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Air Force Network Admins Found Out About Drone Virus Through News Story
Nemesisghost writes "Wired's Danger Room reports that the network admins of the 24th Air Force found out about the virus infecting the drone cockpits at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada by reading the earlier news article. Quoting: 'Not only were officials in charge kept out of the loop about an infection in America’s weapon and surveillance system of choice, but the surprise surrounding that infection highlights a flaw in the way the U.S. military secures its information infrastructure: There’s no one in the Defense Department with his hand on the network switch. In fact, there is no one switch to speak of. The four branches of the U.S. armed forces each has a dedicated unit that, in theory, is supposed to handle cyber defense for the entire service. ... In practice, it’s not that simple. Unlike most big private enterprises, the 24th doesn’t have a centralized system for managing and monitoring its networks. There’s no place at the 24th’s San Antonio headquarters where someone could see all the digital traffic hurtling through the service’s pipes.'"
Compartmentalization AND Security through obscurity.
You can't make this stuff up.
do they even bother to check ... apparently not
... when the news pointed out recently that all the drone video surveillance footage is sent unencrypted? I know I found that a little surprising.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I wonder how much porn and illicit downloading goes through the military networks? In all the other computer networks I've seen, if no one is holding users accountable, the network will be abused.
So, tell me, again, how the virus got on the machines? A "thumb drive," you say? And, the virus keeps returning? Hrmmm...
Who thought this network infrastructure arrangement would be a good idea?
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Standard security practice for high reliability systems is they don't get on the internet, and you lock them down so the operators can't install software. So how could a glorified arcade machine get infected? Oh that's because the men running it like to play games (that aren't installed) so they bring them in on usb sticks and badger the admins to unlock the machines so they can install them. Or the network admins are incompetent.
Just about every possible problem has been discussed on slashdot before.
Trying simple things to lock down military PC's such as sealing up CD-ROM/DVD drives and USB ports is defeated by the motivation of troops wanting to listen to his MP3 collection or view family videos.
Then the security of actual networks isn't done because the admin's are also engaged in regular military duties. They only have enough time to get any system setup before moving to the next assigned work task.
Research groups also have students going in and out as well as working remotely from other sites.
DTi has a report that the level of hacking was so bad that even the group conferences by telephone networks were being accessed remotely.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Have gnu, will travel.
When nuclear weapons were new, each branch of the military tried to become the 'nuclear' arm by introducing new weapons systems and trying to impress politicos with how they should be the ones with the budget and prestige. We don't need multiple branches of cybersecurity forces, we need one branch that can handle it all. Time to dump the military romanticism of the 18th century that divides our military into earth/water/air/fire/heart and reorg. Hell, maybe we even need another side to the Pentagon for cyberwarfare.
Ok, is this what they meant by downgraded provisional cyber command? As in, a room with pictures of maps on big flat screens and no actual command of anything? If this is the best the most elite hackers our military can muster, then I think my wife should try and apply. She knows how to use Excel pretty well.
This has nothing to do with taxes.
The military finds funding when it needs it.
This is mostly a failure of leadership.
Unless something comes from the top down, their networks will remain a group of islands.
It took a 9/11 for us to reform our intelligence sharing and it'll probably take the internet equivalent before the military to puts their house in order.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
..military, they really excelled when they added those bottom two mental categories (Category 5, unbelievably dumb, and Category 6, do not compete with a Pet Rock, sir!). Seriously, though, this is a prime example of what transpires when they've shipped the bulk of tech jobs offshore (as of July, 1999, there has been NO NET NEW job creation in the USA --- thanks Wall Street!!!): they keep erasing it and it just keeps coming back. Hmmm......and they do bisynchronous broadcasting: back and forth between the control element and the drones.....hmmmm....wonder why it just keeps coming back and back......who is next in line to control Skynet, me wonders????
I've worked at 1 Army installation in my short life, but from my experience, people move up in the ranks by tenure -- not skill or experience. Even in IT.
DNS? Department of Network Security?
I'm not sure I want to see the end result of a large government bureaucracy trying to manage multiple secure networks.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
They can find all the funding they like, but if your K-12 schools are teaching that dinosaurs and humans walked paw-in-hand and that computers are the work of a demon-possessed Steve Jobs, then you've got a group of people fundamentally (!) incapable of network management.
