U.S. Cyber Command has no idea why it exists | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Cyber Command has no idea why it exists

reason.com

11 pointscwan29 comments

This article is awful. Instead of doing actual reporting, which would quickly have unearthed the actual purpose of a "cyber" (gag) - command --- which is to protect the integrity of critical information systems (particularly military and utilities) and to develop mechanisms to deny those capabilities to adversaries --- the writer of this piece contents himself with quips like "commander in geek" and "glasses-wearing general" and "world's most powerful IT guy".

I sympathize with Reason's philosophy in general (though I'm not a libertarian), but isn't a strong military one of the very few things that even libertarians agree we should be letting the government take care of?

...but isn't a strong military one of the very few things that even libertarians agree we should be letting the government take care of?

A fact, which is often lost in modern political discussions: goals != results. One can oppose a law or program because of poor implementation (or expected poor implementation) even while agreeing with it's goals.

For instance, I favor some banking regulation to reduce leverage and the possibility of contagion. However, I oppose the particular bill currently likely to be passed, because it makes speculation (particularly shorts) more difficult and codifies bailouts/government forced bankruptcy into law. Similarly, I expect the author of this article favors national defense, but opposes this program since it appears to be ineffective and potentially harmful.

OTOH, I'm also tired of complaints about the way something is run without presenting a reasonable alternative.

Complaining is easy.

If anything, the most painful complaint you can make about the modern military's role in information security is their lack of involvement. We're far more likely to lose billions of dollars due to a concerted attack on our utilities or financial markets than China is.

So, while I see what you're saying, I don't think it's a coherent response to my comment or the article.

the most painful complaint you can make about the modern military's role in information security is their lack of involvement.

On the contrary. Given that the Internet is the creation of DARPA, indeed, was once called "ARPAnet", they're already up to their eyeballs. And to their credit, they've done an excellent job. I don't have citations handy, but I recall reading over the past year about many supposed "cyber attacks", yet for the most part, we all go about our business and surfing without even noticing that anything was going on.

The folks that designed the protocols on which this network runs (everything from ethernet through TCP/IP through DNS) did a phenomenal job. The network just may be the most robust thing ever engineered by man.

So perhaps they've already done their job. The front-loaded engineering gave us something that can withstand huge amounts of abuse, and so doesn't require an army (literally) to babysit it.

You and I aren't having the same conversation. I tend to agree with everything you just said, but the issue isn't the government's role in running the Internet. It's the government's role in offensive and defensive computer security. In other words: it's preventing China from paying 20 year olds to shut down the power grid (note: plausible) and directing research that would allow us to do that to China.

In your comment, you suggested that even libertarians (such as the author) should be supporting a strong military: "... isn't a strong military one of the very few things that even libertarians agree we should be letting the government take care of?"

This article doesn't address that issue one way or the other. All they do is criticize a specific program for having poorly defined goals and for (by their estimation) it's significant odds of collateral damage.

I don't really associate with any political party, but I believe the libertarian view is for smaller military. Often from what I've read they would like to see no standing army, leaving a navy, and militias for defense. However I have not read that much, so I could be reading for an inaccurate source.

No, it's not awful. What the hell is Cyber Command actually trying to do? The NSA's IAD has long had responsibility for securing classified networks (and done a damn good job at it). Cyber command is not about defense. It's about a move to militarize the internet. Too bad the security community is only too happy to jump on the bandwagon for the federal dollars, rather than countering that the military has no business creating an arms race on the net.

I find the notion that any branch of the government has done a good job securing sensitive networks pretty much laughable. Since you could mean a lot of different things by "classified networks", I'm happy to concede your specific point while reiterating that you haven't addressed the core issue.

(I've done network security stuff for DoD and for some agencies, but you may have more experience on the classified side than I do, and what relevant experience I have I'm not going to give up to Hacker News and the Google index.)

And again: the NSA has done absolutely nothing to ensure that adversaries can't shut the power down in major cities, disrupt the GSM infrastructure, or cause billions of dollars in economic damages by messing with electronic markets.

And again: we have no specific knowledge that any branch of the military or intelligence has that capability to inflict on an adversary today.

