Author Archives: Richard Bejtlich

My Prediction for Top Gun 2 Plot

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We’ve known for about a year that Tom Cruise is returning to his iconic “Maverick” role from Top Gun, and that drone warfare would be involved. A few days ago we heard a few more details in this Collider story:

[Producer David Ellison]: There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick. It is I don’t think what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon. But like all things, it all comes down to the script, and Justin is writing as we speak.

[Interviewer]; You’re gonna do what a lot of sequels have been doing now which is incorporate real use of time from the first one to now.

ELLISON and DANA GOLDBERG: Absolutely…

ELLISON:  As everyone knows with Tom, he is 100% going to want to be in those airplanes shooting it practically. When you look at the world of dogfighting, what’s interesting about it is that it’s not a world that exists to the same degree when the original movie came out. This world has not been explored. It is very much a world we live in today where it’s drone technology and fifth generation fighters are really what the United States Navy is calling the last man-made fighter that we’re actually going to produce so it’s really exploring the end of an era of dogfighting and fighter pilots and what that culture is today are all fun things that we’re gonna get to dive into in this movie.

What could the plot involve?

First, who is the adversary? You can’t have dogfighting without a foe. Consider the leading candidates:

  • Russia: Maybe. Nobody is fond of what President Putin is doing in Ukraine.
  • Iran: Possible, but Hollywood types are close to the Democrats, and they will not likely want to upset Iran if Secretary Kerry secures a nuclear deal.
  • China: No way. Studios want to release movies in China, and despite the possibility of aerial conflict in the East or South China Seas, no studio is going to make China the bad guy. In fact, the studio will want to promote China as a good guy to please that audience.
  • North Korea: No way. Prior to “The Interview,” this was a possibility. Not anymore!
My money is on an Islamic terrorist group, either unnamed, or possibly Islamic State. They don’t have an air force, you say? This is where the drone angle comes into play.
Here is my prediction for the Top Gun 2 plot.
Oil tankers are trying to pass through the Gulf of Aden, or maybe the Strait of Hormuz, carrying their precious cargo. Suddenly a swarm of small, yet armed, drones attack and destroy the convoy, setting the oil ablaze in a commercial and environmental disaster. The stock market suffers a huge drop and gas prices skyrocket.
The US Fifth Fleet, and its Chinese counterpart, performing counter-piracy duties nearby, rush to rescue the survivors. They set up joint patrols to guard other commercial sea traffic. Later the Islamic group sends another swarm of drones to attack the American and Chinese ships. This time the enemy includes some sort of electronic warfare-capable drones that jam US and Chinese GPS, communications, and computer equipment. (I’m seeing a modern “Battlestar Galactica” theme here.) American and Chinese pilots die, and their ships are heavily damaged. (By the way, this is Hollywood, not real life.)
The US Navy realizes that its “net-centric,” “technologically superior” force can’t compete with this new era of warfare. Cue the similarities with the pre-Fighter Weapons School, early Vietnam situation described in the first scenes at Miramar in the original movie. (Remember, a 12-1 kill ratio in Korea, 3-1 in early Vietnam due to reliance on missiles and atrophied dogfighting skills, back to 12-1 in Vietnam after Top Gun training?)

The US Navy decides it needs to bring back someone who thinks unconventionally in order to counter the drone threat and resume commercial traffic in the Gulf. They find Maverick, barely hanging on to a job teaching at a civilian flight school. His personal life is a mess, and he was kicked out of the Navy during the first Gulf War in 1991 for breaking too many rules. Now the Navy wants him to teach a new generation of pilots how to fight once their “net-centric crutches” disappear.

You know what happens next. Maverick returns to the Navy as a contractor. Top Gun is now the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) at NAS Fallon, Nevada. The Navy retired his beloved F-14 in 2006, so there is a choice to be made about what aircraft awaits him in Nevada. I see three possibilities:

1) The Navy resurrects the F-14 because it’s “not vulnerable” to the drone electronic warfare. This would be cool, but they aren’t going to be able to fly American F-14s due to their retirement. CGI maybe?

