Bitcoin gives the feds every excuse to make use of those backdoors in every operating system.
Because bitcoin runs on top of an operating system, it should not be assumed to be anonymous at all. All the users of bitcoin are probably being monitored via backdoored software.
Can you give me at least one example of a turned hacker receiving death threats from former compatriots? You make it sound like they were all hip-deep in organized crime, and all hitmen they used to chill with can smell the fed on them when they come walking into the brothel they hang out in. A lot of these guys choose to live mostly online, that's where the basement-dweller sterotype came from.
Adrian Lamo for one is receiving death threats. And other hackers who you probably never heard of and who I wont identify by name have received death threats.
When you get people locked away in prison for long periods of time, their families, friends, and others aren't ever going to forgive and forget that. And on top of that your current friends might turn against you, because how can they trust you if you sell people out?
And also in hacking organized crime is often a component. More often than you might realize. The russian and italian mafia has involvement. Just because they choose to live online it doesn't mean you can't be touched or cannot be targeted just because you are online. If enough people hate you, or know you are an informer, it's going to affect you in real life. Whether or not you get killed probably depends on whether you live in a safe suburb or in the ghetto or slum somewhere. It's probably true that a hacker living in some safe neighborhood probably wont be dealing with mafia types but not every hacker is from that environment.
Finally, just because you don't associate with hitmen it doesnt mean that somebody somewhere isn't making a list of all the informants and passing it around to the sort of people who do. Why don't you look at whosarat.com and see for yourself what goes on. Being an informant sucks, there is no other way around it.
the guy who came clean to Lamo chose the wrong guy. If it came to light that Lamo knew this info. and didn't come clean, he'd probably get to live in the Mitnick Suite at the Hacker Hilton for 5-10. He was saving his own ass and I don't think I can blame him. Once you get a taste of what the Fed. has to offer in terms of justice and accommodations, you don't want no more of that. Ask Mitnick.
That is the point I'm making. I don't know whether or not Manning really was his friend, but any real friend wouldn't subject their friend to being tortured by the US government. Admitting that kind of shit to anybody guarantees that the government is going to do something really really bad to them. So why would Manning have done that to his friend?
I'm not saying Lamo was right but Manning had no reason to tell anyone he truly cared about what he did. That is the kind of thing you tell someone who you hate.
Does the war on insert noun here in question render law enforcement immune to the law?
Imagine NSA setting up an FBI agent using a drugs for credit card numbers sting, and an FBI agent hooking an NSA agent in a credit card numbers for drugs sting.
If so, what happens if each agency simultaneously deems they have enough evidence to prosecute? Should the respective agents be prosecuted?
Seems like the law should apply equally to all of us.
That is a very interesting question. Does the FBI agent become an NSA informant? Does the NSA agent setup by the FBI become an FBI informant? That is what I'd imagine would happen, but who can answer this question except for people in these organizations?
Why was Lamo involuntarily committed just prior to turning in Manning?
If he were tortured, being committed to a mental institution would be the perfect place to do it. And unlike you I will not pretend to know what Lamo thinks. Something happened, nobody really knows exactly what happened except for feds. Manning himself being a military fed at the time, we don't know what they were willing to do to interrogate.
It's certainly possible Lamo could be threatened and if he were it's very unlikely he'd ever admit to it in public. It's also possible he could have been brainwashed, or had his values distorted due to being lied to by the feds. It's also possible that lives were genuinely at stake. The fact is we have no way to determine which of these views of his situation is correct based on the current information. And if we assume we cannot trust any of these individuals, Lamo, Manning, or the people around them, then there is no way to lean one way or another. Yes the government has tortured, and may have used that threat or that willingness to torture or that capability. The government may also have used it's psy-op capability. There are so many possibilities that you can't rule any of it out.
Not every hack is something which is clearly wrong. And not every hacker got into it to be cool.
