Comments on: Better late than never to the cyber arms race

By: Forex Trade

Forex Trade — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:06:19 +0000

you sure got it on this one

By: Betsy

Betsy — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:21:05 +0000

Hey there Tim, before you spank Kevin you had better check this link out!
The Headline is Air Force Looks to Use Military, Civilian PCs For Offensive Botnet
http://www.dailytech.com/Air+Force+Looks+to+Use+Military+Civilian+PCs+For+Offensive+Botnet/article11760.htm
Lets all work together and beat the bits out of them

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:48:36 +0000

The numbers seem a little wonky — 100M total bots, and the *second*-largest botnet has 85M bots? Either the numbers are off, or machines get infected into multiple botnets. I could believe the latter, but it would be interesting to see confirmation.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:39:03 +0000

Tim & Kevin you are both right.
Kevin the point you make is valid. PCs in the US being used in a botnet would slow the Internet for everyone unless the Air Force have their own HUGE pipe through special routing to take the DDoS they launch off our backbone. Tim you are right, Kevin’s point I addressed above and his comment about DDoS architectures require assets outside the US to launch DDoS cyber attacks. It is this type of contructive dialog I love on here. IT expands the understanding of the issues.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:40:48 +0000

“The U.S. Air Force announced it plans to construct a large botnet.“
If your lead sentence is completely wrong, you deserve a serious spanking.
The paper in question is a proposal by an Air Force colonel. It is not a “plan”, and the U.S. Air Force did not approve it.
Kevin Coleman owes the DT readership an apology. Complete misunderstanding of the subject in question is usually handled by AP/Reuters. DT should get out of that business, since they cannot compete.

By: TrustButVerify

TrustButVerify — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:36:11 +0000

Well, I’m skeptical, but pleased– and I’m also obliged to wipe the egg off my face and have a helping of crow, because I never expected the USAF to do this. Operational botnets generally have the advantage of being spread all over the world, making them hard to stop by blocking off IP ranges. I wonder how the AF plans to emulate this attribute? It’s amusing to imagine a cheap apartment in Goa or Minsk with nothing inside but a dozen cast-off desktops being remote-admin’d by the “Cyber Command.”

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:59:29 +0000

Another good link
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080515/FOREIGN/586297128/1003

By: caution

caution — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:51:44 +0000

I’m not sure the Air Force has announced it’s plan or just LCol Williamson. A brief and interesting response is here. http://tinyurl.com/67vgcw

By: SpyGuy

SpyGuy — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:48:12 +0000

Right to the point and not holding back any punches — that is the Kevin we have all come to admire and respect!