Is there substantial overlap here with NSA? I'm 100% sure there is. But NSA is managed very differently than DoD.

What is the real life risk to lack of GSM coverage? Is it really just millions of nerds without iphone (cell) access?

Is any of the electric grid even publicly accessible over the internet? Surely there isn't a big "off" button for the power grid, as its quite a distrubted system... Furthermore I really doubt the infrastructure for these is publicly accessible over the internet. Even so, it seems like physical security would go a much longer way than network in the case of utilities.

As for markets, well there is a tiny agency called the SEC.

Either way this security is a cost to be borne by industry...Not ran by state military agencies.

Let's just call this for what it is, a power grab for defense/infosec contractors, and career officers. :)

To that end I'm not surprised to see it so vehemently defended by infosec professionals.

No. The real-life risk to lack of GSM coverage is that people can't use the phones during emergencies, and that a huge variety of industrial and municipal control networks that piggyback on commercial GSM networks will be rendered inoperable.

As for the markets, what does the SEC do when they get shut down by an electronic attack, other than hold a press conference?

And yes. I'm pretty sure you should just take my word for it on the utilities stuff.

From what I remember, during 9/11 the cell networks in NY were unusable due to capacity, should the DoD be implementing capacity guidlines as well, should we budget trillions so the DoD can buy more spectrum for cell carriers? Do CB radios suddenly stop working?

As for the power companies, I'm sure thats why they hire security professionals like yourself :).

The SEC provides regulations.

Billions don't need to be sunk by defense agencies on what is essentially a regulation issue.

A lot of these doomsday scenarios are bullshit. The world ran fine without cell phones and the internet, it'll run just as fine without it for a little while. Aside from a medical case here and there, noone is going to die and no country will dissolve as a result of being hacked on the internet or even being without power for a little while.

All I can say is that you have strong opinions about telephony, the markets, and the utilities for someone who has clearly never spent time working with the backend systems of phone companies, exchanges, and power companies.

But yes, regulations would be nice. That way, after a foreign power we've pissed off by parking aircraft carriers in their shipping lanes decides to inflict tens of billions of dollars of damage on us with a a few hours keyboarding, we can at least try to sue someone.

You touch on it with the carrier point; so let me get to the real core of my argument.

Electronic or financial damage is nothing compared to the ability to level entire nations physically. Any financial/electronic threat has a suitable recourse physically.

Not sure what's with all the downvotes. I'm honestly not trolling. If there is a large problem with the argument I presented please respond so I can form better opinions.

Yeh, this is not a new problem. In the 80's there was a lot of "discussion" over who had exactly what jurisdiction on the internet.#

It's not really got much better since.

It just seems like the Cyber Command is taking over functions traditionally reserved for the NSA. Consolidating efforts for reverse engineering malware and other software seems to be the primary focus at the moment.

Since NSA is going to keep doing all that stuff anyways, I doubt they mind too much; it just means the oversight is getting shifted away from them.

It seems to me that somebody with not much of a clue has read some rather bad sci-fi novels, and now wants to make it a reality -- with not much of a clue as to what "it" really is.

I can't tell whether you're talking about the author of the article, or the federal government. If it's the author, I agree.

Nerds. With guns.

All snarky humor aside, the purpose here is to have a military commander to point the finger at if and when the nation has a crippling attack on internet infrastructure. When that happens, he'll be the guy getting lots of money.

I agree that it is a bit of a power grab, but the Air Force has been looking for more elbow room for a while. We don't need a lot of B-2 bombers to find OBL. The real question is how to determine if they are doing a good job or not? It's kind of an important thing to know. Especially if you spending a lot of money.

So I support some kind of planning/organization, but I'm not sure an entire command should have been created.

There are some very interesting things going on in the cyber warfare arena. I've seen enough to know it is a risk. We need to pay somebody to keep an eye on it and prepare for contingencies.

I'm just not happy with the Air Force. Something about the match of that agency with that mission doesn't sit well with me. I see lots of expensive cyber warfare computer infrastructure in the near future. I'd rather see DoD do some kind of SecDef skunkworks project sub rosa with some of the incredible tech companies in the states than set up a command. This is time for maximum impact, not structure. You guys have any idea what kind of BS goes with a command? It's the wrong move with the wrong guys.