In fact I'd say the majority get into it just because they are curious and it's so easy. It's like leaving a jar of cookies and telling a young kid not to touch it while you go to sleep. You cannot be surprised if the jar is opened,and at least one cookie is missing.
I think the problem is that not every "hacker" has to get caught to get turned. A hacker could get turned after being set up. They might not necessarily have to even have broken any law on their own. There might not have had to be any victims of their hacks.
I don't claim to know whats going on but it looks like the FBI is just out to use them for their skills. Rather than put ads in the news paper and hire them to help with investigations, instead they want to do this kind of stuff. Most teenage hackers grow out of it when they become an adult. The problem is how many of these informants get turned as teenagers and forced to keep hacking into adulthood? And given the option how many of them would want to have a real job at the FBI or CIA or whereever rather than to be an informant? I don't know anybody and never met anyone who dreams of being an informant if they know how informants get treated. Chances are they saw James Bond or some movie and they think thats what being an informant is.
In reality an informant is a criminal, who ultimately gets treated as a criminal no matter how much good they try and do. At the end of the day the snobby elite treat them as criminals, and the criminal underworld treats them as a snitch, and they have nothing and no one to trust. They do typically get a lot of money, and praise from the government, but who is looking out for informants? When the informants receive death threats who looks out for them? What family do they have? Who can they trust?
The rest of their life they get to look forward to... what?
Because any informant can say you are the leader. Anybody can commit a crime, you could be in a chatroom, they could say you gave them the order and are the leader when they could be an informant all along setting you up to be "caught". Remember informants can commit crimes to catch criminals and that cops can give them permission to do it. This means they could commit the crime, frame you, and now you're "caught".
It's most likey 25% of convicted hackers turned. They are probably defining hackers as site operators AND black hats who dealt in wares, keys, hacks, etc... or worms, viruses, data theft. Think about it, they can only know "hackers" they've caught. I would have thought the turn rate would be a lot higher considering WHY most people choose to venture to that side (it's not for you), the offer isn't probably extended to everybody. And of course to add a little humor, the people they actually want as informants, they can't catch. Script kiddies ahoy.
Thats not true at all. Anyone who is in any chatroom or forum can be entrapped or otherwise contacted. Your IP address is on a list, the informants can invite you into a chatroom, commit a crime in your presence, and according to the law you are now a co-conspirator and just as guilty as them because you knew a crime was being committed and you didn't stop it.
Then of course the police can lie to you, and informants can lie about you, and make it seem like you were the leader all along and you ordered the operation.
If thats all they did then it wasn't as bad as it could have been. You weren't threatened with torture. You weren't entrapped and then threatened with prison as a sex offender. You weren't set up by your "friends".
Trust me, it could have been a lot fucking worse. If this is how they operate, if they went with the honorable civilized man to man talk approach, this actually makes the FBI or Agency look good. No ones rights were violated and no one was tortured, abused, or tricked.
Cutting cables? You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about if you don't consider the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
If you think we connect vital systems by wireless you clearly don't know what the hell you're talking about.
As soon as any threat presents itself, you simply cut off vital systems from the network. Air gap wins.
You need to get over your raging hard on for the word "cyber warrior" and come back to reality. If transmissions cannot be secured, we'll do it the old fashioned way, never underestimate the bandwidth of cpl noname with a case of USB drives handcuffed to his wrist.
Preparing for the "Cyber war" is utterly useless in an age where we cant afford the existing military pork barrel projects. Everything a "Cyber Command" does is already covered under existing cryptography units.
The room would have to be sound proof, light proof, emissions proof, as would all the computers in that room. The air gap would be completely useless if the room leaks emissions. Also the electricity use would have to be masked in such a way so that it cannot be analyzed.
I'm not saying I know all the precautions that the government is taking, I'm saying just disconnecting a computer from the network by cutting the cable is not enough. Any emissions leak at all will leak information which could be analyzed by the enemy so the network would have to be emission proof, there should be nothing for the enemy to work with. And even then you'd have to worry about inside threats.
