Re: With great responsibility comes great power.

[Falcor <falcor () netassassin com>]

Yes and no.  There is no standing ability if they had to start today; 
yes you are probably most correct.  But the US has a vast history of 
ramping down, and even completely mothballing, warfare divisions only to 
reincarnate them later as far more powerful and able units.  Then, 
mothball and forget the lessons learned... a little like shampooing your 
hair basically. Just wash, rinse, and repeat.  We had the same thing 
with cryptographers and code breakers up until the end of WWII when they 
decided to keep such Intelligence units operational full time.  (But you 
could also argue that was more due to the Cold War than being proactive.) 

I believe the US has limited assets currently that are actively training 
/ working in this area.  But the talent pool to pull from, in the event 
they are needed, is massive.  Granted, there is good speculation that 
China (Dave opened the door) has been formally organizing and working 
its assets for a number of years now.  Having offensive and defensive 
teams established with standard operating procedures and training and 
even real-life experience in working as an organized unit.  I do not 
believe the US has this, nor has looked all that much into it on a large 
scale setup.  So yea, I too would put us in the top 10 perhaps, but not 
in higher.  With of course the reservation that th US would "climb to 
#1" if the need arose.

For now, the DHS could use a few good InfoSec engineers let alone cyber 
warfare specialists.  ;) 

matthew wollenweber wrote:

> 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 
> <mailto: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/
>     <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 <mailto:mwollenweber () gmail com> | 
> mjw () cyberwart com <mailto:mjw () cyberwart com>
> www.cyberwart.com <http://www.cyberwart.com>
>
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