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NSA Director Says Agency Is Still Trying To Figure Out Cyber Operations
Trailrunner7 writes: In a keynote speech at a security conference in Washington on Tuesday, new NSA Director Mike Rogers emphasized a need to establish behavioral norms for cyber war. "We're still trying to work our way through distinguishing the difference between criminal hacking and an act of war," said Rogers. "If this was easy, we would have figured it out years ago. We have a broad consensus about what constitutes an act of war, what's an act of defense." Rogers went on to explain that we need to better establish standardized terminology and standardized norms like those that exist in the realm of nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately, unlike in traditional national defense, we can not assume that the government will be able to completely protect us against cyber-threats because the threat ecosystem is just too broad.
YOU ARE THE CYBER-THREATS.
Maybe they should just get off their lazy fucking asses and start pulling all those exploitable 'cyberweapons' off the fucking public network and start having them running on a private network akin to MILNET. There's no excuse for the power grid, medical records, social security, police records, etc being accessable over the public internet, except as a threat window to use in the quest for more security theater. Eliminate access to the resources and you eliminate the majority of non-military threats. On the off chance such information *IS* needed via the internet (see: online banking), make it run through isolated systems with limited end-user data available on the 'public' side, and a batch processing system in-between the public and private networks. While it wouldn't stop exploitation of the end-user, it could stop the majority of actual banking system hacking by eliminating direct access to the computing resources. While this is probably already done to some degree the level of isolation is obviously insufficient.
Militarizing turf wars over the internet however is bad for everyone.
...definitively the most honest thing I've ever heard to come publicly from NSA, ever.
Personally I translate that to "It's important that we don't see ghosts everywhere here!".
And yes, very! Even the NSA know they've gone out of hands here, they also have humans working for them - and nothing they ever do will ever stay 100% a secret everywhere, so it's a better strategy to play with open cards (which they have *NOW* learned the hard way) in the long run. Besides, you can't possibly store all the 1 terabyte personal computer harddisks in the world in even googles vast server-lands anyway. It's all about spotlight. If you're in their spotlight, you'll be spied on, your data will get collected no matter where it is. Going trough vast amounts of byte garbage will yield certain finds - but mostly it's just noise, people who use words that could be similar to what you're looking for, but ultimately...just noise.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"We're still trying to work our way through distinguishing the difference between criminal hacking and an act of war," said Rogers
NSA supposed to be a government agency filled with very intelligent folks, and they are telling us that they can't differentiate between common hacking (whether it be criminal or otherwise) and an _Act of War_ ?
I dunno about you, but I find it very hard to believe!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Pretty bloody easy to define the difference between hacking and act of war. Any hacking attack you can simply divert by cutting the connection is not an act of war. A major electro magnetic pulse generated by a thermonuclear war head is an act of war.
For the idiots at the NSA, permanent damage versus repaired disruption. They just need to ask the buddies at the CIA when it comes to their idea of torture, permanent harm equals torture non permanent harm according to them, based upon them being a bunch of sick psychopath sadists, does not equal torture.
So if you ain't using explosives on digital infrastructure it ain't war. No matter how badly behaved the NSA has been, their acts have not quite crossed the bounds of an act of war. Somehow I guess this will be another example of American exceptionalism and when the US does it, it is not an act of war and when any other country does it, it is an act of war and the US must spend another billion dollars on the US military industrial complex per incident or so the lobbyists say.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
While you're looking for "the cyber threats" you might as well just buy a modern dictionary. Nobody calls anything "cyber" anymore and the number two threat is malware... right behind the number on threat... the NSA.
Cyber-think your way out of that one, NSAmen. Time is short. The cybermen are coming.
The solution is simple. The NSA should continue to spend the lion's share of its effort on attacking the United States' own citizens. It's not an act of war if you're attacking yourself!
The internet isn't safe, so it's all the victim's fault, and we should ignore the attackers. Hmmm. .."
"Anyone in any business who doesn't realize that the internet^H^H^H^H^H^H New York isn't a safe playground.
That's your theory, right? Because the internet / New York / the ocean isn't a safe place, anyone attacked on the internet or in New York had it coming. The government of China is attacking our internet infrastructure, but theyget a pass because the internet isn't perfectly safe, right? The high seas also are not perfectly safe, so it would be okay for China to attack our shios at sea?
Of course the NSA knows what an act of war is, in cyber terms. They just don't want it defined as such because they themselves are no doubt performing those very acts on perceived threats and allies alike and yes, on American citizens as well.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial