US Government to Have Only 50 Gateways 150
Narrative Fallacy brings us a story about the US government's plan to reduce the roughly 4,000 active internet connections used by its civilian agencies to a mere 50 highly secure gateways. This comes as part of the government's response to a rise in attacks on its networks.
"Most security professionals agreed that the TIC security improvements and similar measures are long overdue. 'We should have done this five years ago, but there wasn't the heart or the will then like there is now,' said Howard Schmidt, a former White House cyber security adviser. 'The timetable is aggressive,' he said, but now there is a sense of urgency behind the program. Small agencies that won't qualify for their own connections under TIC must subcontract their Internet services to larger agencies."
Is it just me... (Score:2)
I mean, really. Perhaps ensuring the standards and procedures are actually adhered to would be a much cheaper and less drastic change.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to maintain standards and practices across 4,000 gateway points vs 50. Let alone the agency bureaucracy that would be involved in doing site checks and working across various agency boundaries would be a nightmare. It would take eons to get those things in place to do consistent auditing and management to ensure standards and procedures are followed, let alone actually do them. Might as well consolidate bandwidth costs and number of checkpoints down to 50 in the process.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking two things:
1) You are concentrating access points (and thus increasing the likelihood of failure given concerted attacks [like DDoS for example])
2) With a small definable limit of access points you are decreasing (or eliminating) the possibility of honeypots (and counter-surveillance)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me see...
With 50 gateways, if the internal network is built correctly (unlike say a how certain cable company does their's), then I can not think of any real net negatives except the complexity of the internal network now. But, given the serious issues the 4000 has, the complexity of the internal network is a relatively non-existent issue.
InnerWeb
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It might be wishful thinking, but I am speaking from experience in the military. The networks were definitely redundant in many locations that were critical. I would be willing to bet that a part if not most of this network, especially given the price tag, has a certain level of redundancy behind those 50 gateways.
InnerWeb
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, consolidating the traffic means they could tr
Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) you assume that the 50 gateway points will be managed properly.
2) you assume that access to those gateway points will be managed effectively.
3) you assume that the underlying network design is intelligently put together.
Since this is government work, I would throw in an entirely different set of assumptions:
1) The contractor doing the work will be foreign.
2) The contractor doing the work will have less than solid training in putting together nationwide internet scale networks.
3) The underlying networks will mostly have already been compromised.
4) The project will take at least 2 times longer than predicted to complete.
5) The project will be considered complete before most of the network guru's here on slashdot would consider it complete.
6) The project will likely introduce a 2 or 3 point of failure potential rather than a 50 point of failure potential. If you have trouble imagining such a poor design, you haven't experience with government contracts.
I think the missing tag here is "whatcouldpossiblygowrong?". Knowing that something major WILL go wrong, as with all federal projects, you have to weigh the risk of moving forward against the risk of not moving forward. The realistic risk of moving forward is:
1) a significant portion of the networks will go down and leave several agencies without the capability of getting anything done.
2) a downtime in the network will present a very real and very dangerous national security issue.
The risk of not moving forward?
1) Data currently deemed secure is widely compromised. (in fact, this has probably already happened)
It's an arguably good idea on the surface. But really, shouldn't the nation that brought the world the internet have the most well thought out and effective network infrastructure in the world? A change to the underlying network is a solid idea. This change? This change is the result of small minded thinking and government work.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the assumption is more along the lines of:
50 gateway points are more likely to be managed properly than 4000 points.
Those 50 points will have a great deal of attention and resources allocated to them, about 80 times the amount per point of the previous 4000 points.
When the government really cares about a project (read military) they can be very intelligent, just look at the stealth bomber. They are only haphazard when it is a project that exists only to please the public (read medi-care, or social security)
Re: (Score:2)
I would sincerely hope that the military was segmented from the rest of the network. Certainly - if you take this idea with extreme optimism it is a good one. Experience tells me that optimism on large projects, especially where multiple disparate enterprises are concerned, is not the right way to look at things.
I understand the logic. I simply feel that the logic does not take into account reality. In large projects, c
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since we're supposed to be the government (of, by and for, you know) the more places we can interface with it the better.
