Inside the Secret War Against Internet Spies 116
ahess247 brings us a lengthy BusinessWeek story on the increasing amount of attacks against the US government's online presence as well as its contacts in the private sector. Hackers are gaining a greater awareness of where valuable data might reside, and that awareness is leading to more precise, more sophisticated attacks. Quoting:
"The U.S. government, and its sprawl of defense contractors, have been the victims of an unprecedented rash of similar cyber attacks over the last two years, say current and former U.S. government officials. 'It's espionage on a massive scale,' says Paul B. Kurtz, a former high-ranking national security official. Government agencies reported 12,986 cyber security incidents to the U.S. Homeland Security Dept. last fiscal year, triple the number from two years earlier. Incursions on the military's networks were up 55% last year, says Lieutenant General Charles E. Croom, head of the Pentagon's Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations. Private targets like Booz Allen are just as vulnerable and pose just as much potential security risk. 'They have our information on their networks. They're building our weapon systems. You wouldn't want that in enemy hands,' Croom says. Cyber attackers 'are not denying, disrupting, or destroying operations--yet. But that doesn't mean they don't have the capability.'"
You PWN3D my Empire! (Score:5, Interesting)
Northrop-Grumman or General Dynamics or any D.o'D. approved private contractor can post anything they like about future combat systems on their websites, and even sell secret weapons systems to Saudis or the UAE or anyone else who can buy, but for anyone else to do it is an infringement of national security.
Also, the private contractors can preferentially hire non-nationals, who work diligently and are key to the development of these systems, instead of American citizens who might be disturbed at the nature of what the private contractors are doing in the name of national security, but that's the free market.
So, if I remember correctly, didn't something happen in Germany in the 1930s that caused its brightest physiscists to flee? And didn't the same imperial hubris that caused Germany to persecute the people who might have made it an economic power after WWI really cause it to enter- and lose- WWII?
Just askin'. I just wondered what the Party line was these days.
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Is there anyone dumb enough to still believe the romantic portrayal of the young valiant American heros defending liberty and freedom from the vicious hordes that everyone else refers to as "the rest of the world" ?
Re:You PWN3D my Empire! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Products of the American "education" system.
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The Internet is changing things quickly.
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[citation needed]
I read the article quickly, and I did see that it describes attempts to penetrate US systems, from a US point of view. But I didn't happen to notice any editorializing about US nobility, or any suggestion of a lack of a US cyber warfare program.
Sure it wasn't in your head? Go ahead and criticize US policy. Criticize the article too, if you think it's poorly written. But you're criticizing the article based
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The FoxNews demographic. Earnest, well-intentioned, poorly-informed, misguided and wrong.
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You ever hear the phrase, "If it bleeds, it leads?" Global warming is like that. Fear and destruction sell. And a fearful populace is more likely to do what the rich and powerful media owners want them to. Remember, the rich may be socially liberal or socially cons
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Media bias [skewz.com]
Now, go to a DNC convention. I'm sure you'll find a few rich people who aren't conservative.
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They may be socially liberal, but almost all rich people are fiscal conservatives who don't like paying taxes and want a smaller government.
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And did you even read the header row of the table?
There are lots of news sites with highly leftest ratings on issues like "economic policy" and "domestic policy." Those sound suspiciously like pro-big government.
And really... Can you find anyone who likes paying high taxes? The middle class doesn't like it either, and those greedy poor people don't pay anything! /sarcasm
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And what I meant was, the rich want to stick the middle class and poor with as much of the tax burden as possible.
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Kind of like the middle class and the poor want to stick it to the rich as much as possible?
I personally favor a flat income tax. It has no elements of this stupid class warfare we've been plauged with since Marx expounded upon the plight of the proletariat, is highly visible, simple to administer, and easily quantifiable. ("You think my property's worth $y? It was only worth $x last year!")
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MSNBC - liberal/Democratic
CNBC - somewhat conservative (more bias towards its investor audience)
CNN - fairly neutral (but concentrated on horse race politics)
PBS - Tries to remain neutral, is generally caught between the liberal individual donors and the conservative corporate and foundation donors
CBS - no news organization to speak of
C-Span - The most unbiased source imaginable, since it shows what politicians are saying and doing rather than commen
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I bet some of them are clever and some are not. All you can say is that there must be more heroes in the Military than in most other professions because it's about living or dying. Being prepared to take big risks is something that's impossible not to respect.
