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FBI's Top Cyber-cop Says We're Losing the War Against Hackers
New submitter sienrak writes "Shawn Henry, who is preparing to leave the FBI after more than two decades with the bureau, said in an interview that the current public and private approach to fending off hackers is 'unsustainable.' 'I don't see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology or changes in behavior, because with the status quo, it's an unsustainable model. Unsustainable in that you never get ahead, never become secure, never have a reasonable expectation of privacy or security,' Mr. Henry said."
Hack the planet....
Well of course they are losing the battle..... a house fighting against itself will fall.
so trust the government with our privacy and security they will say...
Who is this "we" ?
Some of us aren't part of the Government...
Not news in anyway shape or form, unless, of course, for some reason you thought the Feds had a handle on things. BAHAHAHA.
Economic espionage is an excellent excuse for implementing centralized control of the internet.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Privacy and Security". Watch those words, folks. In the name of privacy and security we have already given up bits of both. This yahoo wants us to give up even more. Fear the person who says he can guarantee your privacy and security because first you need to give those up to him.
Can you feel it? The government wants to get control of the internet, and computers, and all communications devices in general.
They're going to pretend it's for our safety. They just want to protect us from hackers, after all.
I'm not a "government is evil" guy, but this is the kind of thing governments typically want to do. And it has to be prevented. Call your congressman.
Mr. Henry, who is leaving government to take a cybersecurity job with an undisclosed firm in Washington, said companies need to make major changes in the way they use computer networks to avoid further damage to national security and the economy. Too many companies, from major multinationals to small start-ups, fail to recognize the financial and legal risks they are taking—or the costs they may have already suffered unknowingly—by operating vulnerable networks, he said.
a journey, not a destination.
Thus saith Steve Jobs.
Or maybe it's that perfection is a journey, not a destination.
Meh. Probably both...
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
If he says FBI is winning there's no reason for asking more budget.
I fully agree. We need a change in legislation.
And I propose the following: make every technician in charge of systems security liable for hacks to their network. And systems manufcaturers too. Make security a a requirement, and not a suggestion.
You know, cause some people might interpret "change in legislation" as "we want to spy on all citizens". Which is useless.
Anyone else find it ironic that the FBI, of all organizations, (perhaps besides the NSA) is whining about losing to people hacking into our privacy? Isn't that what they do for a living? Not just to "the other people", but to our own citizens all the same nowadays?
They're grousing over a problem that they're part of...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
There are hackers, phishers, spammers, and other untrustworthy people on the internet. The FBI seems to have just realized that they can't prevent them from existing, and now tells us that we'll "never be secure", and people react. But this has always been the case offline as well. There are thieves, murderers, and con-artists, and we can never make them go away either, and as such, here too, we will never be secure.
That said, if you use common sense, encrypt your important data, don't click links in unsolicited emails, and use a password better than "12345", you'll already be enough of a pain to most "hackers" that they'll not bother, because next door, there's a guy who's got a plaintext full of banking passwords on his desktop with file sharing on.
There's a saying that if attacked by a hungry bear, you don't need to outrun the bear, just the other people at the campground. Same goes here.
I can see it now. Due to rampant hacking we are enacting new laws requiring everyone to have an FBI secured internet box to protect your privacy. Followed by a clause in tiny letters "The FBI will have have access to all your data. But it's OK because we're the good guys".
"...never have a reasonable expectation of privacy or security."
Yet the same government will step aside when the corporates want to nullify privacy, which means the question is really "from whom" and "for how much money".
a war? against cooperation, the US government needs to protect? against cooperation who can't afford to properly secure their OWN SERVERS!?!?
there is a war going on, smart vs retarded government agencies who work for big cooperation and who can't secure their servers...
it's time to pull the plug on the US governments protection of stupid...
"We're losing the war against hackers" is the public version.
"We're losing the war against hackers unless my budget is tripled" is what he tells Congress.