80% of all you learn, you learn before you are 12. You HAVE to get the key aspects of science, engineering, mathematics and rigorous thought TOTALLY in people's brains by that time. If you do not, you are too late. Those who haven't learned the key skills by then will never be capable of learning everything needed.
By the time someone is 24, they will have mentally peaked. Their brains will have begun to deteriorate. Learning a highly advanced, technical skill after that point is possible, but it requires enormous effort and it usually involves leveraging a skill that has similarities so that the adjustment in thought processes is kept to a minimum.
Schools and pre-schools, from age 3 onwards, have to aim at producing people of extremely high calibre. They can't keep aiming at producing Walmart shelf stackers in the hope that universities can clean up the mess. Subjects have become too complex, too intertwined, to do that.
In Britain, they're phasing in a program whereby they expect people to become polyglots by age 5, on the basis that this stimulates brain growth, capacity to learn and mental longevity. That's good. That's as it should be. It would be better if science and maths were equally stressed, but I'm happy with one victory for intelligent education at a time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
We don't and probably won't ever really know the true nature of this virus. Assuming there is a C&C outside the network or a traitor inside, the thing probably was either told to self-destruct, plant a bogus virus and delete its trace - or it was manually deleted. And since no one was actively monitoring the systems, I'm guessing their logs and back-ups are in such a disarray that forensics won't yield much about the original infection.
*sarcasm* way to go, Obama. You can hire the world's best data mining and marketing scientists to crunch social media trend numbers for your campaign, but you can't secure the military which looks to you as their top chief? No, no, I'm not trying to be political... but that is very ironic and shows in general how as a whole our country's investment in computer tech is misplaced.
Anyways, since we can't privatize our intel, obviously we need to invest more money into educating, training or hiring decent (or better) cyber defense and security experts. And monitor our systems with a combination of 24/7 human and algorithmic plus machine learning AI. It needs to be a 110% top priority starting now. A strong policy there will also stimulate growth in the field - education will expand, demand for skilled workers will increase, and the computer industry as a whole will benefit.
There are some things that are just embarrassing though. This is one of them. The F22's avionics systems crashing due to crossing the international date line is another. It raises serious questions about how much we trust our armed forces to properly handle security.
I used to think that the stuxnet virus had a few oversights that were well beyond the incompetence level of the US government (the P2P update feature with hard-coded password being one) but this sort of thing suggests that in fact, when it comes to technology, the US government has no competition in the field of incompetence.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
So apparently Wired had the story in the first place, and now they have a second story reporting that the Air Force never knew about the problem until reading about it in their first story? There are two serious problems here.
First, it seems like Wired has motive for some exaggeration or misrepresentation here: "Our investigative reporting is so top notch they don't even know they're being investigated!" Certainly major exposes make it to press without a leak, it happens all the time, but any journalistic entity has ample motive to over-emphasize their cunning and resourcefulness. How about we rely on more than one source for these things, maybe?
Second, and much more importantly, if Wired really did manage the entire investigation completely under the radar, then they went to press with information about severe flaws in a military weapons system before even telling the government about it. That's unforgivably irresponsible. At minimum the Air Force deserved a direct and forceful communication from Wired the very minute the story went public, if not slightly before: these are weapons systems we're talking about, and remote controlled at that. Getting maximum impact for your story and not giving the government time for a cover up is one thing, but national security isn't just some neoconservative buzzword; some things really are secret and sensitive for good reason. You don't just scream "Top Secret files open on this desk over here!", even if there are files there. It's stupid and damaging.
This is no different, in many ways, from finding flaws in Microsoft products or credit card systems: you give the people who need to fix it some kind of heads-up before you go splattering it all over the internet. Yes, if you don't go public no one ever learns and no one is pressured to fix their problems, but going public before you even consider how you're going to communicate with the affected developer is just stupid grandstanding.
That's a headline we may see if we lose control of those things.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
start by hiring people based on skills and not BA's. It IT hands on work / training / tech school is a lot better then a 4 year CS class load.