2) The Navy flies the new F-35, because it’s new and cool. However, the Navy will probably not have any to fly. CGI again?

3) The Navy flies the F-18. This is most likely, because producers could film live operations as they did in the 1980s.

Beyond the aircraft issues, I expect themes involving relevance as one ages, re-integration with military culture, and possibly friction between members of the joint US-China task force created to counter the Islamic threat.

In the end, thanks to the ingenuity of Maverick’s teaching and tactics, the Americans and Chinese prevail over the Islamic forces. It might require Maverick to make the ultimate sacrifice, showing he’s learned that warfare is a team sport, and that he really misses Goose. The Chinese name their next aircraft carrier the “Pete Mitchell” in honor of Maverick’s sacrifice. (Forget calling it the “Maverick” — too much rebellion for the CCP.)

I’m looking forward to this movie.

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Copyright 2003-2015 Richard Bejtlich and TaoSecurity (taosecurity.blogspot.com and www.taosecurity.com)

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My Prediction for Top Gun 2 Plot

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We’ve known for about a year that Tom Cruise is returning to his iconic “Maverick” role from Top Gun, and that drone warfare would be involved. A few days ago we heard a few more details in this Collider story:

[Producer David Ellison]: There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick. It is I don’t think what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon. But like all things, it all comes down to the script, and Justin is writing as we speak.

[Interviewer]; You’re gonna do what a lot of sequels have been doing now which is incorporate real use of time from the first one to now.

ELLISON and DANA GOLDBERG: Absolutely…

ELLISON:  As everyone knows with Tom, he is 100% going to want to be in those airplanes shooting it practically. When you look at the world of dogfighting, what’s interesting about it is that it’s not a world that exists to the same degree when the original movie came out. This world has not been explored. It is very much a world we live in today where it’s drone technology and fifth generation fighters are really what the United States Navy is calling the last man-made fighter that we’re actually going to produce so it’s really exploring the end of an era of dogfighting and fighter pilots and what that culture is today are all fun things that we’re gonna get to dive into in this movie.

What could the plot involve?

First, who is the adversary? You can’t have dogfighting without a foe. Consider the leading candidates:

  • Russia: Maybe. Nobody is fond of what President Putin is doing in Ukraine.
  • Iran: Possible, but Hollywood types are close to the Democrats, and they will not likely want to upset Iran if Secretary Kerry secures a nuclear deal.
  • China: No way. Studios want to release movies in China, and despite the possibility of aerial conflict in the East or South China Seas, no studio is going to make China the bad guy. In fact, the studio will want to promote China as a good guy to please that audience.
  • North Korea: No way. Prior to “The Interview,” this was a possibility. Not anymore!
My money is on an Islamic terrorist group, either unnamed, or possibly Islamic State. They don’t have an air force, you say? This is where the drone angle comes into play.
Here is my prediction for the Top Gun 2 plot.
Oil tankers are trying to pass through the Gulf of Aden, or maybe the Strait of Hormuz, carrying their precious cargo. Suddenly a swarm of small, yet armed, drones attack and destroy the convoy, setting the oil ablaze in a commercial and environmental disaster. The stock market suffers a huge drop and gas prices skyrocket.
The US Fifth Fleet, and its Chinese counterpart, performing counter-piracy duties nearby, rush to rescue the survivors. They set up joint patrols to guard other commercial sea traffic. Later the Islamic group sends another swarm of drones to attack the American and Chinese ships. This time the enemy includes some sort of electronic warfare-capable drones that jam US and Chinese GPS, communications, and computer equipment. (I’m seeing a modern “Battlestar Galactica” theme here.) American and Chinese pilots die, and their ships are heavily damaged. (By the way, this is Hollywood, not real life.)
The US Navy realizes that its “net-centric,” “technologically superior” force can’t compete with this new era of warfare. Cue the similarities with the pre-Fighter Weapons School, early Vietnam situation described in the first scenes at Miramar in the original movie. (Remember, a 12-1 kill ratio in Korea, 3-1 in early Vietnam due to reliance on missiles and atrophied dogfighting skills, back to 12-1 in Vietnam after Top Gun training?)