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Information sharing is built into the universe, and so is copying of patterns. Atoms and molecules share electrons in predictable ways, cells communicate with each other, living entities communicate and share in incredibly diverse and complex ways; and once "the cat is out of the bag" it's almost impossible to get it back in. Streisand effects ad nauseum. The war living things wage against each other on so many levels - for example, viruses versus our immune systems - are also a facet of this interaction. We exist in an environment where sharing and communication is fundamental and everything influences everything else in myriad, complex ways. Making something totally secure - in other words, preventing it from interacting with its environment - hence is utterly impossible, or at the very least the amount of energy required to secure something is immense and the result is always imperfect.
Goes for plagiairism as well. DNA copies itself, kids copy their parents, we copy habits and patterns from each other hundreds of times every day. It's part of our processes for optimalisation and they're also intrinsic to the universe. Thus, things like copyright are also doomed to fail. Here, too, the amount of energy required is huge.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
"Mr. President, we must not allow... a hacker gap!"
Standard tactic for getting the government to spend money on a military-industrial complex project.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Any "war" where there isn't a party who can negotiate terms of surrender is doomed to failure.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
The first time I ever hooked up a computer to the Internet it was cracked and owned within two weeks. It took me half a day to remove the trojan, install a firewall, and discard all the "helpful security advice" from Microsoft and the antivirus industry. In the 15 years since, no computer under my control has had a security incident worse than a browser hijacker, with the impact confined to the settings in the browser itself.
The problems are twofold: 1) Microsoft makes tons of money from replacement sales to computer illiterate lusers who believe their compromised machine is "broken" and purchase a replacement. 2) A whole industry of useless "certified IT professionals" has been raised up to exploit Microsoft's deliberately broken security model, that makes them "indispensable" and "knights in shining armour" in a world filled with (non-existent) Super Hackers.
People who know how to secure a computer and a network are a very small minority, in terms of both numbers and dollars. Our voices are actively suppressed at every turn, because when people listen to us, Microsoft and their army of outside sales reps a.k.a. A+ and MCSE Certified technicians lose money and power. At least we have this: Ours are always the last systems standing.
You can't really fight terrorism with bullets and bombs, just like you can't fight hackers with some "new" anti-virus program or whatever (at least not for long). But nobody wants to think like that. "If we kill enough of them, they'll stop" doesn't work with terrorists - they're roaches in the walls and you can't get them all without collateral damage or creating yet a different kind of roach. However, all we have are bullets and bombs. "If we build a good enough firewall, it'll stop them" is just a challenge to hackers. Nobody wants to hear "You must completely change how your computers work to have even a ghost of a chance." Instead, it's "How do I fix what I have now?" The answer "You can't" doesn't let you keep your job or make anyone any money.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
At least, that is what I got out of the warnings in the article. It wasn't about the FBI needing more money, so much as his discussion of the absolutely deplorable state of most business networks. Most businesses, even IT managers within businesses, seem to think that best security practice means sending someone to a Cisco firewall class, putting an ASA into an external facing connection, and passing a security scan as all they need to stop the bad guys. They never really consider what it means to really monitor the health of a network, or have an understanding of how their internal applications operate across their machines, nor are they willing to really invest in the kind of staffing and knowledge needed to make sure their data is actually secure. In the end, they are better off with making that early investment, because that knowledge also translates into fewer expenditures on gimmicky appliances, and a better focus on having things run right. It is a shame that mostly these businesses are blithely whistling past the graveyard.
Most businesses seem to miss from the day they replaced their file drawers with a file server, they went from a "widget" company to an IT company that does widgets. It is a subtle but definitive change in how businesses need to focus investments in resources. Unfortunately, most businesses just don't get it. They think because some snake oil dealer slapped "security" on the side of the box that the word means anything.
What I'd like to see is ACM, the ISC, ISC2 (no relation), and other organizations start pushing for more stringent best practices written into regulation (not law). Basically, if a business doesn't take the effort to invest in their own security, then they should be held liable if they get broken into. Don't expect insurance to pay out. Don't expect to be personally shielded by corporate liability if your client data goes into the wild. On the other hand, if businesses DO meet those standards, then they likewise shouldn't be held liable. I would really like to see the above organizations testifying on the Hill about what that would mean.