Also there needs to be a way to get tech people in with out the boot camp part and or having to deal all the rank crap or the move up or get out idea. Some tech people can do good as a manager other not so much.
Also no stay away from lot's of non tech mangers.
For a similar problem, see safety, and specifically how China's top-down control over their high-speed rail network was inadequate in prevent the signaling issues which led to the recent high-profile crash.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Yes but on the other hand if you find flaws in Microsoft or credit card systems the worst that would happen is some fraud and/or inconvenience if the flaws are exploited. The possibility of automated remote controlled murder is a different thing entirely and should perhaps be treated differently. Going public early with maximum sensationalism might increase the likelihood of people realising that remote controlled killing machines are ultimately too dangerous to us all to allow their continued proliferation.
Korma: Good
When you have armies of people who don't want to pay taxes this is what you get. Networking training is not cheap, understanding it is not cheap. Finding people with enough knowledge combined to work across these systems is difficult and comes with a price.
Oh blow it out your ass. The US spends over 698 Billion on it's military, more than 5 time as much as it's closest competitor: China Source. If they cannot find the training budget for network security then maybe they can hold a fucking bake sale like most school districts have to in order to afford supplies.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
... I'm technical and I made it in boot camp (USMC). Every Marine a rifleman. Its not hard and they don't just want IT people. Yes maybe if we get rid of boot camp and increase the pay for certain jobs and stop requiring everyone know how to shoot then the IT staff might be a little better, but I really doubt by much. There are some smart guys in the military things like this are usually a management issue.
They are most certainly not teaching about a 'demon possessed Steve Jobs". If you would bother to read the voluminous eulogies on Mr. Jobs, you would see that he is about to be Sainted.
Fair and Unbalanced!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
um you already are seeing the end of the results of a large government bureaucracy trying to handle multiple insecure networks.
The problem is no one does good security. It has to be installed ground up and thought out ahead of time, with the needs of the users, limitations of technology, need of oversight, and management thought about from an objective point of view.
it is either to tight to allow for actual use by users. the flights systems need thumb drives to transfer GPS data into and images out of those systems. That is bad design.
Steve Jobs said it best. Design isn't just the interface, it isn't just component layout, it is everything.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Having that much money doesn't mean they're spending it as effectively as they could - I get the impression than an awful lot gets spent on shiny gadgets which defense contractors overcharge for, not to mention pork for Senator X's state. Sometimes this is stuff that the military doesn't really want or need.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
from TFA: There’s no one in the Defense Department with his hand on the network switch. In fact, there is no one switch to speak
Maybe it's for the better. If there was a central control of whole network it would make it a great target for attack.
So apparently Wired had the story in the first place, and now they have a second story reporting that the Air Force never knew about the problem until reading about it in their first story? There are two serious problems here.
Not if you bothered to read the article. Here is the first paragraph:
Some people in the Air Force knew, but they did not notify their own network security organization. If true, then that is irresponsible behavior by Air Force personnel, and something we should thank Wired for reporting.
Having said that, I also have to admit that I'm confused about who knew what, and who was denied information. The original Wired story speaks of efforts to eradicate the malware:
One can only hope that the new bunch of security people who just found out about the malware via the Wired article are more competent than the first ones, who leaked the information to Wired. Was the leak itself irresponsible? I truly can't tell: when incompetence in handling such deadly weapons reaches such empyrean altitudes ...my mind boggles. Clearly, no one connected with this weapons system knows what they are doing, nor do they seem overly concerned.
Perhaps a bit of mental clouding is to be expected among individuals who run a weapon system "allowing U.S. forces to attack targets and spy on its foes without risking American lives"—apparently by killing them. Doublethink and duckspeak aren't conducive to organizational efficiency...but that's the price you have to pay to keep the terrorists from winning.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
WRONG fucking answer.
The .mil budgets are enormous, but Air Force customs regarding network management have been fucked up for many years.
"Networking training is not cheap, understanding it is not cheap. Finding people with enough knowledge combined to work across these systems is difficult and comes with a price."
The USAF capably trains people on tasks more demanding than networking, but MilPHBs who don't understand networking combined the computer maintenance folks and the welfare-queen/closet queen (yes, really) Admin paper pushers with predictable results.