The US Navy decides it needs to bring back someone who thinks unconventionally in order to counter the drone threat and resume commercial traffic in the Gulf. They find Maverick, barely hanging on to a job teaching at a civilian flight school. His personal life is a mess, and he was kicked out of the Navy during the first Gulf War in 1991 for breaking too many rules. Now the Navy wants him to teach a new generation of pilots how to fight once their “net-centric crutches” disappear.

You know what happens next. Maverick returns to the Navy as a contractor. Top Gun is now the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (NSAWC) at NAS Fallon, Nevada. The Navy retired his beloved F-14 in 2006, so there is a choice to be made about what aircraft awaits him in Nevada. I see three possibilities:

1) The Navy resurrects the F-14 because it’s “not vulnerable” to the drone electronic warfare. This would be cool, but they aren’t going to be able to fly American F-14s due to their retirement. CGI maybe?

2) The Navy flies the new F-35, because it’s new and cool. However, the Navy will probably not have any to fly. CGI again?

3) The Navy flies the F-18. This is most likely, because producers could film live operations as they did in the 1980s.

Beyond the aircraft issues, I expect themes involving relevance as one ages, re-integration with military culture, and possibly friction between members of the joint US-China task force created to counter the Islamic threat.

In the end, thanks to the ingenuity of Maverick’s teaching and tactics, the Americans and Chinese prevail over the Islamic forces. It might require Maverick to make the ultimate sacrifice, showing he’s learned that warfare is a team sport, and that he really misses Goose. The Chinese name their next aircraft carrier the “Pete Mitchell” in honor of Maverick’s sacrifice. (Forget calling it the “Maverick” — too much rebellion for the CCP.)

I’m looking forward to this movie.

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Copyright 2003-2016 Richard Bejtlich and TaoSecurity (taosecurity.blogspot.com and www.taosecurity.com)

Continue reading My Prediction for Top Gun 2 Plot→

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Hearing Witness Doesn’t Understand CDM

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This post is a follow up to this post on CDM. Since that post I have been watching hearings on the OPM breach.

On Wednesday 24 June a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing titled DHS’ Efforts to Secure .Gov.

A second panel (starts in the Webcast around 2 hours 20 minutes) featured Dr. Daniel M. Gerstein, a former DHS official now with RAND, as its sole witness.

During his opening statement, and in his written testimony, he made the following comments:

“The two foundational programs of DHS’s cybersecurity program are EINSTEIN (also called EINSTEIN 3A) and CDM. These two systems are designed to work in tandem, with EINSTEIN focusing on keeping threats out of federal networks and CDM identifying them when they are inside government networks.

EINSTEIN provides a perimeter around federal (or .gov) users, as well as select users in the .com space that have responsibility for critical infrastructure. EINSTEIN functions by installing sensors at Web access points and employs signatures to identify cyberattacks.

CDM, on the other hand, is designed to provide an embedded system of sensors on internal government networks. These sensors provide real-time capacity to sense anomalous behavior and provide reports to administrators through a scalable dashboard. It is composed of commercial-off-the-shelf equipment coupled with a customized dashboard that can be scaled for administrators at each level.” (emphasis added)

All of the text in bold is false. CDM is not “identifying [threats] when they are in inside government networks.” CDM is not “an embedded system of sensors on internal government networks” looking for threat actors.

Why does Dr. Gerstein so misunderstand the CDM program? The answer is found in the next section of his testimony, reproduced below.