"I don't see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology
I.e., treacherous computing, where the computer actually serves the powers-that-be and not you
or changes in behavior,
Um.... I got nothing here. People are douchebags. Period. People have been defrauding, trolling, lying, and generally hating since before recorded history, and nothing the government can do the change the basic core of human behavior. Embedding monitoring and control logic into each computing and communications node would be far easier, and profitable for those contracted to accomplish it.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The common term "vulnerable network" has incorrect implications. It suggests that the current type of network would be "invulnerable", which is unreasonable. Applying that to the physical world demonstrates the absurdity of that goal. Something like 90%+ of US houses can be broken into with trivial effort (e.g. bump keys) if the burglar even bothers to acknowledge the lock - 99%+ if the burglar decides to just smash a window instead. And yet we don't get continual stories about how we're losing the war on burglaries.
Its only taken them a "few" years to realize this... Yet, the war on drugs is 35(?) years strong now. When will they admit they can't win that one too?
Have gnu, will travel.
The technology is fine, the problem is the user-centric security that everything employs. There's an alternative called the principle of least privilege, which we use all the time in other aspects of life, just not with computers.
You might be tempted to think you know of a system that actually uses this, but you're wrong. The term capability has a lot of uses, and the application of it in Posix or Symbian systems isn't the same thing.
Only when we stop assuming that a program should be able to have free run of everything will we be able to fix this problem.
It's almost like there's an active conspiracy to keep this idea in obscurity..... but probably not.
An employee, who is allowed access to files/info, that they then are then copying/sharing/selling... Users who don't log out of their computers, or administrator who give users to much access to things they dont need to see. Is it hacking then the person has a sticky note with this months password on their monitor, or on their pull out keyboard if they think they are being sneaky.
This is as much a "war" as kids playing with squirt guns in the backyard.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
They are also losing the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on Gambling, the War on Crime, the War on Prostitution, and the War on Thirst. There are some things that you just can't beat. Kill them all, and they will rise up again from an unrelated source.
Are they talking about real hackers that do shit of their own volition? Or about hackers who are talked into doing shit by the FBI and then arrested by the FBI, like the terrorists?
If corporations don't care about their own security why is it so important to the US government?
Over the years I've been subjected to less and less personal data attacks to the point where I can't remember the last time I got a virus. Back in the day I used to be constantly battling with them.
I'm able to do my job (high-performance computational simulations in physics) just fine without worrying about "hackers".
I buy shit off the internet, pay my bills, have cybersex with my girlfriend, play online games, and read the news -- no problems.
How are we "losing the war on hackers" if I can basically do all sorts of useful crap on the internet without having to greatly alter my patterns of behavior because of hackers?
I definitely am more worried about non-computer theft (which I've been the victim of quite a few times) than ONOZ HACKERS. Yes, there is computer crime, but it is really not that big of a deal.
They're just grumpy because others are cutting in on their action. If anyone's going to be violating your right to privacy, it's going to be them!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Dude, if you're cruising for a piece of guy-ass, we don't need to know about it.
Seriously.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Solving the problem might require abandoning the "war" metaphor. Declaring this a "war" is a way of allowing the authorities to ignore insignificant (to them) things like legality and morality. The inevitable result, which we're already seeing, is offending a lot of the population by the overreaction and "scorched earth" tactics. Taking down sites without any semblance of due process is guaranteed to hurt a lot of innocent bystanders, and as with real wars, this just turns the population against you.
This is much like the "war on drugs". Even those of us who don't abuse (or even use) illegal drugs are still very likely to be offended by the atrocities committed by the warriors. Taking people's cars, homes, and sometimes lives without any sort of trial is both wrong and counterproductive, but it's what the "war" metaphor leads to.
There's also a major problem with the media's expropriation of the term "hacker", which was originally a term of high praise for a technical expert, retargetting (;-) it as a term for an anti-social criminal. This tends to get the message across that people with technical expertise in software security are considered suspect by the media and the general population. You want these people on your side. Characterizing them as criminals isn't the best way to make this happen.
