Of Cyberwars, Assassinations and Things That Go Bump in the Night.

[Rick]

It's a whole different world in the shadows. Thank goodness some good guys live there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...us-strike-iran

[Ken]

Ah, reminds me the good old days, before I became a lawyer, when banks used to pay me, among other things, to break into their shareholder service (mutual funds) systems. I remember that Asst. VP in Boston in 1984. The one at the meeting in the prototype center, where I was about to present my initial security analysis findings to my firm's owner and to a SVP and two VPs from the bank. The same Asst. VP who indignantly said that she had personally designed a tamper-proof system, and that nobody could ever break into it, and that paying my firm to redesign the system was a waste of money. The one whose head snapped up (so I was told) when the demonstration printer started printing out checks payable to me only 5 minutes after I excused myself from the meeting. The very same one who couldn't turn the system off because I had just changed her security access to level "0". The one who didn't even know that the on/off switch was located on the side of the high speed printer. And I always wondered if Marsha Andelman blamed herself or me when they fired her that morning.

[2dumb2kwit]

Well....it's good to know that we can screw with their computers.

Although, it does make me wonder about ours. It's scary, how so much depends on computers.

[Ken]

Well....it's good to know that we can screw with their computers.

Although, it does make me wonder about ours.

We're screwed. Our ability to break into theirs far exceeds our ability to protect our own.

[BENESSE]

Cohen said: "For the long run, while it is impossible to predict, my gut feeling is that Iran will not have the full bomb.The only thing that would push Iran to the bomb would be an attack on Iran. I think Iran would ultimately emerge smart enough to avoid confrontation with the world but would insist to keep themselves very close to the bomb, still within the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) claiming the right to a fuel cycle. Whether the west and Israel would be able to live with that, I don't know."
A pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear sites by the US would likely provoke retaliatory attacks by Iranian "sleepers".


Common sense would suggest that.

[crashdive123]

Common sense would also dictate that when a group keeps telling the world how they will destroy the Little Satan (Israel) and the Big Satan (United States) that they should be taken at their word and not be given the opportunity to accomplish that goal.

[BENESSE]

Common sense would also dictate that when a group keeps telling the world how they will destroy the Little Satan (Israel) and the Big Satan (United States) that they should be taken at their word and not be given the opportunity to accomplish that goal.

We all know there are many ways to accomplish that goal. (Let's not count the ways) A nuclear attack is just one of many.

[Ken]

We all know there are many ways to accomplish that goal. (Let's not count the ways) A nuclear attack is just one of many.

Pick any one that will work. There all fine with me.

[BENESSE]

Pick any one that will work. There all fine with me.

It goes BOTH ways, counselor.

[crashdive123]

I guess my point was - I am in the preemptive strike camp. If somebody tells me over and over again that they are going to do me harm, I will believe them and take action to prevent that harm. That prevention can take many forms. IMO the best would be revolution from within, but I would take nothing off the table.

[Pal334]

Not if their computers don't work the way they think they will. Just saying

[Pal334]

And as we have repeatedly shown them, Iraq (at the begining of that war) and several others (to include the Former soviet Union), they are more "at risk" than we are.Not to downplay our deficiencies

[BENESSE]

I guess my point was - I am in the preemptive strike camp. If somebody tells me over and over again that they are going to do me harm, I will believe them and take action to prevent that harm. That prevention can take many forms. IMO the best would be revolution from within, but I would take nothing off the table.

I agree.
So when one considers ALL options at our disposal, a military intervention sounds so 20th century and the least effective, IMO.

[crashdive123]

I agree.
So when one considers ALL options at our disposal, a military intervention sounds so 20th century and the least effective, IMO.

Not necessarily. War is something that nobody should ever want to undertake. If however it is undertaken, it should be prosecuted with such overwhelming force and viciousness that no potential aggressor would ever consider chancing it. We as a nation have been prosecuting a politically correct undertaking, all the while weakening the resolve of a nation and strengthening the resolve of our enemies. The reason there was never a conflict with the Soviet Union IMO was because both sides knew that undertaking such a war would be so devastating that neither side would probably emerge resembling the nation that entered. We no longer have that mentality when it comes to war. IMO unless we do, we are dishonoring the men and women that we send into battle.

[Pocomoonskyeyes3]

I agree.
So when one considers ALL options at our disposal, a military intervention sounds so 20th century and the least effective, IMO.

Oh I don't know about that.... Iraq and Afghanistan are a couple that come to mind.
.................................................. .................................................. .................................

One of the Biggest problems with our "Intelligence" System, Is that they became overly dependent on electronic intelligence (Satellites, Reconnaissance plane fly-overs, electronic "eavesdropping",etc)and neglected "Humint" (Human intelligence = spies, moles, or other operatives). The problem there (A huge one) is that electronic intel can be initiated rather quickly, but it takes years, sometimes decades to develop reliable Humint assets. IMO Humint should ALWAYS be used to verify or deny the accuracy of E-int.