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I disagree. Any idiot can be prepared to take big risks - casinos, hospitals, prisons and morgues are full of them.
In my opinion you get respect for knowing WHEN and HOW to take big risks - not just being willing to risk your life and/or livlihood. Sometimes (as is the case for many in our military) you take a huge risk to your livlihood (and freedom even) by deciding to refuse to take part in something you feel is
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Re:You PWN3D my Empire! (Score:5, Insightful)
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kthnx.
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kthnx.
You don't live in the US? Wow--way to blow his argument apart...except nowhere did anyone say the US was the only place that had free speech.
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[sarcasm]Of course, we'd be fine without US military alliances, be
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Back in the age of Kings and Queens, Free Speech could zing some very really big egos who had absolutely no need to curb their vengeance and you were lucky if you were connected to people two towns over, let alone across the country. People who could wield the power of the pen were relatively few as well.
Now, the power of the pen has been diluted by the masses and we have every idiot comparing every public figure to Hitler -- giving rise to Godwin's l
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That's like being thankful you have a "better" cancer, cause there are worse cancers out there.
Sure, I want the least-bad strain, but I still strongly prefer no cancer at all, and you bet your ass I'm exploring every option to cut the damn thing out, irradiate it, and make it GO AWAY
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Yes but only if Hollywood makes a movie about it and shows it world wide.
I debate with people from all around the world on Internet forums, most of them cite examples from Hollywood movies. Then they think that the USA must really be like what they keep seeing in movies about the USA. Like Forr
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http://www.afcyber.af.mil/
You were being sarcastic, right?
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Is there anyone dumb enough to still believe the romantic portrayal of the young valiant American heros defending liberty and freedom from the vicious hordes that everyone else refers to as "the rest of the world" ?
Americans are arrogant, it is true, and boneheaded and sometimes selfish, and in international relations we try to get our way. The government is just a reflection of the people.
But at heart we are good. We aren't trying to hurt people, and we help them out when we can. We send billions of dollars to foreign countries in aid. You may say it's not enough, but realistically we don't have to send any. Americans individually donate as much or more money to charity as any other country in the world.
Sure w
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Billions of dollars to buy their feudal allegiance - with goodwill as the PR story to sell Empire back home.
Um.....I think you are a bit confused about how feudalism works. You see the idea is the underling gives money and tribute to his feudal Lord. You don't buy feudal allegiance with money, you get it by promising not to destroy the country.
Maybe this is not what you meant. Maybe you picked the wrong words; but you will get a lot farther using words that represent what you actually mean rather than picking words that sound sensationalistic and are clearly an exaggeration.
America isn't perfect by any s
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The loyalty of the villians, and the benediction of the church were secured through these poses of generosity.
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Oh, and the tone of your message is basically "Sure we killed millions of innocents and plundered natural wealth to which we had no legal or moral claim. But hey, at least our heart was in the right place!".
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The US does many good things. Have you never heard of the Peace Corps? Do you think it would be better if the US didn't give out any money? Nobody is saying the US is perfect, or even that they are unselfish, but to ignore the good and only focus on the bad helps no one and misrepresents reality.
Incidentally, the intent of my post was not t
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Yes, I know quite a number of people who left it, describing it as just another appendage by which the US government wields influence over foreign nations. Have you ever travelled with the Peace Corps? Not being a US citizen I can't officially do so, but I've been with them before, and met many, many members.
Actually, that's precisely what I'm saying.
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Let's talk about El Salvador, since I am most familiar with that situation. The main complain
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Much of the world considers the institution of the US government to be an evil dictator thinly veiled as a two party democracy. How would you take it if another nation decided to take it upon themselves to "liberate" you?
"Iraq WILL be left better off than we found it."
More have died since the invasion due to collapsed infrastructure and abject failure of management than died in the entire history of
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Much of the world considers the institution of the US government to be an evil dictator thinly veiled as a two party democracy.
Let's talk about what is, not some unspecified paranoids believe. The US is a representative democracy, and in general it's foreign policy reflects the desires of its citizens. If you wish to change the US, it is necessary to change the opinions of the citizens. This is something I'm working on.
How would you take it if another nation decided to take it upon themselves to "liberate" you?
I don't know. Ask the citizens of Halabja.
