Entries Tagged "military"

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UK Ministry of Defense Loses Memory Stick with Military Secrets

Oops:

The USB stick, outlining training for 70 soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, was found on the floor of The Beach in Newquay in May.

Times, locations and travel and accommodation details for the troops were included in files on the device.

It’s not the first time:

More than 120 USB memory sticks, some containing secret information, have been lost or stolen from the Ministry of Defence since 2004, it was reported earlier this year.

Some 26 of those disappeared this year == including three which contained information classified as “secret”, and 19 which were “restricted”.

I’ve written about this general problem before: we’re storing ever more data in ever smaller devices.

The point is that it’s now amazingly easy to lose an enormous amount of information. Twenty years ago, someone could break into my office and copy every customer file, every piece of correspondence, everything about my professional life. Today, all he has to do is steal my computer. Or my portable backup drive. Or my small stack of DVD backups. Furthermore, he could sneak into my office and copy all this data, and I’d never know it.

The solution? Encrypt them.

Posted on September 16, 2008 at 6:21 AM • View Comments

Secret Military Technology

On 60 Minutes, in an interview with Scott Pelley, reporter Bob Woodward claimed that the U.S. military has a new secret technique that’s so revolutionary, it’s on par with the tank and the airplane:

Woodward: This is very sensitive and very top secret, but there are secret operational capabilities that have been developed by the military to locate, target, and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq, insurgent leaders, renegade militia leaders, that is one of the true breakthroughs.

Pelley: What are we talking about here? Some kind of surveillance, some kind of targeted way of taking out just the people that you’re looking for, the leadership of the enemy?

[…]

Woodward: It is the stuff of which military novels are written.

Pelley: Do you mean to say that this special capability is such an advance in military technique and technology that it reminds you of the advent of the tank and the airplane?

Woodward: Yeah.

It’s here, 7 minutes and 55 seconds in.

Anyone have any ideas?

EDITED TO ADD (9/11): One idea:

I’m going to make a wager about what I think Woodward is talking about, and I’ll be curious to see what Danger Room readers have to say. I believe he is talking about the much ballyhooed (in defense geek circles) "Tagging, Tracking and Locating" program; here’s a briefing on it from Special Operations Command. These are newfangled technologies designed to track people from long distances, without the targeted people realizing they are being tracked. That can theoretically include thermal signatures, or some sort of "taggant" placed on a person. Think Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Well, not so many cameras, maybe.

Posted on September 10, 2008 at 11:35 AM • View Comments

Cyberattack Against Georgia Preceded Real Attack

This is interesting:

Exactly who was behind the cyberattack is not known. The Georgian government blamed Russia for the attacks, but the Russian government said it was not involved. In the end, Georgia, with a population of just 4.6 million and a relative latecomer to the Internet, saw little effect beyond inaccessibility to many of its government Web sites, which limited the government’s ability to spread its message online and to connect with sympathizers around the world during the fighting with Russia.

[…]

In Georgia, media, communications and transportation companies were also attacked, according to security researchers. Shadowserver saw the attack against Georgia spread to computers throughout the government after Russian troops entered the Georgian province of South Ossetia. The National Bank of Georgia’s Web site was defaced at one point. Images of 20th-century dictators as well as an image of Georgia’s president, Mr. Saakashvili, were placed on the site. “Could this somehow be indirect Russian action? Yes, but considering Russia is past playing nice and uses real bombs, they could have attacked more strategic targets or eliminated the infrastructure kinetically,” said Gadi Evron, an Israeli network security expert. “The nature of what’s going on isn’t clear,” he said.

[…]

In addition to D.D.O.S. attacks that crippled Georgia’s limited Internet infrastructure, researchers said there was evidence of redirection of Internet traffic through Russian telecommunications firms beginning last weekend. The attacks continued on Tuesday, controlled by software programs that were located in hosting centers controlled by a Russian telecommunications firms. A Russian-language Web site, stopgeorgia.ru, also continued to operate and offer software for download used for D.D.O.S. attacks.

Welcome to 21st century warfare.

“It costs about 4 cents per machine,” Mr. Woodcock said. “You could fund an entire cyberwarfare campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread, so you would be foolish not to.”

Posted on August 18, 2008 at 1:11 PM • View Comments

The Risk of Anthrax

Some reality to counter the hype.

The Bottom Line

While there has been much consternation and alarm-raising over the potential for widespread proliferation of biological weapons and the possible use of such weapons on a massive scale, there are significant constraints on such designs. The current dearth of substantial biological weapons programs and arsenals by governments worldwide, and the even smaller number of cases in which systems were actually used, seems to belie—or at least bring into question—the intense concern about such programs.

While we would like to believe that countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia have halted their biological warfare programs for some noble ideological or humanitarian reason, we simply can’t. If biological weapons were in practice as effective as some would lead us to believe, these states would surely maintain stockpiles of them, just as they have maintained their nuclear weapons programs. Biological weapons programs were abandoned because they proved to be not as effective as advertised and because conventional munitions proved to provide more bang for the buck.

Posted on August 13, 2008 at 2:29 PM • View Comments

Italians Use Soldiers to Prevent Crime

Interesting:

Soldiers were deployed throughout Italy on Monday to embassies, subway and railway stations, as part of broader government measures to fight violent crime here for which illegal immigrants are broadly blamed.

[…]

The conservative government of Silvio Berlusconi won elections in April while promising to crack down on petty crime and illegal immigrants. The new patrols of soldiers, who are not empowered to make arrests, do not seem aimed only at illegal immigrants, though the patrols were deployed to centers where illegal immigrants are housed.

“Security is something concrete,” Mr. La Russa said on Monday. The troops, he said, will be a “deterrent to criminals.”

That reminds me of one of my favorite logical fallacies: “We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.” It does seem largely to be a demonstration of “doing something” by the Berlusconi government. The legitimate police, of course, think it’s a terrible idea.

“You need to be specially trained to carry out some kinds of controls,” Nicola Tanzi, the secretary of a trade union that represents Italian police officers. “Soldiers just aren’t qualified.”

He also questioned whether the $93.6 million that will be spent for the extra deployment, called Operation Safe Streets, might not have been better used to increase the budgets for Italy’s police and military.

Posted on August 5, 2008 at 6:36 AM • View Comments

World War II Deception Story

Great security story from an obituary of former OSS agent Roger Hall:

One of his favorite OSS stories involved a colleague sent to occupied France to destroy a seemingly impenetrable German tank at a key crossroads. The French resistance found that grenades were no use.

The OSS man, fluent in German and dressed like a French peasant, walked up to the tank and yelled, “Mail!”

The lid opened, and in went two grenades.

Hall’s book about his OSS days, You’re Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger, is a must-read.

Posted on July 29, 2008 at 1:50 PM • View Comments

Pentagon Consulting Social Scientists on Security

This seems like a good idea:

Eager to embrace eggheads and ideas, the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism.

The article talks a lot about potential conflicts of interest and such, and less on what sorts of insights the social scientists can offer. I think there is a lot of potential value here.

Posted on June 30, 2008 at 12:13 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.