
UK to create new cyber defence force - Henn
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24321717
======
nezumi
Sort of off-topic, but does it bug anyone else that the militaries and
governments of the world continue to refer to 'cyberspace' as if 'cyber-' was
current Internet jargon? (Whereas in reality I only see it used for that other
thing we are supposed to be making instead of war...)

~~~
DanBC
What other word would you use?

Cyber is pretty clearly defined among the people who use it. Other words are
not.

~~~
forktheif
Got to admit though, "cyber" sounds very 90s.

Now excuse me as I continue surfing the information super highway!

~~~
rpc_was_taken
Or very 40s when Norbert Wiener published "Cybernetics, or Communication and
Control in the Animal and the Machine".

------
spongle
This isn't going to work. I worked in the defence industry for a couple of
years in an IT capacity and I'm not joking, the guys who run the shop don't
know arse from elbow. Everything is run army style i.e. procedurally and non
established procedures, even if they mitigate realistic threats aren't
considered or accepted. They're that bad that still to this day, there are NT4
and exchange 5.5 deployments hanging around because some clueless fuck hasn't
had orders to fix it.

What will happen here is they will create a team that will be written out of
usefulness by procedure instantly and that is all.

~~~
tikums
Any particular reason why they couldn't become as agile as IDF ISNU?

[http://www.al-
monitor.com/pulse/tr/contents/articles/busines...](http://www.al-
monitor.com/pulse/tr/contents/articles/business/2013/09/cyber-attack-hackers-
idf.html)

~~~
spongle
Yes. This was the ministry of defence which somehow manages to fuck everything
up on a galactic scale. They really didn't have the talent to pull that off.

------
belorn
While I hope that this force would focus their attention at serious crimes,
nation's attacks against nations, and espionage, my inner cynic tells me that
the primary target will be 16 year old kids who DDOS the web hosting company
of a government website that happens to have been done by the lowest bidder.

Basically sending the army after the nation's own kids.

~~~
ihsw
Don't be naive, they'll be hacking into torrent websites in no time. The
government is going to declare a variety of categories of targets that will be
open game for sabotage and infiltration.

~~~
belorn
While that might be the future, I was more describing how things are today.

Just a week ago, one of the largest public transport companies in Sweden got
hit by a DDOS attack. Their website, ticket system, and other areas was
effected for several days. It was presented in the news as a major cyber
attack, likely originating from organized crimes in countries far far away.

And then a website for 16 year olds "crackers" in Sweden came forth... I still
see news articles lagging behind, still describing how government should deal
with this "new" threat. All from secret police to anti-terrorist equipment,
and I doubt that the military is that far behind in getting a piece of the
increased budget pie.

------
ihsw
One can only hope it's actually for defence, because there are already
astronomical resources devoted to offence. Good defence requires clamping down
all perimeter defences, and there are _a lot_.

If they can get defence into good shape then they'll have achieved something
worth admiring.

In all likelihood the new military branch will focus on weaponizing zero-day
exploits and licensing NSA's surveillance/analysis services, which is far less
interesting.

------
EliRivers
To be honest, they'll be lucky. I have some knowledge of the UK reserve
forces, and right now there is a massive attempt to recruit as the government
tries to switch its defence manning policy in a very, very short time. Unlike
the US and Australia and various other modern forces (which have a much
greater proportion of reserve forces), the UK has until very recently has a
relatively small reserve forces. It's common in the US and other such for
reserve forces to be part of the routine planning and deployment for
operations; the UK has only recently been forced to think like this,
principally due to the manning issues encountered in the Middle East over the
last decade.

Fifteen years ago (maybe even ten years ago, depending on which reserve force
one joined), you could join the UK reserve forces and the general feeling was
that one could easily go a few decades without being mobilised; now, people
are told on joining to expect to be mobilised - it's routine.

The US is a very warlike society, with a significant civilian buy-in to the
idea of the armed forces and reserve forces. The UK, whilst as a nation just
as busy travelling around the world to meet interesting people and shoot at
them, does not have nearly such a civilian buy-in; there are already rumblings
that reservists are just less attractive to employers on the grounds that they
can be expected to disappear for nine months, and the employer is forced to
hold their job open for them. This is clearly a big concern for the
government, because they're trying to push the idea that employing a reservist
brings advantages. Many employers seem... dubious that losing someone for nine
months is worth the less tangible benefits.

Some reserve forces are being asked to increase on the order of 50% in about 5
years; given that in the UK it can take three years (and sometimes more - five
years isn't unheard of; I understand that in some nations, reservists might
spend several weeks or even months doing all the initial training in a single
block; that simply won't work in the UK unless civilian attitude to reservists
undergoes a massive change) to take a new reserve recruit and make them
deployable (on the "trained strength" as the vernacular goes) this is one hell
of a recruitment target.

The network infrastructure reservist branches are still in their infancy; in
the British navy reserve, the branch is very, very new. They are still working
out just what they're about. The kind of IT professional I anticipate they'll
be trying to recruit will almost certainly feel a bit ripped off to be
exercising their years of experience (for which, as contractors, they probably
charge up to a hundred a day) on initial pay which, as I recall, is around 40
UKP a day, before tax etc. The initial basic training and militarisation can
easily take a couple of years anyway, before they even start thinking about
branching, so this might be something of a hard sell; "join us, and spend two
years slogging around fields in the mud, and eventually we'll use your
civilian skills at a much lower rate of pay than you get for them in your day
job". Given that one of the main selling points of the reserve forces in the
UK is that you get to do something a bit different, this is going to be a very
hard sell.