I didn't actually address the question of whether they were warriors or not. My point was more that the term, which was already fairly archaic, has become a meaningless buzzword.
When there's an engagement, you generally have the combat units and everyone else. The combat units rehearse battle drills and plans and such, and everyone else's job is to get out of the way. No doubt, the support personnel shoot back when they have to, they take big risks, and their service is perfectly honorable. But their role is not combat oriented, and it's wrongheaded to conflate the two
That is my point. I don't consider cyber warriors "support personnel" in an information war, I consider them to be the main unit. In these new kinds of war which don't involve conventional weapons it's pointless to think of the hacker as the support personnel. In a conventional war where you are dealing with conventional weaponry, the hackers would be the ones to disrupt enemy communication. In an unconventional war the hackers may be the main units leading the revolution, civil war, etc. They also will be the first to be captured, tortured or disappeared. At the same time their actions can cause people to be killed as well, such as if the society is violently homophobic and the hackers plant evidence of homosexuality on the computer of the enemy. The sort of psychological, or information based attacks represent entirely new forms of war. Information can kill in many cases or cause people to be killed, for this reason it's not as simple where you can think of them as support personnel.
That being said how much longer do you think hackers can last if they aren't trained to shoot and kill? I think it's a combination of both. You can have hackers who are mercenaries, who track and kill terrorists using computer technology. I just don't think it's as clear cut as saying someone who is a cyber warrior isn't or shouldn't be trained to be a sniper, or to do assassination missions, as I don't see why a cyber warrior couldn't be trained to do all out war using unconventional weapons.
Example: you have a convoy. Some trucks are convoy security, some trucks might be EOD. The security elements are the combat elements, they are in charge of the mission and if there is conctact, EOD stick with whatever truck they're assigned to, and don't go off engaging the enemy unless they're returning fire.
And, pardon my vagueness, but I've actually done something close to what "cyberwarriors" might. Though I was also a gunner at the time, this was an additional tactic that was part of our battle plan. But this wasn't about inflicting casualties, rather it was degrading the capacity of the enemy. Computers and radios don't inflict physical damage, and war is still about killing the enemy and occupying territory
Yes but in unconventional wars you aren't going to want to kill with a gun when you can kill in an undetectable fashion. If the enemy doesn't know you are coming, it certainly would be a useful skill to have the ability to use information weapons to confuse or disrupt the enemy while at the same time kill the enemy. It makes perfect sense if one person could do multiple things. So if you can leverage information.technology, but you also can assassinate/kill, this seems could be useful as well. The point I'm trying to make is I don't think we know for sure what wars of the future will look like or what skills will be required but if we are talking about urban warfare or unconventinonal warfare, guns and tanks probably wont be the best way to go about it and inflicting mass casualties probably wouldnt be the best way to launch a revolution for example. In that specific kind of war, I could see cyber warriors being the main fighting unit. Like in Libya for example where the goal is to remove or change the regime, they aren't going to want to go gun for gun in a conventional war, they are going to want to use guerilla tactics and leverage advanced technologies. In these sorts of wars
If cables are cut, radiowaves, light waves, microwaves or any other mechanism can be used.
Each of these technologies requires a base station, a point of ingress into an internal network. You cant simply just beam a microwave signal into nowhere. If a country wanted to cut itself off from the internet, it would be quite easy as you can simply shut down the transmitters and outgoing routers.
Where did you learn about wide area networking?
Or wireless, I'm yet to see a wireless technology that did not require a receiver. That would a physical bit of hardware that can be shut down, well, physically.
Countries like Thailand and China already control all the points of interconnect for data, it wouldn't be hard for the US or UK to completely isolate themselves if the need arises (they simply have more points of interconnect to send troops to). But what is more likely is that vital infrastructure is simply removed from the public grid. An air gap can easily be gated by a human. When Mil.net 1 wants to send something to Mil.net 2, the data can be loaded onto USB key, a Pvt simply moves this from the private USB slot to the public USB slot where it can be transmitted (or just carries the key over manually).