Another problem is that we can't always trust our allies who DO have this Humint in place. In the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, both The UK AND Israel knew that it was going to happen. However to protect THEIR Humint sources they did not pass this info on to the US. So American Marines paid the price, the ultimate sacrifice..... needlessly.

I also question the truth of this obviously leaked story. IF it is a joint US/Israel operation, WHY Is this story coming from the UK? Something is rotten in Denmark, and it isn't the cheese.....

[2dumb2kwit]

Not necessarily. War is something that nobody should ever want to undertake. If however it is undertaken, it should be prosecuted with such overwhelming force and viciousness that no potential aggressor would ever consider chancing it. We as a nation have been prosecuting a politically correct undertaking, all the while weakening the resolve of a nation and strengthening the resolve of our enemies. The reason there was never a conflict with the Soviet Union IMO was because both sides knew that undertaking such a war would be so devastating that neither side would probably emerge resembling the nation that entered. We no longer have that mentality when it comes to war. IMO unless we do, we are dishonoring the men and women that we send into battle.

Well said, crash.

[BENESSE]

Oh I don't know about that.... Iraq and Afghanistan are a couple that come to mind.

The jury is still out on Iraq, and that's being generous. Nothing good can, nor will come out of Afghanistan if one only considers their mentality and history of fierce conflict.

We have not demonstrated in a long time that we have it in us to do what it takes to get the job done, at least according to the Powell Doctrine: "Essentially, the Doctrine expresses that military action should be used only as a last resort and only if there is a clear risk to national security by the intended target; the force, when used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the enemy; there must be strong support for the campaign by the general public; and there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict in which the military is engaged. Powell based this strategy for warfare in part on the views held by his former boss in the Reagan administration, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and also on his own experience as a major in Vietnam. That protracted campaign, in Powell's view, was representative of a war in which public support was flimsy, the military objectives were not clear, overwhelming force was not used consistently, and an exit strategy was ill defined. " (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/te...ine_short.html)

I don't disagree with that view, which, by the way, is what Crash said. So I agree with Crash!

[Pocomoonskyeyes3]

OH I agree with all 3 of you. It should be ALL assets used as efficiently as possible, as you quoted above. However even being "reserved" in our response, I still think we all(meaning all nations) have done well, all things considered, in both Theaters. Still I would have rather it been more decisive than it has been.

[Rick]

I'm probably the least knowledgeable "soldier" on the planet but I do read current events and study history (and I did stay in a Holiday Inn). With no formal training or experience my view may well be wrong. We do a terrible job against a guerrilla force that is well supplied by a super power. We fought that same type of campaign for our independence, being supplied by France, and since then have been stopped cold in several campaigns. Striking a massive blow against an organized force such as Russia is one thing. They battle, more or less, using the same 8 principles of warfare that we use. But guerrillas fight for home, ideals and/or religion making them almost impossible to stop without cutting off suppliers and that means confronting another super power. Iraq was doomed from the outset and so is Afghanistan and for the very same reason the Mujahideen defeated Russia in the 80's. In this case, however, they fight for all three.

[canid]

it is honestly not a question of our ability to protect our data/information systems as much as a question of our committment to doing so, and ability to put the right people on the job. contrast lazy application of stop-gaps, expedients and half measures.

an example: i've been reviewing an insecurity in my home fileserver's dynamic library loading which has existed for some time. it - of questionable nessecity - allows the loading by an unpriveleged user of libraries executing protected system functions through binaries which run as root. while this is not immediately problematic, and so far the libraries in question on my machine are secure against improper use, the very last version of glibc contained many which where not. further, they allowed the user to supply arguments to those libraries in a variety of ways, including file operations and directory creation within trusted space.

the official solution has been to harden the libraries so that they can only be run in their intended contexts, and can only function as intended where the insecurities have been found, rather than audit the security schemes of the loader itself in a way that isolates user control of system libraries. if the later had been done from the start, all the insecure libraries in the world would only allow privelaged users (or system proccesses) to control the libraries in question (e.g. only root could exploit insecure library functions, gaining nothing since those users are already permitted to access those system operations). as far as i know, the user specified arguments are still passed to the libraries

instead, they have ignored that notion and decided to secure the libraries themselves. this is well and good if you are willing to trust that they have fixed them all. this is unlikely when you consider that just a few months ago several of them where not written securely. even if they did, any future versions of these, or any arbitrary libraries developed for use on a given system which are places in trusted space could be vulnerable.

albiet, there are better hardened systems, they are only hardened until you start managing/modifying them in insecure ways.

enough rambling. i hope you get my point.
coffee time.