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| Air Force Aims for "Full Control"; of "Any and All" Computers | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 14 2008, 10:29 AM (312 Views) | |
| robin | May 14 2008, 10:29 AM Post #1 |
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Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers via Danger Room by Noah Shachtman on 5/13/08 The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is. And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t849CYRd2Ak The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online. The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity iniative." That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks. "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes. "Now, all you need is an Internet connection." On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement." "Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access," a request for proposals notes, "to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms... any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware." This isn't just some computer science study, mind you; "research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities." Unlike an Air Force colonel's proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, "low and slow" approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then "stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information" from adversaries' networks. But, in the end, the Air Force wants to see all kinds of "techniques and technologies" to "Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, [or] Destroy" hostile systems. And "in addition to these main concepts," the Research Lab would like to see studies into "Proactive Botnet Defense Technology Development," the "reinvent[ion of] the network protocol stack" and new antennas, based on carbon nanotubes. Traditionally, the military has been extremely reluctant to talk much about offensive operations online. Instead, the focus has normally been on protecting against electronic attacks. But in the last year or so, the tone has changed -- and become more bellicose. "Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense," said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service's Cyberspace Task Force. "If you're defending in cyber, you're already too late." "We want to go in and knock them out in the first round," added Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, which focuses on network issues. "An adversary needs to know that the U.S. possesses powerful hard and soft-kill (cyberwarfare) means for attacking adversary information and command and support systems at all levels," a recent Defense Department report notes. "Every potential adversary, from nation states to rogue individuals... should be compelled to consider... an attack on U.S. systems resulting in highly undesireable consequences to their own security." __._,_.___ ============================================== IF YOU'RE NOT PARANOID, THEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION! ============================================== To Post: ParanoidTimes@yahoogroups.com Home Page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ParanoidTimes Subscribe: ParanoidTimes-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ================================================== NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ================================================== *(there are embedded links ill have to re-add) |
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| robin | May 15 2008, 09:48 AM Post #2 |
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i saw this commercial on tv. ============================================== Air Force's Scare-Mongering Space Ad Shoves Facts Out of the Airlock via Danger Room by Noah Shachtman on 5/7/08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk7DVpCkgwQ No one expects commercials to be word-for-word accurate -- not even ads from the U.S. military. But a new Air Force commercial, about the perils of an attack in space, does more than stretch the truth, a bit. It snaps the truth into tiny little pieces, experts and former officers say -- violating the laws of physics and common sense, while flying in the face everything that's known about the world's constellation of satellites. "What if your cell phone calls, your television, your GPS system, even your bank transactions, could be taken out with a single missile?" the military ad asks. "They can." No, they can't. Not unless there's some new missile out there that can strike dozens and dozens of targets, spread out over thousands and thousands of miles. Even a nuke in space wouldn't do the trick. Communication, television and navigational systems are handled by different arrays of satellites. Each craft in the constellation is set apart by hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. And each constellation is thousands of miles from the other. At least ten thousand miles, for example, separates the arrays of communications and GPS satellites. The communications birds are typically positioned in geostationary orbit, or GEO, about 22,000 miles away from Earth. The ring of 32 GPS satellites, on the other hand, circle the planet in a Medium Earth Orbit, or MEO, approximately 12,000 miles up. There's no missile that can hit two targets that far away from one other. (In fact, there's no anti-satellite missile, taking off from Earth, that can even reach GEO or MEO. China's satellite-killing missile only reached up to about 540 miles.) And even if such a weapon was one day invented, it still wouldn't cause much more than hiccups in your GPS or bank service. Because "while it is true that a single ASAT [anti-satellite weapon] could theoretically take out a single satellite, none of the services mentioned in the commercial rely on a single satellite," says Brian Weeden, who served nine years in the Air Force's space and missile corps. "I find it distressing that the Air Force would resort to such fear-mongering." Take GPS. There are 24 of those satellites. Blasting one of them might slow up your car's navigational system for a little while. But one missile could in no way bring down the entire constellation. "It is impossible, period," says the Center for Defense Information's Theresa Hitchens. "We do lose satellites, you know. They die all the time," adds our own Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on space security (among other things) at the New America Foundation. "When the Galaxy IV [telecommunications satellite] croaked, there was a real problem for the pagers in the U.S. But we got over it. Even if you whack one satellite (which is really a collection of transponders), the service could simply lease more space. The point is that with debris, the harsh environment of outer space and Murphy's Law, that we don't have a single satellite in orbit that is irreplaceable. Because it would go dead at the worst possible time." And, of course, not all of the services mentioned in the Air Force's ad rely solely on satellites to function. "Cell phone calls are not, generally speaking, dependent on satellites. Indeed, that is why they are not called satellite phones," Lewis quips. "Nor does television (or radio), with the exception of DirectTV and satellite radio. So, you lose porn and Howard Stern, but PBS keeps going." Even banks -- which do use GPS to track the timing of their transactions -- have terrestrial, fiber optic backups. "It is clear that the Air Force is preying on the lack of public understanding of the threat (and space in general) in an attempt to convince voters that space is important too and only the US Air Force can protect America in space,' Weeden notes. "After years of trying to convince the politicians that areas such as space situational awareness needed more funding and failing, the Air Force has turned to another method to get its message across: fear." Because Air Force Space Command can't even do that much against the kind of satellite-killing missile depicted in the ad, Hitchens observes. It's pretty nigh impossible to protect current LEO [Low Earth Orbit] sats unless you have time to move them (which is doubtful) and GEO sats are relatively safe only because of the booster power required to get something there. The primary USAF [US Air Force] efforts at space protection currently center of space situational awareness (knowing what is happening in space), and research on distributed architectures (i.e. constellations) and rapid resupply. The latter two capabilities once developed would help ensure redundant capability but it wouldn't "protect" any individual satellite from a DA [direct assent] ASAT [a satellite-striking missile that takes off from Earth]. There are also efforts to convince commercial folks to take steps like encryption and electromagnetic hardening; again nothing to help... The only sure way at the moment to protect against a DA ASAT is to bomb the launch pad before it takes off. The last time I checked, Air Force Space Command does not drop bombs. The anti-satellite ad is part of an $81 million marketing push to, as the Washington Post put it, "reinvigorate America's love for fighter jets and high technology, and to highlight the service's wartime activity." Most of the commercials in the series make no explicit attempt to recruit new airmen. Ad the service is currently looking to pare back, rather than increase, its workforce. Which leads John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, to say, "I am at a loss to understand the statutory authority under which the US Air Force can spend my money in propagandizing to me that they are doing a great job of spending my money. This advertising initiative is without precedent, and if it is not illegal it should be." |
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