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Government Security United States IT

White House Declassifies Outline of Cybersecurity Plans 51

Posted by Soulskill from the how-generous dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration on Tuesday declassified part of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative created during the Bush administration, outlining offensive and defensive strategies for protecting information networks. The initiative was originally intended to unify efforts of a number of government agencies into a comprehensive strategy to protect the nation's computer networks. 'One area in which the government did officially disclose new details was Einstein 3, a program to protect civilian government systems from intrusion by deploying sensors on the networks of private telecommunications companies. For the first time, the government disclosed officially that the program would use technology developed by the NSA, the nation's largest intelligence agency. It also said that the Department of Homeland Security, which would run the program, would share malicious code data with the NSA but not the content of communications, such as e-mails.'"
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White House Declassifies Outline of Cybersecurity Plans More

White House Declassifies Outline of Cybersecurity Plans

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  • You have the freedom of speech, but when someone listens you are a threat to national security and they shut your network down.
  • I guess my most major concern about using the Department of Homeland Security is that if anything should go wrong; that it's not during dinner [cnn.com].

    "...Mike Brown needs a little more time for dinner in Baton Rouge. He'll get back to you..." - D.H.S. Staff Communication.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by girlintraining ( 1395911 )

      I guess my most major concern about using the Department of Homeland Security is that if anything should go wrong; that it's not during dinner.

      And I guess my most major concern about using the Department of Homeland Security is that. They take my nail clippers away because it's a security risk, say I can't wear underwire bras, have closed the bathroom down for most, if not all of the flight (and god help you if you have a feminine issue then) now they want to take high-resolution naked pictures of me and share them with their government buddies, contractors, and basically anyone not me. They can't even handle issues of basic sanitation and common

  • High Risk - High Payoff? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @11:47AM (#31346214) Homepage Journal

    Initiative #9. Define and develop enduring "leap-ahead" technology, strategies, and programs. One goal of the CNCI is to develop technologies that provide increases in cybersecurity by orders of magnitude above current systems and which can be deployed within 5 to 10 years. This initiative seeks to develop strategies and programs to enhance the component of the government R&D portfolio that pursues high-risk/high-payoff solutions to critical cybersecurity problems. The Federal Government has begun to outline Grand Challenges for the research community to help solve these difficult problems that require 'out of the box' thinking. In dealing with the private sector, the government is identifying and communicating common needs that should drive mutual investment in key research areas.

    (Emphasis mine)

    I propose instead that we consult the results of the previous R&D work that has been active in this area since the 1960s, and learn the lessons of problems already solved. This is low risk (as we've already paid for it), high payoff.

    Let's get capability based security into the hands of the masses. This will remove their machines from the threat pool. It would also allow those inside the government to manage security in a much more granular (and thus more effective) manner.

    This can be fixed, and it doesn't require a high risk, just due diligence, and hard work.

    • This can be fixed, and it doesn't require a high risk, just due diligence, and hard work.

      Which makes it, politically, decidedly non-sexy, and therefore unlikely to be seriously considered as a workable approach. I've seen it with my own eyes, made the same suggestions almost 10 years ago when Richard Clarke and the PCCIP dog and pony show was in town. Blank stares at the suggestion that the PC's of "the masses" were the high ground and could be taken at will by the bad guys. Then, as now, the reality, evident to anyone with a clue when it comes to security issues, is that we are on our own. The

    • 1) No one's going to be developing anything in 5-10 years. NSA will pull something out of a hat that's been in the works for decades. And it'll probably be exactly what you guessed.

      2) "Dealing" with the private sector sounds ominous.

      3) This sounds suspiciously like DRM. Oh, you do business with the feds? You'll need to use certified, "trusted" systems that allow NSA to remotely memory-hole anything you're accidentally sent.

      4) Next step: Internet user licensing. Say goodbye to anonymity. Three-strikes

  • read the solution is here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by viralMeme ( 1461143 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @11:51AM (#31346268)
    "To strengthen the future cybersecurity environment by .. working to define and develop strategies to deter hostile or malicious activity in cyberspace"

    How about designing an Operating System that strictly differenciates between code and data - and don't download code from the Internet, except from a well defined whitelist of known secure and verified sources. And don't allow the excecution of code by clicking on a URL or opening an email attachment.

    "The EINSTEIN 2 capability enables analysis of network flow information to identify potential malicious activity while conducting automatic full packet inspection of traffic entering or exiting U.S. Government networks for malicious activity using signature-based intrusion detection technology"

    Except enumerating badness [ranum.com] is a bad idea, and if the computers didn't arbiterarly execute code coming in off the Internet then you wouldn't need to analysis of network flow of information. Such a monitoring system itself being open to abuse. Your one stop shop to hacking the entire grid.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ka9dgx ( 72702 )

      Yes, enumerating badness is a bad idea... you'll aways be behind. Securing the OS by simply allowing the user what rights to grant a program at run time is a much more sane approach, don't you think?