“CDM operates by providing

          federal departments and agencies with capabilities and tools that identify
          cybersecurity risks on an ongoing basis, prioritize these risks based upon
          potential impacts, and enable cybersecurity personnel to mitigate the
          most significant problems first. Congress established the CDM program
          to provide adequate, risk-based, and cost-effective cybersecurity and
          more efficiently allocate cybersecurity resources.” (emphasis added)

The indented section is reproduced from the DHS CDM Website, as footnoted in Dr. Gerstein’s statement.

The answer to my question of misunderstanding involves two levels of confusion.

The first level of confusion is a result of the the CDM description, which confuses risks with vulnerabilities. Basically, the CDM description should say vulnerabilities instead of risks. CDM, now known as Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, is a “find and fix flaws (i.e., vulnerabilities) faster” program.

In other words, the CDM description should say:

“CDM gives federal departments and agencies with capabilities and tools that identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis, prioritize these vulnerabilities based upon potential impacts, and enable cybersecurity personnel to mitigate the most significant problems first.”

The second level of confusion is a result of Dr. Gerstein confusing risks with threats. It is clear that when Dr. Gerstein reads the CDM description and its mention of “risks,” he thinks CDM is looking for threat actors. CDM does not look for threat actors; CDM looks for vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are flaws in software or configuration that make it possible for intruders to gain unauthorized access.

As I wrote in my CDM post, we absolutely need the capability to find and fix flaws faster. We need CDM. However, do not confuse CDM with the operational capability to detect and remove threat actors. CDM could be deployed across the entire Federal government, but it would be an accident if a security analyst noticed an intruder using a CDM tool.

Essentially, the government needs to implement My Federal Government Security Crash Program to detect and remove threat actors.

It is critical that staffers, lawmakers, and the public understand what is happening, and not be lulled into a false sense of security due to misunderstanding these concepts.

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Copyright 2003-2015 Richard Bejtlich and TaoSecurity (taosecurity.blogspot.com and www.taosecurity.com)

Continue reading Hearing Witness Doesn’t Understand CDM→

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Hearing Witness Doesn’t Understand CDM

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This post is a follow up to this post on CDM. Since that post I have been watching hearings on the OPM breach.

On Wednesday 24 June a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing titled DHS’ Efforts to Secure .Gov.

A second panel (starts in the Webcast around 2 hours 20 minutes) featured Dr. Daniel M. Gerstein, a former DHS official now with RAND, as its sole witness.

During his opening statement, and in his written testimony, he made the following comments:

“The two foundational programs of DHS’s cybersecurity program are EINSTEIN (also called EINSTEIN 3A) and CDM. These two systems are designed to work in tandem, with EINSTEIN focusing on keeping threats out of federal networks and CDM identifying them when they are inside government networks.

EINSTEIN provides a perimeter around federal (or .gov) users, as well as select users in the .com space that have responsibility for critical infrastructure. EINSTEIN functions by installing sensors at Web access points and employs signatures to identify cyberattacks.

CDM, on the other hand, is designed to provide an embedded system of sensors on internal government networks. These sensors provide real-time capacity to sense anomalous behavior and provide reports to administrators through a scalable dashboard. It is composed of commercial-off-the-shelf equipment coupled with a customized dashboard that can be scaled for administrators at each level.” (emphasis added)

All of the text in bold is false. CDM is not “identifying [threats] when they are in inside government networks.” CDM is not “an embedded system of sensors on internal government networks” looking for threat actors.

Why does Dr. Gerstein so misunderstand the CDM program? The answer is found in the next section of his testimony, reproduced below.

“CDM operates by providing

          federal departments and agencies with capabilities and tools that identify
          cybersecurity risks on an ongoing basis, prioritize these risks based upon
          potential impacts, and enable cybersecurity personnel to mitigate the
          most significant problems first. Congress established the CDM program
          to provide adequate, risk-based, and cost-effective cybersecurity and
          more efficiently allocate cybersecurity resources.” (emphasis added)

The indented section is reproduced from the DHS CDM Website, as footnoted in Dr. Gerstein’s statement.

