Category: Computer/online security

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DefDog: Cyberwar is the New Yellow Cake

Computer/online security, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
DefDog

The same has been said about the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, et al…..and nothing seems to back up the dire rhetoric, but the spending of tax dollars rolls on just the same.

Wired Opinion: Cyberwar Is the New Yellowcake

By

WIRED, 14 February 2012

In last month’s State of the Union address, President Obama called on Congress to pass “legislation that will secure our country from the growing dangers of cyber threats.” The Hill was way ahead of him, with over 50 cybersecurity bills introduced this Congress. This week, both the House and Senate are moving on their versions of consolidated, comprehensive legislation.

The reason cybersecurity legislation is so pressing, proponents say, is that we face an immediate risk of national disaster.

“Today’s cyber criminals have the ability to interrupt life-sustaining services, cause catastrophic economic damage, or severely degrade the networks our defense and intelligence agencies rely on,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said at a hearing last week. “Congress needs to act on comprehensive cybersecurity legislation immediately.”

Yet evidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent. In many respects, rhetoric about cyber catastrophe resembles threat inflation we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War. And while Congress’ passing of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation wouldn’t lead to war, it could saddle us with an expensive and overreaching cyber-industrial complex.

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Robert Steele: Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies, and the New Craft of Intelligence

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, Hacking, History, Information Operations (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Resilience, Serious Games, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc), Whole Earth Review
Robert David STEELE Vivas

I have begun drafting my portion of the new Handbook of Intelligence Studies (Routledge, 2013), it is a chapter early on entitled “The Craft of Intelligence.”  I pick up where Allen Dulles and Sherman Kent left off.  My graphic on Intelligence Maturity captures the essence of my thinking at the strategic level, but of course there is more to come, including the desperate need to restore integrity to all that we do.

In 1988 I ghost-wrote for the Commandant of  the Marine Corps an article that he enhanced and signed, “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's.”  At that time my focus was on the difference between the conventional threat and the emerging unconventional threat.

Now my focus is on the purpose and process of intelligence as decision-support.  We must — we will — move from secret intelligence for the few to open intelligence for the many; from expensive centralized largely worthless intelligence to free and low-cost distributed intelligence relevant to every person at every level on every issue; from intelligence as window-dressing for channeling $80 billion a year to banks and corporations, to intelligence as an integral element of every aspect of a Smart Nation.

Today Owl sent me a link to an article, Philip E. Tetlock and Barabara A Mellers, “Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies,” American Psychologist, 2011, pp. 1-12.  I  respect Owl, so I printed it and read it twice.

This article is completely out of touch with reality and the authors have not bothered to familiarize themselves with the literatures pertinent to their endeavor.  Out of 89 cited sources 12 are non-intelligence-related prior publications of the lead author, 1 is a prior publication of the second author, and 11 are ostensibly about intelligence but truly marginal selections.  So 12% sources on the subject, 13% self-citation, and 75% escoteric psycho-babble irrelevant to the actual challenge.  As an intelligence professional, I am offended that two ostensibly erudite individuals would dare to publish this trype without even a semblance of understanding of the subject under discussion.

See Also:

Robert Steele: The Craft of Intelligence – OLD vs. NEW

Here are a few comments and additional links:

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John Robb: Four Sources of Trust, Crypto Not Scaling….

Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Threats
John Robb

Why The Global System is Killing Trust

Posted: 09 Feb 2012 03:35 PM PST

Trust is an essential building block of any economic and social system.  Systems that attempt to operate without it inevitably fail.  A loss of trust typically preceeds a collapse in legitimacy.

That's our future.  Here's why:

Let's start with a philosopher “king” of crypt0-security, Bruce Schneier.  He has a new book out called Liars and Outliers: Eneabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive (Wiley, 2012).

The book is all about the mechanisms for building trust.  There are four mechanisms:

  • moral controls,
  • reputational pressure (shame),
  • institutional pressure (legal system), and
  • security controls (encryption, locks, etc.).

He contends (rightly) that in the modern world, we don't typically make/have the personal relationships required to build moral and reputational trust.  We typically make impersonal relationships when we interact with a global economic system (you buy stuff made by people you don't know).  As a result, we rely up on institutional (legal compliance) and security (to guard against bad behavior) to provide the level of trust necessary to make the global economy work.

There are two massive problems with that.

Legal compliance is increasingly a farce.  Take the mortgage settlement the US government and the financial industry reached over rampant fraud in mortgage lending.  I wrote a bit more about it on the Resilient Community blog if you want more detail.   What does this mean?  That even at the national level in a “developed country” it is impossible to use legal means to enforce trustworthiness (let's not even talk about compliance at the global level).  It's doesn't work anymore.  It's just too easy for anybody with financial means, to buy off country's legal system for pennies on the dollar (to the damage caused).  The compliance system is broken.