Seriously, what do they teach people about network security these days.
Learn about Tempest. Just because you aren't connected to the internet it doesn't mean your computers on the network are properly shielded and wont produce emissions which can easily be intercepted. Intercepted emissions in the form of light, sound, radiation, the flow of electricity, all of this can be intercepted to give an adversary an accurate picture of whats going on inside the computer.
A cyber warrior is as much of a warrior as a pilot or a sniper. Sure a pilot or a sniper doesn't necessarily take as much or the same kind of risk as the guy kicking in doors, but a sniper can be counter sniped. A pilot can be shot to pieces.
A hacker can be hacked, and disappeared by counter intelligence.
That is a good question. Nobody actually defines what a cyber warrior is. I assume it's any hacker or former hacker who helps the feds.
The government needs to decide what a cyber warrior is and what their mission is. That being said anyone who risks their life and who fights in war is either a soldier or a warrior. Hackers get killed, hackers risk their lives, so they are warriors as much as anybody else, but they are information warriors.
I doubt these North Koreans have a better choice. They either serve North Korea and their families get privileges or they don't an their families get tortured or killed.
Since nobody knows exactly what goes on in North Korea, the privilege could be allowing them to stay alive.
They'll probably recruit from the underground. Since the underground needs cash, North Korea would probably just offer cash for code. Then they'll read the code, learn to write their own code, and thats how they'll learn.
The Stuxnet authors? You think they are the only skilled programmers? They are the skilled programmers recognized by the government, probably with clearance, but not the only skilled programmers. The North Korens can target game developers and find programmers with an equal level of skill if not greater.
If you have better hardware to run your botnet on, you can crack passwords faster, crash servers faster via DDOS, or do many things better.
Beyond this for coordination, communication and intelligence high technology is essential. Satellites aren't cheap. Truly secure encrypted communication mechanisms aren't cheap. None of this stuff will be cheap.
North Koreans do not have the advantage in computing power. They might have the advantage in man power, training, skill, but not in computing power. This means everything you are saying is right and that cyberwarfare will require a lot of resources but I think the resources would mainly be support resources. I don't think training will be all that necessary, theres more than enough people with the skill in the USA. The problem is organizing them.
Step one, create a service and draft people. Step two, fully fund the service and the missions. Step three, pay for the best tools, best hardware, best support team.
Whatever the US is doing right now obviously isn't working. The US (at least the FBI) last I checked is still focused on crime fighting, on child porn, and on everything but cyberwarfare. Cyber crime isn't really the same problem as cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare is backed by a state while cybercrime usually results in a lot of American hackers being arrested over stupid charges.
A cyber team would need botnets. Good computers. Expensive software. Little in the way of resources? You can't even crack passwords without a decently powered computer or series of computers to do it.
Yes you might be able to do it with a PS3 and sure it's cheaper to pay for cyber warriors than for airforce pilots or something like that, but it's cheaper on paper than it will be in practice.
Finally it depends on the kind of attack. Not every attack requires a lot of money or resources. The expense would come in the form of support. If someone is going to hack some important network they are going to need state of the art communications equipment and this wont be chap. They will need support which might require satellite images and other help which once again wont be cheap.
On the other hand if you just want them to DDOS a bunch of websites and act like script kiddies this sort of "hacking" doesn't require any support because anybody could do it, and it's relatively easy.
Slashdot Mirror
Bitcoin gives the feds every excuse to make use of those backdoors in every operating system.
Because bitcoin runs on top of an operating system, it should not be assumed to be anonymous at all. All the users of bitcoin are probably being monitored via backdoored software.
I'm sure the police offered to let them keep their site up and to become informants. Chances are they refused the offer and got raided as a result.
Usually police love to have control over these sorts of websites so that they may more easily sting pirates.
Yes you have a low level script kiddie who probably wouldn't have to worry about being killed (not saying they'd actually be safe) if they inform.
