5 ms·

Possibly important to note the timing of this admission right on the heels of the announcement of our defense minister that she wants to build a 'cyber' divisio

• elcapitan 11y ago
  Here in Germany that only means that 13000 people print out reports for the minister, while 500 people look at screens. 10 of them program the stuff that happens on the screens.
  • duncan_bayne 11y ago
    You have that many Australians working in Germany?
    • cm3 11y ago
      I don't get the reference.
      • gpvos 11y ago
        He just means that it's the same everywhere. In Australia, Germany, etc.
  • iamgopal 11y ago
    It's same everywhere.
  • majewsky 11y ago
    Classic joke: "Wow, that's a huge building. How many people work here?" - "Maybe half of them."
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• philfrasty 11y ago
  Yeah, totally agree. They also have aggressive print advertising everywhere (here in Munich) for this campaign. I wonder if they can attract any real talent though? Only people I know willingly wanted to work for the Bundeswehr eiter did not have the grades to study elsewhere or went to Afghanistan for the money.
  • zorked 11y ago
    They have pamphlets that pretty much say "hey, you could earn more money and have better working conditions from a real employer but that would be boring right?". So I guess not.
    • EwanToo 11y ago
      That's the same as GCHQ say here in the UK, it seems every goverment is much the same!
  • cm3 11y ago
    I'm glad somebody joins them, though, or they would make up a law to legalize what drug cartels are doing with IT (and other) talent. Laws can be passed in parliament and be in use and need to go through trial at supreme court to be ruled invalid. I really wish passing laws was super had, super laborious, and took a very long time (at least 5 years). Then, the government, which needs to be reelected every 4 years, cannot pass all kinds of stupidity.
    • drjesusphd 11y ago
      What are "drug cartels doing with IT talent"?
      • cm3 11y ago
        http://motherboard.vice.com/read/radio-silence http://motherboard.vice.com/read/radio-silence http://www.zdnet.com/article/it-myths-colombian-drugs-gangs-mainframe-assisted-assassinations/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/it-myths-colombian-drugs-gangs-...
• pjc50 11y ago
  Also just after the 30th anniversary of Chernobyl.
• RGamma 11y ago
  That program is completely misguided. You don't need thousands of "cyber soldiers", just a few good computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Because a system built from trusted and provably correct components (hardware and software) is infinitely better than a swiss cheese with dozens of people attempting to keep it from falling apart. And from that point on, you only need to teach soldiers to operate their equipment correctly. The challenges of information technology w.r.t. warfare are fundamentally different from usual war tactics. You can't solve them by throwing lots of personel or big guns at them. If midst-fight your equipment or infrastructure fails because of security flaws, it's not because there's no personel to deal with it (for that it's already too late): it's because its designers failed at the drawing board. It'd be better they concentrated on quality instead of quantity and the resignative "anything can be hacked" myth a lot of popular media is putting forward, as if information technology operated according to the same rules the physical battlefield does. These analogies only go so far... (of course the same applies to non-military contexts as well)
  • emmelaich 11y ago
    You'd need a lot more for offensive operations. And although the article says only a few of those thousands will be used for offensive ops, I suspect that many more will be. I think you can make a better effort with more people; the critical thing is the quality of the people. Of course there's a good chance more will be less valuable!
    • RGamma 11y ago
      Yes, I was focussing more on the defensive aspect. In offense the situation may be different, but in that case, if your enemy is in large-scale possession of technology that would make it susceptible to this in the first place, bad things have happened...
  • jcrawfordor 11y ago
    As someone who works in security operations, there is absolutely a need for people. Yes, a small number of experts could, given enough time, produce some small amount of thoroughly secure components. But that's not the situation we're facing. In real life, governments are some of the largest enterprises that exist, and use the same software and systems as everyone else. Complete replacement with provably correct systems is such a large task that it would never be completed, for just the same reasons as in private industry. The attack surface of a government ranges from sophisticated military hardware to mobile apps. Deterring, detecting, and remediating security incidents is thus done the same way the private sector does it: testing, continuous monitoring, hunting, forensics, etc. All of these activities are person-hour intensive, and I don't think there's a security operations center in the world that wouldn't tell you right now that they are limited by the size of their staff. That said, full-service security departments will include technical auditing and software security components, and I suspect the German government intends to include this. Of course, these functions are quite limited by being on the client end of the relationship, as I doubt the German government produces any more of its software in-house than the US government does (which is not very much).
• davidf18 11y ago
  These viruses are very serious and should be considered as a "near misses" in terms of critical power plant software malfunctioning. After the US, Israel is #2 in Cyber security and is very dependent on Germany for military needs such as submarines and engines for their tanks. Since these nuclear power plants have nothing to do with national security directly, Germany should employ Israelis to help them if they have not already done so.