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German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Feb 09, 2009 12:46 AM
from the blinkenlights-brauch'-das-fingerpoken dept.
from the blinkenlights-brauch'-das-fingerpoken dept.
bad_alloc writes "Heise.de tells us about the German Bundeswehr's idea of recruiting hackers in order to 'penetrate, manipulate and damage hostile networks.' (Note: The following passage has been translated from German into English: 'The Regiment is stationed in Rheinbach, near Bonn, and consists of several dozen graduates from Bundeswehr universities. They're training at the moment, but the 'hackers in uniforms' are supposed to be operational by next year. This regiment officially belongs to the "Kommando Strategische Aufklärung" (strategic reconnaissance) and is commanded by Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. The Bundeswehr has not said anything to this regiment yet.' You can find the full article in German."
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Just asking. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't buy a parser from you (Score:5, Funny)
So I'm not the only one who read that as Budweiser!
Incidentally Hacker [wikipedia.org] is a brewery.
Parent
Is this really news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
In English (Score:3, Informative)
very informative! (Score:5, Funny)
"And even if the cyber attack on Estonia in retrospect, not as a "war" browsed meanwhile shall any State which is a substantial electronic IT infrastructure operates, potential threats posed by cyber attacks seriously."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The rest of the article is rather uniformative though..
(emphasize by me)
Well, it's about military, so uniforms shouldn't be a surprise ...
IT Work (Score:5, Interesting)
The first sentence of TFA says that "not only will it do the security of IT systems but also carry out..."
Why does everyone focus immediately on the "black hat" side of the story, and neglect that the group is supposed to do BOTH sides, which in some ways, is a good aspect of ANY security team... just hopefully, your security team follows ethics.
And I imagine that the Bundeswehr is going to follow ethics as well, "no hacking friendly networks......... overtly".
Actually... (Score:2)
Actually, the constitutional safeguards still work in Germany, so it will likely be more like "no hacking anyone else's networks ever, unless we've already properly declared war and the bureaucracy is done approving the paperwork." (At which point the war is probably over anyway.)
Wait what? (Score:2)
Re:Wait what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly when has the "Bundestrojaner" been actually used without authorization? No, seriously, I'm curious now.
And how's it any worse than, say, the USA? You can find plenty of cases where the FBI planted a trojan or a keylogger on a _suspect's_ computer, which is all that the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to do. The difference is that in Germany there has been a whole debate about it and it's been shot down on constitutional and privacy grounds repeatedly, while in the USA nobody even bothered wondering much about it.
Let me repeat: the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to only be used with a court mandate, only for a limited time, and only on the computers of people suspected of terror activities and the like. Plus a court is supposed to establish (as per the german supreme court decision) that the use does not pose any danger to a person's other rights, among which their freedom. It'll be interesting to see if they can use it at all then, but at any rate you can't use it, say, to intimidate your opponents.
But seriously, how's that any worse than what the rest of the world already does? It seems to me like the USA just shipped such suspects to Gitmo for some waterboarding. I'll take a court-approved keylogger instead if I'm ever suspected of anything, thank you very much.
And then you have cases like the NSA spying on its citizens without any court approval or legal mandate.
Basically if you think that a law which sets clear limits is actually worse than no law, well, you're naive.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The Bundeswehr Tornado Bomber is usually only used with a mandate as well and yet these things flew recon missions during the G8 summit. So what? Let's just agree that this kind of publicly funded technology isn't always used according to it's dedicated purpose.
It's not any worse than in other countries
Re: (Score:2)
``just hopefully, your security team follows ethics''
Which, of course, isn't unique to security teams.
Re: (Score:2)
Why does everyone focus immediately on the "black hat" side of the story, and neglect that the group is supposed to do BOTH sides, which in some ways, is a good aspect of ANY security team... just hopefully, your security team follows ethics.
Because in general, the military is not exactly known for it's humanitarian altruistic approach. Most military define security by going into the enemies home and screwing them there.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Why does everyone focus immediately on the "black hat" side of the story, and neglect that the group is supposed to do BOTH sides, which in some ways, is a good aspect of ANY security team... just hopefully, your security team follows ethics.
Because in general, the military is not exactly known for it's humanitarian altruistic approach. Most military define security by going into the enemies home and screwing them there.
Which is why the majority of soldiers in the "Democratic" Republic of Congo has AIDS.
I hope our German friends have better security than that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sweet... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The Bundeswehr is german military.
Did all you beer and football confused people not pay attention in school, or was the second world war only lightly touched upon?
German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No, this is Germany. They're more likely to drink Budweiser Budvar [wikipedia.org] :)
Finally... my chance to escape the MAFIAA! (Score:2)
Where do I sign up? Can we keep it quiet?
Good times for security professionals (Score:2)
Not that it will be really difficult keeping these pople out, but many networks have not been attacked because of lack of an attacker. One more group that fills the role and increases the need for working defenses. Incidentially, bad times for Microsoft as well and generally for systems without competent administrators. But then, a competent administrator was allways and likely will allways be a requirement for professional computing. C
Important issue missing in TFA (Score:2)
If I sign, will they give me that cool german helmet?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Do you want the Stahlhelm [wikipedia.org] or the Pickelhaube [wikipedia.org]?
Beer company wants hackers? (Score:2)
German Bundeswehr's idea of recruiting hackers in order to 'penetrate, manipulate and damage
You get the 'penetrate, manipulate and damage' with Budweiser or any beer, but why hackers only? Carnage for all I say!
