Re: With great responsibility comes great power.

["matthew wollenweber" <mwollenweber () gmail com>]

I've never seen anything at all to make me think that the US is even a major
player in the cyber warfare spectrum. Maybe top 10, but top 5? I'm not
inclined to think so.

Dave makes a good point regarding the number of participants at foreign
infosec conferences, but I'm not sure that's a good metric. There's no doubt
BH/Defcon are flooded with Feds but those conferences aren't about cyber
warfare. Hacking, exploitation, etc are all parts of cyber warfare but it's
a much larger topic and one that I've never seen the government discuss in
any detail in open channels.

On 6/24/07, mOses <trklisted () networksamurai org> wrote:
> The question is weather that is as scary as this:
>
>
> http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/06/04/3_plead_guilty_in_tech_export_case/
>
> Chi Mak who in 2005 was arrested for espionage. He was allegedly sending
> documents from his job as a defense contractor over to china. The CD's
> that where found contained propulsion systems for a new submarine and
> lot more juicy things you can imagine.
>
> I wonder how much far forward the Chinese got because of this person and
> people like him.....
>
>
> Dave Aitel wrote:
> >
> > Right now we're in the midst of some sort of weird publicity push from
> > the US Military regarding cyberwar, which started before the Estonians
> > got DDoSed last week. Most of the articles point out how China is
> > beefing up their forces with frankly inane titles such as "China
> > Cyberware Alert!":
> >
> >
> http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/06/13/china.cyberspace.reut/index.html
> > http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003548.html
> > There's a NYT article today too, but they make it impossible to link
> > to them.
> >
> > In March, Stratfor had an article about it as well:
> > http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=286304
> > They concluded:
> > """
> > Ultimately, much about cyberwarfare efforts will remain classified.
> > Cartwright's comments are more illustrative of a military that is
> > accustomed to dominating the battle space preparing for a new
> > offensive in cyberspace. STRATCOM's staff judge advocate -- the
> > command's legal representative -- likely has advised Cartwright that
> > his efforts to bring offensive cyberwarfare measures to bear have
> > reached the point at which they require congressional oversight and
> > approval -- the only real motivation for Cartwright to share his
> > command's efforts with the public.
> > """
> >
> > If you listen to John Arquilla, of the Naval Postgraduate school, he
> > also mentions China first as the leading integrator of cyberwarfare
> > into their overall strategy [1]. Oddly he believes there's only a few
> > dozen master hackers in the world, a number I think is far too small,
> > but perhaps we have different definitions or just a different circle
> > of friends. His estimate is that half of the master hackers are
> > American, a number I would say is irrelevant. You can't judge the
> > length of a sword by the sharpness of the point.
> >
> > My opinion is that any cyberwar waged against the United States would
> > be one-sided. As Admiral Yamamoto learned the hard way[2], one of the
> > US Military's defining characteristics is extensive propaganda efforts
> > to get the opponent to underestimate them. But as a somewhat useful
> > metric, you can fit the attendees of all the non-US information
> > security conferences each month into any one US conference.
> >
> > -dave
> >
> > [1] http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/podcast.aspx?id=30 - I started
> > listening to this sure he would be full of it, but it's really quite
> > good.
> > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto and
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto%27s_sleeping_giant_quote
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto%27s_sleeping_giant_quote>
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--
Matthew  Wollenweber
mwollenweber () gmail com | mjw () cyberwart com
www.cyberwart.com

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