Coding Is Maneuver

Coding is Maneuver And a few other very rapidly delivered thoughts and axioms on Cyber Warfare Jim Stogdill CTO, Gestalt jstogdill@gestalt-llc.com www.limnthis.com

1. Coding is Maneuver It needs to turn when you push the stick

From a blog post that seemed to resonate

In Physical Domain You Have: Air + Physics + S.H. Physical Assets

But, in Cyber... • The Domain is Code • The “platforms” are code • And “the stick” inputs are often code You can’t make up for crappy code with supremely performing physical assets in a domain without any.

What kind of code? • Coding an exploit for a newly discovered vulnerability • Adding a new attack vector to an existing tool • Creating on-the-ﬂy visualizations for newly discovered or suspected attack vectors • Defending an exploit (patching in real time) • Modifying an attack tool to mask it’s OS • ...

So, in the Cyber Domain, technological agility will matter even more, because there will be no compensating physical assets.

2. Cyber SA is Different But it should be related to the geo-spatial battlespace

How do this...

this...

and this...

relate to this?

If you were the JFACC, wouldn’t you want to know?

For the public Internet, are you prepared to use things like Quova and Plazer (commercial / public) to ﬁnd out where network devices are?

Are you building a “Cyber MIDB” that can cleanly integrate with the one with physical targets? (you’ll want your COI talking to the C2 COI)

3. Culture Matters, you can’t do this on an island & it’s not your Internet

Would you hire this guy?

Do you have a problem with these?

Do you think callsigns should be: Goose Maverick Viper

Instead of: r0m1 & Sp3w

don’t let cultural “signals” get in the way

SOF has a very different culture for important reasons, maybe Cyber will evolve one too.

Get out in the world, participate in Communities of Practice

Attend stuff like this:

And this:

Subscribe to this:

And ﬁgure out how to get this guy engaged and believing in what you are doing and he’ll join your Civil Cyber Patrol

Otherwise, you are so gonna get

4. You’ll Have to Use Open Source Or, Coding is Still Maneuver

To use this

And this

And, of course, this (You don’t want to have the only hackers on the planet whose attack can be identiﬁed coming from Solaris!)

Finally, all that other stuff could theoretically be bought, but...

Participate to get stuff you can’t otherwise get, to gather intelligence on what everyone else is doing, and make sure you can change your source code fast when you need to.

And, to wrap up, a few questions to ponder...

Does 8th AF heritage imply global strike on public public / sovereign networks?

If so, Are you learning by doing; playing Cowboy’s and Cossacks? If you aren’t bumping into them, you ain’t learning.

During Bosnian intervention redux ﬂying missions out of Aviano... Do you know what you would do if Serb- sympathizing Russian hackers “Estonia’d” Italy? Would you be prepared to help your ally?

Are we thinking about cyber power the way they thought about air power?

With as many as a million machines in botnets, who owns them? Are some state owned? Can the exploits be exploited without having to build them?

If you had to guess, whose cyber force do you think has more American educated pHD’s in uniform? US Cyber Command or Chinese PLA?

Are you considering how to incorporate Social Engineering into your attack vectors?

And... Why not call it the EOC (effects operations center)? -and- Will there ever be a JFCCC?

Oh, just one more thought experiment... If this were Cyber’s1948 and we were standing up the USCF, how would we organize it to focus on all of the missions? TCF? SCF? CMC?

Thanks! Jim Stogdill jstogdill@gestalt-llc.com www.limnthis.com

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Coding Is Maneuver

by jstogdill on Dec 05, 2007

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Coding Is Maneuver — Presentation Transcript