Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers

[Cyre2067]

From here: _http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/air-force-mater.html

Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers

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."

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.

raditionally, 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."

Not surprising, especially given how info on Comets and Psychopathy has been slowly making its way around the 'net.

Disturbing though.

 

[Jimbo]

Has anybody made a mirror site of the sott, QFG and Cassiopae websites? If not, someone should definately get on that. Ill look into it some more.

 

[JonnyRadar]

it seems this may be the PTB putting something out there in the media that they have already had the capability of doing for quite a while. this is the air force, which is to say nothing of NSA, CIA, DIA or DHS or (insert gov't agency 3-letter acronym here). more fear, more dis-ease, the eye of big brother is always watching, etc... this stuff can really spin people out - which is understandable - problem is that seems to be exactly what they want it to do.

 

[D69]

First of all lets shortly define what botnet , cracker ,hacker ,skiddie words stand for in real world

hacker - a person who is fascinated in computers ,networks , very skilled , posses deep knowledge - NOT hostile - in fact they build internet - nowadays , they are often called Whitehats. Meaning of term "hacker" is badly twisted by other media - now its synonym of evil criminal - this is not true.

cracker - also a person fascinated in computers and networks , also very skilled - difference here is that crackers use their knowledge to gain profit , sometimes involved in criminal activity. In general not hostile but they do not hesistate to sell their skills - nowadays , known as Blackhats

skiddie (short of script kiddie ) - often young people who does not have much skill , instead they use software developed by hackers & crackers. They fight for fame on scene ( often because of that young age ) , they do not hesistate to use their rather poor skill in bad ways ( including selling their services ). VERY often they are holders of lame but vast BOTNETS.
Also because of naive thinking , greed or simply fame , they are being bought by spamsenders. They DO rent their botnets to criminals , govs etc. etc.

Botnet - virtual network of zombie nodes - idea here is to gather as much hosts as possible and bind them all under one , centralized "control-panel". Techniques of gathering those bots are quite simple. You grab ( or write ) some kind of trojan horse (bot in this scenario ) program , combine it with for example worm ( fast , small , efficient program that infects computers using holes in software ) and viola ! This host then communicates to , again for example - IRC network/channel <- the control-panel
Then from one place ( irc channel ) , with one command , they can send spam , launch an attack , eat bandwidth etc etc from all zombie hosts at the same time.Botnets main goal is to launch DDoS kind of attack ( Distributed Denial of Service ) which is very hard to neutralize. Why ? because simply botnet master sends an order to open <www.exampletargetsite.com> in browser for example once every 3 seconds - imagine what will happen when there are 1000`s of bots. And all that http queries are valid and legal.
<www.exampletargetsite.com> will stop working - server overload , network bandwidth eaten up etc. etc.

Ill bet that at this moment , high % of users reading this forum , is currently infected with some kind of bot - and NO if i know something but thats just the way it is. Your PCs are being used and will be used in myrriad of ways - it was like this since beginning of internet.
Very few examples: parasite network computing , worms , viruses , trojans etc. etc. etc. etc.

Now having all that described , i find big similarity to C`s words. Knowledge & awareness combo protects.
I would risk a sentence and say that 95% of users of internet does not know how their OS work , why it can be infected , how its all built. Thats why they are often victims of phishers - always read what computer writes to you ;)

So now back to subject. Imo this is quite big BS , this report. They just want to make it official. Govs hired botnet holders for long time . As an fast example google this phrase - china cyber attacks india
It is easiest way to hire large botnet from skiddie and when something goes wrong , put blame on him and throw to jail to close his mouth.
So they simply want to make it official that they often control holders of botnets. - something like - masters of masters of puppets.

Here you have translated version of short news from one of polish hacking sites

http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fhack.pl%2Faktualnosci%2Fwojskowy_botnet_968&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=pl&tl=en

original url:
http://hack.pl/aktualnosci/wojskowy_botnet_968

This all report is like - p33r us ! we are t3h might !

Anyways , Cyre thanks for putting it here it serves as good example to discuss

 

[D69]

BUMP:

well , i just got a link to this site - http://www.impact-alliance.org/

first thought : they are gathering potential mercenaries

PS.I am bit over paranoid so remember to turn off JavaScript while browsing this page

EDIT:

another link :
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/16718/a-u-s-military-botnet