Defense Expert: Hire Hackers and Wage War

Phoghat writes "A top defense and cybersecurity expert says the U.S. should stop trying to take aim at expert hackers and start doing a better job of recruiting them. 'Let's just say that in some places you find guys with body piercings and nonregulation haircuts,' says U.S. Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla . 'But most of these sorts of guys can't be vetted in the traditional way. We need a new institutional culture that allows us to reach out to them.'"

Comments

I got first post :P

[Anonymous Coward]

I am guessing that culture doesn't want to be vetted, by any means, traditional or non-traditional.

Distrust and lie paved way to these hacks

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these hackers inherently distrust the government, that's why they are hacking them. So what is the benefit in hiring them?

Re:Distrust and lie paved way to these hacks

[SuricouRaven]

Principles can be overridden with money. Doesn't even need much. The benefit is that some of those hackers are very highly skilled, and they are used to not playing by the rules - which is good, because the enemies of the US won't be playing by the rules either.

That's the idea, anyway. I think in practice any good hacker (As opposed to a conventionally, formally trained engineer) is going to be driven half-crazy by the highly conformist military culture, and those that can stick with it are going to need constant micromanaging to keep them on their assigned mission ('You want me to disassemble yet another possible Chinese worm? BORING!') rather than using the available resources to do what they think is best ('Ohh, I'll write a virus that installs HTTPSeverywhere and blocks RST packets! That'll totally screw with China's filtering!').

Re:Distrust and lie paved way to these hacks

[axlr8or]

No, principles can be overridden with ego. Real hackers are about the science. Hackers that are out to damaage things are about their egos. That's actually what mades hiring them fruitless. Once they get bored with the 'I work ops for the FBI' or whatever, they'll move on to, 'I'm a double agent' so and so forth etc...That's why instead of building things they find it much easier and gets them more attention to break things. No, they aren't good bets.

Easy

[santax]

Buy Blizzard. Threaten to close WoW account of said hacker. Et voila, you've got yourself a hacker that you can count upon! (Give them a free flying mount once in a while and you keep them happy too!)

This is nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the most talented technical people I know are also the most clean-cut and athletic. Some of the worst, show-offs who know the talk but little else, fall into your usual hacker stereotype with their appearance. I think the former is more realistic, and the latter is more romantic fantasy— brought on by people who idealize Gibson. In other words, why bother? The first group is more likely to give you a well-rounded individual who actually knows her material. The second group is a total crapshoot.

It takes one to know one

[cheros]

The problem is that vetting the ethics of a hacker needs someone who has insight in the cultural framework as much as the technical capabilities of the person under review, and that is MILES beyond your average HR setup.

I know from my own experience that the best reviewer for tech is someone who is either a former hacker him/herself, or has a personality that borders on Aspergers. You cannot understand technical people if you do not have the required mental tools, and especially the brighter hackers do not exactly conform to the standard employee model.

So, use one to know one, and forget about your average corporate HR droid doing anywhere near a sensible assessment. Oh, and forget about standard management techniques either - not only does it take one to know one, it certainly takes one to manage them.

Re:That's how they killed it.

[jafiwam]

It's sorta funny to read this type of bleating in a Slashdot article that appears on the same day as one that says the Chinese government has backdoors in 80% of Telecoms to sniff information.

Look, ya dumb sheep.

They are already waging war against us, enemy and "friendly" states already use their government resources to steal intellectual property and wage industrial espionage against the United States. You obviously don't actually run any internet-facing services or you would see this shit in your logs.

The fact that our government doesn't do it aggressively too is the odd part. It's time to man up and fight back or your children (assuming you manage to breed) will be speaking Chinese and working for Russian mobsters for a daily loaf of bread.

never going to work, ridiculous principle.

[nimbius]

you have to realize that many of the "cyber hackers" the government is eyeballing are the very same people that love nothing more than to leak classified data and hack into defense secrets solely because they view your establishent as the problem.

speaking as one of the the aformentioned non-regulation pierced guy, i can say that each time i hear a blowhard suit at the anything-department wax prophetic upon anything prefixed with "cyber," i roll my eyes, turn up the hardcore techno, and go back to writing that python interface for the communications receiver I bought on craigslist a few months back.

no one cares about the next war you're trying to sell america except the mouthbreathing walmartians in the sticks. the people youre trying to "reach out to" explicitly do not respond because they arent stupid enough to nod when told "be all you can be." as knowledge is power they understand enough about your institution to avoid it at all costs. all its done in the past 40 years is act as an engine of misery, destruction and sorrow across the globe.

Re:If this is about cyberwar,

[ranton]

I say it's awfully childish. Do we really want the Internet to be an unstable place?

It is far more childish to think that if we just play nice, everyone else will follow suit. The Internet will not be made secure by covering our eyes, crossing our fingers, and praying. It will only be more secure by making sure that those interested in its security have bigger "guns" than those interested in its instability.

Wait

[Provocateur]

We need a new institutional culture that allows us to reach out to them.'

Cue MONTAGE featuring Cameron Diaz as cute "brutal" platoon sargeant yelling orders at misfis!

Re:If this is about cyberwar,

[tenco]

If you hand out bigger "guns" and the internet becomes a warzone, everyone loses. The only way to keep it civilized is by handing out better "armor", making "guns" as ineffectual as possible. Since the military isn't interested in armor only and i don't trust them to use "guns" in a reasonable way (if there actually is one) i don't know why i should put me under their command.