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Air Force To Rewrite the Rules of the Internet
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Nov 03, 2008 12:59 PM
from the because-they-can dept.
from the because-they-can dept.
meridiangod writes "The Air Force is fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even locations are unclear. So now the service is looking to restore its advantage on the virtual battlefield by doing nothing less than the rewriting the 'laws of cyberspace.'" I'm sure that'll work out really well for them.
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Disconnect (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were smart, they would disconnect their computers from the public internet. People can't access hardware they can't access.
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, of course. But this isn't about computers with Secret information, which are a non-issue when it comes to the Internet -- those machines are on their own completely air-gapped network and secured behind locked doors, alarms and armed guards.
This is about the Air Force's services that are on the public Internet. The Air Force, like the other branches of the military and other government agencies, needs to interface with the public. One of their primary means of doing that these days is through their Internet presence.
Of course, sites in the .mil domain are going to constantly be hammered by cyber criminals, bored teenagers and even spammer gangs trying to bring down the sites.
The USAF would like to alter the permissive and decentralized nature of the Internet through technological and possibly political means to suit itself.
All I have to say is good luck with that and uh, get in line. Companies have tried and failed for years to mold the Internet in their own image. Companies with billions and billions of dollars to throw at the matter. Companies who were once powerful juggernauts and 800 lb. gorillas finding themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant...
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Insightful)
You know
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Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Informative)
I love Google as much as the next nerd, but exactly what rules are you talking about?
FTP, SMTP, HTTP, UDP, and TCP/IP still work pretty much as their respective RFCs dictated prior to Google. So do ping, tracert, and a whole host of other things.
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a pretty radical change to before-google-became-all-too-popular times.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Insightful)
Altavista, Hotbot, and MSN are not verbs. Yahoo! tried to make its name a verb(with their "Do you Yahoo?" slogan) but failed. Ask [ask.com] is a verb, but unlike Google, Ask was born a verb, it wasn't made one because of its ubiquity and popularity among the masses.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
A googol is a one with a hundred zeros.
I internet all the time.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Insightful)
Google changed something about how the internet is used and perceived by people. I'm not discounting this but the USAF is trying to change something more fundamental about the internet. The effects that they want would require scrapping TCP/IP and replacing it with something else (it may still be called TCP/IP but it will be something entirely different).
This is like claiming that the "Obama Revolution" is fundamentally changing the nature of the United States and then somebody coming along and saying that they want to change the Law of Gravity. They're just not on the same scale.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Insightful)
Bookmarking is obsolete? Since when? I and everyone I know who has a computer with internet access has some bookmarks.
Bookmarking would be obsolete for people who only do research on the internet (and not even for all of them) and only visit sites that are as popular as Slashdot or Digg. If they like any, even just one, slightly more unknown site than that they risk not being to find it again if they can't recall the exact url. How high on the list of results from a search engine a particular site would show up on changes day to day, even hour to hour. It might tenth in the results one day and not even on the first page of 100 the next. Anyone who tried to just use Google instead of bookmarking would quickly learn better. Seriously, how can you think Google made bookmarking obsolete and who modded up this nonsense? Google astroturfers, maybe?
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
whitehouse.gov is the real official website of the executive branch, while whitehouse.org and whitehouse.com are not (though this example is a bit dated).
How so? Hasn't the White House been a commercial operation for the past 8 years, for sale to anyone for the right price?
Of course, the more cynical among us will claim that it has always been so. Others would suggest that at least whitehouse.org is inappropriate, though it might have been better to suggest that during the Clinton administration.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
The USAF would like to alter the permissive and decentralized nature of the Internet through technological and possibly political means to suit itself.
I reckon that if any entity tries a large scale centralisation of the "the internet" then the users will simply adapt and decentralize in other ways.
The more surveillance present on the internet the less useful it will be as a way to transmit information anonymously. However with advances in wireless technologies setting up other ways to transmit data is not only possible, but easier and cheaper than ever before. It's not about doing things that are illegal, but rather that to ensure freedom, liberty and justice there needs to be ways of communicating that is not subject to government (or corporate) scrutiny.