More have died since the invasion due to collapsed infrastructure and abject failure of management than died in the entire history of Saddam's rule
Wait, let's talk about this. The infrastructure was never really good. People wire their own houses to the power grid, causing blow outs etc. This is not uncommon i
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Let's turn your argument around and ask you -- Give us an example of a country with a GOOD Foreign Policy that's as big and has as many world-wide interests as the United States.
China? Nope.
What's left of the Soviet Union? Nope.
UK? Nope.
Australia? Hmm. Maybe.
Anyway... thinking through it you seem to be complaining about bad foreign policy in such a way as to NOT compare i
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I didn't see Iraqi troops in the US before the invasion, and just because our side uses Apaches helicopters and has a PR department doesn't make it any different. Killing is killing.
If you think that US forces have only ever responded to threats, perhaps you heard of a little country called Vietnam. No? How about Chile? Nicaragua? Go
Haven't they ever heard of GPG signatures? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I would have though that emails of this nature would be:
1) encrypted since they are sensitive themselves and at the very least
2) signed with a GPG or PGP signature that allows verification of the author.
Email encryption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_encryption [wikipedia.org]
They can even do it for Free.
http://www.mozilla-enigmail.org/ [mozilla-enigmail.org]
or buy a PGP solution from someone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy [wikipedia.org]
But I guess setting up a few signature servers and basic processes that control "secure email" would be
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Now, I believe I ordered the dancing pigs!
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For every defense... (Score:3, Insightful)
For every threat there is funding (Score:3, Insightful)
The end of the Cold War was a huge threat to careers and funding in the CIA, military and govt contractors. Need those Iraq wars, terrorists and hackers to keep the whole war machine going.
The military industry is not the only one that works this way. The medical industry is catching on too (bird flu) and now the whole greenwashing industry (global warming etc).
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For defense you need to pay competent people (Score:1)
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Spy vs. Spy (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, spies would rather have infrastructure INTACT, so they can exploit it easily. They are lazy humans, like you.
Re:Spy vs. Spy (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spy vs. Spy (Score:5, Funny)
I could see him thinking about spies, and birds being like spies, and then screwing it up. What I find funnier is how many people will skim over that sentence really quickly and find it smart and intelligent sounding, while never really understanding what ornithology or ontology really is.
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What's worse is disagreeing with someone and spouting, "just read these 14 URLs comprising 347,958 words and you'll find out how stupid you really are" rather than putting effort into making some clear statements and taking the time to put coherent thought into words.
There's not much worse than copypaste advocacy but it's all the rage with those who tend to refer others to talking points and narratives.
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Re:Spy vs. Spy (Score:5, Interesting)
And just because we're worried about "internet spies" let's not forget that there are plenty of the old-fashioned variety out there, too.
For example, how many of us know that 15 Bush Administration officials, including Sec'y of State Condi Rice, have just been subpoenaed in the oft-delayed Franklin/AIPAC/Israel Lobby spy case. Even though it's common enough to come up in Google search auto-complete, it hasn't been mentioned on any US media.
The difference is now the people that are spying on us are employed by the ones that are supposed to be working to protect us.
And even if we caught every single spy, who among us feels we could trust our Department of Justice to prosecute them with any integrity? Hell, if there were any justice, the top law enforcement appointees (John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez, Michael Mukasey, etc) not to mention their bosses, would be the ones facing trial.
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Not much of a secret anymore now is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Either way, please send two to my hotel room as soon as they are built.
You shouldn't have military plans on the Net (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that they're not even following their own rules - Win boxen have never been approved for holding Net-connected data - only in a stand-alone environment are they even considered, and even then in a secure room with full security protocols enforced.
We used to lock down our drives too. In locked cabinets. When we went home.
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Windows boxes have been allowed on the SIPRNet and JWICS since before I started my IT career. NT 4.0 was NIAP approved ages ago to do so. While those systems (arguable) aren't connected directly to the net, their boundaries have greatly expanded over the last 5 years to areas outside of military control.
The only drives that are locked up at night (in my environment) are ones that are used for desktops in non open-storag
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Just because the EAL rating was based on it not being connected, doesn't mean that the DoD didn't allow it to be connected. For god's sake I think the NT STIG is still available.
Re:You shouldn't have military plans on the Net (Score:4, Informative)
If the military was as susceptible as they might lead you to believe, they'd still be trying to stop spam emails from pouring out of the RNC servers. Holy shit man, if they were hackable someone on the NYT would already be posting the 'lost RNC emails' if you know what I mean... geez
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My apologies for posting anon, but I have mod points and I work for the Navy.
