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The Code War Arms Race
pacopico writes "A story in Bloomberg Businessweek gives the first in-depth look at a wave of new start-ups selling cyber weaponry. The story describes this as the evolution of the defense industry in response to a wave of brazen attacks against Google, the Pentagon, the IMF and thousands of companies. It's pretty scary stuff, especially considering that these new weapons are not regulated at all."
President, we have ascertained the location of the hackers!
Good, where are they coming from?
They're hacking in from 192.168.0.1!
Excellent! Unleash our counterattack now!
Consider yourself spoken to.
Really? Good god, slashdot.
The clowns buying these services haven't a clue, but they do have fat checkbooks.
That the future of cyber warfare is a bunch of script kiddies in military uniforms clicking "Attack" on some shitty VBasic GUI?
The difference between hacking and warfare is the former requires out side the box thinking and creativity. Find me a US general with just one of those traits. Army culture is the exact opposite, not a stereotype.
FTFA, the Endgame company seems like a PMC at this point. They offer strategic intel, attack vectors to any individual or international group willing to pay. But hey, at least they say they won't attack the U.S.!
Launch all zig and make hackers hack themself! Set gateway IP to 127.0.0.1!...
Wait...why we haz no internetz?
It's pretty scary stuff, especially considering that these new weapons are not regulated at all.
As opposed to the regulated weapons of war which are made with bunnies, flowers, and candy.
Stopped caring at "cyber weaponry".
The only "Arms Race" is the race to shut down the internet in the name to prevent "Cyber War". The more articles like this posted, the more likely the treasonous congress will pass something to lock even more down right in your face.
And you know what "Cyber War" is code for? It's code for "Stop! You are getting too close to the truth of the reality of the world".
"Hacking" in it's purest form is exploring, probing, questioning, thinking, about a solution to a problem.
The problem is deception, trickery, falsehoods, lies, and most of all; greed.
Sometimes the solution requires some "Scary Stuff"
Pussy.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. "
Spam is ironic too in this way, with some few destroying email in order to make some small (relative to global scale) profit on it, and meanwhile making it harder to use email to bring abundance to everyone.
There needs to be a general term for this. Selfishness disease? Or is is better to just call it a "Racket"?
http://warisaracket.org/racket.html
The biggest crime is not even in the theft -- it is in forcing everyone to spend a lot of time worrying about theft,.
We could build much more secure systems, especially based on free and open systems like GNU/Linux, and we had the opportunity, but the US Congress made it hard twenty years ago to build good encryption into everything and bad standards stuck, and now with effectively infinite copyrights and overly broad patents, cooperation has been made harder to make good systems for everyone. Richard Stallman's points on freedom are making more and more sense every day.
http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society-2/
So we see another arms race sucking up so much time and energy and the lives of smart people to produce what? Meanwhile the singularity (if it is to happen) draws nearer every day.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The article is pretty scary. I'm not sure the people at these well-funded companies even realize the potential for these tools to be used accidentally to do all sorts of nasty things. Or what is going to happen when script kiddies get a hold of them or they are reverse engineersed, like Stuxnet is a blueprint for worse. It is just insanity. It shows the folly of current US defense posture relying primarily on extrinsic security (defending things by soldiers or hackers) and unilateral security (trying to scare your opponents into submission by being the meanest nastiest SOB around). We need to move back to a defense posture that emphasizes intrinsic security (systems that can take abuse) and mutual security (cultivating allies through diplomacy wuth everyone watching each other's back). US security used to be more like that before WWII, but it is a lot less profitable for defense contractors because, unlike security theater, intrinisic and mutual security actually work and don't lead to expensive arms races!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No way this could ever backfire. No sir.
Regulation always makes things so much friendlier.
They can't get me, officer! I have norton!!!
What WOULD render this ineffective: Teaching people how to secure their machines against the threats by exposing them.
What WILL happen: A crackdown on "hacking tools" with the false idea that without tools there will be no hacking.
For those that don't know why this is no solution: Try to outlaw them in China, and try to audit your machines for security holes without them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...... WTF.
So "computers" == "windows"
There's your problem.
That Kuang Grade Mark Eleven is a hell of a program...
I dun backtraced it! and I am calling the Cyber Defense Force!
Yes it is scary because the number of evil geniuses and clueless retards crying cyber that cyber this is increasing day by day. You can see the regular pattern here: scare the public witless and you can push any law you need. They also can start a new dot.com bubble in this frenzy.
The number of clueless retards buying this crap is also scary because they are the vote bank for the ones chanting Cyber this Cyber that.
Calling any of that shit "weaponry" is bullshit.
I'd try to provide a more coherent rebuttal, but the story really didn't give me anything else to work with..
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It wasn't enough to have imaginary "property", now we have imaginary "weapons" to defend it with.
This is just more inane posturing by idiots who have no clue as to what they're talking about. Here's an example: they come after me with their "cyber weapons" and I respond with hardware; say .45 caliber hardware. Care to bet on how that exchange would turn out?
By now, the concept of vulnerabilities and how they get exploited should be well established. The bad guys don't always wear uniforms or work for a governmental unit; most of them are just after as much as they can grab for themselves. The solutions are pretty well known, too.
Discussions of how best to secure our end-terminal devices against an ever-more-sophisticated group of black hats is a good thing - but describing cracking tools as "cyber weapons" is a clear sign of someone who has no clue.
Beside the fact that people who break into systems are crackers and not hackers, this military jargon sucks. Today everything is filled with this vocabulary. War on terror. War on drugs. A worm is not a gun or a bomb it is more a digital lock pick. As the Internet is a (meta)medium it allows all scams and tricks which could be done only locally in the past. now they can be done around the globe.
We should learn that Information is not always true. Not only from governments, but also inside organizations. We should act accordingly. Meaning: Don't trust information which makes no sense. And when someone is standing in front of you and he or she claims something. Just don't dismiss him or her just on the basis, because the computer said so. Ok this is the old "Think before act" rule, but it seams necessary.
"A story in Bloomberg Businessweek gives the first in-depth look at a wave of new start-ups selling cyber weaponry"
And yet in the opening para we have some guy in a ski mask breaking into some offices. This, another article from the school of bad fiction and total cyberbullshit