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Department of Homeland Security Wants Nerds For a New "Cyber Reserve'"

Posted by samzenpus on from the grabbing-geeks dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "Just three weeks after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told an audience at the Sea, Air and Space Museum that the U.S. is on the brink of a 'cyber Pearl Harbor,' the government has decided it needs to beef up the ranks of its digital defenses. It's assembling a league of extraordinary computer geeks for what will be known as the 'Cyber Reserve.'"

7 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. If it worked like the Army reserve, I'd be in. by jerpyro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Think about it, you participate one weekend a month for sec training and preparedness drills, and take on a special project every once in a while, and get the military benefits without leaving your house. I'd be in for that, especially if it (being those projects) could be done as moonlighting outside my regular job. That doesn't sound so bad.

    1. Re:If it worked like the Army reserve, I'd be in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Actually, it does sound bad. Who the fuck wants to mobilize for cleanup of the inevitable mess that will happen due to them sending billions of dollars to Redmond? You know that's what they want for for: to be the guy who re-installs Windows after the AV software can't remove something. Fuck it. Let it burn. If the constituents get mad about the downtime, maybe the money-wasting will finally end.

      If they're really against cyber-Pearl-Harbor, then they should do what we all say now and have been saying for the last couple decades. We keep saying it's just a matter of time until someone's whim is for malware to do something truly bad, instead of merely playfully naughty. But they keep running malware. Don't come crying to us later, pretending that you didn't know you were making the computers unsafe and ripping off the taxpayers while you did it.

      If anything, the sooner Cyber-Pearl-Harbor happens, the better. The billions of dollars of damage to the economy sounds like a lot in 2012, but it's not nearly as much as the cost in 2017, 2022, .... If only we had sustained the loss in 1997 or even 2002 the country would be in decent shape by now. Let's just get it over with, so we can finally start remembering our common sense.

    2. Re:If it worked like the Army reserve, I'd be in. by stephanruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's not switching the job description, I'm pretty sure you sign up to be in the Air Force, I'm pretty sure they won't promise you'll be a pilot or a sniper before you sign up (maybe that it's a possibility).

      Fine, disregard my Air Force example, but what about my Reservists example?

      That's like signing up to work at best buy and then saying they duped you when you don't become manager.

      This is true enough, may be not about Best Buy, I don't actually know that many people who dream of becoming Best Buy managers, but this does happen in other professions. For instance, in law firms, the carrot of becoming a partner usually gets bandied about for seven years, even if they know from the start that you'll never make the cut.

      And this is different from the military, because the military is not some law firm you can join one day, and then quit the next as their lies get revealed to you. If you ever join the Reserves, they'll own you from that point forward. It doesn't matter if you fulfilled your contract, and retired from the military. Current events have shown that it's far more palatable to the American public to back-draft reservists into the military than to enact a mandatory draft, or to pay them actual wages super high enough that would make them want to actually go back.

      Also, changing job description is not the only lie recruiters will tell you. See article below.

      [...]

      Last year, ABC News armed a group of high school students with hidden cameras and sent them into ten Army recruiting stations in in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, posing as potential applicants. Sadly, the Army failed this particular recruiting ethics test. More than half of the recruiters were caught on tape making what can only be kindly referred to as "misleading" statements. In other words, they lied.

      One recruiter was filmed telling the applicant that his chances of being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan after basic training and job school were"slim to none." One recruiter bluntly stated that the Army wasn't sending people to Iraq anymore -- in fact, they were bringing them home. One simply said, "War? What war? The war ended years ago."

      Another recruit was told he could quit the Army anytime he wanted to, just by asking, under a "failure to adapt" discharge. (Hee, hee.....Go ahead. Tell your drill sergeant you want to quit. But, make sure you tell me in advance. I want to sell tickets.)

      [...]

      Top Ten Lies Told by Recruiters

  2. Please, just stop... by FSWKU · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Once again, the clueless people in high places prove they don't understand. Attaching "cyber", "e", "online" or even "with a computer" to something does NOT make it a new threat. And "Cyber Pearl Harbor"? Gimme a damn break. There is no need to try and compare unlawful access to a computer system by a foreign entity to an attack that killed thousands of people and drew the US into one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

    Espionage is espionage, regardless of wether it's someone sneaking documents out of a building or tapping into someone's computer system. Just because something happens on a computer does not automatically make it a new class of crime for which there must be an immediate expenditure of untold sums of taxpayer money.

    So please, governments....stop with the crap already...

    --
    "So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
  3. Re:Assembling? by reboot246 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many would say that working for DHS would be working for the enemy. They are quite good at terrorizing U.S. citizens.

  4. Military Intelligence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Didn't we all get into technology for the meetings, the red tape, the bureaucracy, the TPS reports, the PHBs (pointy haired bosses)

    In no particular order, the Heroes at Homeland Security will clap the leg-irons onto all their tame geeks, will lock down every box, will firewall every internal network, will take away every admin priv, will assign a "handler" to every geek with veto authority on every mouse click. And then? Of course the token techies will be crucified for not being able to use their non-existent resources to defend Wal-Mart from the script kiddies

    They're looking for scapegoats my friends, don't fall for it

  5. Conflating and misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "The SCADA security holes have only recently come to the attention of the industry. I can assure you that there's a giant collective brick being shat over it but fixing this stuff takes time."

    Rubbish.

    What DHS is doing talking and what you also did was this:
    a) Talking about SCADA system vulnerabilities and mentioning STUXNET as evidence of it (and not mentioning that it had to be introduced by a spy inside the plant and not internet facing)
    b) Talking up cyber intrusions on web servers (which are internet facing).
    c) Conflating the two as if they are both cyber attacks and thus the man attacking the web server can attack the SCADA system because they're both 'cyber'.

    SCADA systems as NOT mostly on the internet with open logins, that's a fooking lie. This problem has been known from the start and the technicians who put these systems in are no idiots who've only just found out there may be a problem.

    The problem here is the misinformation from the DHS to pump its own budget.