~~~
walshemj
I thought it was civilian adjunct to the reserves part time Daniel Jacksons if
you will - I am seriously considering volunteering for this.

~~~
EliRivers
Not that I know of, and I'd be awfully surprised if it was. The UK reserve
forces really don't do that sort of thing. Even the very niche skills
(neurosurgeons, specialists in obscure dialects, that sort of thing) aren't
any kind of civilian under contract; they're in the reserve forces, like
everybody else. How else would it work?

They need to be able to mobilise people at very short notice and deploy them
anywhere in the world under military discipline for the best part of a year.
It's no good if they can just say "Oh, I'm busy next week." (although the
number of reservists who effectively do say just that when they get the call
is astounding :p ) To fit into the military environment they'll need to have
undergone the same basic reservist training as everyone else. Certainly in the
naval reserve, it's just another branch, like all the others. If you joined
the naval reserve for this, expect to go through the two years or so of
navalisation and basic training first, like everybody else. There's also the
legal aspect; if you're attacking another nation as part of a military effort,
and you're not on the books as an official military combatant, what are you? A
mercenary? A terrorist? War criminal? Whatever you are, you don't get the
legal recognitions and protections that official armed forces get. As I
understand it, part of the justification for not treating properly all those
chaps wearing orange boiler suits in Cuba is that they weren't proper official
military soldiers; if that's what happens to people who aren't official
soldiers, I certainly wouldn't be interested!

I did once see someone recruited specifically for his ability to speak Arabic;
he was rushed through as fast as they could and given special dispensation for
some courses before being mobilised (took about a year from identifying him to
giving him a pit in Baghdad, where he had some mutant officer rank because
nobody quite knew what rank he should be) but he was in all legal respects
just as much in the armed forces as all the other reservists being mobilised.
Given that this information infrastructure operations branch is something the
MOD are actually planning properly, they are not planning to have it as what
you seem to think; essentially a bunch of phone numbers of civilians to ring
and hope they don't mind leaving their life for a year at two weeks' notice.

Their civilian specialist team available for consultations and non-military
deployment already exists; GCHQ.

 _ADDENDUM: All the above is based on my knowledge of how things ARE now, and
how they HAVE BEEN in the past. The future is an unknown and hey, maybe the
MOD does want a ragtag bunch of IT admin staff to partake in military
operations._

~~~
walshemj
GCHQ has problems with not being able to pay the going rate - but as you say
it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

------
ris
Gravy train nonsense.

------
amadeuspzs
Good luck getting all the part-timers through DV!

~~~
EliRivers
Will they need DV? It's not like they'll be handling anything particularly
secret. The reservist intelligence branches seem to have no problem getting
all their people through DV, although it does take bloody ages.

------
PaulAJ
Are they going to protect us from the NSA? What about GCHQ?

~~~
alexchamberlain
I suspect they'll be under orders from GCHQ...

