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Bush Cyber Initiative Aims To Monitor, Restrict Access To Federal Network

Posted by Zonk on Tue Apr 15, 2008 09:13 AM
from the gotta-keep-em-seperated dept.
United States Government Privacy Security News IT
dstates writes "Details of George Bush's Cyber Initiative are beginning to trickle out. The Cyber Initiative was created in January to secure government against electronic attacks. Newsweek says that over the next seven years, Bush's Cyber Initiative will spend as much as $30 billion to create a new monitoring system for all federal networks, a combined project of the DHS, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The U.S. government has launched a classified operation called Byzantine Foothold to detect, track, and disarm intrusions on the government's most critical networks. ComputerWorld reports that all data traffic flowing through agency networks will be checked, and that it will be inspected at a deeper level than the current system is capable of. BusinessWeek, meanwhile, reports that one requirement is to reduce the number of internet access points in the Federal Government from the thousands now in use to only 100 sites by June 2008. How this will impact public information resources such as the Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine or even the US Congress remains to be seen."
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Submission: Bush Cyber Initiative shuts down access to the Fed by dstates (629350)
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  • Why is it that everything the government does costs so much more than what it would normally cost?

    Are they really itemizing hammers for $300, toilet seats for $1000? Are government contractors just taking us to the cleaners?

    Why does the public not have any say in where this money goes?

    • Re:$30 billion? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:19AM (#23077112)

      Why does the public not have any say in where this money goes?


      The public does have a say. Stop voting jackasses to power.

      • Re:$30 billion? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Skyshadow (508) * on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:21AM (#23077136) Homepage

        The public does have a say. Stop voting jackasses to power.
        ...but if we didn't vote for our jackasses, the wrong jackasses might get in!

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rbannon (512814)

        Why does the public not have any say in where this money goes?


        The public does have a say. Stop voting jackasses to power.
        We're beyond voting. At best, let's hope we're invaded by the next America to help puts us back on our feet.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Kingrames (858416)
        On the contrary, if the jackass party had been elected in 2000, we wouldn't have these problems.

        • Re:$30 billion? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by eln (21727) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @10:22AM (#23077956) Homepage
          How delightfully naive. This administration should have taught you that it just doesn't work that way anymore.

          If you give them less money, they won't spend any less, they'll just go further into debt. The national debt is now so large that it is completely incomprehensible even to those in power.

          The debt currently stands at almost 9.5 trillion dollars, and is increasing at around 1.67 billion dollars per day. This level of spending would make even a drunken sailor blush, and it's being done despite the fact that we are giving them less money through the various tax cuts that have been implemented over the past 7 years.

          The government spends money as if it were monopoly money, and accumulates expenditures with little or no regard to the disparity between revenue coming in and expenditures going out.

          • I recently heard a nice way to help put these large numbers in perspective.

            The following time is the time it would take to pay of the following amounts at a rate of 1 dollar per second:

            1 million = 11.57 days
            1 billion = 31.71 years
            1 trillion = 31,710 years

            So at 1 dollar per second, it would take 301,243 years to pay back that 9.5 trillion dollar debt.

        • Re:$30 billion? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mcmonkey (96054) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @10:26AM (#23077998) Homepage

          Wouldn't it be nice...

          Why on Earth would I want to give them more? On the contrary, if we give them less money, they will have less power.

          The problem with giving the federal government less money is, we made the mistake of telling them what 'credit' is and gave them the power to increase their own credit limit at will.

          Whatever issues we have with 'tax and spend' Democrats, they have a more honest approach than 'borrow and spend' Republicans. But the bottom line is still, between the Democrats and Republicans, there is no right lizard.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Skuld-Chan (302449)
          Eh? If they have less money - they'll just spend more of what they don't have.

          They are already spending more than they take in right now...

