DHS Publishes Report on Operation Cyberstorm 64
uniquebydegrees writes "InfoWorld reports that the Department of Homeland Security has released the findings of Operation Cyber Storm, a large-scale simulation of combined cyber-physical attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure. From the article: 'According to DHS, "observers noted that players had difficulty ascertaining what organizations and whom within those organizations to contact when there was no previously established relationship or pre-determined plans for response coordination and risk assessments/mitigation. There was a general recognition of the difficulties organizations faced when attempting to establish trust with unfamiliar organizations during time of crisis."'"
Translated from bureaucrat to English (Score:5, Funny)
> "observers noted that players had difficulty ascertaining what organizations and whom within those organizations to contact when there was no previously established relationship or pre-determined plans for response coordination and risk assessments/mitigation. There was a general recognition of the difficulties organizations faced when attempting to establish trust with unfamiliar organizations during time of crisis."
English:
"Situation Normal, All Fucked Up."
Ah! I thought it meant... (Score:2)
Come to think of it, that's what your translation says, too.
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You nailed it! (Score:1)
> "Clarifying roles and responsibilities across government, and clearly articulating expectations between public and private sectors will enable the advancement of processes and communications architecture to support the development and maintenance of situational awareness across sectors.
Here's the translation: We don't know who is going to do what, or how they are going to do it. So, we need a study (which will be done after the election and the campaign contributions are
Shouldn't government agencies be a bit paranoid? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello, FBI? Mid-level functionary from FEMA here. Nasty computer virus we're having, eh? Yeah, I haven't had power for a week either
Depends on the paranoia (Score:2)
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From that page, the manufacturing contract is guaranteed through 1999. Guess the DHS is screwed.
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DHS: they're not Really Ready [livejournal.com] for anything, are they?
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So you install BPL in the area?
Sounds Interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that's the case, it's exactly the kind of improvements we should expect to see from government agencies: identifying weaknesses, and working to eliminate them.
So, kudos to DHS, and may they successfully apply the lessons learned from this exercise.
Re:Sounds Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
It wasn't what the U.S. signed on for in 1776 or 1789.
Re:Sounds Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
However, in so far as we have government at all, I would prefer that it was able to act effectively in times of crisis.
I mean, think how much better off we'd be if FEMA, the State of Louisiana, and the City of New Orleans had thought to work out trust relationships and clear contingency plans and handoff of responsibilities, prior to the arrival of a giant fucking hurricane, yeah?
Besides, America has probably the most un-secret "secret police" of any nation in the world (unprovable conspiracy theories aside).
Also, the article isn't about the "secret police", but about the woefully feeble capabilities of government infrastructure agencies in general, to survive and recover from "cyber" attacks. You might want to save your "secret police" objections for an article about actual "secret police".
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I wholeheartedly agree. The Founders knew what they were talking about when they insisted on keeping the Federal government relatively weak and ineffective. They had a severe distrust of centralised power, and with good reason. They'd just won a revolution from a
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there are probably untrained to assertain a priority to recovery.
You need experts. You also need the local politicians to scream, yell, point, and gather attention of the media and point out every single problem you run into to focus responisbility on FEMA.
In New Orleans there wan't anyone on the ground capable to call the shots.
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This training only exists at a Federal level?
These experts only exist on a Federal level? And aren't a lot of our problems due to the tendency of every
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According to this article, the chief lesson of the exercise was that the different parts did not communicate effectively in times of crisis, and that this put the whole at risk.
The recommendation, then, is to improve communication between the separate parts, not to centralize their functions.
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Yeah, but look at what you've got: a government that is basing its whole policy on "security" and asking "are we more secure?" "Do you feel more secure?" "Would the other party be able to make you feel as secure as we do?"
It's like they've forgotten what that statue in New York Harbour is named.
And like they've forgotten what some radical left-wing terrorist-sympathizer said: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be bought at the price of warren
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If there's a second thing our government is really good at, it's debating the best, most carefully thought out plans until the next election, then completely forgetting about the whole thing.
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Senator Ted Stevens is not a truck. (Score:1)
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you mean that govt's been lying to us?
Parsing error. Does not compute. (Score:3, Interesting)
This, combined with the submitter's bad line:
Honestly, what's with all hyphenated oxymorons? Normally I'm not a Grammar Nazi, but it feels like the left-right side of my grammar center just got a swift kick in the nuts.
Finally, I found it funny that at the bottom of TFA they had links such as "Digg this!"
However, they also had a "Slashdot this!"
To which I reply. "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means."
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They're called compound adjectives and if you actually were a Grammar Nazi, you'd know that.
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The terms "private-public" and "cyber-physical" are not compound adjectives... or at least not proper ones. A proper compound adjective is one in which one adjective gives additional meaning or clarification to the other one; the hyphen is added to show the reader that the words do not independently modify the noun. In this case, one adjective directly contradicts the other one, thus, they can neither independently modify the noun nor modify each other. This construction makes no sense. If I wrote somet
I presume I wasn't the only one who misread... (Score:4, Funny)
The terrorists are after our energon cubes.
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Energon Cubes (Score:2)
Being cube shaped, they must be transported in trucks which makes them vulnerable, instead of being moved around through a series of (secure) tubes.
How am I supposed to be surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
So You're Saying It Was A ClusterFuck? (Score:2, Funny)
Please, enough is enough. (Score:1)
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DHS Press Release (Score:3, Informative)
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http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/press_releas e/press_release_0993.xml [dhs.gov]
I was just there and downloaded the 20-page report from
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interweb/assetlibrary
References? (Score:1)
Could somebody please post this, if it exists?
Personally, I find it hard to take any government (Score:2)
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When in danger or in doubt... (Score:2)
So everything's normal then?
Very funny and BS (Score:2)
Root servers are not the softest DNS target (Score:2)
The reason is that their data is so small - only about 250 names, the whole thing compresses down to less than 20K bytes - that it is well cached (and privately replicated.)
I've traced root server queries and most sites that don't reboot their resolvers will generate usually no more than a few hundred queries to the roots per month. If root servers stopped responding, most people would live out of their ISP's resolver caches for a long time, many
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Blatant Karma Whoring (Score:1)
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Hackers are supposed to hammer a HIPAA data to hold medical authorities to ransom - which of course in the scenario they 'beat off'. Yay for the good guys.
In reality of course they'd slip in, copy the details of anyone with a particularly embarassing illness, then blackmail THEM to stop release of the data. In reality the government probably wouldn't have a clue.
If this is indicative of the general standard of 'Cyber Storm' they need more help in understanding the
easy (Score:1)
then simply call the phone number of the network owner.
that is easy.
the government is so caught up in buying expensive shit to solve non-existant problems, they have forgotten basic net troubleshooting.
Does this suprise anyone? (Score:2)
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