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US/UK Will Stage 'Cyber-Attack War Games' As Pressure Against Encryption Mounts
An anonymous reader writes: British prime minister David Cameron is currently visiting Washington to discuss the future of cyber-security in Britain and North America. The leaders have announced that their respective intelligence agencies will mount ongoing cyber-attack "war games" starting this summer in an effort to strengthen the West's tarnished reputation following the Sony hacking scandal. Somewhat relatedly, a recently-leaked Edward Snowden document show the NSA giving dire warnings in 2009 of the threat posed by the lack of encrypted communications on the internet.
Given the state of real-world security, 'cyber war games' are going to look like a particularly enthusiastic WWI reenactor event if the participants take the gloves off.
Who feels like a little speculation: Will the offensive teams be fairly picked(from people with suitable skills) and actually try, resulting a a resounding bloodbath, or will the 'exercise' be largely a whitewash?
Encryption is one of the first defences against "cyber-attacks".
It's like banning locks on doors to deal with the problem of burglaries.
As a European, please take a huge rope, tie it around the UK and drag it to the other side of the pool. And if you think you don't have enough space for another country, we will gladly take Canada.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How about, instead of playing war games, you use the same resources to actually secure the vital infrastructure that we get regular scare stories about, or audit widely used FOSS before the next shellshock or heartbleed?
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Scotland should have seceded with the UK willing to have such a daft demagogue in charge. Now he's trying to turn the UK and the rest of the world into even more of a surveillance nightmare than the street cameras London already has.
He can piss up a rope and then hang himself from it.
Can't we just work together and find a safe place to put all of our authoritarian politicians, maybe Yucca Mountain? It was designed to handle dangerous materials for long periods of time.
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So they're playing Starcraft II against each other?
This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. I think people forget that they exist to try and help advance the security of the internets, not listen to cheating husbands and wives for fun. Didn't they create SELinux, and the navy developed tor. Whether they are good or bad on the whole is a topic for another discussion but we shouldn't pretend that their mission statement is something like 'what 4th amendment' or 'internet cowboys without purpose'
OMG facts!
Mr Cameron has previously said in relation to cyber attacks that there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read".
It sounds like Mr Cameron wants microphones in every person's residence.
People who feel with absolute certainty that someone else is always the problem will always try to grab more power for themselves, and because of that, they can't be trusted with the ability to grab power, even though their current goals in using that power are ostensibly laudatory. They can't be trusted with power, because they will never consider any part of any of their own goals as being suspect. Citizens don't benefit when people who can't cope with compromising and feeling frustrated have a career in politics or public service.
The Guardian had a huge trove of documents, and most of them haven't come out yet.
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Actually, there is an election due in the UK. All of this feckless noise is electioneering, to try to sway the opinions of the Great Unclued out there.
The nitty-gritty detail is the usual sordidly mucky mess of politics everywhere. You may wish to skip this part and move on to calling me silly names if politics bores you.
Britain is a member of the European Union, but is not a member of the EU currency union (the Euro). The EU is institutionally corrupt, to the extent that its own tame poodle of an auditor will not approve its accounts, and has not for the last seventeen years. The EU may be thought of as an empire-by-stealth, one of the few to actually start out decadent. As a result of this, the Euro currency is failing, and the EU is responding by asking for more money from its member states, and by churning out ever more regulations.
Most UK politicians like the EU, but few are able to articulate why this is the case, nor why the EU is such a great entity. Notable exceptions are the UK Independance Party (UKIP) which despite attracting a broad spectrum of loons, does have widespread appeal in Britain.
David Cameron is the leader of the Conservative Party (or Tories). This party is currently in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Opposing them is the Labour Party, led by Ed Milliband. The Tories and Labour are currently about level pegging in electoral stakes; UKIP may alter this a little, but not all that much.
Cameron is trying presently to become more popular. He is unfortunately being advised very poorly, and is also being influenced by the Home Office, the government department in charge of domestic security, policing and the like. The Home Office has the reputation of being the department where useless civil servants get parked to serve out their time without annoying anyone important; it also has the reputation of slowly driving and Home Secretary insane, to the point of totalitarian leanings.
So, what you're seeing is electioneering plus silly politicians plus nutcase advisors plus at least one nutcase political party, arguing against another load of nutcases in the country next door.
This entire post probably makes very little sense to anyone in the USA. Don't worry, though; it makes almost as little sense if you live in the UK.
How can he lead a nation if he doesnt understand that the corporations OWN obama, there is no vector that he can use to "pressure" them. Maybe cameron thinks that if they have enough of a market share they can persuade the big boys to play nice.
its amusing that they also dont seem to understand that the algorithms for good encryption have been published and people can just encrypt their message inside their decryptable message and layer up the encription just like Tor works...
encryption is like pandoras box, its too late to try and close the lid, its impossible to stuff it all back in the box. maybe all the government people should spend tims doing their jobs instead of complaining how their jobs keep getting harder as technology advances. yes, you cant go to a switch board, plug in a set of headphones and listen to a conversation any more.. the government hacks are just complaining because sometimes capatalism does work and corrects the market and there is no ammount of whining or back handed back room deals that can make it work the way THEY want capatalism to work.
A curious game. The only way to win is for the governments to collude behind the scenes in order to distract their populations with a state of perpetual war.
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"The leaders have announced that their respective intelligence agencies will mount ongoing cyber-attack "war games" starting this summer in an effort to strengthen the West's tarnished reputation following the Sony hacking scandal."
'Inside the “wiper” malware that brought Sony Pictures to its knees Analysis of code shows it used knowledge of Sony's Windows network to spread and wreak havoc.'
Fortunately the US is likely to tell Cameron to fuck off, since it would be unconstitutional to ban encryption...
Just like it is unconstitutional to torture prisoners etc. etc.? I expect that you are right in that they will deny his request but the reason will be because it is the request of a foreign power. I also expect that many US politicians will think that it sounds like an excellent idea and after a suitable period so that they can claim it is their own idea there will be an American lead initiative to do the same thing. Why would they listen to some idiotic right wing UK politician when they have plenty of their own to choose from?
In the real world any serious attack would have been conduced in stealth far in advance with damage triggered at a time of the attackers choosing.
In the fantasy world military brass operate repelling a "cyber attack" means sitting in front of a oversized console while "god" yells Rabbit.. flu shot? Someone talk to me.
The Brits needed to keep up with the US. The Americans, being too preoccupied with American Idol and Honey Boo Boo to get a clue about the issues, elected Bush Jr and Obama. Not to be outdone by the Americans, the UK went one stupider with Cameron.
Would Quebec be enough? Please, take it.