The answer to my question of misunderstanding involves two levels of confusion.

The first level of confusion is a result of the the CDM description, which confuses risks with vulnerabilities. Basically, the CDM description should say vulnerabilities instead of risks. CDM, now known as Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, is a “find and fix flaws (i.e., vulnerabilities) faster” program.

In other words, the CDM description should say:

“CDM gives federal departments and agencies with capabilities and tools that identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis, prioritize these vulnerabilities based upon potential impacts, and enable cybersecurity personnel to mitigate the most significant problems first.”

The second level of confusion is a result of Dr. Gerstein confusing risks with threats. It is clear that when Dr. Gerstein reads the CDM description and its mention of “risks,” he thinks CDM is looking for threat actors. CDM does not look for threat actors; CDM looks for vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are flaws in software or configuration that make it possible for intruders to gain unauthorized access.

As I wrote in my CDM post, we absolutely need the capability to find and fix flaws faster. We need CDM. However, do not confuse CDM with the operational capability to detect and remove threat actors. CDM could be deployed across the entire Federal government, but it would be an accident if a security analyst noticed an intruder using a CDM tool.

Essentially, the government needs to implement My Federal Government Security Crash Program to detect and remove threat actors.

It is critical that staffers, lawmakers, and the public understand what is happening, and not be lulled into a false sense of security due to misunderstanding these concepts.

Tweet

Copyright 2003-2016 Richard Bejtlich and TaoSecurity (taosecurity.blogspot.com and www.taosecurity.com)

Continue reading Hearing Witness Doesn’t Understand CDM→

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The Tragedy of the Bloomberg Code Issue

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Last week I Tweeted about the Bloomberg “code” issue. I said I didn’t know how to think about it. The issue is a 28,000+ word document, enough to qualify as a book, that’s been covered by news outlets like the Huffington Post.

I approached the document with an open mind. When I opened my mail box last week, I didn’t expect to get a 112 page magazine devoted to explaining the importance of software to non-technical people. It was a welcome surprise.

This morning I decided to try to read some of the issue. (It’s been a busy week.) I opened the table of contents, shown at left. It took me a moment, but I realized none of the article titles mentioned security.

Next I visited the online edition, which contains the entire print version and adds additional content. I searched the text for the word “security.” These are the results:

Security research specialists love to party.

I have been asked if I was physical security (despite security wearing very distinctive uniforms),” wrote Erica Joy Baker on Medium.com who has worked, among other places, at Google.

Can we not rathole on Mailinator before we talk overall security?

We didn’t talk about password length, the number of letters and symbols necessary for passwords to be secure, or whether our password strategy on this site will fit in with the overall security profile of the company, which is the responsibility of a different division. 

Ditto many of the security concerns that arise when building websites, the typical abuses people perpetrate.

“First, I needed to pass everything through the security team, which was five months of review,” TMitTB says, “and then it took me weeks to get a working development environment, so I had my developers sneaking out to Starbucks to check in their code. …”

In Fortran, and I ask to see your security clearance.

If you’re counting, that’s eight instances of “security” in seven sentences. There’s no mention of “software security.” There’s a small discussion about “e-mail validation,” but it’s printed to show how broken software development meetings can be.

Searching for “hack” yields two references to “Hacker News” and this sentence talking about the perils of the PHP programming language:

Everything was always broken, and people were always hacking into my sites.

There is one result for “breach,” but it has nothing to do with security incidents. The only time the word “incident” appears is in a sentence talking about programming conference attendees behaving badly.

In brief, a 112 page magazine devoted to the importance of software has absolutely nothing useful to say about software security. Arguably, it says absolutely nothing on software security.

When someone communicates, what he or she doesn’t say can be as important as what he or she does say.

In the case of this magazine, it’s clear that software security is not on the minds of the professional programmer who wrote the issue. It’s also not a concern of the editor or any of the team that contributed to it.