But hackers with a high degree of skill and expertise have probably read about or heard about Assassination politics.
http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm
Read all of it and then comment on whether or not you think informants shouldn't fear death threats.
Can you give me at least one example of a turned hacker receiving death threats from former compatriots? You make it sound like they were all hip-deep in organized crime, and all hitmen they used to chill with can smell the fed on them when they come walking into the brothel they hang out in. A lot of these guys choose to live mostly online, that's where the basement-dweller sterotype came from.
Adrian Lamo for one is receiving death threats. And other hackers who you probably never heard of and who I wont identify by name have received death threats.
When you get people locked away in prison for long periods of time, their families, friends, and others aren't ever going to forgive and forget that. And on top of that your current friends might turn against you, because how can they trust you if you sell people out?
And also in hacking organized crime is often a component. More often than you might realize. The russian and italian mafia has involvement. Just because they choose to live online it doesn't mean you can't be touched or cannot be targeted just because you are online. If enough people hate you, or know you are an informer, it's going to affect you in real life. Whether or not you get killed probably depends on whether you live in a safe suburb or in the ghetto or slum somewhere. It's probably true that a hacker living in some safe neighborhood probably wont be dealing with mafia types but not every hacker is from that environment.
Finally, just because you don't associate with hitmen it doesnt mean that somebody somewhere isn't making a list of all the informants and passing it around to the sort of people who do. Why don't you look at whosarat.com and see for yourself what goes on. Being an informant sucks, there is no other way around it.
It's not a privilege to be a snitch.
the guy who came clean to Lamo chose the wrong guy. If it came to light that Lamo knew this info. and didn't come clean, he'd probably get to live in the Mitnick Suite at the Hacker Hilton for 5-10. He was saving his own ass and I don't think I can blame him. Once you get a taste of what the Fed. has to offer in terms of justice and accommodations, you don't want no more of that. Ask Mitnick.
That is the point I'm making. I don't know whether or not Manning really was his friend, but any real friend wouldn't subject their friend to being tortured by the US government. Admitting that kind of shit to anybody guarantees that the government is going to do something really really bad to them. So why would Manning have done that to his friend?
I'm not saying Lamo was right but Manning had no reason to tell anyone he truly cared about what he did. That is the kind of thing you tell someone who you hate.
Yeah but they can always put you in jail after you work for them. Then what?
Does the war on insert noun here in question render law enforcement immune to the law?
Imagine NSA setting up an FBI agent using a drugs for credit card numbers sting, and an FBI agent hooking an NSA agent in a credit card numbers for drugs sting.
If so, what happens if each agency simultaneously deems they have enough evidence to prosecute? Should the respective agents be prosecuted?
Seems like the law should apply equally to all of us.
That is a very interesting question. Does the FBI agent become an NSA informant? Does the NSA agent setup by the FBI become an FBI informant? That is what I'd imagine would happen, but who can answer this question except for people in these organizations?
Why was Lamo involuntarily committed just prior to turning in Manning?
If he were tortured, being committed to a mental institution would be the perfect place to do it. And unlike you I will not pretend to know what Lamo thinks. Something happened, nobody really knows exactly what happened except for feds. Manning himself being a military fed at the time, we don't know what they were willing to do to interrogate.
It's certainly possible Lamo could be threatened and if he were it's very unlikely he'd ever admit to it in public. It's also possible he could have been brainwashed, or had his values distorted due to being lied to by the feds. It's also possible that lives were genuinely at stake. The fact is we have no way to determine which of these views of his situation is correct based on the current information. And if we assume we cannot trust any of these individuals, Lamo, Manning, or the people around them, then there is no way to lean one way or another. Yes the government has tortured, and may have used that threat or that willingness to torture or that capability. The government may also have used it's psy-op capability. There are so many possibilities that you can't rule any of it out.
Not every hack is something which is clearly wrong.
And not every hacker got into it to be cool.