          I like how you blame it on democrats too - Bush lowers taxes, but spends more than any democrat. Essentially what he's doing is deferring any really hard financial decisions to the next guy/girl in power. Its like a stealth raise in taxes because the more deficit spending that occurs the more worthless our dollar is.
        • On the contrary, if we give them less money, they will have less power

          Oh, yeah, sure. After all, the government can't spend money it doesn't have.

        • Whenever a Democrat tells me we need to raise taxes -- in whatever code words they are using at the time, be it increasing business taxes or "rolling back the Bush tax cuts" -- I love pointing out where all the money is currently wasted. (Almost everywhere it's spent.)

          and whenever a republican tells me that they're going to roll out new tax cuts, I point out the national debt and complete lack of funding for anything useful. republicans don't spend any less than democrats do on pork, they merely cut anyth

    • Re:$30 billion? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cryptodan (1098165) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:22AM (#23077146) Homepage
      You have to realize the magnitude of the US Federal Government internet foot print. You have to include all the ships in the US Navy, all the Army, Air Force, and Marine bases as well as Naval Bases. There are liaison offices, Embassy Offices, and other places. 30 Billion isnt that much for a network that big.

    • Are they really itemizing hammers for $300, toilet seats for $1000? Are government contractors just taking us to the cleaners?


      No, they are itemizing Cisco Pix firewalls at $500,000 a pop. Not including labor.

    • Re:$30 billion? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lookin4Trouble (1112649) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:46AM (#23077488)

      Are they really itemizing hammers for $300, toilet seats for $1000? Are government contractors just taking us to the cleaners?
      *sigh* Thou shalt not feed the trolls
      No. The whole myth of $300 hammers and $1000 toilet seats came from a model of contract purchasing that's been out of use since the 1980s. That contract may have 300 hammers ($5 apiece) and one jet engine ($150,000), but the total cost of the contract ($151,500) gets spread across each item on the contract, so it shows up as (Quantity: 300, Hammer, $505 ea., Quantity: 1, Jet Engine, $505 ea.)
      • For what it's worth, my question was an honest one, even though it may have sounded trollish. My apologies for that. It's just that $30 billion is still a lot of money. I am aware that government networks can be a pain (as I have done work for government), but for the scope of work it's still expensive. I suppose if you factor in the time frame (two months!) it's more reasonable, as it would be quite labor intensive.

  • SlashBias (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CogDissident (951207) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:17AM (#23077080)
    Well, from a network-security point of view, having fewer links to the web at large is actually a good thing, and things like this SHOULD be secured.

    Implying that simply because the departments arn't completely open to the internet in a thousand ways is a denial of freedom of information, is a huge leap.

    Granted, nobody trusts bush, and they shouldn't, as this is likely what he plans to do, but this part in particular is a good idea.
    • No one implied a 'denial of freedom of information' except for you. Fewer access points might mean that public-facing government sites might have performance issues. Or it might not -- it depends on how they implemented it. That's all the summary said -- no one knows how the infrastructure changes will affect public-facing sites because no one knows the design and implementation details yet.

      • No one implied a 'denial of freedom of information' except for you.

        How this will impact public information resources such as the Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine or even the US Congress remains to be seen.

        Hey, read the summary sometime. Thanks.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Iridium_Hack (931607)

      I mostly agree - But wonder if another part of this will end out allowing Greater Penetration of the Internet public networks even as it limits access to the government ones. After all, if you have rights and abilities to break into networks in the public domain but never have to be concerned about the public breaking into yours, do as you wish. . . life is good! And no one will ever find out what you're doing.

      If they really cared about doing it right, it wouldn't always be a one-sided standard protec

  • instead of the more commoditized view of networking and security as two seperate entities, it might help.

    TCP/IP was never intended to be secure. It was intended to be flexible, robust and fault-tolerant. Security was not incorporated in the design of TCP/IP networks, save as a kludge attached after the fact. Fine for most of us; but if security is critical, I recommend using a different technology at the network level, one which incorporates security at the fundamental level. Since these networks should already be defined as "dark" networks, the potential for inter-network connectivity issues should not be a major consideration.