So, that leaves us with security as the only way to prevent bad actors from running away with the global system.  This leads me to a great presentation I heard yesterday by Dan Geer.   He's another philosopher “king” of crypto-security (but for the CIA).  Very smart guy.   He made a convincing case that security is scaling slower than data, bandwidth, node, and user growth.  It is falling behind and will continue to fall behind as the global system grows.

Upshot:  it's already nearly impossible to secure big organizations. Every Fortune 500 company has and will continue to compromised. The government's systems are already a sieve.  There's almost nothing that can be done about it and it will get increasingly worse. Forget about securing a single person trying to connect to the global system.  They are just sheep ready for slaughter.

So, what happens now?

The global system will continue to grow.  Trust will continue to leak as attempts at compliance and security fail to work effectively.  The economic depression we have already started gets worse and worse and worse.  Disorder erupts.  It grows….

Is there a solution?  An alternative form of social order that can provide a scalable global solution?

Yes.  Resilient communities.  Resilient communities rescale your life down to a rational level.  They make personal relationships with the people that economically interact with you possible (again).

Hey, let the rest of the world sink into the squalor of a trust free world.   It will make that system easier to trounce in head to head competition for people.

See Also:

Robert David Steele, THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, 5 June 2012)

and

Robert Garigue at Phi Beta Iota

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DefDog: Anonymous Intercepts FBI – Scotland Yard Conference Call On — Wait for It — Hacking… + Meta-RECAP

Computer/online security, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement
DefDog

Example of the state of USGOV systems….

Anonymous gain access to FBI and Scotland Yard hacking call

BBC news, 3 February 2012

Hacking network Anonymous has released a recording of a conference call between the FBI and UK police in which they discuss efforts against hacking.

The call, said to have taken place last month, covers the tracking of Anonymous and similar groups, dates of planned arrests and evidence details.

Anonymous also published an email, apparently from the FBI, showing the email addresses of call participants.

The FBI confirmed the intercept and said it was hunting those responsible.

The loose collective Anonymous have targeted a number of big institutions in recent years

“The information was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained. A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible,” it said in a statement.

London's Metropolitan Police's central e-crime unit said the matter was being investigated but that no operational risks had been identified.

A comment on one of the Twitter accounts linked to Anonymous, AnonymousIRC, said: “The FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.”

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  This is too funny for words.  Hackers and Phi Beta Iota have been very clear for over 20 years that most law enforcement systems are easy to hack into, especially now that they are all digital and controlled by a server where no one has had the brains to change the factory installed root password.  What is really happening now is that government incomtence in security is being “outed.”  CIA has worked overseas for decades, pretending to be clandestine when in fact all case officers have been known to local liaison.  Similarly, government “security” is an oxymoron.  On the one hand, it does not exist, and on the other we are spending tens of billions on the well-intentioned but ignorant threatics of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) and the world's most expensive coffee klatch, the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC).  This is what you end up with when a government of arrogant “experts” and even more arrogant politicians refuse to listen to both insider iconoclasts and outsider “loyal opposition” minds that actually know what they are talking about and see these things 20 years before the “leaders” at the top, who are really nothing more than clerks fighting for budget share, without a strategic bone in their bodies.

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

See Also:

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DefDog: STRATFOR Bites on Security

03 Economy, Commerce, Computer/online security, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency
DefDog

No. It's THE code breaker. No more secrets… Sneakers

Victims in hacking of security analyst Stratfor targeted after speaking to news media, online

Associated Press, 27 December 2011

EXTRACT:

The loose-knit hacking movement “Anonymous” claimed Sunday through Twitter that it had stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to the company’s clients. Anonymous members posted links to some of the information Sunday and more on Monday.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  We sounded the alarm in 1994 and were ignored.  We sounded it again in 2010 and were ignored.  STRATFOR is the lowest common denominator in an abysmally irresponsible government-private sector ecology of ignorance mixed with complacency.

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DefDog: Russia-Europe-China Ignore US Cyber-Fools

02 China, 03 Economy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Computer/online security, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency
DefDog

Some background on this old report…..this conference has been going on for some time, fluctuates between Garmisch and Moscow…The US has offered to host it but has been consistently turned down. China showed up two years ago and the next conference (2012) is scheduled to be in Beijing…..if the US cannot, with is efforts in technological development, host a cyber conference it is indicative of what the rest of the world thinks of us….

Russia's Cyber Security Plans

As Washington airs plans for a new “cyber command,” a top Russian official discusses the threat of cyberweapons.

Phi Beta Iota:  The lack of intelligence and integrity in the US Government is chillingly deep, especially within the US secret intelligence, and nowhere more irresponsible than within the National Security Agency/US Cyber-Command – both oxymorons.  The Chinese are all over NSA and Cyber is not a Command.

See Also:

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