As long as we have a "war against hackers", I'd expect the problems to get worse. That phrase itself is pretty much a guarantee that the problems won't be approached in a reasonable fashion. It also guarantees that lots of innocent bystanders will be hit by the warlike measures. Even worse, people who could have helped you will be classified as hackers and, uh, "discouraged" from helping find the solutions.
I'm reminded of the time, back in the 1960s, when a "War on Poverty" was declared here in the US. That one ended rather quickly, as lots of poor people started publicly asking where they could go to surrender. But it's not obvious that the large population of software "hackers" will take this approach. If I happened to be a software expert with some expertise in computer security, where would I go to surrender?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Perhaps because the FBI doesn't have a clearly defined role, or at least not one that they willingly define to the public. They're all over the place. What the hell is the FBI, an domestic investigative body, doing in every country we have an embassy? Oh, right. Providing investigative administrative assistance.
Perhaps it's my fault to think they should only be operating within US borders. That said, let's look at the argument here. Losing to Hackers. Would that be domestic hackers, or foreign hackers? Can the FBI even tell the difference? I doubt it. Especially when it's been stated before Congress that the entire military and corporate network landscape has been compromised by China!
I digress though, since ICE is clearly handling those nasty trademark cases by shutting down product infringement websites both here in the US and overseas, where presumably, their only way in is if the TLD goes back to Verisign ownership. Good use of enforcement money and protection against industry products who can be easily replicated at 1/3 the price. To hell with International law, trade agreements, and treaties, right?
Then you have US-CERT, which I presume should be the one handling actual network security and response, seem to be doing a bang up job at the moment. Remember again how our entire military and corporate network environment has been infiltrated by foreign entities? Are they asleep at the switch or they just lacking the funding to implement effective policies.
Then we have the NSA, which I'd argue is in the best position to inform us of who is doing what to whom on the networks, and how we can better stopgap that, but that would mean admitting that they are actually vaccumming up every bit that travels more than a meter domestically.
And all that goes back to proper administration personnel, right? I mean, it's the arm-chair admins who are the last line of defense here isn't it? They're the ones securiing the networks, servers, web portals, access-rights, and so on, and so on ......
But we don't punish admins or contractors who lapse at their job, do we? Well, if they do, I haven't heard of too many other than those who were commiting fraud or vising questionably legal content on the web from work, instead of rolling out patches from earlier this week. I mean, we're still going after Gary McKinnon for 'logging in' to unsecured windows boxes at NASA. At least he brought awareness to the fact that some public facing machines were vulnerable. I'd say give him a $1000 cashiers check and be on about it. Oh, and fire the admins or permanently ban the Government contractors who were supposed to be doing the job they were hired for.
My point? It's spaghettification. Creating the DHS did nothing for any of this, even if that wasn't part of its intent. And I can bet you several things will happen in response to this giant gaping cluster-f#&k of a situation. Which will likely occur after another year or two, when more retiring long-serving members of the Gov, testify before Congressional posturing sessions. The result will be more money will be thrown at it, more completely misdirected legislation will be passed to combat it, usually pinpointed to restricting US citizens rights online, and more infiltration by foreign entities will ultimately ensue. All the while, from a legal perspective of the 'save your own ass clause', it's better for such compromises to exist in the first place lest the blame can't be held to the military or corporation, but to an untouchable 3rd party OUT of every US citizens jurisdiction.
Cynical? There isn't a word for how I feel about all this.
the correct term is cracker. A hacker is a good thing.
US Firewall, here we come!
they keep writing free software faster than we can use it!!111 halp!
Mr. Henry has earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Hofstra University in New York, and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. He's a "bureau"crat saying what he's saying for political reasons and/or personal gain rather than any insight or competency. Not that academic credentials are the be all and end all but there's no indication either in his experience or training that would give me any confidence in his independent judgement or understanding of what others are telling him- other than that he's a politician....
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/shawn-henry-named-executive-assistant-director-of-the-criminal-cyber-response-and-services-branch
What do you call a one-sided war, where the opposing side does not even register that you are fighting them, let alone why?
