On Nov 25, 2007 9:54 PM, Randall Shimizu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Paul G. Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Main Discussion List for KPLUG <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2007 8:12:31 PM > Subject: Re: China has the largest (DoS) Denial of service capability....! > > > > Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > > > > > Compared to the zillions of zombified Windows machines, I doubt China is > > that impressive. > > Maybe China is counting on all those Windows machines.
Only an idiot would not. I do not think the Chinese are idiots. > > In addition, all of China's traffic gets throttled through a small > > number of optic links, IIRC. > > > > Simply pulling the plug on those links stops anything China wants to > do. > > Easier said than done. Not to mention, once an attack has started, > pulling the plug after the fact could do nothing to solve stop it See > below.) Yep. The corollary is that China's widely heralded firewall is leaky as hell. All those factory managers and the colonels that "controll" them in South China want ther porn. They have a gazillion ways to get net from the world. I do not expect the Chinese firewall to work any better than the Great Wall did. See Far from it being unbreachable, Chinese emperors relied on the wall only as a last resort to fend off their enemies. (The Ming dynasty, for instance, found it useless against the victorious Manchus, who merely bribed the gatekeepers to let them in.) http://www.amazon.com/Great-Wall-China-Against-World/dp/0802118143 When one has Sex versus Facism I will bet on Sex. And bribery, its constant companion. > > This is not true for the zombies that already exist in our own > country. > > How many of those zombies are (or can be) controlled by the Chinese? > How would we know one way or another? What would it take for the > Chinese to set the zombies off? > > > > > Yes, China has cyber-warfare as one of its goals--*as does our > military*. > > >> China's military is probably ahead, but it's hard to tell how their > >> hacking skills compare with the skills that exist in the US today. I can > >> certainly see however that a organized force could be more effective. > > China is a lot farther along than we are. Would you care to support that statement? Even a few factual references of almost any kind would be appreciated. I do _not_ consider PGA's assertions facts. > > And, if our military *doesn't* have cyber-warfare as one of its > goals, > > then our military is pathetically stupid. > > > > One problem is that that military's cyber warfare is not coordinated > > among the Navy, Army and Air Force. It's hard to see why the military > > is still using Windows on their critical systems. The militiary however > > is putting a lot of effort into securing their systems. The military > > has a set of guides called the STIG's (standard implementation guidelines). The budget of any one of those branches is larger than most of the world's military budget's put together. So the fact that we have multiple competing strategies could be viewed as an advantage. Here BTW is a reference to Security Technical Implementation Guides http://iase.disa.mil/stigs/stig/index.html Disclaimer: I do _not_ have a clue what is in these documents. > Having worked extensively with the military (Navy, Marines, and Army), > I can attest to the fact that they are indeed stupid. They are very > limited in their training as it seems focused on purely military goals > and systems. Not to mention that the people making the decisions as to > what technology is used have purely political aims in mind. Their most > important systems use insecure Windows operating systems and networks. > They are way behind the curve when it comes to computer and network > security. There are thousands of computers on military bases with > access to military networks that could easily be used in DDoS attacks. While I agree that the military is not dominated by brilliance I would point out that _you_ are missing one hell of an opportunity to cash in on this ignorance. Write me privately for how. > If I were wanting to effect such an attack on an enemy country, I would > use that countries own weaknesses against them (as I would do as part of > any military strategy). In this case, one large weakness are the > millions of Windows computers in the country and the thousands of > corporate Windows networks. All those zombied machines, all those > systems waiting for my bots to take control and effect a DDoS (or other > cyber warfare). Agreed. Still, this is hardly a new insight. Sun Tzu understood this thousands of years ago. > Now as a Linux user, I don't have to worry about my systems or networks > being compromised and being a part of a DDoS by anyone. Not that a > Linux system can't be compromised, but it's not as trivial as it is with > Windows. Again agreed. What is remiss in all of this is a fundamental assumption. You seem to think that the purpose of the DOD and the entire military-industrial complex that controls the DOD is to "defend America." I suggest that is _not_ the case. The purpose is to defend the profits of a number of large players in this game. The players are transnational. They will and do sell weapons of all kinds to all comers. They _do_ have some inhibitions about nuclear weapons. Why? Because nukes are _so_ destabilizing. The defense of a declining nation state is far less important than the positioning of the corporation to take advantage of the emerging world order which will likely be far different than the American hegemony that has characterized the last sixty years since WWII. This is worth a read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony BobLQ "Born skeptical, I cannot help but question assumptions." -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