    Yes, DarpaNet is a remarkable invention - but it's the Model-T of the computing industry. Y'know how many guys got their arms broken by that bloody starter crank, before Henry F. incorporated a lead-acid battery and electric starting moter? Sure, the hand-crank works well enough, but it's time to come up with the next advancement, not to mandate more foam padding and other safety features for the arm-breaker.

    • So, you're right that TCP/IP has some attributes which make it less than ideal for a number of applications. However, it has (literally) network effects--the protocol is more valuable because of the number of people using it--which is why it has eclipsed all the alternative technologies: DECNET, OSI/ISO, ATM, X.25, Frame Relay, etc.... (I know I'm mixing OSI layers there) Heck, IPv6 is having a hard time even though everybody has pretty much agreed to move to it.

      Sure, if you wanted to, you could create
        • Well, the biggest security problem isn't really in the network protocol -- the intrusions that you see happening aren't really due to TCP/IP directly -- they're because of high-level holes in the software, stuff like not checking boundary conditions or sanitizing database inputs. Most intrusions are not really related to TCP/IP, except in an ancillary sense. Intrusions into supposedly secure networks are made from machines which are already authorized to communicate on those networks.

          I don't see it as a l
  • The U.S. government has launched a classified operation called Byzantine Foothold to detect, track, and disarm intrusions on the government's most critical networks.

    Disarm an intrusion?! Because the intrusion is armed?

    • Disarm an intrusion?! Because the intrusion is armed?
      Of course. Once they [Iranians, al-Qaeda, whoever "they" are this week] get their troops and armaments loaded onto their trucks and start driving them through the tubes, there is no telling how much havoc they can wreak. Unless, of course, the tubes become clogged.
      • Interesting that they named it at all, since the previous 3 names were classified as well, and everytime the name is made public, they rename it again. This time however they released it instead of it being leaked.

        I was involved in the Einstein program during its early days in a previous life, it is actually quite useful, for monitoring all the traffic coming and going, as well as a historical searching.

        The current implementation as far as I know (its been almost a year since I was involved) only has heade
      • Also, a program can be classified while the name is not. Since most purchasing of equipment for said programs is public record (procurement officers rarely have clearances).

  • Bush Cyber Initiative Aims To Monitor, Restrict Access to Federal Network


    This was obviously worded to stir the 'Left' trolling the comments.

    The article speaks of data lost to China last year due to hackers on the Government network. If our tax dollars should pay for anything, it should be national defense and to protect this data.

  • Finally on target (Score:4, Insightful)

    by booch (4157) * <slashdot2009@cra ... m minus math_god> on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:37AM (#23077352) Homepage
    I'm glad to see that the Bush administration is finally on target with their network monitoring. They've been monitoring innocent citizens on the open Internet for years now. Pretty amazing that they'd do that before bothering to secure their own networks.

    What's more amazing is that I'm still amazed by government stupidity and corruption.

  • Firewalls (Score:4, Insightful)

    by davidwr (791652) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:40AM (#23077402) Homepage Journal
    I hope classified data already runs on its own networks isolated from the Internet. Some unclassified but sensitive data, such as taxpayer and social security data, should be given the same treatment.

    When the technology allows for it, I expect most companies to do the same thing, limiting or eliminating access to their sensitive data from computers that have access to the Internet.

    As for data that is supposed to be public, read-only copies - perhaps made nearly in real time - must be accessible to the public. If someone manages to break security and trash a read-only copy, the original data remains uncorrupted.

    • Re:Firewalls (Score:4, Informative)

      by yuna49 (905461) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @10:15AM (#23077838)
      The BusinessWeek story tells of a forged email sent to a senior official at Booz, Allen Hamilton involved with sales of US military hardware. The From address was forged to be from a senior Defense Department official, and the message contained a trojan PDF attachment that included a keystroke logger. These sorts of targeted attacks ("spear-phishing") have been on the rise in the commercial sector as well.