In fact I'd say the majority get into it just because they are curious and it's so easy. It's like leaving a jar of cookies and telling a young kid not to touch it while you go to sleep. You cannot be surprised if the jar is opened,and at least one cookie is missing.
I think the problem is that not every "hacker" has to get caught to get turned. A hacker could get turned after being set up. They might not necessarily have to even have broken any law on their own. There might not have had to be any victims of their hacks.
I don't claim to know whats going on but it looks like the FBI is just out to use them for their skills. Rather than put ads in the news paper and hire them to help with investigations, instead they want to do this kind of stuff. Most teenage hackers grow out of it when they become an adult. The problem is how many of these informants get turned as teenagers and forced to keep hacking into adulthood? And given the option how many of them would want to have a real job at the FBI or CIA or whereever rather than to be an informant? I don't know anybody and never met anyone who dreams of being an informant if they know how informants get treated. Chances are they saw James Bond or some movie and they think thats what being an informant is.
In reality an informant is a criminal, who ultimately gets treated as a criminal no matter how much good they try and do. At the end of the day the snobby elite treat them as criminals, and the criminal underworld treats them as a snitch, and they have nothing and no one to trust. They do typically get a lot of money, and praise from the government, but who is looking out for informants? When the informants receive death threats who looks out for them? What family do they have? Who can they trust?
The rest of their life they get to look forward to... what?
Because any informant can say you are the leader. Anybody can commit a crime, you could be in a chatroom, they could say you gave them the order and are the leader when they could be an informant all along setting you up to be "caught". Remember informants can commit crimes to catch criminals and that cops can give them permission to do it. This means they could commit the crime, frame you, and now you're "caught".
It's most likey 25% of convicted hackers turned. They are probably defining hackers as site operators AND black hats who dealt in wares, keys, hacks, etc... or worms, viruses, data theft. Think about it, they can only know "hackers" they've caught. I would have thought the turn rate would be a lot higher considering WHY most people choose to venture to that side (it's not for you), the offer isn't probably extended to everybody. And of course to add a little humor, the people they actually want as informants, they can't catch. Script kiddies ahoy.
Thats not true at all. Anyone who is in any chatroom or forum can be entrapped or otherwise contacted. Your IP address is on a list, the informants can invite you into a chatroom, commit a crime in your presence, and according to the law you are now a co-conspirator and just as guilty as them because you knew a crime was being committed and you didn't stop it.
Then of course the police can lie to you, and informants can lie about you, and make it seem like you were the leader all along and you ordered the operation.
If thats all they did then it wasn't as bad as it could have been. You weren't threatened with torture. You weren't entrapped and then threatened with prison as a sex offender. You weren't set up by your "friends".
Trust me, it could have been a lot fucking worse. If this is how they operate, if they went with the honorable civilized man to man talk approach, this actually makes the FBI or Agency look good. No ones rights were violated and no one was tortured, abused, or tricked.
When it's cases like Lamo's and the CIA gets involved they aren't beyond torturing somebody, or killing, or threatening to kill.
So if Lamo were going to be tortured alongside Manning unless he helped them, that would turn Lamo too.
What then? You can't really do anything about it whether it's intentional or unintentional.
And if a team of informants want to set you up, there are enough laws and enough ways to make it happen.
If you think we connect vital systems by wireless you clearly don't know what the hell you're talking about.
As soon as any threat presents itself, you simply cut off vital systems from the network. Air gap wins.
You need to get over your raging hard on for the word "cyber warrior" and come back to reality. If transmissions cannot be secured, we'll do it the old fashioned way, never underestimate the bandwidth of cpl noname with a case of USB drives handcuffed to his wrist.
Preparing for the "Cyber war" is utterly useless in an age where we cant afford the existing military pork barrel projects. Everything a "Cyber Command" does is already covered under existing cryptography units.
The room would have to be sound proof, light proof, emissions proof, as would all the computers in that room. The air gap would be completely useless if the room leaks emissions. Also the electricity use would have to be masked in such a way so that it cannot be analyzed.