Of course that is not what this specific case is about, but I fear that whatever measures they implement (or try to) will carry with it a host of other issues that could inhibit the ability of ordinary citizens to access knowledge or data without being logged in an ever growing database. The phrase "if you are not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about" is misleading. Since it does not consider the possibility that what you did today, while not illegal, could be used months, years, decades, down the line when the motivations of those with access to the database changes (or indeed the database falls into the hands of antagonistic person(s)).
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
Someone, someday will carry lost a USB thumbdrive carrying the sensitive information.
Perhaps we need a new RFC, similar to this one [RFC1149] [faqs.org], for USB thumbdrive.
Parent
Consider it done (Score:4, Funny)
lameness filter forced me to munge the layout
RFC1149a - Standard for the transmission of flash memory on avia
Network Working Group_____________ TubeSteak
Request for Comments: 1149a__________LOL WTF
3 November 2008
A Standard for the Transmission of Flash Memory on Avian Carriers
Status of this Memo
This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of
flash memory in avian carriers. This specification is primarily
useful in Metropolitan Area Networks. This is an experimental, not
recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Overview and Rational
Avian carriers can provide high delay, low throughput, and low
altitude service. The connection topology is limited to a single
point-to-point path for each carrier, used with standard carriers,
but many carriers can be used without significant interference with
each other, outside of early spring. This is because of the 3D ether
space available to the carriers, in contrast to the 1D ether used by
IEEE802.3. The carriers have an intrinsic collision avoidance
system, which increases availability. Unlike some network
technologies, such as packet radio, communication is not limited to
line-of-sight distance. Connection oriented service is available in
some cities, usually based upon a central hub topology.
Frame Format
The flash memory is packaged, inside a small waterproof container,
and formatted to FAT32. The waterproof container is attached to the
back of the avian, between the wings, as a backpack. The bandwidth
is variable and limited by the carrying capacity of the avian.
Upon receipt, the backpack is removed, the flash memory extracted
and checked for physical and liquid damage.
Discussion
Multiple types of service can be provided with a prioritized pecking
order. An additional property is built-in worm detection and
eradication. With time, the carriers are self-regenerating. While
broadcasting is not specified, storms can cause data loss. There is
persistent delivery retry, until the carrier drops. Audit trails
are automatically generated, and can often be found on logs and
cable trays.
Security Considerations
Security is a problem during normal operation, as flash memory
has a non-trivial and intrinsic value. Special measures must be
taken (such as data encryption) when avian carriers are used in
a tactical environment.
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Insightful)
Correction: any computer which is supposed to be allowed to access Secret information is not allowed to be hooked up to the Internet. I suspect there is no way to enforce the rule as you state it without possibly divulging what is secret and what is not. For example if I'm monitoring a computer and find that a bunch of files have been deleted, I might look at one of the files I downloaded that was purged, and say, "hey, this memo implies the F35 can climb at over 330 meters/second."
What I'm saying is that it's best not to trust in systems to operate according to the rules.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Informative)
"hey, this memo implies the F35 can climb at over 330 meters/second."
Actually, there's plenty of that stuff around, and it's actually not necessarily classified, even if it's true. In the bad old days of the cold war, I asked the security officer in my Army unit why all this crap we were working with was classified SECRET and TOP SECRET when the same exact information was available to anyone purchasing a Jane's book by mail order. It was explained to me that it was not the raw information that was secret, but rather the positive verification that it was true that was being controlled. Most classified information falls into that category, really. Very little of it is truly secret, in that nobody without clearance knows it. I've seen quite a few pictures of "people and stuff at locations in Certain Southwest Asian Countries" that I know from personal experience would be classified SECRET or higher if they were government photos rather than casual snapshots taken by a yokel or journalist with a pocket camera. What the classification of the subject matter does is bar me (under penalty of waterboarding or whatever) from pointing out which pictures those are.