It's always been a MilPHB problem, and because the Air Force now is extremely "corporate" people who may be competent at war are taught to emulate corporate fuckups-I-mean-models.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Part of the shuffling around that created Cybercommand also created the 24th Air Force to be the AF's IT shop. They're still standing up and taking over operations from all the separate units.
So it's not completely surprising they wouldn't know about it. They may not have taken over at that base yet.
You may have had a point if there had actually been any military budget cuts in the last decade.
1) The network goons know they should report it. They dun goofed, they are in BIG trouble.
2) Had this virus been on a network that crosses into the Internet then it WOULD be detected. End of story. Even if it didn't cross into the Internet, it was detected by HBSS - aka anti-virus. Somehow the reporting dun broke down.
3) There will be fallout but most of this is FUD, telling the narrative "OMG teh US Military is not ready for CyberWarz!" Ok, chicken little, settle down... unless you are a airman in the networking section at Creech, everything is fine. There are many, many layers to this tootsie pop and even if it were full of shite it would take a while to get to that center of excrement. These guys blew it and didn't report the problem to anyone other than Wired?
... I'm technical and I made it in boot camp (USMC). Every Marine a rifleman. Its not hard and they don't just want IT people. Yes maybe if we get rid of boot camp and increase the pay for certain jobs and stop requiring everyone know how to shoot then the IT staff might be a little better, but I really doubt by much. There are some smart guys in the military things like this are usually a management issue.
well you want IT people to be IT not rifleman or other stuff that can let then be pulled from the IT to a non IT rifleman job even more so for a state side job.
Also there are IT people who are to old for boot camp and or are hacker types / people with Asburger / other stuff who can do a IT job but can't be the type of person you want on the front lines as a rifleman or the people who will fail boot camp.
It needs to be out side of the enlisted / officer side of things. Maybe direct commission like with scientists, pharmacists, physicians, nurses, clergy, and attorneys
it will end up just as bad with more cover ups.
Are you always this insane? I've got a BS in chemistry, GPA 3.7 from 20 years ago, and I went to an absolutely batshit crazy Christian school through sixth grade. (I went there because they had a really excellent primary education in every subject other than the sciences and cost less than half of what the other private schools in the area did, in a city whose public schools suck.) You can totally learn science after the age of 12 (I did). You can totally learn new things after 24 - I certainly did. I hope you did.
What you can't replace is the free time that teenagers and college students who are supported by their parents have. I'm interested in all sorts of subjects that I'll never master because I don't have the time anymore. I can't dedicate five hours a day, six days a week, to hobbies.
"Windows" was Orange Book C2 Rated in the 90s on WindowsNT v3.5SP3 on 3 certain Compaq Hardware Specs, with no CD Drive, Floppy Drive, no modem and no network connection. How much different could it be now. We have been told Windows 7 is the MOST SECURE Windows yet... so its gotta be better now than in the 90s. Right? The saying "Remember Ed Curry!" keeps popping up in my head for some reason.
greg, REMEMBER ED CURRY!!!
Considering that defense, customs and border control are some of the few items actually set out in the Constitution as important activities of the federal government, that's probably a reasonably good thing. (Not to say that it's being done right now, I'm just sayin'). IIRC, for most of US history Defense was well over 1/2 of the total federal budget. Now it's somewhere close to 20%.
In the 1950s the entire Interstate Highway System was justified on defense grounds - the height of overpasses was set to allow military vehicles and missile carriers to go through.
The plain fact is that without borders and defense, we don't have a nation-state. EVERYTHING else is frosting on the cake. Is it being done right, effectively, etc.? Separate question. Should we be the policeman for the whole world? Nearly every other nation has wanted us in that role since WWII including many so-called counter parties like Russia and China. (Notable exceptions are of the ilk of North Korea, etc.) They often don't like the way we do it, but they distrust every other nation even more - and they certainly don't want the UN to have that kind of power any more than we do.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Umm.. If you were in charge of the country, who would you make sure was first on the funding lists? Picking the group with the best armed people in the world, who were specifically trained to kill, doesn't seem like a bad idea.
Sticking them at the end of the list, where they won't ever see funding, would be a rather poor idea. Well, unless you want an armed revolution with no one to protect you.
