Back in December I posted about Air Force Cyberspace Command.
Now we know more about it. 5-10,000 people. $2 billion budget. California, Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, and New Mexico are competing for the headquarters.
(If New Mexico can’t have it, I’m rooting for Louisiana. But New Mexico really needs to have it. We haven’t won a big military budget battle since the F-117s moved into Alamogordo.)
The US military logged 79,000 attempted intrusions into military computers in 2005.
1700 were successful. More recently, a People Liberation Army cyberwar outfit successfully hacked into a Defense Department computer in the office of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
The Chinese have also got into the computers of no less than 10 British ministries, and have also done some damage in Germany.
Supposedly China has something like 40,000 active hackers working under their umbrella.
Of the cyberwar specialists being trained by Cyber Command at Hurlbut and Lackland, I wonder how many speak or read Chinese? Or Russian? Or Arabic?
Looks like we’ve got a long way to go.
So much for the poor but virtuous Cyberpunk Kid, in his mirrorshades and hot leathers, listening to the latest punk band before they go commercial and lose it, hacking his way into the systems of the Big Government all in order to prevent the dastardly scheme to take utter control of the world.
I never did find that scenario particularly convincing, which was one reason I never wrote about that scenario.
Instead I equipped my loner rebel with a hovertank, which I’m sure you will agree was much more realistic.
There’s a difference between “Defense Department computer” and “computer which is in a Defense Department office”. At a previous classified-work position, our computer systems were on an entirely independent network; no access to the internet from any point. There were special kiosks where you did general-access work; company email, internet, etcetera. Someone could indeed break into one of those and claim that they’d “hacked into a computer in a highly-secured facility” but all they’d learn is that I was cheating on my time card.
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dubjay: Not just a hovertank, but also hypersonic fighter planes and a huge support network.
Of course, if DoD computers really are secure, and there is no real threat, then the Air Force doesn’t get its billions of dollars for Cyber Command.
What you’d need instead are a whole lot of competent investigators on the alert for the next Wen Ho Lee.
I think the Air Force would rather have its billions of dollars.
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