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Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes that is pretty much the first rule. any machine with senitive data is not hooked up to the Internet. Not even via a firewall. They call it an "air gap" but today with wireless the term is an anachronism but still you get the idea "no connection at all".
Computers that handle REALLY sensitive stuff can't even be connected to normal AC power systems or even to normal building ground wires.
Many of the computers have removable disk drives. That is where ALL of the drives can be removed without tools. The rule requires the drives to be removed and stored in a safe when not in use.
Believe me they do have a few smart people who understand security and they have a decent educational system in place where people have to go to class and read some papers before they can use systems that handle sensitive information. And they are required to re-take the classes periodically
But then there are always ideots and weven normal people forget and make mistakes. But then typically some guard is assigned the task to walk around a pull on safe handles and check that desks are clear and so on. Hell likely catch most of the mistakes
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Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
Because the Air Force can't catch people over the internet, that must mean that they are also vulnerable to vans with tinted windows in the car park of the armed forces branch head quarters with a 20" dish antenna mounted on top.
Parent
Jurisdiction... (Score:5, Insightful)
The AF can deal with someone in a nearby van, but not easily deal with someone anonymously using a free wifi connection in Europe that is bounced through 5 different servers. Even if they were able to completely track an attacker, how do they deal with multiple international jurisdictions?
Parent
Re:Jurisdiction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. And some harsh realities have to be realized by the AF or any DOD department.
1) The Internet does not belong to America. Period. It is a global network of good guys and bad guys, and the rest of the world won't, nor should they abide by our rules.
2) The Internet does not belong to the military. It has far more to do with domestic and international trade and information than it does to various arms of the DOD.
If the USAF wants a secure network, then they should create their own isolated network completely divorced from the civilian Internet. I'm sorry if that means generals can't look at porn sites from their office, but that's the way things go.
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:4, Interesting)
The Air Force has announced similar programs to this in the past with little or no actual outcome. Every now and then they have to come out with another program with a spiffy name to distract us from the fact that they can't keep kids from breaking into their networks.
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true. While working for the Dept of Defense I saw this scenario played out - it was around 1995.
A van pulled up about a quarter-block away from a BDM building (located on a very public street) but the van was just too suspicious, for reasons I'd rather not elaborate on. Secretaries returning from lunch noticed it and reported it to security. Local police cordoned off the area very, very quickly - almost real-time - coincident with a first-responder team from the local USAF base. Automatic rifles were pointed at the van from three directions, two Ruger AC-556s were layed against the back door, and the solid side of the van was struck with some sort of hammer, and a cry to get the fuck out of the van ensued. Public area, people put rapidly out of harm's way. I recall that from phone report to guy laid out being handcuffed took less than 20 minutes.
And yes, he was a spy, using the latest EM-based eavesdropping equipment. Saw it and heard it. None of this sir, please step out crap.
Maybe a decade later we've learned to coddle suspected spies... no, wait - I saw Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (sorry, couldn't resist) - I rather doubt it, but then, I could be in error.
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
As opposed to turn-based?
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Informative)
Negative on that full of shit, compadre. Happened in Albuquerque, NM. First responders came from Kirtland AFB - home to Sandia National Labs (where ALL of the country's nukes were managed), (at the time) the Air Force Weapons Lab and the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, as well (at the time) of the Air Force's contract management office.
Home to the cradle-to-grave, or inception to deployment to retirement, of our strategic nuke delivery systems. At the time, Albuquerque was a higher priority Soviet nuclear first strike target than Washington, D.C.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are scarier things in this world than the donut eaters you describe working for the purple-suiters. So, no apologies, not full of shit - not even a little.
And the guy in my story was a spy. And I'm not going to elaborate on what made the van different, as I said in my post.
Believe what you want. If you choose not to, it's just another horse-water-drink situation to me.
Parent
Re:Disconnect (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
They've solved their own problem (Score:5, Informative)
Luckily for the Air Force, they don't actually have to do any work at all to make this happen, since it's been not only possible, but actually implemented since at least 1998, when RFC 2341 was written all about Virtual Private Networks.
