U.S. Military's Hackers

definate writes "Wired is running a story on the Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare, or JFCCNW. A multimillion dollar military task force used to attack the electronic infrastructure of their opponents."

Script Kiddies in Uniform

[Flywheels of Fire]

From TFA:"There are some tremendous questions being raised about this," said Dietz. "On whether they (JFCCNW) have the legal mandate or the authority to shut these sites down with a defacement or a denial-of-service attack."

According to TFA, the main task of JFCCNW is to bring down websites [mithuro.com] that don't portray America in good light.

It is going to be more of a PR-damage limitation excercise than anything else. And a good way to spend millions of taxpayer money.

Re:Script Kiddies in Uniform

[Guano_Jim]

According to TFA, the main task of JFCCNW is to bring down websites that don't portray America in good light.

It is going to be more of a PR-damage limitation excercise than anything else. And a good way to spend millions of taxpayer money.


Until they start going after opposition sites like Daily Kos [dailykos.com] or Eschaton [blogspot.com] because they're critical of the current administration. Collateral damage in the War on Terror, you know.

Don't think it could happen here? GOP Denial of Service attack on New Hampshire Democratic Phone Bank [newsmax.com]

CDX

[Anonymous Coward]

You may also want to check out NSA's annual Computer Defense Exercise (CDX). Story here [recordonline.com].

The Hearing

[markmcb]

For anyone interested, here's a link to a hearing [apc.org] (not sure if it's the one referenced), that gives some insight into the broader goals of the the strategic command that this hacking force falls under.

The real threat....

[mestreBimba]

The real threat from hackers of this nature lies not in their ability to hack the command and control grid of the enemy, but in their ability to crash the opossitions economy. Every major war of the last century has been won by economic might, more than by brillant stategies.

What is the impact of crashing an enemy's powersytem? A catastrophic crash of a power grid with actual physical damage to the grid is not beyond the realm of possibility. How many billions of $$$$ a day could be lost by such an attack on the US? If an enemy brings down even a small part of the grid it can cascade and bring down the whole shooting match.

Other scary possibilities..... hack the SCADA control system of a nasty chemical plant. Release a toxic gas cloud and kill thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. Hack a number of oil refineries and knock them out of production. Watch what that does to the price of doing business.

Most of the admins on such systems will tell you that the systems have no external links.... but when you ask them if there is a DB from the SCADA LAN that communicates with the coprporate LAN, well every admin and security guru that I have asked that question of, has admitted that such a DB exists. And where such a communication path exists then it can be exploited.

The next globalr war, if it ever happens, will start with a wave of pre-emptive infastructure hacks.

Re:Really?

[oni]

Surely something like a surface-to-air missile system is isolated from the web?

isolated from the web? from the *web*? You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Do you?

Mod parent down-malicious code in sig

[JLavezzo]

The Perl code in [Gob Blesh It]'s sig is a recursive delete.
Mod him down. Script Kiddie deserves no Karma.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[demo9orgon]

Just how does the military end up with such uninspired, soul withering, marginalized and obfuscated acronyms?

My understanding is that officers are usually tasked with creating acronyms for the projects they are responsible for. This would be in keeping with the fact that they have to do all the documentation and write ups on it. Now, we're living in a politically correct world where you don't want someone twisting your acronym up and side-banding your project with potty humor. And you sure as hell don't want to offend some female (women wield a startling amount of power in the military when it comes to decorum) officer who might have to say it.

So something as intellectually neutered as JFCCNW is actually the kind of acronym that a smart person would like to see in their dossier. Over time, as an officers dossier is reviewed, part of the whole "reading the entrails" to see if an officer is suitable comes down to how well they work within the bureaucracy, and to this end I've known officers who have been promoted for such things. It's a whacked planet.

Re:I wonder if these were the guys...

[jfw3]

No, that was a retard named John Buffo that social engineered Network Solutions to redirect the site. http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/culture/0%2C1284%2 C59216%2C00.html

Re:Restrictions?

[Ace26_805]

Actually, in the US Govt (for which I work for repairing/patching computers) there is a loooong waiting list before your allowed to install patches. Windows XP was just recently approved to be used by the Military and SP2 will probably be another year before its been throughly tested and allowed to be used/installed. Usually for non Service Pack updates it is about a 6 month wait until "critical" patches deemed by MS are allowed to be installed and a year plus for Service Packs.

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[FinalCut]

JFCCNW is not an acronym. Oh sure, people love to say everything that consists of the first letter of each word is an acronym - but this isnt.

Acronym - a new word or pronounceable and hence memorable name coined from the first or first few letters or parts of a phrase or compound term (HUD for Housing and Urban Development).

About all JFCCNW does is take the first letter from a bunch of words. It is certainly not pronouncable, nor is it particularly memorable.

Not only are your acronym's funnier, but they are actually acronyms.

Or maybe this is pronounced Jiff-canoe ('jif? - k&-'nü)

Re:Culture clash?

[Anonymous Coward]

My cousin's husband is a boffin with the MoD, as far as I know he has no rank, doesn't have to parade, doesn't have to to have passed a course with an SA-80A2. etc.
Working for the military doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually a soldier

Re:Worst. Acronym. Ever.

[bigsmoke]

According to the Chicago Manual of Style's FAQ [chicagomanualofstyle.org], it's an initialism:

Q. I had always understood the term acronym to mean an abbreviation that spells a word, such as snafu (per Webster's), but in your manual [the fourteenth edition, 1993] the two terms are used interchangeably. Can you tell me where you get your definition of acronym?

A. Since 1993, we've realized that we needed to be more precise. In the fifteenth edition, therefore, we distinguish between acronyms, initialisms, and contractions, all under the umbrella of abbreviation, as follows: acronym refers only to terms based on the initial letters of their various elements and read as single words (NATO, AIDS); initialism to terms read as a series of letters (BBC, ATM); and contraction to abbreviations that include the first and last letters of the full word (Mr., amt.). These distinctions can also be found in the multivolume work Acronyms, Initialisms, and Abbreviations Dictionary, edited by Mary Rose Bonk and published in its twenty-seventh edition in 2000 by Gale Research Incorporated.