      But, let's analyze this particular event for a moment. First, why would Booz, Allen's email server accept as legitimate an email claiming to be from the Defense Department when it was sent through Korea and Yahoo? Messages like that ought to be blocked at the doorstep. I don't let mail with @aol.com From addresses in here unless they come from AOL's own servers. The fact that such an obviously illegitimate email could be accepted by one of America's largest defense contractors make me wonder how they recruit their network staff.

      Next, why aren't they using public-key encryption, or at least digital certificates for authentication? Hell, they ought to be using SMTP-level encryption with certificates for every message sent by DOD mail servers to their contractors. We're apparently more concerned about regulating the privacy of people's health information through HIPAA rules than we are about the privacy and security of communications between the military and its contractors. If you send an email with "patient health information" between providers in the clear, you could be in a heap of trouble. Why doesn't that mindset apply to defense contractors who have a lot more money to spend on this stuff than health providers?

      The article also glosses over the role that the Microsoft monoculture plays in all this. Some of these attacks target OS to install things like keyloggers, but another large chunk apparently exploit Office applications like Word, Powerpoint, and Access. The article suggests that a large amount of militarily-sensitive data is kept in Access databases which make them an appealing target. Apparently the intent is to burrow small modules into Access databases that ship out the data in the background when the database is opened. Last time I looked, Access wouldn't really be my choice for a database designed to hold and protect militarily-sensitive data.

      While it might be nice to think of the problem as somehow analogous to closing the borders, it looks to me like the usual security principle applies. It matters more who and what's behind the firewall than what's coming in.

      BTW, the whole focus on the guy running a domain registration service in China was patently ridiculous. Of course, no one with a throwaway GoDaddy account ever used it to hack into something; it's only those devious Chinese who've figured this out.

  • How this will impact public information resources (Score:4, Informative)

    by wiredog (43288) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:41AM (#23077412) Journal
    such as the Library of Congress, ... or even the US Congress remains to be seen.

    Since the LoC and Congress are Legislative branch, and the President's Cyber Policy is from the Executive branch, I'd say "very little".

  • Just make it mandatory that a government agency has to use NetBEUI as their network protocol, using MS Proxy Server as their gateway to the tubes. Hacking potential goes WAY down.

  • Proposed security measures... (Score:5, Funny)

    by vmxeo (173325) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @09:50AM (#23077566) Homepage Journal
    Well, if it follows the same pattern of security as other parts of the government, each packet will be required to show two forms of government-issued ID, restrict its data to whatever it can fit into 3 ounce bottles in a clear quart-sized bag, and remove its shoes. Additionally, packets will also be subject to a "No-Route" list, and may also be randomly pulled aside for deep inspection. It will be suggested for packets to arrive at least 1 hour earlier (2 for international routing) for the extra queue length caused by the increased security.
  • Reduce access to 100 sites by June 2008? That must be a typo unless work is already started. I would imagine that it would require leases on buildings, secure power, purchase and installation of electronics, and training, hiring, and relocation of people to run it. All in two months? I don't think that could be accomplished even if the sites were run by private companies who get non-competitive contracts. Oh, is that the point?
  • Uhmm. So this is a classified project?

    Then why do we know about it?
  • But it is only about shutting the windows of government workers and forcing everyone else through a handful of guarded doors with frisking. As if anybody currently expects some kind of free pass today with how the current admin is running this country. They shouldn't if they do.

    Now, I wonder if every entry point will have a pop up asking of you are really sure you want to move forward to the next page? ;-)

    LoB

  • Oh the irony (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hoi Polloi (522990) on Tuesday April 15 2008, @11:16AM (#23078676) Journal
    Does anyone see the irony in calling a large scale government information project "Byzantine [learnthat.com]"?
  • and get all their sensitive material on the SIPRNet [wikipedia.org] (or something like it) where it should belong. Nothing should reachable from the public network.

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