Helpful Hint for the Air Force: Pay your private sector computer engineers more and you'll get the innovation you're looking for.
Re:They've solved their own problem (Score:5, Insightful)
VPN?
How bout a private network.
Which is what all secret and above classifications use.
Physically disconnected from the internet.
Physically inaccessible by the plebes.
Code auditing, memory wiping, classification-based job scheduling (a machine works only on secret defense or only on top secret or only on top secret nuclear, or etc. jobs at a time, never mixing), secure attention keys, custom hardware, physical security, surveillance, custom hardware, etc.
I'd say that, for the shit that matters, they've got a pretty good setup. But let's listen to the internet nerds who think they know everything. They'll tell us how to fix it.
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There is porn of it. (Score:5, Funny)
I hope they don't overlook Rule 34.
It worked for the Army! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It worked for the Army! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
there's nothing wrong here (Score:5, Interesting)
for an organization the size of the air force, and with the mandate it has, there is nothing laughable or overly ambitious about say, creating and implementing your own supersecure protocol, and supporting it within its subnet
and, if successful, watch it leave its military surroundings, be adapted by universities, then corporations, then the general public
kind of like the internet itself
somebody is going to do this at some point, considering the various shortcomings of our present dominant protocol suite
that it would be the military to do it first makes sense
Re:there's nothing wrong here (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:there's nothing wrong here (Score:5, Interesting)
there is nothing laughable
But this [cnn.com] is very laughable, as is this [cnn.com] and this [crime-research.org]. Now imagine what we don't know about!
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Penny Arcade (Score:5, Funny)
As usual, Penny Arcade predicted the future. (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/)
Technician: Our webs are down, sir. We can't log in!
Agent: Which webs?
Technician: All of them.
Technician: They've penetrated our code walls. They're stealing the Internet!
Agent: We'll need to hack all IPs simultaneously.
Re:Penny Arcade (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a hint for future postings.
Enclosing your URL in parentheses prevents Slashdot from creating an automatic hyperlink. This is annoying, as it means that I have to copy and paste rather than just clicking. It's the difference between:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/ [penny-arcade.com]
and
(http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/)
on the screen.
In general, it's a bad idea anyway because parentheses are valid in a URL. Parsers which try to automatically hyperlink URLs may get confused by the trailing ')'. For this same reason, despite the rules of English suggesting it, you should avoid punctuation immediately following a URL.
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Re:Penny Arcade (Score:4, Informative)
Or you could type them like <URL:http://example.com/>, which renders like http://example.com/ [example.com] and is a standard.
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prevent IP spoofing - save the world (Score:5, Insightful)
actually there is a very simple measure ISPs can take to prevent many attacks.
and that is to prevent their customers from spoofing the source IP in their IP packets.
If governments (starting with the US) would pressure(force by law) ISPs to do this, it can be done with out much technological difficulties.
This anti-spoofing measure can be implemented on many levels, so that even if a certain ISP does not co-operate other ISPs could prevent its customers from spoofing any IP which does not belong to the problematic ISP. This in itself helps protect against IP spoofing.
Without IP spoofing attackers are more easily identified and blocked.
Shouldn't the IPs all be in the same block? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
good concepts, bad headline (Score:5, Interesting)
If you actually RTFA, you see that they aren't bonkers. Quite to the contrary. See this quote, for example:
"[M]ost threats should be made irrelevant by eliminating vulnerabilities beforehand by either moving them 'out of band' (i.e., making them technically or physically inaccessible to the adversary), or 'designing them out' completely," the request for proposals adds.
Yeah, absolutely. Remember that this is the military we're talking about. These are the guys who are the "customers" of stuff like the NSA's formally verifiable code project. These are the guys who still use 10 year old computers because those are hardened and tested to military standards. If they upgrade to 5 year old computers, the gain in speed will offset pretty much any performance penalty that security methods that don't fly in the commercial world because of said performance penalties, could cause.
