Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Tacoma News Tribune
October 15, 2007 By John Lasker, For The News Tribune
In search of part-time “cyber warriors,” the U.S. Air Force is recruiting high-tech professionals and other white-collar workers from around the Puget Sound region to join an information warfare unit at McChord Air Force Base.
The 100 or so members of the 262nd Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron are like other Reservists in some ways: Between their day jobs, they put in one weekend a month, two weeks a year and report for duty at McChord in their uniforms.
But while much of the Air Force focuses on securing air and space, the realm of the 262nd is cyberspace. It was commissioned in 2002 primarily to protect the nation’s military computer networks from Islamic radicals and other terrorists. Its mission is not to go on the offensive – at least not yet.
“Much of their work is defensive in nature. They do look at adversarial threat packages from all across the board,” said Maj. Philip Osterli, a Washington State Air and Army National Guard spokesman based at Camp Murray, south of Tacoma. In the mean time, he said, “We do not have a charter allowing us to conduct CNA (Computer Network Attack).”
The tide might be starting to turn. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne has called upon information technology pros and others to become citizen soldiers and join a growing number of regional info-warfare units.
“We must be prepared to defeat our enemies by using combined arms – air ground, sea, space, and cyber weapons systems,” Wynne wrote in the spring issue of the Air and Space Power Journal.
Wynne praised the 262nd and noted that the Air National Guard has had little trouble recruiting talented tech workers from companies including Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Cisco Systems.
In fact, Washington has become a leading edge of sorts in the military’s drive to advance its “Info ops” capabilities.
Congress approved $800,000 in this year’s defense budget to plan and design a new training and operations facility for the 262nd at McChord. Pressing for the funds was Rep. Adam Smith, D-Tacoma, who’s a member of the House Committee on Armed Services and chairman of its Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Threats.
A Smith spokesman said the congressman had not seen the facilities for the 262nd, nor visited with any of its airmen. He declined to comment on the unit’s emerging offensive capabilities.
But in a News Tribune story last month, Smith expressed concern about the U.S. intelligence community’s monitoring of terrorists’ use of the Internet.
“They are very sophisticated,” he said. “It has become a crucial battleground in this struggle, and if we do not treat it as such, we will not defeat these terrorists.”
Along with the 262nd, Osterli said Washington used to have the Army Guard’s 1st Info Ops Group, which utilized the talents of stock brokers, engineers and accountants. That group has been disbanded, however, and its members dispersed into other Washington Army Guard units.
“(The 262nd) has more of a focus on cyber security, protecting our networks and improving our information security posture,” Osterli said. “The Army’s missions are not so clear cut. They’re involved in strategic communication, civil affairs and counter propaganda. The Air Force is more tech-oriented than the Army.”
The 262nd is shrouded in secrecy, and Osterli would not make any of the Reservists available for an interview.
An Air Force job posting says: “The 262nd Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron is looking for officers and enlisted who are highly skilled in computer networks and Information Operations …This unit is highly selective and provides a onetime opportunity to those able to meet its standards.”
A master sergeant listed as the contact on the job posting did not respond to multiple calls from a reporter.
Officials are also wary of talking about the military tactic known as a Computer Network Attack. Osterli said if a CNA were executed, it must first be authorized by the president. Cyberspace combat experts claim China has declared that a CNA attack against the country would be considered an act of war.
What type of attack the Air Force might someday unleash is a mystery. Clues can be gathered, however, from a cyber-attack in April that targeted Estonia. Suspected of originating from Russia, a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) overloaded the Baltic nation’s critical government and commerce sites with information, making them inaccessible.
Winning at computer-based warfare is “all about knowing exploits no one else knows about,” says Robert Masse, a reformed hacker who recently sold his computer security firm GoSecure Inc. “The people with the most exploits win. You need the exploits to break in.”
An exploit is a series of software commands that takes advantage of a hole or weakness in an operating system or software package. Finding such vulnerabilities has become an industry unto itself.
Several companies refuse to reveal anything about employees who double as citizen soldiers. And it is strictly confidential whether they have in-house rules for software engineers who have joined a military unit.
“Microsoft does not hold specifics about employees that are supporting the 262nd,” said a Microsoft spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “So there really is no comment on the types of work they are doing.”
Cisco spokeswoman Robyn Jenkins Blum offered a similar response: “Cisco does not solicit or maintain information about the military status, including branch of service or individual unit, of employees.”
Richard Forno, who runs infowarrior.org, said the U.S. is wise to capitalize on the “public-private partnership” between the military and high-tech companies.
“The whole idea of an offensive information warfare unit, particularly a Computer Network Attack unit, is to build capabilities for possible exploitation down the road,” Forno said. “The U.S. is lucky that the companies building the world’s most popular and widely-used IT products are based in the United States.”
John Lasker is a freelance writer who has written for Wired.com.