English version of article. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Report-claims-German-armed-forces-setting-up-cyberwar-unit--/112595
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Funny)
what with this being an english site and all.
This being slashdot and all, nobody would actually read the article anyway.
Parent
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
... it would be nice if you could post a link to a full article in English, what with this being an english site and all. No, babelfish doesn't count.
Yes, we should ignore all foreign articles until they've been officially translated, even tho' translation tools are adequate to give you the gist of an article
I mean - it's not like there's any Germans who read Slashdot & will translate in the comments or anything is it?
Parent
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Jaja, aber Kartoffelbrei, ich bin mit der Fernsehturm verheiraten. I can fix it for you! Super hero acht klar!
Dieses hax0rs wollen siene gelÃck zu hax0r nicht-unsere aber others netwÃrk getesten. Jemand wollen SS uniformen zugaben before entlich der communist volk probieren sind!
Or well, maybe I leave it to the native germans after all.
Parent
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll give it a shot. The page this article is from (heise.de) is probably the closest to a german ./ there is. The original article that is referred to in this text was published in the Spiegel (Translation: mirror), a well-known german magazine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Spiegel [wikipedia.org]
The Bundeswehr is said to set up a "Cyberwar unit", which won't only protect the (army's or Germany's, not explicitly stated) own IT-infrastructure but is also supposed to carry out reconnaissance or manipulation "in opposing networks". ./ article) and is led by the Brigade General (whatever rank that is)Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. There haven't been any comments from the Bundeswehr regarding this report. According to the Basic Constitutional Law the German army is not allowed to carry out any functions/missions in the inland (meant is that they may not carry out police or secret service work, etc.... within germany) but there have been plans to abolish that restriction for quite some time.
According to information of the Spiegel, the troup is made out of a few dozen computer science alumni of the Bundeswehr's universities.
According to the Hamburg-based news magazine the "hackers in uniform" are still in training at the moment but should be fully ready next year.
The top secret (har har) unit is supposedly under the command of the "Kommando Strategische AufklÃrung" (like they said in the
While experts are still debating wether a term like Cyberwar is correct since there are neither killings nor injuries in such a war, there seems to be an agreement that the defense against such threats should be one of the duties of a nation's army. And even if the Cyberattack on Estland wasn't termed a "War" afterwards it's true that every state that runs a substantial IT-infrastructure is taking potential threats of cyberattacks seriously.
Americans mangling up random german words never fail to amuse me ;)
Parent
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we should ignore all foreign articles until they've been officially translated, ...
And it's not as if this is specifically an English-language site anyway, is it? I mean, look at the URL -- ".org". Not ".us", ".uk", ".au" or anything nation- or language- specific. The URL clearly indicates that it's supposed to be a pan-national site.
(Yes, I know what the FAQ says. The URL sends a stronger and more direct message than the FAQ, however.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And .us would also not mean English-language as the the US has no official language.
And Hawaiian is an official language in the state of Hawaii.
Manually translated (Score:4, Informative)
All links are leading to German pages. No guarantees on the accuracy of the translation, especially the military terms.
Parent
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, we should ignore all foreign articles until they've been officially translated, even tho' translation tools are adequate to give you the gist of an article
Quite. After all this being the Internet, it's not like it interconnects any networks all over the planet, or if /. had been around for any amount of time and had drawn English speaking people from all kinds of places.
So let's stick to articles from the US or (very occasionally) Air Strip 1. After all all other people must hate freedom as shown by their willingness of living outside of the US (and speaking funny languages with weird characters that aren't even proper ASCII).
I mean - it's not like there's any Germans who read Slashdot & will translate in the comments or anything is it?
Now that's just crazy talk.
Parent
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:5, Informative)
bundeswehr (who are they? why do I care?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr [wikipedia.org] In short, the German army/navy/air force/etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Great, now why wasn't any of this information in the story? :)
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps you could post a link to an English version of the article instead of just complaining that somebody else didn't?
No?
Perhaps you should just keep your whining to yourself then.
P.S. If you don't like Babelfish, vielleicht sollst du Deutsch lernen.
Re:That's great and all, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Vieleicht solltest Du auch erst einmal deutsch lernen ...
Are we going to get faulty spelling flames in German now?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
It's the German army. I don't think it's that difficult to figure it out from context for English readers, but I speak German so I'm probably not the best person to make that judgment.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the German Army.
Now I'll yield the floor for Godwin.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the German Army.
Now I'll yield the floor for Godwin.
Grandparent was as ignorant as a Nazi.. ;)
Jokes aside though, one of the things the Germans learned from WWII was not to have an army only consisting of professional soldiers, who live in their own bubble and are shielded from contact with the 'normal' people (e.g. simply by just living in army bases). That way it is much easier to control them and give them orders normal people would not follow so blindly.
The current Bundeswehr consists of people being drafted from the normal population.
Re: (Score:2)
The current Bundeswehr consists of people being drafted from the normal population.
(Emphasis mine)
I would certainly contest that. The Draftees, for the most part, are a nice enough crowd, but God help us should we ever have to engage in a full-scale military operation against a traditional armed force. The median IQ on the "executional" level is not exactly stunning, to say the least.
The Bundeswehr has quite a history of misplacing vehicles and weapons on their own exercise areas, and I had the questionable pleasure of experiencing first-hand how prone to getting lost even with maps and
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
being proud of you own ignorance sure makes you look like a hero!
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Because everyone knows what is US navy or USAF ... You should care because US has just managed to pull whole world into financial crisis, so we would appreciate if you look a bit further then inside of your borders.