These are also the guys who do a ton of things badly.
So it'll be interesting to watch.
Attack and defend? (Score:4, Insightful)
Replace TCP/IP (Score:4, Interesting)
Its not so crazy that they would replace TCP/IP with something else fairly similar for their internal use.
achilles heel (Score:5, Insightful)
The Air Force excels at just about everything they do. But for the past decade or two, their Achilles Heel has been computing technology because it moves faster than anything else they're used to.
The Air Force is a very old organization and although they can generally respond to most anything quickly, overall change tends to happen very very slowly. Not long after I enlisted in 1998, there were rumors that the uniform was going to change from the classic camouflage pattern to a kind of pixellated-marble look. Based on what recent photos I can find, they're still only about halfway through getting the new uniform out to everyone.
Also, I know for a fact we're still flying some planes with vacuum tubes in the autopilot computer even though upgrades for all airframes have been around since at least the 80's. Most of the technical manuals that I used to repair avionics were between 25-40 years old and still had technical errors in them. (We weren't able to make corrections to technical manuals any more than you'd be allowed to make pen-and-ink corrections to a federal law.)
Computer use only became common in most squadrons about 10 years ago and even then, they were not really used for the correct purposes. Some captain would get the bright idea that somebody should use a spreadsheet program instead of a paper form for some menial task, force everybody to use it, ignore the pleas from his subordinates that it tripled the effort required to perform the task, and then make up some elaborate report for his commander about how he just saved the Air Force $358,000.
While I was in the service, the Air Force never really caught on that you had to hire and train smart people who know about computers if you wanted to make the most of them. Some squadrons took young administrative airman fresh out of tech school and sat them down in front of the admin console and said, "All right, it's your job now to make sure this doesn't break." This is very uncharacteristic of the Air Force as you normally need at least several weeks of training before you can be trusted to mop the floor correctly. But when a commander has something that needs to be done and he doesn't know how to do it, it's not at all uncommon for him to assign someone to it while implying that they should be rather quiet about it.
Others units farmed out network administration to government contractors like Lockheed Martin which wasn't any better because most of their employees are old military retirees who thought they were going to get paid more as a civilian for doing the same thing they did in the military and ended up being wrong on both counts. (Got seven stripes and an MSCE? Then they're hiring!)
I guess this long-winded point it that it doesn't surprise me that high-level Air Force officers are saying, "Hey, who says we can't control this thing? We're the Air Force, after all." They're used to having fine-grained control over everything in their view and a high degree of security surrounding it.
In other words, the Air Force is still nowhere near where they need to be in terms of network security. The only encouraging part of this is that they finally realize it.
It'll work, if cyberspace != internet (Score:5, Insightful)
The headline here says 'rewrite the rules of the internet', whereas the Wired article talks about 'rewriting the rules of cyberspace.' Subtle difference here.
The internet exists as it is--fundamentally an IP-based network connected in all the ways we know about, routing, addressing, etc.
The thing is, there's no reason that the Air Force (or anyone else) couldn't create their own, entirely incompatible version. Start with something that has guaranteed QoS, hard-wired source addressing, encryption at the equivalent of the transport layer, content-metadata in the packets (or equivalent to packets--it doesn't have to be a packet protocol at all), etc..
If you need to connect it to the internet, create a tunneling protocol, or a translating switch. Make it different. Make it incompatible. Make it rigid in its requirements. You CAN create a secure network, but not if it's based on the same technology that makes up the existing internet.
Re:Only traitors will vote for Oook-oook Banana (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a Liberal.
I believe in the Constitution which contains the right to bear arms and seperation of church and state.
I believe in the United States of America, not Jesusland.
When the American Right stops trying to destroy the First Amendment, which incidentally comes before the Second Amendment, I will consider it.
Until then, you're welcome to relocate to a country more amiable to your theocratic oligarchy: I think Iran would suit you nicely.
Parent
Re:Only traitors will vote for Oook-oook Banana (Score:4, Funny)
I would mod it to +32,768.
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