Of the three major service agencies, the Air Force has always been closest to internet security. They're a feeder for network security people in the industry, and they've been in the middle of "cybercrime" investigations since Operation Sun Devil in the early '90s.

So really, you need to start with the question of, "should the DoD be running information security, or should intelligence"? If it's military, then it's naturally going to be the Air Force.

Incidentally: this is not an area where the government can simply collaborate with private industry. Too much of what's required to be effective (start with intensely sensitive information sharing) is off the table for private companies.

I agree with all of that.

Part of the question is whether cyber activities are domestic in nature or foreign. While it might seem like a moot point to folks from other countries, we make a distinction about which agencies can do what and where. There needs to be some thinking about how an actual cyber war would happen. Would Air Force personnel physically take out internet backbones located inside the Continental U.S.? Would they serve search warrants? If not, would they direct the FBI to do so? Can they detain or investigate people?

We focus on the logical structure of a cyber-attack: computers, code, vectors, etc. But there a are a lot of physical components as well, and they can be located anywhere.

I completely agree that the AF is best of all the services to do this. If anything, the eventual solution should probably end up as an equal to DoD and not as a subordinate -- this subject area is just a weird duck when it comes to constitutional law. I just don't think taking the idea of a command and applying it here makes much sense. Sounds like the old "I have the solution, what is your problem" scenario.

And I can't get into your second point without becoming uncomfortable. Yes, we're not talking some kind of loose collaboration. But there's a long way from simple collaboration with industry to having a GS-12 potentially decide the fate of billions of dollars of e-commerce. The career track here does not match at all with the other services.

Or to put this in a personal story, I knew a guy who worked with very sensitive information for the Navy back in the day. He had a PhD from MIT and never wore a Navy uniform. He showed up to work everyday in sandals and Bermuda shorts. While he was incredibly effective for the Navy, he also did not fit into the traditional roles at DoD whatsoever. They had an inspection and he was supposed to have a uniform. He had no idea what a uniform looked like or how to wear one, and it was quite an adventure making it all happen on time. All of the paperwork and procedures the Navy required made absolutely no sense to him -- so he had other people take care of it.

Now you can get away with this for a while in small isolated units where the rest of the organization can "cover" for them, but it's another thing entirely if 90% of the guys doing the work don't fit into the cookie-cutter mold they are supposed to.

An organization structured to hone young people into super responsible war-fighting roles, doing so in ways it has learned in wars since Sparta, is going to have a lot of problems with the people, personalities, and experiences necessary to fulfill this particular mission. In my opinion.

EDIT: Or to put this in terms of my original joke, which was meant to be insightful, I'm not so sure that an organization dedicated to cyber warfare needs to be part of the armed forces.

Your second graf is very sensible and raises many of the big questions here. At the same time: the threat we're talking about is very real --- it may be the most cost-effective way to hit the US today. We've done much dumber things in the name of national security than anything the "Cyber Command" could possibly execute on.

We're way behind the eight ball here --- at least in terms of the stuff we're allowed to know about --- and I think it's probably best to reserve criticism until we actually have something up and running to oversee.

I like criticism, so I'll take issue there, but for the rest of your comment I wish I could upvote you about a dozen times.

And that may be the first time that has happened :)

The problem I have is that the notion of "cyber war" is so open-ended, and runs from immediate practical reality to pure science fiction, that a discussion of a "Cyber Command" is just going to waste a lot of time on BS like the government's secret plan to take over civilian computing systems, or to install spyware on everyone's computer.

Irony: the crazy-sounding stuff, like remote-destroying people's pacemakers or turning off the power to a whole country --- more plausible than the government takeover of the Internet.

* the purpose here is to have a military commander to point the finger at*

Well, a commander and 30,000 airmen. That personnel budget must total at least $3 billion, fully loaded. What's the point of that?

That's easy: the AF "Cyber Command" has command of several basic IT infrastructure units already in the Air Force. It takes a lot of people to make sure that, for instance, military units in the field can actually talk to each other and relay theater intelligence.

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