An article from a German Magazine (heise.de - In German, and probably the closest to a German Slashdot there is.) Goes into details of a new German Army (Bundeswehr) cyber unit. The unit seems to be in the spirit of the USAF Cyber Command.
Some helpful commenter on Slashdot translated the story into English:
The Bundeswehr is said to set up a "Cyberwar unit", which won't only protect the (army's or Germany's, not explicitly stated) own IT-infrastructure but is also supposed to carry out reconnaissance or manipulation "in opposing networks".
According to information of the Spiegel, the troup is made out of a few dozen computer science alumni of the Bundeswehr's universities.According to the Hamburg-based news magazine the "hackers in uniform" are still in training at the moment but should be fully ready next year.
The top secret (har har) unit is supposedly under the command of the "Kommando Strategische AufklÃrung" and is led by the Brigade General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel.
There haven't been any comments from the Bundeswehr regarding this report. According to the Basic Constitutional Law the German army is not allowed to carry out any domestic functions or missions, however, there have been plans to abolish that restriction for quite some time.
While experts are still debating wether a term like Cyberwar is correct since there are neither killings nor injuries in such a war, there seems to be an agreement that the defense against such threats should be one of the duties of a nation's army.
And even if the Cyberattack on Estonia wasn't termed a "War" afterwards it's true that every state that runs a substantial IT-infrastructure is taking potential threats of cyberattacks seriously.
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this is really cool - I love the idea of hackers in uniform
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of a war where people don't get hurt. Well, I guess unless SCADA attacks bring down critical infrastructure and people starve or whatever.
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