We've been trained by 27 years of "Conservative" control of government and media to see "government" as some alien entity over which we have no control and which only acts to make our lives unpleasant. St. Ronald was the first to really market this erroneous notion, and it really disrespects the clever and elegant plan our founding fathers laid out for us.
This meme of "drowning government in a bathtub" is so ubiquitous that even some smart people are lazily spreading it, as you have done.
If you've recently driven on a US highway, or if you're one of the unlucky ones under whom a bridge recently collapsed in Minnesota, you know first-hand what happens when "the commons" are neglected.
The strangest thing about this whole story is that we are constantly told that the US is a "Christian Nation" yet the idea of "care in common" which is anathema to Republicans is a most Christian notion. But I guess it's to be expected when hypocrisy is the new black.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only the "projects" on American soil. Have you seen some of the plans for "projects" in Baghdad and Kosovo? Military bases the size of Disneyworld.
The "Fed" is us, smitty. The "State" is us. That was rule one of our Constitution. By demonizing the US Government, Ronald Reagan began setting up a "privatized" government that would benefit a very few. He also started
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, that document?
Consider the 10th Amendment:
Your statement seems to have bulldozed a few elements of the Constitution.
Constitutional bulldozing is not a new sport [hpol.org].
Look at FDR claim to adhere to the Constitution while doing the opposite.
Those who see Bush42 as
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To save the rest of you the headache, here's the motto of the page behind the link:
"You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being to trusting."
Uh, no.
(I left the misspelling in. I'm not a grammar nazi, but if you're going to put up a phrase that sums up your philosophy you really ought to proofread it, or be
Re: (Score:2)
From lots of little contracts to BIG CONTRACTS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:From lots of little contracts to BIG CONTRACTS! (Score:5, Insightful)
And, as a taxpayer, is a legitimate question that should be addressed by our Government. Especially, when, not if, it comes to light that the project runs over budget by millions of dollars which they inevitably do. Disgustingly, fleecing of the taxpayer has become de rigeur.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you misread. What they said is:
"Small agencies that won't qualify for their own connections under TIC must subcontract their Internet services to larger agencies."
I think that means they are keeping it in house so to speak and causing small agencies to contract with large agencies for
DoS??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:DoS??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing new here really. Most of those 4,000 gateways are already at least several racks of hardware. I doubt that the vulnerability to distributed attacks will go up as a result of lowering the number of vectors. If anything, having 50 standardized and more carefully monitored gateways will probably further harden them against attacks. (is YOUR gateway patched?)
Of course the other viewpoint is if all 50 of them are being administrated by the same group or a group under central control, when a vulnerability DOES surface, (and they alway so) they will probably ALL be vulnerable since they are standardized.
Assuming they have their heads screwed on straight, they will at least be using somewhat of a variation of several hardware and software vendors to prevent this. As it is now, if a serious problem is discovered in a high end bit of router hardware, it may force downtime on maybe 300 gateways while traffic routes around them. If all 50 are using the same, what do you do then? Flip the kill switch and take down the entire country's internet whilst you fix it?
I want to hear that phonecall. "Hello, Cisco. We're calling in regard to this morning's zero-day bug 433-86b in regard to your model 822 enterprise gateways. We're down, we need a fix now. No, DOWN. The entire country. Yes, really."
I'd be interested to know how China handles their great firewall. Are there details posted anywhere? Somehow I don't think they'd terribly mind taking down the entire country's internet for a day or two for national security though. (and "for reasons of national security" is very loosely interpreted in China it would seem)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DoS??? (Score:4, Funny)
A truly excellent idea. When (if) they finish this project, it should be pretty trivial to have an "Internet-free day" at Government agencies. No Dilbert! No Slashdot! Just actually do something!
On second thought, this may not be such a good idea. Carry on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sort of. While there would be fewer targets, in theory the gateways would have very high levels of connectivity, resources, and knowhow behind them that might not exist with smaller agencies doing their own thing.
More importantly, think in terms of what the attacker is trying to do with a DoS and what the US government is attempting to do with the network. DoS attacks are frequently used as an extortion technique. This obviously won't work against the US governme
Re: (Score:2)
A gateway is a point of entry, but do not confuse "a point" with "a single line, a single box."
New bureaucratic excuse (Score:1)
I've worked in a bureaucracy for a few years. The main reason for proliferation is because of disputes between departments, whether for poor service or arrogant management or both.