  • Old news (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kiaser Zohsay ( 20134 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @11:55AM (#31346344)

    It also said that the Department of Homeland Security, which would run the program, would share malicious code data with the NSA but not the content of communications, such as e-mails.

    ... because they already have that from the network providers.

    • In my government job, our annual security training specifically stated "p2p networks" are a threat and source of viruses. That wasn't in last year's training. I'm thinking the combination of (the government monitoring private networks for malicious software) and (p2p networks are considered malicious software by the government) are what this is all about.

  • This is not self-monitoring. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bjamesv ( 1528503 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @12:00PM (#31346408)
    On the face of it proposal #3 seems perfectly fine.

    The desire for government agencies to have "situational awareness" in the form of deep-packet inspection of every transaction coming in or out of their network is nothing more then a proactive capability that any responsible Admin might want for their network. (assuming they disclose this capability and have policy dictating its use)

    What does worry me are the washington posts comments about Telcom involvement.
    This other article make it very clear EINSTEIN 3 is truly NSA equipment installed on the commercial telcom network where the potential exists for it to easily be repurposed to monitor _OTHER_ traffic streams.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/02/AR2009070202771.html?nav=emailpage [washingtonpost.com]

    this is a whole different animal from whitehouse.gov's portrayal of responsible network admin.

    • That is not correct, the equipment is placed on the telco side of the gov entities connection where it comes into the facility.

      The only traffic being inspected, is what is coming and going to said gov entity, nothing more.

      The original Einstein program was based on the silk analysis tool suit developed (and open source) by CMU, then second edition of the program used a commercial tool that sucked horribly, it was slow when you started creating different network groups to separate the traffic based on each in

  • Slippery slope (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @12:26PM (#31346758) Homepage

    I think this is the most obvious example of a slippery slope that I've ever heard. The government is going to install devices that can intercept communications, and promise not to use it. Pardon me while I go beat myself over the head repeatedly. I need to lose at least another 30 IQ points before I can continue to live in this country.

    It also said that the Department of Homeland Security, which would run the program, would share malicious code data with the NSA but not the content of communications, such as e-mails

  • Defense: a legitimate government power, right? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @12:30PM (#31346826)

    If your neighbor is worried about the Red Menace, he might be inclined to put a ABM launch site in his backyard, or even ICBMs as deterrent force.

    You probably don't want that.

    There are some very good reasons for centralizing physical warfare under a single political authority. It's not just that the constitution says this is a federal executive job (i.e. not something you leave to the states or the people); it's a good idea. If it weren't in the constitution already, I think almost all people would support an amendment making it so.

    But even so, there are limits to that. There's no legitimate reason the federal government should be able to have any sort of authority at all, over whether or not people are allowed to build bomb shelters. A bomb shelter isn't a particularly good way to deal with the threat of nuclear holocaust (the best thing to do, is persuade the Russkies to not attack in the first place), but it doesn't really endanger your neighbors or usurp the president's negotiating power.

    The same applies even to 18th century threats. If your neighbor is worried that the Brits might try to retake the colonies, it's ok for him to stock up on musket ammunition, but that's not really a good solution either. You want a single political entity to deal with the Brits, hopefully at a point long before anyone has to worry about redcoats marching through their farms.

    With cybersecurity, the situation is pretty different. The analogy to relatively ineffective private bomb shelters and relatively ineffective musket ammunition stockpiles, happens to be the best solution to computer security problems. If you decide to have a policy of not executing malware, you are pretty much invincible except for Denial of Service issues related to overwhelming traffic. (And the private network providers are able to deal with that.)

    We don't need any sort of central authority for dealing with computer security. That doesn't mean a central plan would be totally useless, but the payoff is pretty low. A president in charge of cybersecurity is about as an effective solution to cybersecurity, as bomb shelters are an effective solution to nuclear war.

    People can already deal with this; they just don't bother to. That's their problem.

    Now, TFA is actually not all that stupid-looking. He's mostly talking about the government protecting goverement systems. That's a no-brainer. But we don't need them to protect private networks, and I hope people keep an eye on any bullshit that moves in that direction.

  • Preview of outlines (Score:5, Funny)

    by noidentity ( 188756 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @01:22PM (#31347604)
    Here's an ASCII preview of the declassified outlines:

    +-----------x
    |           |\
    |           | \
    |           |  \
    |           |   \
    |            ----
    |                |
    |                |
    |                |
    |                |
    |                |
    |                |
    +----------------+

    Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition.

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