS implementations include "tapless and secure" "end-to-end" encryption facilities supports my first sentence...
DNSSEC isn't just for DNS, it could authenticate and encrypt email, or any other web traffic and can be a replacement for SSL. Please research it before replying to this comment.
Additionally, it doesn't matter how encrypted your connection is to what you see as yourbank.com if you can't verify that your are really connected to the place you think you are connected. Ergo: end-to-end encryption is not all the 'secure' we need, we also need authentication -- The fact that you did not mention authentication also supports my first statement. Now, if there is already a shared secret key between two parties then BOTH authentication and encryption can be performed easily.
Me: "I'm VortexCortex, here is some session salt: NWUyOGVkMWZlMTQw, and here is my encrypted message: "..."
Bank: "Hello VortexCortex, here is some session salt: MTkwMjM4MDE5ODIzM, and here is my encrypted reply: "..."
The shared secret key can be used along with the salts to create a key that decrypts the messages -- no fancy PKI needed... However, how do you first set up the account? With banks, you could visit them in person, but what about online retailers? You would have no pre-shared key, and this means they don't know who you are, and you can't verify who they are because neither have a pre-shared key.
Thus, we need some form of trusted public/private key infrastructure (hierarchical or Web of Trust, etc) in order to first validate an endpoint.
Finally -- WE CAN'T ENCRYPT EVERYTHING. It's not feasible to do this for cached content, high bandwidth video, live streaming, etc because encryption makes distributed content and/or deduplication impractical.
Unfortunately HTML and TLS (security) are designed independently of each-other and no one (but me?) thinks that HTML needs to know about security too... HTTP cookies can be marked as "secure only", why can't HTML tags have secure attributes?
The thing is: We don't need to encrypt something in order to trust it -- we can use hashing / digital fingerprints to ensure data integrity. Here's a post I made concerning the brain-damage that is the lack of security aware HTML. For the link-lazy, here's the pertinent part:
The BIGGEST retardation on the WEB is the fact that we have strong encryption and cryptographic signature technology in our browsers, and yet MIXED content is UNSAFE because (X)HTML standards don't declare facilities to specify fingerprints for the non-encrypted data that the encrypted page pulls in -- thus allowing for privacy of encrypted content, AND caching of plaintext content WITHOUT compromising integrity. /> Now apply this to the .js, .class, flash, .mp3, .avi, etc, and you get the point.
<img src="bkgnd.png" sig="SHA-1/hex;22172a80d89e99d250db62bf71031a23cbac4801" salt="HMAC/Base64;U2VjdXJpdHkgaXMgZWFzeS4K"
in short: You don't seem to know what you are talking about, but fret not, no one else does either or else we would have already solved this problem (because the answers are so apparent to those who do know what they are talking about).
TL;DR: I agree, the current direction the web is going is fine, but we need authentication an
So... the net as we know it will be headed the same way as usenet.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Amtrak requires ID.
Greyhound doesn't, though.
But since nobody in the public could possibly make use of something so useless; you had better not use any of our tax money to fund it.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Aside from all the comments above regarding why it will not work and what difficulties can and will arise, compromising its so-called security, could this lead us to internet based elections and discussions of a political nature? Might we be permitted to have government level discussions from our homes over our secure access tokens to not only vote but to eliminate the need for representation at all? As a fictional example I cite the wonder work by Orson Scott Card entitled Ender's Game (If you haven't read it, quit slashdot forever) Where political discussions take place on "adult" nets requiring real name credentials, with no throw-away identities. For examples of how it won't work, due to loopholes and the like, I cite the same work of fiction in which two children use their father's credentials to write motivating columns for syndicated newspapers, obtain aliases to the secure nets as payments for their work, and set about taking over the world through the ideas they foster into the minds of the people. Time will tell. But I think the world as it is does not want to see an absolution of representation, nor the taxation that goes along with it.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
The War on Hacking is the War on Drugs for the 21st Century. A never ending siphon of money into the hands of a few well-connected companies and politicians. There will be some collateral damage, of course, but it will be deemed to be worth it by those who matter. Actually, the collateral damage (loss of privacy, a "locked down" internet) will be considered a feature not a bug.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Actually, no, privacy and security are opposites. If you want total security, you need to live in a police state
Ask anyone who's ever lived in a police state how secure they felt doing so.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It just looks a lot like a new top level domain to me. And if someone manages to hack your DNS setup and point you to an evil server, .secure won't mean squat. They'll redirect your sessions through a 'man in the middle' system, or just point every page request you make to Goatse Guy.