Blocklists (Score:3, Funny)
Hopefully this will work out better (Score:5, Informative)
Netcraft [netcraft.com]
When the U.S. Justice Department stepped up its investigation of cybercrime, it found spam originating from an unexpected source: hundreds of powerful computers at the Department of Defense and the U.S. Senate. The machines were "zombies" that had been compromised by hackers and integrated into bot networks that can be remotely controlled to send spam or launch distributed denial of service attacks.
(this link also mentions the older Republican access of the Democrat fileserver)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
So THAT explains all of the 'enlarge your gun' spam!
What does gateway limiting *really* help? (Score:1)
However, it nicely ensures that spendings on hosting and applications is filtered through a limited number of suppliers, reducing competition and stifling innovation -- the american way
--
Helge
Re:What does gateway limiting *really* help? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the connections between different departments are also forced to go through only these 50 departments, that would ensure a further layer of protection.
It is *much* easier to defend a centralized infrastructure (like this) then to defend something random.
This is the same like in real life. Defending a castle is much simpler than defending the village. Yes castle failures are more spectacular and do more damage, but they occur so much less that it's worth to build them anyway. Breaches in the security of a "village" are constant, unfollowable and you cannot prevent them.
So from security standpoint
Re: (Score:2)
Suggesting that government contracts stifle innovation simply because of their size is also ridiculous. The government is a large entity, but by no means the only one. In fact, consolidating and centralising capacity
Re: (Score:2)
The "gateway" methodology is the basis for pretty much all security, physical and computer. How do you think security on a military base works? You keep out people who aren't supposed to be there. It doesn't mean that someone who is supposed to be there isn't working contrary to your best interest, but it eliminates a bunch of the low hanging fruit so you can focus your
Newbie Mistake (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Newbie Mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody's so cynical here (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that there was nothing wrong with the Maginot line itself, that the problem was that it only ran the French/German border and did not include the French/Belgium border since Belgium was a friend and it would be insulting to arm that border? The Germans simply invaded Belgium on their way to France.
Or has the government said that only 4,000 of the 5,000 gateways will go behind the new line since the remaining 1,00
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely it'll work this way; government agencies are put behind the connection points, connection points become bogged down with administration and security rules, employees can't do their actual work, employees become frustrated enough to set up 3G access on their laptops, government agencies end up with 500.000 gateways instead.
So I think the Maginot comparison isn't that far off the mark.
One could lead to the other... (Score:5, Interesting)
After they do a project this large for their own network they'll have the experience necessary to do this across the board.
If they do that at the major trunks running in/out of the US that pretty much would be the end of unmonitored access for anybody on the 'net in the US. (Not like ISPs in a lot cases aren't logging stuff now but there's a big difference between that and a government run filter.)
Regardless it certainly bears keeping an eye on this to make sure it doesn't show signs of creep or expansion beyond government use.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My country (Australia) has only a handful of international links (I think it is around five), and it is still improbable that a Government could monitor all that data. They can filter out everything but "persons of interest", but t
Re: (Score:2)
The whole point was that if they go through all the hurdles to learn how to combine all these networks into 50 from 4000 and then filter/restrict that they will have learned how to do that on a larger scale.
From that point it is just a matter of having the covert/overt funds and media spin for the project.
I don't deny that monitoring is already occurring. As you said ECHELON has been around for years.
But if they were to restrict the trunks it
Re: (Score:2)
And the point about there aren't that many egress and ingress points obviously would make the job of filtering the US networks just that much easier and reduce the cost needed as well.
Some Generals Were Getting A Tour Of The Internet (Score:2)
At the time there were only seven connections between the Internet and the MilNet. One of the generals asked how they could be disconnected in times of war.
Before their guide could answer, another general piped up with "Explosive bolts".
Performance will be awful (Score:2)
Imagine if bittorrent decided to say "screw the distributed client model", we'll just host 50 giant sites with all the files stored on them. Yeah, that just wouldn't work....
Re: (Score:2)
You sure? Maybe the folks at Internal Revenue, Social Security, etc don't need to be reaching rich media content outside the federal network and the federal network does not need to host rich media content for citizens from inside the federal network?