I'm not saying I know all the precautions that the government is taking, I'm saying just disconnecting a computer from the network by cutting the cable is not enough. Any emissions leak at all will leak information which could be analyzed by the enemy so the network would have to be emission proof, there should be nothing for the enemy to work with. And even then you'd have to worry about inside threats.
I didn't actually address the question of whether they were warriors or not. My point was more that the term, which was already fairly archaic, has become a meaningless buzzword.
When there's an engagement, you generally have the combat units and everyone else. The combat units rehearse battle drills and plans and such, and everyone else's job is to get out of the way. No doubt, the support personnel shoot back when they have to, they take big risks, and their service is perfectly honorable. But their role is not combat oriented, and it's wrongheaded to conflate the two
That is my point. I don't consider cyber warriors "support personnel" in an information war, I consider them to be the main unit. In these new kinds of war which don't involve conventional weapons it's pointless to think of the hacker as the support personnel. In a conventional war where you are dealing with conventional weaponry, the hackers would be the ones to disrupt enemy communication. In an unconventional war the hackers may be the main units leading the revolution, civil war, etc. They also will be the first to be captured, tortured or disappeared. At the same time their actions can cause people to be killed as well, such as if the society is violently homophobic and the hackers plant evidence of homosexuality on the computer of the enemy. The sort of psychological, or information based attacks represent entirely new forms of war. Information can kill in many cases or cause people to be killed, for this reason it's not as simple where you can think of them as support personnel.
That being said how much longer do you think hackers can last if they aren't trained to shoot and kill? I think it's a combination of both. You can have hackers who are mercenaries, who track and kill terrorists using computer technology. I just don't think it's as clear cut as saying someone who is a cyber warrior isn't or shouldn't be trained to be a sniper, or to do assassination missions, as I don't see why a cyber warrior couldn't be trained to do all out war using unconventional weapons.
Example: you have a convoy. Some trucks are convoy security, some trucks might be EOD. The security elements are the combat elements, they are in charge of the mission and if there is conctact, EOD stick with whatever truck they're assigned to, and don't go off engaging the enemy unless they're returning fire.
And, pardon my vagueness, but I've actually done something close to what "cyberwarriors" might. Though I was also a gunner at the time, this was an additional tactic that was part of our battle plan. But this wasn't about inflicting casualties, rather it was degrading the capacity of the enemy. Computers and radios don't inflict physical damage, and war is still about killing the enemy and occupying territory
Yes but in unconventional wars you aren't going to want to kill with a gun when you can kill in an undetectable fashion. If the enemy doesn't know you are coming, it certainly would be a useful skill to have the ability to use information weapons to confuse or disrupt the enemy while at the same time kill the enemy. It makes perfect sense if one person could do multiple things. So if you can leverage information.technology, but you also can assassinate/kill, this seems could be useful as well. The point I'm trying to make is I don't think we know for sure what wars of the future will look like or what skills will be required but if we are talking about urban warfare or unconventinonal warfare, guns and tanks probably wont be the best way to go about it and inflicting mass casualties probably wouldnt be the best way to launch a revolution for example. In that specific kind of war, I could see cyber warriors being the main fighting unit. Like in Libya for example where the goal is to remove or change the regime, they aren't going to want to go gun for gun in a conventional war, they are going to want to use guerilla tactics and leverage advanced technologies. In these sorts of wars
Each of these technologies requires a base station, a point of ingress into an internal network. You cant simply just beam a microwave signal into nowhere. If a country wanted to cut itself off from the internet, it would be quite easy as you can simply shut down the transmitters and outgoing routers.
Where did you learn about wide area networking?
Or wireless, I'm yet to see a wireless technology that did not require a receiver. That would a physical bit of hardware that can be shut down, well, physically.