October 15, 2007 By John Lasker, For The News Tribune
In search of part-time “cyber warriors,” the U.S. Air Force is recruiting high-tech professionals and other white-collar workers from around the Puget Sound region to join an information warfare unit at McChord Air Force Base.
The 100 or so members of the 262nd Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron are like other Reservists in some ways: Between their day jobs, they put in one weekend a month, two weeks a year and report for duty at McChord in their uniforms.
But while much of the Air Force focuses on securing air and space, the realm of the 262nd is cyberspace. It was commissioned in 2002 primarily to protect the nation’s military computer networks from Islamic radicals and other terrorists. Its mission is not to go on the offensive – at least not yet.
“Much of their work is defensive in nature. They do look at adversarial threat packages from all across the board,” said Maj. Philip Osterli, a Washington State Air and Army National Guard spokesman based at Camp Murray, south of Tacoma. In the mean time, he said, “We do not have a charter allowing us to conduct CNA (Computer Network Attack).”
The tide might be starting to turn. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne has called upon information technology pros and others to become citizen soldiers and join a growing number of regional info-warfare units.
“We must be prepared to defeat our enemies by using combined arms – air ground, sea, space, and cyber weapons systems,” Wynne wrote in the spring issue of the Air and Space Power Journal.
Wynne praised the 262nd and noted that the Air National Guard has had little trouble recruiting talented tech workers from companies including Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Cisco Systems.
In fact, Washington has become a leading edge of sorts in the military’s drive to advance its “Info ops” capabilities.
Congress approved $800,000 in this year’s defense budget to plan and design a new training and operations facility for the 262nd at McChord. Pressing for the funds was Rep. Adam Smith, D-Tacoma, who’s a member of the House Committee on Armed Services and chairman of its Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Threats.
A Smith spokesman said the congressman had not seen the facilities for the 262nd, nor visited with any of its airmen. He declined to comment on the unit’s emerging offensive capabilities.
But in a News Tribune story last month, Smith expressed concern about the U.S. intelligence community’s monitoring of terrorists’ use of the Internet.
“They are very sophisticated,” he said. “It has become a crucial battleground in this struggle, and if we do not treat it as such, we will not defeat these terrorists.”
Along with the 262nd, Osterli said Washington used to have the Army Guard’s 1st Info Ops Group, which utilized the talents of stock brokers, engineers and accountants. That group has been disbanded, however, and its members dispersed into other Washington Army Guard units.
“(The 262nd) has more of a focus on cyber security, protecting our networks and improving our information security posture,” Osterli said. “The Army’s missions are not so clear cut. They’re involved in strategic communication, civil affairs and counter propaganda. The Air Force is more tech-oriented than the Army.”
The 262nd is shrouded in secrecy, and Osterli would not make any of the Reservists available for an interview.
An Air Force job posting says: “The 262nd Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron is looking for officers and enlisted who are highly skilled in computer networks and Information Operations …This unit is highly selective and provides a onetime opportunity to those able to meet its standards.”
A master sergeant listed as the contact on the job posting did not respond to multiple calls from a reporter.
Officials are also wary of talking about the military tactic known as a Computer Network Attack. Osterli said if a CNA were executed, it must first be authorized by the president. Cyberspace combat experts claim China has declared that a CNA attack against the country would be considered an act of war.
What type of attack the Air Force might someday unleash is a mystery. Clues can be gathered, however, from a cyber-attack in April that targeted Estonia. Suspected of originating from Russia, a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) overloaded the Baltic nation’s critical government and commerce sites with information, making them inaccessible.
Winning at computer-based warfare is “all about knowing exploits no one else knows about,” says Robert Masse, a reformed hacker who recently sold his computer security firm GoSecure Inc. “The people with the most exploits win. You need the exploits to break in.”
An exploit is a series of software commands that takes advantage of a hole or weakness in an operating system or software package. Finding such vulnerabilities has become an industry unto itself.
Several companies refuse to reveal anything about employees who double as citizen soldiers. And it is strictly confidential whether they have in-house rules for software engineers who have joined a military unit.
“Microsoft does not hold specifics about employees that are supporting the 262nd,” said a Microsoft spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “So there really is no comment on the types of work they are doing.”
Cisco spokeswoman Robyn Jenkins Blum offered a similar response: “Cisco does not solicit or maintain information about the military status, including branch of service or individual unit, of employees.”
Richard Forno, who runs infowarrior.org, said the U.S. is wise to capitalize on the “public-private partnership” between the military and high-tech companies.
“The whole idea of an offensive information warfare unit, particularly a Computer Network Attack unit, is to build capabilities for possible exploitation down the road,” Forno said. “The U.S. is lucky that the companies building the world’s most popular and widely-used IT products are based in the United States.”
John Lasker is a freelance writer who has written for Wired.com.