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. Have you ever seen a google data center? All Google functions are provided by a grand total of 36 (known) data centers - only 19 of which are in the US. And I can pretty much guarantee that Google processes mo
Say what now? (Score:2)
Because the back-end databases contain proprietary information that could be private or even classified, the back-end networks need additional protection to fend off hacking attempts from outside. A separate layer of firewalls inside each agency's network will provide security by insulating the back-end systems from the rest of the network, Bradner said.
Since when was classified data allowed to be anywhere near an internet facing computer?
Are they abandoning the airgap policy or something?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when was classified data allowed to be anywhere near an internet facing computer?
The times are changing my friend.
Are they abandoning the airgap policy or something?
Put simply, yes, it's a bit scary and myself and various coworkers (as contractors) have questioned the change in perspective but the government seems to be moving away from air gaps, at least in 1 agency that I know of which will go unnamed for privacy and security considerations. I think classified systems will be the last to be merged but already production and non-production systems are being merged. The idea, as TFA says, is to just put security monitoring devices
There must be 50 ways to hax0r your server (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
clarity (Score:2)
And this is today's.
Sudden Urgency After 7 Worthless DHS Years (Score:2)
After 7 years bleeding us all dry, making us more endangered, lying to us, wasting our time and squandering our advantages against our many real enemies, suddenly Homeland Security has "a sense of urgency"?
They're just going to spend as much money as they possibly can in the last 8 months Bush/Cheney control the Executive, all sent to their cronies, grabbing more power and cutting off as much communications inside
Re: (Score:2)
1) It's a much shorter period of time and
2) It's the last damn time.
Progress as Promised!
Gateways? (Score:2)
circling the wagons around texas (Score:2)
You wear clothes. Your house probably has a bathroom door. But Seattle or San Diego are probably too big and too intertangled with the world to use perimeter security in a big way, much less large countries with land borders.
Doesn't this mean (Score:2)
Am I wrong about this?
Waivers. Lots of waivers. (Score:3, Interesting)
When the DOD did this, no new money was provided for the switch, vendor "H" was the only source of outside assistance, at their usual outrageous prices, and everyone who could waivered out.
Yet another candidate for.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would like to see someone attempt to keep 80 Helm's Deeps safe as opposed to 1 Helm's Deep safe... obviously, it failed, but that's because I am going along with your analogy and it was doomed to fail, hehe.
Seriously, having redundancy is a very good thing, but if you are too redundant, it is way easier. If you have 50 shaded windows that people try to look in, it's a lot easier to monitor than if you have 200 windows that you try to monitor (and make sure all the defenses are safe, etc).
Re: (Score:2)
Lovely - and useless (Score:2)
This could have worked earlier, say 5 years ago. However, the nature of attacks is such that the whole hard shell, soft centre approach is compromised.
The primary issue is that defence mechanisms are moving up the stack. It started with being on an isolated bit of cable, then it because a routed network to the Internet - with 50 firewalls, that's the hard shell these guys are talking about.
But the problem sit INSIDE t
At an awfully high cost (Score:2)
Common sense travels slowly (Score:2)
Yes, about par for the course. From memory DEC (my employer at that time) took a similar decision back around 1985 or so. The plan entailed channelling all connections from the company's tens of thousands of computers, linked worldwide by DECnet, through one or at most two gateways to the ARPAnet. The security logic was unassailable even then.
22 years for public
Re:Great Wall of China (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Cheers
Re:Great Wall of China (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great Wall of China (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd have to be a dumbass to leak material via your workstation in a government facility. Actually, you wouldn't be a dumbass, you'd be a Guantanamo inmate.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great Wall of China (Score:5, Funny)
As far as a practical implementation, I imagine that behind the network's regular firewall, one would just place a container of tigers (a "Tigerbox") that way. The firewall will work as a general security measure, but if a hacker were to break through into the network, he would be immediately eviscerated by tigers. I suppose that in theory, one could even get rid of the firewall entirely, like you suggest, and protect the network entirely with tigers. I'm not sure how practical this would be, due to the increased number of tigers required. However, it might be feasible in a few years once tigerboxes are more popular and the market begins to flood with cheap commodity tigers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Great Wall of China (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
~S
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Keep the government fenced up sounds like a good idea to me.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I'm pretty sure they won't try to do this under OS X.
