[Dailydave] "I hunt Sys-Admins"

[dave aitel]

Occasionally I like to reflect, as you all do, on the various things
that have mis-shaped our understanding of cyber war.

For example, take this Intercept article based on the Snowden leaks:
https://theintercept.com/2014/03/20/inside-nsa-secret-efforts-hunt-hack-system-administrators/

Viewed in hindsight, this article points very closely at something I'm
going to support in depth in an article coming out shortly, which is
that *the term "Critical Infrastructure" does not apply in cyber the way
defense strategists think it does*. I mention this, which may seem
obvious to the readership of this list, because if you read policy
papers they go on an on about how nations should avoid "attacking" each
others "critical infrastructure" as a "norm". They don't, of course,
consider defining a lot of terms in any specificity, but they do mention
that under no circumstances should CERTs be attacked. Which clearly is
ridiculous because in cyberwar the CERT is something you will have
penetrated first so you know when you've been caught everywhere else.
Likewise, CERTs are usually very easy to attack. Likewise, top on your
list is secure at microsoft.com, and every other security contact. And in
order to claim those things as "off limits" we have to declare huge
swaths of infrastructure (often unknown ahead of time) as off limits.

Also visible in retrospect is that people love to focus on the catchy
phrases. "I hunt sys-admins". Sure you do! But that means your strategic
offensive efforts have already failed at least twice. In order to get to
the point where "I hunt sys-admins" team is involved, you have to get
through "I hunt developers", "I hunt other hackers", and "I hunt system
integrators". And even above them is "I hunt standards developers and
cryptographers" (aka, NIST :) ). 

-dave






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