And this kills me. They want money for a 'war' that doesn't even exist, to produce armaments to fight enemies that do not wear uniforms and rarely act as groups, and to acquire powers which are so completely antithetical to this nation's foundation (super 4th Amendment violation) that merely suggesting the need for them guarantees an involuntary laugh from anyone with some learning in the field. It's such a power-grab, of such a large magnitude and breadth, using nothing but fear coupled with lies (of them being able to actually protect anyone, let alone themselves), that it is comparable to asking a King if you could have a night with the Queen, and oh, if you could, leave some condoms and lube on the night table near the bed.
Never mind the part where they will, in time, ask to install electronic agents on people's computers. I would be mindful to point at that that action will violate the 3rd Amendment: "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law." In so far as they have labeled this a 'war,' by their very own language, and will, no doubt, ask to sequester electronic 'soldiers' on people's machines, in their homes, they will be in supreme violation of the law of the land.
But I digress. It's highly unlikely that the Supreme Court Justices, whose understanding of technology, I imagine, is eclipsed by their understanding of trainspotting, will lift a finger to stop that from happening.
I am John Hurt.
How else would we employ all the cyber police.
Introduce an "intenet repair tax" that applies for Windows users. And they can just go on being lazy and fearful of changing to something better designed, but at least they will contribute towards paying for the damage.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
It's always an epic battle. That is why it creates jobs because there a problems to be solved which aren't easy.
It's a war in the sense that hackers can put lives at stake and get people killed. Yes it's accurate to describe it as a war.
But I don't think teenage script kiddies are "cyber warriors".
"I don't see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology or changes in behavior"
ding, ding, ding, ding
Sounds like a "dire prediction" land-grab for an outgoing lunatic who needed to retire MANY years sooner....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Remember that one of the pillars of fascism and other totalitarian societies is the great enemy, which must simultaneously be too strong to defeat and too weak to be defeated by, allowing for a constant state of panic to get people to surrender their rights for.
For Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish Bolshevist communists who were always about to take over. Obviously in 1984 it was Eastasia. In modern America it's Islamic Terrorism and Hackers.
I don't want to compare the US to Nazi Germany, we haven't gotten there yet, but we are definitely moving in that direction at an alarming rate.
... take off and nuke them from orbit. Its the only way to be sure. TechSandy
The technology to build secure systems already exists, and ironically its creation was spearheaded by the US DOD. i.e. http://www.adacore.com
What changes are required to save us? Look at some other changes:
The changes that made chemistry so dangerous, because it teaches explosives?
The changes that made pocket knives so dangerous, because knives can kill?
The changes that made the internet so dangerous because, child-porn and rock music can be duplicated at zero cost?
The changes that made e-business so dangerous because people don't recognize a trojan applet/web-page/e-mail?
And of course there is the increasing encroachment on our freedoms of travel, association, thought, possession by law enforcement and corporations.
Do you know where your data is?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
A "loosing the battle" statement, in modern history, is often precedent to a mass disruption of civil rights.
+1 Insightful
First make sure no one could break into my house, or kill me or pickpocket me in the street, then talk about "sustainable computer security".
Its the humans to blame, and not the tools.
It's a war in the sense that hackers can put lives at stake and get people killed. Yes it's accurate to describe it as a war.
Then the mining industry is at war with miners, fertilizer factories provide material support for terrorists and a guy in an automobile is America's primary warfighter.
We have always been at war. What use is metaphor, when people willingly believe things literally when it serves a purpose?
I don't see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology or changes in behavior, because with the status quo, it's an unsustainable model.
Sounds like this dude just acknowledged incompetence and volunteered to resign.
Thinking of your enemies as roaches is a serious misconception which will cause flawed decisions. Unless they are actual roaches and you work in pest control. However wicked and crazy they might be, terrorists and even hackers are human beings and you better keep that in mind if you don't want them to catch you pants down, just because you underestimated them to be some kind of dumb animal.
That's the most important. I currently work for a government agency. Yeah, we're doomed. The private sector doesn't do nearly as bad, especially smaller companies (1000 or so employeees) who are smart enough to hire bright, security-minded admins.
Security yield's better ROI than paying out losing lawsuits for negligence though...
APK