So...the Great Wall of San Diego (Score:2)
Re:Great Wall of China (Score:5, Insightful)
First, there is no consensus that the Great Wall was created to keep citizens in, as nice as a soundbyte as it makes. Second, history does not show what you claim it does. Off the top of my head, European castles, the Maginot Line, the fences around U.S. military bases in Vietnam, the fences Israel uses to restrict Palestinian access to Israel itself, and the fences that the U.S. attempts to use at the Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants out are all examples of fences designed to keep the "other" from coming in.
In fact, fences being used to keep _citizens_ in is relatively uncommon. They are most commonly used to keep the "other" out, to mark property lines, or to keep animals, livestock, or children within a certain area.
But in any case, what exactly is your point? That you can compare the actions of a feudal society's relationship to its people to basics of computer security in a pithy two sentence statement and be insightful? Would you also claim that the edifice of WSUS for patch management is another example of the man trying to keep the federal employees down? Your fence analogy doesn't even hold up - this is a _gate_ - designed for deliberate flow to and fro.
The article does specifically state that the monitoring systems are designed to keep certain information from leaving via the internet (whether intentionally or not) but that doesn't indicate that this is some feudal oppression system to choke the minds of federal employees. They are free to use whatever internet provider they wish when they get home, are they not? It's a firewall on steriods designed to protect government computers and data. Don't try to make it into something that it's not.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
1. Keep HORSES out of China. China had a capable military but also a vast border. The more nomadic horse riding people up north were able to make raids into China and be gone before the Chinese army could respond. The Europeans had the same issue with the Vikings. While people can scale walls, horses can't. Cavalry without horses is useless. The point of the Great Wall is to make such raids very difficult.
2. Signal the Chinese army
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Now for the reality:There are no terrorists.
Yes, 911, the pretext for all this, was an inside job!
Surely, you jest my friend!
The next thing you would say is that Pearl Harbor was allowed deliberately to throw the bomb at 'em Japs or that Hilter was a puppet of the US and the entire WW-2 was pre-planned albeit apparently sketchily - you know the routine elite-versus-commoner struggles that lead to "war and strife"
These things sound like good gossip material but are not so much verifiable.
Re: (Score:2)
Couple things. They don't have the technology to conquer the west. They don't. We know that. The leaders of the USA know that. We both out number and out gun them. If we really were as threatened by [the Muslims] as the media says, lets evaluate what would happen.
Navy Seals would be dispatched to seize every oil facility in Saudi Arabia. After that. We would carpet bomb and drop
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, the Govt itself will feel the pain of their own stupidity. Whats the difference if they have 50 firewalls or 500? This is what the terrorists want: to make working at Govt. agencies less enjoyable by cramping their internet access while making them waste millions implementing it!. Now for the reality: There are no terrorists. The goal is to make more money for contractors. We Americans foot the bill all the way. Its all a big lie, either you believe it or you go along with it to reap the benefits. Yes, 911, the pretext for all this, was an inside job!
Why does reducing infrastructure equipment have to imply reducing functionality? You obviously don't understand the concept of consolidation. Reducing the # of devices reduces the amount of time managing and monitoring the devices. It makes managing the network easier because firewall rules can be consolidated and made simpler, along with other types of rules used throughout a network. Reducing the # of gateways to the outside world for a gov't agency or network also makes it more secure. People using tho
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, you've got your tinfoil hat on too tight. This has nothing to do with private internet access. This is about the IT systems used by the federal government, which currently connect to the internet on 4000 wildly disparate gateways. It's very hard to keep track of that, and to consistently handle the attacks that come in on a regular basis. So, they're very wisely tightening things up. Your comment is just another example of shrill, uninformed, ideallogically fragile whiny nons
Re: (Score:2)
I would have done so very simply, had you not so enthusiastically piled on the Orwellian melodrama in the first place yourself.
Everyone already took the others. (Score:2)
The government is cutting down the number of gateways to the government network, this has nothing to do with the rest of the US' private access. If you had said for example:
"I'd like to see the government try to stop all the wifi Point-to-Point antenna pointed across the street (to private unsecured gateways) or accessed at home using their government issue laptops."
you would have been insightful, but as it s
Re: (Score:2)