So feed them some bum plans. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Give me a break. TFA is about a memoir written by a former Reagan official, not a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request or something that could be believable.
"5, Interesting" sounds more like six Reagan fanboys to me.
-Matt
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You're probably right. ;)
I just appreciate a good Earth Shattering Kaboom [tvtropes.org]! (Okay, I exaggerate.)
Connection to other malware. (Score:4, Insightful)
We have a multibillion-dollar industry based on corrupting computers and stealing selected information from them, which the governments have virtually ignored while its techniques were honed. Now their own military secrets are the target of a similar attack. Any bets on whether it is built on the same code base.
Too late now, guys. The enemies' cyber-warfare departments now have the technology.
But I bet that, if you start finding and closing the barn doors even after most of the horses are gone, you'll find enough fingerprints and tire-tracks to trace down who did it. Hunt them down and take them out, and you'll eliminate a bunch of the talent that would otherwise be developing the technology further.
Color me underwhelmed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Western civilization was saved from the abyss.
Who doesn't think these things happen all of the time. I would be upset (in a general way) if our enemies didn't try that sort of stuff. And sneaking in via the side door. And the hot secretary. And countless other bits of espionage craft. Keep up the firewalls men! Loose lips sink ships. Watch them commies, you never know what to expect. Let's have another iPhone article, shall we. It's been maybe 24 hours since the last one. I'm getting bored.
International meshing needs to change (Score:1)
I realize this is heresy for some, but the mesh network was designed and makes sense for a *national* network. Meshing internationally keeps costs down, but it is a really bad idea from a security point of view.
Why not have point to points with certain nations/regions of the world? Connection with these nations continue on the condition that they only route traffic to the US that originates on their national network. There are ways around any architecture, of course, the point is to give you
Privatizing == Larger Surface Area (Score:1, Insightful)
So how can we do online governance? (Score:1, Interesting)
How do you think the metagovernment [metagovernment.org] will prevent hacker attacks?
I suppose governments can't go completely virtual until we can figure out how to make them hacker-proof.
Is complete openness in the code and systems enough to counter hackers? And/or can we suppose there will be a lot of white hats in favor of, and thus protecting, an open source government?
Can anyone explain... (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet spies? (Score:1)
Please tell me (Score:2)
Why are you even on the web? (Score:1)
And BusinessWeek maybe you should go back to focusing on Executive Life, instead of publishing fascist propaganda for the government.
Spies? (Score:1)
Logistics is key, even in the cyber age (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasn't "The military marches on its stomach." some historical quote that was attributed to Napolean? Anyhow, where I'd keep an eye out for cyber vulnerabilities is in the logisitics chain. All it'd take is someone to get into the requisitions, inventory, and procurement channels and they could make all hell break loose. Frozen fish in the place of ammo, livestock sent to some other place, 100 screwdrivers and bomb fuses to an office that only does paperwork, etc. Not only can such things waste resources or man hours to correct, but it can cause negative economic consequences for contract vendors. Stupid shit like that could get old really fast.
Hopefully the military brass has enough sense to ensure strong verification when dealing with civilian contractors in the supply chain (and via internal supply channels). Also there should be some means to ensure the trustworthiness of supply contractors, as some purchase orders might have the possibility of indicating potential for action, etc.
On the other hand, this would potentially be a great way for the U.S. to attack any adversaries too. The more bureaucratic, thick, and mundane an organization is - the more opportunities for logistics data mayhem. False requests will tend to look more "reasonable" under such systems.
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Nope, it was Sun Tzu who said it first in 'The Art of War' almost 3,000 years ago.
"Hopefully the military brass has enough sense to ensure strong verification when dealing with civilian contractors in the supply chain (and via internal supply channels).
Wrong again. Most of the time the procurement folks are too lazy/overworked to even bother with a freaking FAX, forget even trying to get them to do anyth
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Diverts from the Real Issue (Score:1)
Again it begs the question, (Score:2)
Why are they connected to the internet? (Score:1)
"Secret War"? (Score:2)
USAF is putting it's scare-tactic recruitment propaganda on during prime-time TV, replete with all the current buzzwords.
D5E vs C4I (Score:1)
"three cyber security specialists"??? (Score:1)