[and then the light over AC's head blinks on]
So kids, that's why your schools are shutting down. Because you don't pose an immediate threat to the government. Wait til you turn 18, and they train you to kill. You'll get funding. Well, until you are broken. By then, you aren't as much of a threat, and a good bit of the brainwashing will still stick.
(No offense intended to any service men or women who are reading this. I do intend offense towards our government.)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
well you want IT people to be IT not rifleman or other stuff that can let then be pulled from the IT to a non IT rifleman job even more so for a state side job.
IIRC 'every man a rifleman' is characteristic of the Marines, and not the same as other branches. The Marines consider it very important that every member of the team can operate that way. This is related to the particular job that Marines are intended to do, operating as small groups often out of touch with higher levels of command. So everyone on the team has to be able to pick up the slack when they lose someone. (IANA military guy - I've just read a lot.)
It's worth noting that in Desert Storm the Marines had their own network architecture (I think it was based on Banyan, an early proprietary windows-centric ethernet architecture). They brought in several thousand computers and had their entire network up and running in something over a week, from a bare patch of sand with no power. Pretty impressive for 1991. The other services, not so much.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Go Sparta!
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
I am.
The fact that they don't have a means of broadcasting alerts to the technicians is a sign of an absolutely scary level of incometence.
Are the launch codes for the nuclear arsenal as well protected and monitored as the drones? If so, the entire world should be terrified of American incompetence.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Top-down control is inadequate for problems of this nature. Security needs to be a priority at the top, sure, but you need to be able to give lower-level people the ability to actually accomplish things, and work with their peers to make things happen.
I'm not sure you understand what I was talking about or what TFA is discussing.
We're not talking about top down control, we're talking about top down leadership.
The problem is exactly that "lower-level people [have] the ability to actually accomplish things"
The military doesn't have a unified architecture or plan for their network and that is a major weakness.
They need to create a plan to unify the disparate networks and (most importantly) execute that plan.
Things like Manning's theft of Diplomatic cables should never have happened if the military hadn't been doing IT on an ad-hoc basis.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What you've just suggested is the same error clueless bureaucrats make about technology, except in reverse; the other side of the same coin.
PHBs who have no idea how computers or networks work say to organize or administrate them in a way that makes sense for organizing tangible items with physical problems, but utterly fails when applied to computers.
You have suggested organizing the branches of the military according to the way a computer network should be organized. Worse, you've suggested this not only regarding the branches' computer networks, but also regarding military operations.
Not only do you ignore the inter-service cooperation that already exists, but you ignore the pointless extra division that your idea would entail, like having AF pilots flying aircraft off carriers or flying Blackhawks full of Army troops. In both cases, the AF pilots would be working exclusively with members of the other branch, so what would the point be of having them under a different CoC? They'd end up assigned to TDY under another branch...in which case they might as well be in that branch in the first place. It really doesn't help unit cohesion to have artificial divisions between, e.g. the chopper pilots and the troops they carry around and support.
Are you even aware that the Marines are under the Department of the Navy? Sheesh.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
The drone control systems should be completely isolated physically. A secure drone control network should be devoid of any physical/wireless/removable media connection to anything other than drones and other drone control devices under local command. This must include input vectors such as removable media or anything other than secure updates installed by military personnel.
Think STUXnet.
Or perhaps SINOnet?
Paranoid? Or not paranoid enough?
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
One would think analyzing your own data traffic would be a good thing. sheesh...
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
"By the time someone is 24, they will have mentally peaked."
I don't know what you are measuring here but it certainly isn't true of some university professors. Many of those people do their best work in their 50's and 60's because it takes that long to build up enough knowledge and understand relationships among ideas in order to come up with something new.
I suspect something similar happens to the rest of us. At 24, you are still a baby and have experienced very little of life. It usually takes until 30's or 40's before a calmer maturity sets in where one isn't all fired up about the latest buzz because one is smart enough to see through it. In a way, the 24 age thing is something wrong with American industry run by Business School Product. It is the kind of thing they'd come up with to fire older people and hire younger ones...younger cheaper ones regardless of the immature mistakes they will make costing their companies millions.
