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DARPA Training Cadets and Midshipmen As Cyber Warriors
An anonymous reader writes "DARPA officials say the Defense Department must train 4,000 cybersecurity experts by 2017. Meeting that goal requires building a pipeline for training and education, especially for future officers who'll oversee protection of the cyber domain. During a winter weekend in Pittsburgh, more than 50 cadets and midshipmen from three service academies sat elbow to elbow at nine round tables in a packed room. They'd been training since November to compete in a pilot program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called the Service Academy Cyber Stakes. From the article: 'This involves skills such as being able to reverse engineer binary, or machine-readable, files and, Ragsdale said, finding source-code-level vulnerabilities that could be exploited, and doing so with software source-level analysis and with automated tools that perform functions such as fuzzing, the informal name for automatic bug finding."
or future officers?
I hope they will offer pay equivalent to the skill level they seek.
Contrary to popular belief they don't have the best and brightest in these programs...
What I want to know is if I can use my 15 years of computer security experience to get a nice fat check from DARPA.
For the same reasons you won't find real hackers in the police force, you won't find them anytime soon in the military either. The best hackers don't do it for political reasons, they do it because they enjoy a challenge. Generally, hackers tend to hate warmongers AFAIK.
I've never ever encountered a REAL knowledgeable hacker in the police force, not even in their cybercrime division. This is due to the fact that most of them, are schoolboys who have a degree in computer science & programming...unfortunately - the most difficult stuff, can't be taught in classes, this comes from YEARS of actual real-life practice and experience.
I do believe NSA have some serious badboys working for them however, but these are probably semi-skilled hackers who bragged too much, made a few mistakes - and are held captive by their own past. But you'll never ever find the best ones, because they don't brag about their achievements.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Special Forces
It is good to see that they are teaching them real subject matter, like binary disassembly and source code analysis. When I first read the headline, I was afraid that they were just turning out script kiddies.
Makes sense, it's easier to teach these guys the required skills than to put any discipline or personal hygiene into your average nerd.
Look at the sock puppets we get on slashdot :)
Pentagon Spokesman: Public Affairs Must Change With Times (Jul. 25, 2013)
http://www.defense.gov/News/Ne...
"We must communicate with the American public in crisp and memorable lines that deliver a clear and accurate message,”"
Expect to see a lot of hints of new options to shape the flow of information and public opinion in the next few years.
Blocking select servers, the turning of online activists into "busy work" or traps
"Jeremy Hammond: FBI directed my attacks on foreign government sites":
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
All this will require an inner cadre of new people skilled with the slang, memes and culture to enter and thrive in different online communities building trust, spreading disinformation long term.
Why new people? They may know nothing but a constant war on a tactic and may find aspects of 'privacy' i.e. the domestic legal protections are historical/just red tape/understood talking points to them.
Think of it a cyber 'cannon fodder' for 1000's of sites, chatrooms, forums been flooded with 1000's of unique new/old user names to spread disinformation.
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media" (18 March 2011)
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
to "From Twitter with love: American spies snooping on our social media feeds" Feb 17, 2014
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/t...
also see http://cryptome.org/2014/02/ar...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Really? Now we're surprised that part of a college Comp Sci degree at a military academy includes training in military applications of coding?
I've got a hot tip for you: they also teach them to shoot guns in college. I know - fucking insane, isn't it? It's like there's a whole secret government department that does nothing but think up ways to kill and disable people and infrastructure! Except, you know, it's not really secret.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Or... they could just not build insecure systems directly connected to the internet?
Ok, ok, I know that nothing is ever totally safe and the Natanz reactor in Iran was hacked without being connected to the internet but surely, better design, better systems management and better monitoring, etc, would reduce the need for such an astronomical number of heads, just sitting in a chair all day watching logs or looking for bugs in code? And you can be quite sure some idiot will still run an out of date flash or java on their IE browser and plenty of small areas will still get subcontractors in to manage domains, scripts, small programs etc and they'll be under the radar.
Sounds like the modern equivalent of the industrial revolution - just pay a huge number of plebs to do menial tasks. Somehow I doubt this will stop a bugged monitor cable, supplied by the NSA, from doing what it does.
The 80's called, they want their cheesy words back.
Back to my cyber sex.
They really are mutually exclusive-
Warriors = NCOs
Experts = Warrant Officer
Cadets = Future Officers
It's (not) surprising how retention pay hasn't come up. They do it for aviators and last time I checked, there isn't a huge demand for them out here in the civilian world.
The Air Force already had a program like this. It was called Advanced Cyber Education and ran for a few years before it was cancelled last year due to lack of funding. The main difference I can see was it mainly aimed at ROTC cadets/midshipmen instead of the Academies. So now we have a new program that must be developed because the old one was cancelled.
Sounds to me like someone thought of the idea again. But this time positioned it for the Good Ol' Boys club that are the Academies.
There's nothing magical about 10000 hours, if you are basing this on Gladwell's 10000 hours = expert thing, then you should know that it's BS
4000 security experts, totally doable.
