I was scanning through the headlines, and came across this Wired article entitled, "
U.S. Military's Elite Hacker Crew." My initial reaction was, where do I sign up?
The U.S. military has assembled the world's most formidable hacker posse: a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets....
One expert on cyber warfare said considering the unit is a "joint command," it is most likely made up of personnel from the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI, the four military branches, a smattering of civilians and even military representatives from allied nations...
Verton said the unit's capabilities are highly classified, but he believes they can destroy networks and penetrate enemy computers to steal or manipulate data. He said they may also be able to set loose a worm to take down command-and-control systems so the enemy is unable to communicate and direct ground forces, or fire surface-to-air missiles, for example...
Dietz knows a thing or two about information warfare. He led NATO's "I-War" against Serbia in the mid-1990s -- a conflict that many believe was the occasion for the U.S. military to launch its first wave of cyber attacks against an enemy. One story widely reported, but never confirmed, described how a team of military ops was dropped into Serbia, and after cutting a wire leading to a major radar hub, planted a device that emitted phantom targets on Serb radar.
Pretty cool in an extremely geeky way. Could you imagine being able to legally hack for your country?
By the way, hacking is not as glorious as Hollywood portrays it. Movies like
Hackers or
Swordfish give a very distorted picture of what hacking involves. Hackers do not skateboard around in flashy outfits trying to hack the gibson. Hackers do not
draw viruses. Hackers do not get the ladies. Hacking (as I've heard) involves countless hours finding exploits in systems, reading through code, and programming.
Anyways, it is interesting how information warfare is being integrated into modern warfare tactics. I guess disrupting enemy networks can be a huge problem. For example, do you remember how big of a pain it was when the CIBC bank system went down, and no one could withdraw money from ATMs? That was a simple programming error, could you imagine if some military force wanted to intentionally attack a bank system?
There were some funny stories about information warfare when the Iraq war started. A lot of American hackers claimed to be "patriots" and decided to help the war effort by hacking Iraqi targets. The FBI officially told them to cut it out. The most famous hacking exploit was when a
hacker hacked into Saddam's e-mail account.
