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Air Force Firewall Now Designated a Weapons System (gazette.com)
An anonymous reader writes with a report from the Colorado Springs Gazette that the U.S. Air Force Space Command has declared its first cyber "weapons system" operational. The weapon, deemed fully operational this month, is basically a big firewall designed to protect the Air Force's internal 1 million-user network from hackers. It will be a hot topic at the Rocky Mountain Cyber Symposium, which is expected to draw hundreds of computer experts to The Broadmoor for a four-day confab starting Monday."
More from the article about why a firewall would be called a weapon: The biggest reason for the weaponization push is financial: When it comes to budget battles, weapons, even those with a keyboard and a mouse, get cash from Congress. "Designating something as a weapons system really does help us justify our funding," Col. Pamela Wooley, who commands the Alabama-based 26th Cyberspace Operations Group, which includes the new weapon.
profit!
So maybe the poor should re-define themselves as "potential suicide-bombers" to be treated just as generous?
Unless this has some ridiculous hack-back-attack capabilities, complete with a nerdy looking airman typing as fast as humanly possible to "execute" the hack back attack, Congress may have to start looking a bit closer at these "weapons systems."
We need more toilet paper for the bathroom.
Here you go.
WTF? Why does this toilet paper have pictures of guns on it?
This is weaponized toilet paper. It helps with allocating funding...
Plus, if we call it a weapon and we catch you with one, we'll just ignore all of your rights and treat you with "extreme prejudice". And no second amendment bullshit, the second amendment does not say that you have the right to own a firewall.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
weapon [wep-uh n]
noun
1. any instrument or device for use in attack or defense in combat, fighting, or war, as a sword, rifle, or cannon.
2. anything used against an opponent, adversary, or victim:
the deadly weapon of satire.
3. Zoology. any part or organ serving for attack or defense, as claws, horns, teeth, or stings.
It's no more surprising than storing weapons in an armory.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
Note: ??? == Congressional Funding, for all values of ???
Why is Snark Required?
Do i need a weapon license now?
so people working on such 'weapons' are now legitimate military targets?
According to Wikipedia:
308,016 active personnel
180,084 civilian personnel
71,400 reserve personnel
106,700 air guard personnel
That is only 666,000 people.
"The weapon .. is basically a big firewall designed to protect the .. network from hackers."
A basic firewall blocks connecting based on a table of IP address and port combinations. If the 'firewall' can't identify malicious connections then it's next to useless. So called 'stateful inspection firewalls' utilize a man-in-the-middle hack, only work by installing a fake cert on the client browser, decrypts passing data and supposedly identifies malicious code. Which begs the question, if the MITM firewall can decryption your communications, what's stopping some malicious third part doing the same. So basically here we have someone diluting security in order to increase security. If the 'firewall' can't identify malicious code then it's next to useless. Most of todays rich web applications can't function without running embedded code. Clicking on a URL that downloads and runs someone else's code makes the firewall next to useless.
stateful inspection firewall
If it's classified as a weapon, it is covered by ITAR and can't be easily exported. So other nations can't install one of their own from a regulated vendor (country) and block attacks from Pentagon cyber warfare systems or probes by the NSA.
Have gnu, will travel.
pgp encryption was classified as munitions so that they could limit its export
Hey, I've still got my t-shirt with the 3-line perl implementation of pgp, and the explanation on the back that it's legally a "munition". I still wear it once or twice a year to some inappropriate event where I know there'll be lots of them furriner types. ;-)
(So far I've never been arrested for wearing it to public events, and none of my acquaintances who also have one have been arrested either. I've been disappointed to not be able to follow the fun that would follow if they actually tried to punish someone for wearing such dangerous t-shirts.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Fair warning/full disclosure: I"m an Airmen in the USAF.
A 'weapon system' is a special designation. Lots of things are weapon systems. A truck is a weapon system. Every weapon system gets a System Program Office (SPO) that is responsible for developing, managing, updating/upgrading/improving the weapon system. Weapon systems have full certification processes that the SPO oversees. Think change management on steroids.
Want to modify the weapon system? Better clear it with the SPO. If you don't, it just became de-certified and you can't deploy it. If it were a plane, that would mean its grounded.
Without knowing more details other than their is a weapon system that is a firewall, that would mean that the hardware and software gets certified before it is deployed (turned on/plugged in). Chances are there are standard configurations that are then mandated.
This also means that its going to be heavily vetted. Chances are its not a commercial-off-the-shelf device., but if it is they'd be taking it apart looking for backdoors and other exploits.
So personally I'm excited by this, but then I know what it means...
Well, much like you aren't allowed to build a bomb, but you ARE allowed access to gasoline, you're of COURSE permitted the PERL implementation. You're much more likely to self immolate than do damage to anything else, after all...
Never... you are an idiot.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
If anyone ever deserves contempt it's the people giving the drone pilots contemptible orders. The pilots don't set the missions or pick targets.
Do you also think pilots flying in a clear sky with no risk of anti-aircraft fire are also cowards?
How about global thermonuclear war?
bash>
So the misunderstanding, as so often happens, is because a word has a specific meaning within a certain community that differs from the meaning of that word in the general population?
After all, they can't call it FW-1 or , if you prefer, Firewall One.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It's still not a fucking weapons system.
Good luck btw getting the SPO to respond quickly enough to keep the damn thing patched and properly configured.
You could justify it in the same way that in many / most companies, senior management claims that higher pay and bonuses for directors motivates them to make more profit. Could you depend on a general who does not get at least, say, twenty times as much as the ordinary airman?
Disclaimer: I am US military officer (not the same AC as above), not an expert on cybersecurity or the legal details of US foreign weapons sales. I agree that firewalls are not a weapon.
That being said, I suspect that, in addition to the funding aspect mentioned in the summary, this is a legal maneuver to protect the details of this particular firewall. Generally firewalls are fair game for export worldwide (as they should be in my opinion) under the terms of the Wassenaar Arrangement (see Category 5). However that means the USAF has very little legal recourse against anyone leaking the operational details of the firewall, including the source code and what system it is deployed on, to either the intelligence apparatus of foreign powers or to the general public. Classifying the firewall as a weapon brings it under the purview of the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, which has a lot more teeth to it and can carry some pretty severe penalties. By classifying it as a weapon, the USAF blocks their firewall, and only their firewall, from being sold to foreign powers, without limiting the ability of cybersecurity companies to sell firewalls to friendly foreign powers.
This is my computer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My computer is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My computer, without me, is useless. Without my computer, I am useless. I must comment my code in detail. I must hack truer than my enemy who is trying to pwn me. I must pwn him before he pwns me. I will...
My computer and I know that what counts in war is not the darkness of the cubicle, the temperature of the coffee, nor the dust of the Doritos. We know that it is the lines of code we commit. We will commit...
My computer is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its CPU and its memory. I will keep my computer patched and updated, even as I am patched and updated. We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God, I swear this creed. My computer and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
In 3 lines of perl.. are you actually implementing encryption, or are you just using some CPAN package and implementing the protocol only?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Perhaps some people looked into the alternatives. If you don't speak Icelandic or Norwegian they start getting iffy.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yup; and that's certainly 'leet perl; it looks like line noise. ;-)
But we might dispute the comment that it'd take 300 lines of C. 300 lines of readable, well-formatted C, perhaps, but C can be made nearly as cryptic and compact as perl. It's mainly things like pattern matching and table manipulation and such where C requires the use of libraries to be so succinct. For basic bit/number crunching, perl isn't really much more compact than C.
I wonder if the Obscure C folks have tackled this problem. Maybe I should google it ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
So to get decent funding, we just need to redesignate our physical borders as weapons!