A single expert in 3 years? If that's the standard then no wonder American security interests are getting hacked like corn.
And if the people advising the decision makers AND the decision makers reckon three years makes an expert?
Your staff are only as experienced as the ones deciding if they are or not and it sounds like they've got some right Apple fanboy's calling the shots.
Why not focus those efforts on helping secure platforms from those same techniques? You know, so we can help avoid the next Target debacle and the economic damages that come with it. I know it's not as sexy, but it will be better for everyone.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The first problem is that their recruitment/training policies aren't designed for that.
Stephen Hawking would have difficult time being accepted to any military academy.
The NSA does not discriminate on whether you can pass a physical fitness test. Stephen Hawking, were he so inclined, would probably at least get an interview there.
It's not that you cannot have a physically fit hacker. They do exist.
But when the recruitment criteria STARTS with physical capabilities, then you have problems because you're reducing the pool of applicants on the WRONG criteria.
of the digital domains, or the next evolution of the modern Amerikan Gestapo...what will they actually be protecting and who will they be "warriors" against?
Mod parent up.
A++++ would eat again
Might does not make right
Since when, exactly? Might has always made right.
we should use diplomacy to solve our problems
I'm afraid I have to Godwin this immediately and agree with your idea to give up the Sudetenland. That'll certainly work and bring a long-lasting peace.
Lets face it, "computer" security is fundamentally broken, it's time to bin the current model and start again from scratch ..
I'm in! Where do I apply for that? :D
A bit Enders Game feeling to this...
I agree with the eye roll. Some of them may have started in November, but it's not just classes. And, Dan Ragsdale just might have a clue about how to train them. He's pretty good in his own right. Take a look at the civilian variant, CCDC.
Warrant Officers fly attack helicopters. --- wrong, they are specialized Soldiers who are experts in thier fields i.e aviation, singal (computers & Networking) Egineers ect... a Warrant Officer is not limited to just flying
Officers lead infantry, armor, field artillery, aviation, engineers, and other combat and combat support units.
Both officers and warrant officers are indeed warriors.
There seems to be an awful lot of under rating the potential of the cadets and midshipmen, and much of that appears to be motivated by everything other than the facts. When you really get to know them, you'll find there is a whole lot more variability in the corps than the cartoon images created in the comments.
Some of these kids have been programming and using computers since they were in diapers. Yes they all do have to meet basic physical standards, but there is nothing about programming that precludes that. In fact, fitness has been proven to help the intellect (imagine how much better those couch potato programmers could be if they good off their fat butts?). The intellectual challenge of getting into the academies is even harder than the physical challenge and it is competitive, not just having to meet a certain level as with the physical. And then beyond that, they expect you to be engaged with the people around you.
So now take these already select people and put them in an intense academic program (count the number of Rhodes and other scholars) with more than just a few programming courses. They are going to come out with a pretty strong ability even if they haven't been programming since wearing diapers.
Now compare them to the basement dwelling hacker - They'll have developed more of their intellectual ability, they'll have been exposed to a much broader base of knowledge due to the curricula of the academies, they'll know a broad base the theory of programming (as opposed to the self-taught hacker who knows tools or a language and only as much of the theory as they had to learn or were interested in), they'll be fit enough to go at it for days on end, they'll understand strategy and tactics and be able to apply those to code and IS, and more than anything, they'll have the discipline to take a well structured approach, to keep at it when it gets tough, and to persevere when there is no obvious answer.
Please stop with the 'cyber' shit. It's already difficult enough to take you seriously without your use of this nonsensical prefix for all things computer and network related.
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Avoiding all the whiny bitches
I started wih programming, at 14, while most of my classmates at Collegue, even touched a computer. They just hear the "Computer Science" hype. I.T. wasn't considered a well paid career, yet.
Interest in programming, is as good as years of experiences. It does help to some extra years of experience, than others.
By the way, even that I was fascinated by computers / programmers, I do have certified short atention problem: ADDH. Cheers.
I personally disagree on matching "Hacker equals Good Programmer", there are several things that may match, while others don't.
I consider myself a good programmer, I hate the hacker stereotype, yet, I constantly get labeled as a Hacker, even, if I have never cracked a password, and never enter on a network, or any of that kind of stuff.
But, I agree than both hackers & bright programmers, require certains skills that a Collegue or University, cannot provide. And the "out of the box" or "Daredevil" mentality that Goverment institutions mindset crash.
I never consider the existance of the "semihackers", before, but, i got the idea.
Agree, two of the main things that get into conflict, in having goverment cyberwarriors, are mindset & physical fitness.
Even than the goverment could built a goverment a desk job cyber unit, sooner, or later, may need a cyberwarrior unit, where people does know how to hack a network, run some miles carring 40 lbs, and, so on, Geek soldiers, that does do geek stuff, and does do military stuff, at the same time (not just playing Medal of Honor video games).
As a geek whom got interested in the military, can say that the physical stuff wasn't easy, and, the only thing thing that keep me going, is that I am very stubborn.