If you can secure specific clients, servers, and routers assigned to a secure infrastructure, then .mil, .gov, or even .com will be just fine. A new TLD will look cool, but won't buy you much more than .xxx. If you are actually proposing a whole new system of pipes, physically separate from the Internet v1.0, its going to cost you big time. And much of the value of being able to work with the public 'Net will be lost.
Have gnu, will travel.
Tell that to someone from Hawaii or Alaska. I'm pretty sure both ship and airline passage require ID.
You haven't traveled on any interstate highways that happen to travel by the border with Mexico lately, have you. Try driving from Yuma to Los Angeles on I-8. You will encounter no less than TWO *permanent* US Border Patrol (DHS) checkpoints along the way, where you have to stop and provide identification in the form of a driver's license and submit to a search of your vehicle if they feel like it.
No, this isn't because the US-Mexico border magically moved north a few miles. You didn't cross an international border without realizing it. It's because DHS claims authority over areas 100 miles from all US borders, including sea borders. In this case, you must show papers to travel within the US... and it's not a small case, it's actually a very broadly applicable area.
Seriously man, are you trolling, or are you really THAT ignorant? The noose isn't getting any looser. Start worrying!
Just mandate people get fixed IP addresses - or blocks of them. Sure, use SSL and such existing protocols. Oh right, the ISPs don't want you to have one.
I believe that GP was asking for a different reason... it's like this guy suddenly thinks that SIPR and NIPR are insufficient, and they need a whole other Internet besides - err, just like SIPR, apparently.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Problem: We need a secure way to communicate with critical non-local computers while keeping the bad guys out.
Solution #1: Physically isolated network.
Downside: Typically very expensive once you leave a building or campus.
Solution #2: Isolated in "IP space," but may share physical wire with Internet traffic.
Downside: Can't use same PC or remote device to access this machine and the Internet at the same time. Can't easily guarantee computer isn't infected with malware unless you don't allow the PC to connect to the Internet or run non-approved software, ever.
Solution #3: VPN with strong authentication and strong prevention of VPN client computer becoming a "bridge" between the Internet and the secured network.
Downside: It's practically impossible to completely ensure the client computer isn't also on the Internet and not hosting malware.
In practice though Solution #3 is more than adequate for non-military or similar uses.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This Security-vs-Anonymity thing is a false dilemma contrived by a government that excels in both the theater of security and the blatantly unconstitutional decimation of privacy.
"Secure" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authenticating a guest, it could just mean encrypting data traffic. Which would actually be great for porn.
If they're just NOW contemplating this, they should've hired me when I turned 21 and let me get shit set straight.
But nooooooo, gotta go for that dipshit with only paper knowledge and zero real-world experience, because that college degree MUST mean he knows his stuff, riiiight?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I sort of assumed that too, though I figure internally they probably want something in between Intelink and NIPRNet, obviously this allows for an infinitely more controlled level of public access. Clearly this would be handy for the NSA and other 3 letter agencies since they get to dip their fingers in any time they feel like, though being an ex-3-letter-agency drone myself, I can't help but think (know) that these suggestions only come about because there is an insatiable desire to have access to even greater amounts information. None of these people ever stand back and think "Maybe we're doing okay, lets just coast for a while" They've long since gone from knowing their targets to simply sucking down everything they can, sift through it all later.
doesn't RFC 3514 already address this?
Unlike .com, .xxx and other new domains now proliferating the Internet, .secure would require visitors to use certified credentials for entry and would do away with users' Fourth Amendment rights to privacy.
TLDs DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!! GOOD NIGHT!
Seems to me, the way SIPRNet is managed it is insufficient. Bradley Manning (allegedly) proved that. I've seen far more oversight of users' actions at private ops than Manning's superiors displayed. If they'd been doing their jobs, Manning wouldn't have been able to get into this mess.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
No, it doesn't take a separate TLD, but at least some of the clueless or malicious people involved want to have a part of the Internet namespace where they can make the rules, and can then use that to gradually force more and more of the Internet to obey their rules.
Having physically separate private networks is an entirely different issue - they've got multiples of those (and in fact that's part of how we got the 10.x.x.x namespace that everybody uses for private addresses.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks