Re: [ISN] Air Force Colonel Wants to Build a Military Botnet

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Thu May 15 2008 - 00:51:21 PDT


Forwarded from: "Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg (at) netzero.net>
Cc: jasonc (at) science.org

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- -- ISN quotes Jason Coombs <jasonc (at) science.org> as saying:

>Magic Lantern, Carnivore, DCS 1000/2000, and all these platforms' more 
=
=

recent distributed automated progeny courtesy of the coordinated =

American response to terrorism should already have positioned Uncle Sam 
=
=

to impersonate the entire Internet with the flip of a switch, so the =

idea of recycling old 386 boxes into botnets is probably meant to make =

people who aren't paying attention believe we're still computing in the 
=
=

stone age and nothing really sophisticated will happen for a few more =

decades yet so there's nothing to worry about, let the cyber crime 
spree=

begin!
>

People who talk like this scare the crap out of me.

Speaking from a purely network security viewpoint, I cannot help
but point out that such cavalier attitudes towards monitoring
user traffic almost always leads to a slippery-slope situation in
which the consumer becomes victimized without their knowledge, and
for me, that is completely unacceptable.

And hopefully, it will soon also become illegal.

I'm appalled at the attitude that "...since it can be done, it
will be done, get over it."

Sorry -- we will not go quietly into that dark void.

Sure, governments will surreptitiously conduct surveillance on
Internet traffic at their discretion (various issue here), but we
should never, ever condone idiocy to be perpetrated on the users
in the name "The War on Foo".

Forget about it. Fail.

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/


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