Titan Rain

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 8:17 am

The Sept. 05 issue of Time Magazine has a interesting article on how the Chi-coms are doing a serious hack job on our nations security apparatus. The Chi-com hackers are given the code name "Titan Rain". Hu hum, yawn you say? Well here's the interesting part. Remember the pre 9/11 wall erected by one Jamie Gorelik that kept various agencies from communicating with one another? You do? Good, because here's another one.
We are all under the impression that the Homeland Security Dept. was formed to remove interagency barricades where national security issues are at stake.
So lets see how well this is working.

One Shawn Carpenter who worked (notice the past tense?) for Sandia National Labs, was on his own time tracking down network break-ins of various govt. networks. Initially he was working with Army cyber intelligence. Shawn finally tracked down the hackers and found that the attacks emminated from just three routers all of which are located in the Chinese province of Guangdong. You'll have to read the article to fully appreciate the magnitude and potential damage the hackers are doing. Anyway, kudos to Mr. Carpenter...or so you would think.

So here comes a new "Wall". Seems federal law prohibits the military intelligence officers from working with civilians such as Mr. Carpenter.
The Army passes Carpenter over to the FBI where he wins warm praise from the G-men for the work he is doing. Cool huh? Then his employers at Sandia found out what Carpenter was doing....and encouraged him to keep working at it, gave him a private office to use...all in the name of keeping our country safe. That is probablty what you or I'd do, except...ding ding ding! Wrong answer. Sandia fired him and stripped him of his security clearance. Seems it is illegal for Americans to hack into a foreign countries computors. Ah ah ahh...don't be too quick to condemn, Carpenter was doing this with full knowledge and encouragement by both the Army and the FBI. Now Carpenter is falling down the rabbit hole as his "buddies" over at the FBI start claiming they were really stringing Carpenter along as the were really investigating him. Sound familiar?

As to Carpenters's employer Sandia, a Sandia memo dated March 2003 stated that he (Carpenter ) and his colleagues should think like "world class hackers" (Carpenters job was to analyze network security) and to quote, "retrieve tools that other attackers used against Sandia". So Carpenter did what he was instructed to do, showed a little ingenuity and was quite successful (to the point he left a bugging code on the primary routers software that alerted him via email to a Yahoo account every time the Chi-com gang of hackers made a move. In two weeks 23,000 message appeared in the account). Too bad the "Wall" is still standing tall and all the Humpty Dumpty's that try to clamber over it wind up taking the fall.

roid · Post by **roid** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 8:50 am

So here comes a new "Wall". Seems federal law prohibits the military intelligence officers from working with civilians such as Mr. Carpenter.

this is new law yes?

dissent · Post by **dissent** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 9:17 am

woodchip wrote: Seems it is illegal for Americans to hack into a foreign countries computors.

lol - yeah, I suppose it oughta be for the ordinary citizen, but I'd expect law enforcement / homeland security to be doing this as a matter of course. Sounds to me like they should have given the guy a raise and a corner office. politics sux.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 10:31 am

The more I learn about our own government, and how inter-agency and intra-agency politics interferes with military and security operations, the more I realize that the only reason we haven't been defeated by a world power is because one hasn't attacked us yet.

In Battlefield2 terms: We're not winning because we're superior, we're winning because we're the farthest flag from the enemy spawn point and they just haven't arrived here yet...
We're a nation of TK'ing, radio-spamming, bunny hopping, heli-pad and runway campers just waiting to be picked off.

Palzon · Post by **Palzon** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 10:51 am

Will Robinson wrote:In Battlefield2 terms...

You use a BF analogy on the descentBB? For shame, Will Robinson. D3 is truly dead when it cannot even provide us with an analogy.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 11:24 am

All right then, to extend Will's analogy to D3, our team isn't winning in Veins CTF because we're the better pilots. We're winning because the other team has no one flagrunning and keeps stumbling over themselves trying to play defense. We're a bunch of typekilling, MD-whoring, Skipnix-flying lamers just waiting to get a faceful of triple Fusion. That good enough for ya?

P.S. Note that I don't subscribe to this theory myself; I just wanted to see if I could come up with a valid analogy. As it turns out, I pleasantly surprised myself.

Palzon · Post by **Palzon** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 11:35 am

You hear that, Will Robinson? Some of us still love D3 enough to make it our primary basis for geo-political analogy!

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 1:48 pm

Palzon wrote:You hear that, Will Robinson? Some of us still love D3 enough to make it our primary basis for geo-political analogy!

I have been assimilated, I need my C4 or my SMAW...I must cause the enemies vehicles to go BOOM and watch their limp bodies flail about in the air like little rag dolls!

will_kill · Post by **will_kill** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 3:57 pm

noooooo!...come back to the light...come back to the blue orb, still shining bright

edit:funny how none of my ground-pounding friends who have promised me time and again to install and patch so we can play have seem to come thru...

Kyouryuu · Post by **Kyouryuu** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 12:18 am

And I thought this topic had to do with rain on Titan.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 5:30 am

Nice way to kill a thread guys. Bubble gum anyone?

will_kill · Post by **will_kill** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 11:10 am

woodchip wrote:Nice way to kill a thread guys. Bubble gum anyone?

woops!

roid · Post by **roid** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 9:42 pm

you skipped over my question woodchip.
are you quite sure that this is a NEW law?

Hostile · Post by **Hostile** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 2:45 pm

Where are you playing these days Will. I am quite addicted to BF2.....

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 6:42 pm

roid wrote:you skipped over my question woodchip.
are you quite sure that this is a NEW law?

The civilian/military intelligence ban is probably old law. Like I said, I thought the new laws would have appended the old law.

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 11:26 am

Top Gun wrote:All right then, to extend Will's analogy to D3, our team isn't winning in Veins CTF because we're the better pilots. We're winning because the other team has no one flagrunning and keeps stumbling over themselves trying to play defense. We're a bunch of typekilling, MD-whoring, Skipnix-flying lamers just waiting to get a faceful of triple Fusion...

I laughed aloud after reading that... very nice! (Except for that jab at Skip-nix pilots.

)

Avatar · Post by **Avatar** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:26 pm

For SHAME! Talking about D3 only when chastising Will Robinson... What happened to the love for D1 and D2? Sheesh. Though I'm too lazy to come up with a D1 or D2 version of the analogy.

On the original subject... I would strongly suspect that this is more of an old law screwing that guy over. It's quite moronic to punish him over this kind of crap though. Efficiency and effectiveness have never been specialties of our Government or Military (IMO at least). Just goes to show what you get for being innovative when you work for the government doesn't it?

Titan Rain

Titan Rain

Re: Titan Rain