From what I have seen, that neglect is not unique to Bloomberg.

That is the tragedy of the Bloomberg code issue, and it remains a contributing factor to the decades of breaches we have been suffering.

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Copyright 2003-2015 Richard Bejtlich and TaoSecurity (taosecurity.blogspot.com and www.taosecurity.com)

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Air Force Enlisted Ratings Remain Dysfunctional

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I just read Firewall 5s are history: Quotas for top ratings announced in Air Force Times. It describes an effort to eliminate the so-called “firewall 5” policy with a new “forced distribution” approach:

The Air Force’s old enlisted promotion system was heavily criticized by airmen for out-of-control grade inflation that came with its five-point numerical rating system. There were no limits on how many airmen could get the maximum: five out of five points [aka “firewall 5”]. As a result nearly everyone got a 5 rating.

As more and more raters gave their airmen 5s on their EPR [ Enlisted Performance Report], the firewall 5 became a common occurrence received by some 90 percent of airmen. And this meant the old EPR was effectively useless at trying to differentiate between levels of performance…

Under the new system, [Brig. Gen. Brian Kelly, director of military force management policy] said in a June 12 interview at the Pentagon, the numerical ratings are gone — and firewall 5s will be impossible…

The quotas — or as the Air Force calls them, “forced distribution” — will be one of the final elements to be put in place in the service’s massive overhaul of its enlisted promotion process, which has been in the works for three years…

Only the top 5 percent, at most, of senior airmen, staff sergeants and technical sergeants who are up for promotion to the next rank will be deemed “promote now” and get the full 250 EPR points…

The quotas for the next tier of airmen — who will be deemed “must promote” and will get 220 out of 250 EPR points — will differ based on their rank. Kelly said that up to 15 percent of senior airmen who are eligible for promotion to staff sergeant can receive a “must promote” rating, and up to 10 percent of staff sergeants and tech sergeants up for promotion to technical and master sergeant can get that rating, and the accompanying 220 points.

The next three ratings — “promote,” “not ready now” and “do not promote” — will each earn airmen 200, 150 and 50 points, respectively. But there will be no limit on how many airmen can get those ratings. (emphasis added)

I am not an expert on the enlisted performance rating system. In some ways, I think the EPR is superior to the corresponding system for officers, because enlisted personnel take tests whose scores influence their promotion potential.

However, upon reading this story, it reminded me of my 2012 post How to Kill Teams Through “Stack Ranking”, which cited a Vanity Fair article about Microsoft’s old promotion system:

[Author Kurt] Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking” — a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor — effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate.

“Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed — every one — cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes.

This sounds uncomfortably like the new Air Force enlisted “forced distribution” system.

I was also reminded of another of my 2012 posts, Bejtlich’s Thoughts on “Why Our Best Officers Are Leaving”, which stressed the finding that

[V]eterans were shocked to look back at how “archaic and arbitrary” talent management was in the armed forces. Unlike industrial-era firms, and unlike the military, successful companies in the knowledge economy understand that nearly all value is embedded in their human capital. (emphasis added)

I am sure the Air Force is doing what it thinks is right by changing the EPR system. However, it’s equivalent to making changes in a centrally planned economy, without abandoning central planning.

It’s time the Air Force, and the rest of the military, discard their centrally-planned, promote-the-paper (instead of the person), involuntary assignment process.

In its place I recommend one that openly and competitively advertises and offers positions; gives pay, hiring, and firing authority to the local manager; and adopts similar aspects of sound private sector personnel management.

Today’s knowledge economy demands that military personnel be treated as unique individuals, not industrial age interchangeable parts. Our military talent is one of the few competitive advantages we possess over peer rivals. We must not squander it with dysfunctional promotion systems.

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Copyright 2003-2015 Richard Bejtlich and TaoSecurity (taosecurity.blogspot.com and www.taosecurity.com)

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