US Cyber Command Reveals Plans To Hit Back At Cyber Threats

CNet News.com is reporting that the Air Force's Cyber Command has just as much interest in offense as defense. "Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER), a US military unit set up in September 2007 to fight in cyberspace, is due to become fully operational in the autumn under the aegis of the US Eighth Air Force. Lieutenant general Robert J. Elder Jr., who commands the Eighth Air Force's Barksdale base, told ZDNet.co.uk at the Cyber Warfare Conference 2008 that Air Force is interested in developing its capabilities to attack enemy forces as well as defend critical national infrastructure. "

dupe first, ask questions later dept

[zappepcs]

It still means bad things are about to happen when the defense team is studying offense tactics

Re:dupe first, ask questions later dept

[TubeSteak]

It still means bad things are about to happen when the defense team is studying offense tactics

If your defensive plan doesn't include any offensive measures, you're doing it wrong.

To put it in simple terms, if someone is abusing your network bandwidth, you don't just throttle them down, you go tell them to knock it off (or something equivalent). That's an "offensive measure" and it's common sense, isn't it?

Defense.

[headkase]

Having hackers for offence is all and good but when it comes to defense they need to train the programmers of the "critical infrastructure" in security techniques. And also perform regular penetration testing on the infrastructure correcting any problems they find as they go. So basically the hackers would not only be hacking other nations but they would continually have to try to hack their own as well to defend it.

Re:dupe first, ask questions later dept

[gnick]

An offensive measure would be more like block traffic to certain sites ahead of time.

Blocking traffic is still a defensive strategy. There's a difference between proactive defense and offense.

Not very intelligent in the long run

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had this debate many times here. All of would love to use offensive expoits against spammers, or to hit agressive corporations like Sony with revenge attacks, but the law, and the considered morals advise against it. For the firstpart you have target identification. Because of spoofing, which any intelligent agressor will use, you can't be sure who you're hitting back at. Secondly there's a difference between using real weapons offensively and hacking weapons. To use the latter you give the weapon away. If you fire a bullet at a target they don't get to keep the shell and the rifle. Different story if you set up your provocateur honeypot to goad the opposition into launching their attacks (which you can then use on them). The whole game pretty quickly spirals out of control. While attack and defence are inseperable; since you must develop exploits to do your own penetration testing, the goal should be overall defensive, to tighten up your own systems. In this way everyone benefits and the attacks become moot. Taking the opposite approach merely leads to proliferation.