If they're stupid enough to use Windows, why should we expect them to be smart about anything else? I was hoping the military would be more sensible than to use an OS with a history of security issues. It's only a matter of time before terrorists manage to hit us with our own weapons. It's pretty pathetic when we grow up in a computer centric culture and yet we allow people without adequate computer knowledge manage IT in the military as well as companies.
Networking engineers tend to be fairly braindead. They seem to think that as long as their switches are up and you can ping a server, it can't be a problem with the network. This seems to be universal.
"There's no one in the Defense Department with his hand on the network switch. In fact, there is no one switch to speak of. "
I am shocked that US runs it's country like this, build a big switch and glue someone's hand to it immediately you crazy fools.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Yes and no. There are some unfortunate individuals in the armed forces that are so good at what they do they are often deprived of the opportunity to advance in rank. For instance, if you have a super star in your unit, that keeps everything running, you do not let him leave for military schooling. If he's enlisted, he cannot pass E4 without going to school. So, if they don't have good leadership, they'll stay at E4 until they become frustrated and just leave. It's very sad and short sided. This happens in the professional world too. The sucky people get promoted quickly, or transferred around so that their boss doesn't have to deal with them anymore.
no IDS? no network sniffing?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
What's really amazing is that no one at Creech AFB bothered to tell their cybersecurity guys for two weeks even after they knew they had it. Imagine that! For two weeks!!! So, since no one outside Creech knew of the exploit it makes me wonder who broke the store that finally informed the security folks. Obvsiously someone at Creech who knew about the virus and was somewhat upset that no one was reporting it.
The USAF has more problems than just security. It has some serious disciplinary issues.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
At the end of the day, at some point, those in power need to recognize that IT security is both a pervasive issue throughout the organization and a critical military asset for future operations. We couldn't fight wars of the past with IT, but wars of the future will certainly have an IT component. A distinct branch of service is needed.
And I thought it was bad when we find out about virus infections when our firewall blocks the spambot...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Perhaps a bit of mental clouding is to be expected among individuals who run a weapon system "allowing U.S. forces to attack targets and spy on its foes without risking American lives"—apparently by killing them. Doublethink and duckspeak aren't conducive to organizational efficiency...but that's the price you have to pay to keep the terrorists from winning.
Uh, anybody who joins the military should know that their primary function is killing people, or making other people more effective at killing people, or otherwise helping to kill people. I'm not sure how that results in mental clouding - pretty smart people have been killing each other since the dawn of time.
And inefficient organizations are hardly something unique to the military. When people find a mistake in their records how many people drop what they're doing and call the corporate auditing group to tell them about it, versus just fixing it and hoping it never gets noticed? The only thing unique to the military is that organizational foul-ups can result in the wrong people getting killed.
Mind explaining those last two acronyms for us civilians?
Seriously? That's how a German hacker got into the US military networks in 1989. Granted, he used tymnet and mechanically switched phone systems to cover his tracks, but once he got a login prompt it was the same thing.
I think it would not be so difficult to know the difference between expected data streams and unexpected data streams without ever knowing the content of the streams. IP addresses, MACs, ports, and any app info is all you need. There is no need for deep inspection.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
If a war started right now we don't know who would choose where any of the major weapons would be pointed. Anonymous? The NSA? China? Russia?
Of course the really secret weapons (buried by the opposition under Soviet and American cities) are probably still just as effective as they were when deployed in the 60s and 70s.
Like anything it's a bell curve. Scarily there are probably some AMAZINGLY talented hackers in the military, also scarily brainwashed. But of course they only have so many tricks, they don't want to reveal them unless there is a crisis.
They certainly don't want their efforts to go into a honeypot or enemy database of cyber attacks.
So they write each one from scratch (so it won't have Made in the XXX written on it) and write them poorly if it'll get the job done.
Think of the SIGINT work in WW2, if they could break Enigma easily then you think they've gotten worse since?
It's a nice thought that people smart enough to design really powerful intrusion systems wouldn't be brainwashed into the "Everyone but us is hostile" mindset of the military... but I imagine some are quite conservative and have the associated mindset... "Yay paycheck! Screw the consequences! Whoever pays my salary is right about everything! And I don't need to know what they're actually doing!"