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Air Force wants to control ‘any and all computers’?


Posted by Dennis Sellers May 19, 2008 at 10:16am

So how will our Macs be affected by this: The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it “access” to—and “full control” of—any kind of computer there is, reports Wired.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their “adversaries’ information infrastructure completely undetected,” the article adds.

The Air Force recently put together a “Cyberspace Command,” with a charter to rule networks “the way its fighter jets rule the skies,” according to Wired. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, US$30 billion “national cybersecurity initiative.”

On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for “Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement.” Here’s part of the “engagement” plans: “This includes high risk, high payoff capabilities for gaining access to any remotely located open or closed computer information systems; these systems enabling full control of a network for the purposes of information gathering and effects based operations. Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms. Robust methodologies to enable access to any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware are of interest. Also, we are interested in technology to provide the capability to maintain an active presence within the adversaries’ information infrastructure completely undetected. Of interest are any and all techniques to enable stealth and persistence capabilities on an adversaries infrastructure. This could be a combination of hardware and/or software focused development efforts.

”Following this, it is desired to have the capability to stealthily exfiltrate information from any remotely-located open or closed computer information systems with the possibility to discover information with previously unknown existence. Any and all techniques to enable exfiltration techniques on both fixed and mobile computing platforms are of interest. Consideration should be given to maintaining a ‘low and slow’ gathering paradigm in these development efforts to enable stealthy operation.”

Is it just me or is does this sound very Big Brother-ish and a potential invasion of privacy?

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