Countries like Thailand and China already control all the points of interconnect for data, it wouldn't be hard for the US or UK to completely isolate themselves if the need arises (they simply have more points of interconnect to send troops to). But what is more likely is that vital infrastructure is simply removed from the public grid. An air gap can easily be gated by a human. When Mil.net 1 wants to send something to Mil.net 2, the data can be loaded onto USB key, a Pvt simply moves this from the private USB slot to the public USB slot where it can be transmitted (or just carries the key over manually).
Seriously, what do they teach people about network security these days.
Learn about Tempest. Just because you aren't connected to the internet it doesn't mean your computers on the network are properly shielded and wont produce emissions which can easily be intercepted. Intercepted emissions in the form of light, sound, radiation, the flow of electricity, all of this can be intercepted to give an adversary an accurate picture of whats going on inside the computer.
Disagree.
A cyber warrior is as much of a warrior as a pilot or a sniper. Sure a pilot or a sniper doesn't necessarily take as much or the same kind of risk as the guy kicking in doors, but a sniper can be counter sniped. A pilot can be shot to pieces.
A hacker can be hacked, and disappeared by counter intelligence.
That is a good question. Nobody actually defines what a cyber warrior is. I assume it's any hacker or former hacker who helps the feds.
The government needs to decide what a cyber warrior is and what their mission is. That being said anyone who risks their life and who fights in war is either a soldier or a warrior. Hackers get killed, hackers risk their lives, so they are warriors as much as anybody else, but they are information warriors.
I doubt these North Koreans have a better choice. They either serve North Korea and their families get privileges or they don't an their families get tortured or killed.
Since nobody knows exactly what goes on in North Korea, the privilege could be allowing them to stay alive.
They'll probably recruit from the underground. Since the underground needs cash, North Korea would probably just offer cash for code.
Then they'll read the code, learn to write their own code, and thats how they'll learn.
The Stuxnet authors? You think they are the only skilled programmers? They are the skilled programmers recognized by the government, probably with clearance, but not the only skilled programmers. The North Korens can target game developers and find programmers with an equal level of skill if not greater.
Cutting cables? You obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about if you don't consider the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
If cables are cut, radiowaves, light waves, microwaves or any other mechanism can be used.
If you have better hardware to run your botnet on, you can crack passwords faster, crash servers faster via DDOS, or do many things better.
Beyond this for coordination, communication and intelligence high technology is essential. Satellites aren't cheap. Truly secure encrypted communication mechanisms aren't cheap. None of this stuff will be cheap.
North Koreans do not have the advantage in computing power. They might have the advantage in man power, training, skill, but not in computing power. This means everything you are saying is right and that cyberwarfare will require a lot of resources but I think the resources would mainly be support resources. I don't think training will be all that necessary, theres more than enough people with the skill in the USA. The problem is organizing them.
Step one, create a service and draft people. Step two, fully fund the service and the missions. Step three, pay for the best tools, best hardware, best support team.
Whatever the US is doing right now obviously isn't working. The US (at least the FBI) last I checked is still focused on crime fighting, on child porn, and on everything but cyberwarfare. Cyber crime isn't really the same problem as cyberwarfare. Cyberwarfare is backed by a state while cybercrime usually results in a lot of American hackers being arrested over stupid charges.
A cyber team would need botnets. Good computers. Expensive software.
Little in the way of resources? You can't even crack passwords without a decently powered computer or series of computers to do it.
Yes you might be able to do it with a PS3 and sure it's cheaper to pay for cyber warriors than for airforce pilots or something like that, but it's cheaper on paper than it will be in practice.
Finally it depends on the kind of attack. Not every attack requires a lot of money or resources. The expense would come in the form of support. If someone is going to hack some important network they are going to need state of the art communications equipment and this wont be chap. They will need support which might require satellite images and other help which once again wont be cheap.
On the other hand if you just want them to DDOS a bunch of websites and act like script kiddies this sort of "hacking" doesn't require any support because anybody could do it, and it's relatively easy.
nothing stops the feds from saying you are a member when you aren't.