USAF considers making a botnet

[Cain]

See http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080512-preparing-for-cyber-warfare-us-air-force-floats-botnet-plan.html and http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2008/05/3375884

The thing is, as I understand it, a botnet kind of requires you to covertly take over many computers on many different servers in order to have any sort of real impact.  Because

1) bandwidth isn't free
2) the idea is to make it impossible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate attackers.  If all the attacking IPs are .mil, it wont be hard to identifty, isolate and block them

And the thing is, if the USAF is going to go out there and take over computers with the blessing of the White House and Pentagon...what's to stop them keeping your computer as a slave PC for their botnet?  How does that idea sound, of the Pentagon having a presence on your laptop?  And assuming they did it with consent (of either the manufacturers or those foolish enough to sign up) what else would the DoD do with a civilian computer that has been "drafted" for military purposes?  Does this make the owner a combatant or legal target?  What if an enemy nation or sub-national group were to assassinate, bomb and sabotage companies and individuals who signed up to the botnet?

And secondly, what else would the USAF do with such a botnet?  As I understand it, botnets are also used for spamming.  Will we suffer even more online psyops from the Pentagon?

[Triple Zero]

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

sounds like someone who thought up this idea doesnt really understand how this works. i only read the arstechnica post so far, but they talk about recommissioning old military computers???

that's retarded because it's not about the computers (the machines/boxes themselves) but just about their network connections. all you'd need is one fairly powerful computer with a shitload of UTP wires coming out of it (or something).

if i were them, i'd put some malicious spoofing code somewhere further up the internet backbone architecture, and just fake the botnet to come from 100.000s of different IPs?

on the other hand, this kind of hardcore low level internet stuff is a bit beyond my knowledge too, so i might be talking poop here.

[Requia ☣]

I would assume they would infect chinese PCs.

[Cain]

000 I dont think its just you.  I've seen this mentioned in other places, and lots of other people are saying wtf, does the Air Force actually understand the internet at all?

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

...what's to stop them keeping your computer as a slave PC for their botnet?

The owner of the PC, I would imagine...
That said, this is pretty fucked up. They've got the budget to literally/physically build their own botnet.

That said, Cyber Command has been put on indefinite hold last I heard. I'm not too worried about this.

[Requia ☣]

Cyber command was alive and well last I checked, though its only purpose so far is to restrict the information Air Force personnel have access to.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Coming from the guy who said he's never seen a digital SLR you can change ISO on...


Boop doop doop:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4277752.html
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080812_7995.php
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/08/air-force-suspe.html
http://www.ktbs.com/news/Future-of-cyber-command-under-review-15357/
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080815/NEWS03/808150407/1007/NEWS03

[Requia ☣]

Ah, thats really recent then.

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

Recent is a pretty relative term.

[Cain]

Yeah, I heard about this too.  Seems a little odd, especially in the light of the importance of hackers and computer systems to Russia's and China's military forces.  I wonder if they are looking to either free it from Air Force control and have it integrated into all branches of the military, or else turn it over to civilian hands?  Or are they foolishly just dumping the idea of Cyber Command altogether?

[Shibboleet The Annihilator]

I am by no means an expert on this, but I don't believe they're giving up on the idea of Cyber Command. From my understanding, the branches are bickering over who should control it while many government computers remain insecure...

Oh well, we still have the NSA...

[Triple Zero]

maybe they figured out there's no way they can build a botnet publically, so they outsourced the job to blackwater or some other outside group who is given carte blanche to 0wn whatever computer they want?

[rong]

Recent is a pretty relative term.

yes. . . yes it is.