Wired News: U.S. Military's Elite Hacker Crew

April 18, 2005

 

Wired News: U.S. Military's Elite Hacker Crew: "The U.S. military has assembled the world's most formidable hacker posse: a super-secret, multimillion-dollar weapons program that may be ready to launch bloodless cyberwar against enemy networks -- from electric grids to telephone nets."
"In simple terms and sans any military jargon, the unit could best be described as the world's most formidable hacker posse. Ever."

It is interesting to read reports like this. "Cyberwar", "hacker posse", etc. What is the media's facination with this romantized vision of the great computer war? This isn't Neuromancer where "Console Cowboys" "punch deck" and mesh with the "Ice" and ride on a digital shark to "cut the AI" (or in Johnny Neumonic, but it was a digital dolphin that helped "Hack his Brain"). This isn't the final "Hack the Gibson" scene in the movie "Hackers" where you float around a "data city".

The reality of the situation boring, nothing like the images the media conjures to describe the "Cyberwar". So the Military has some guys that call themselves hackers (who doesn't). They probably sit around in some cubes, a few computer screens in front of them, typing away at some command prompt, running scans on foriegn IPs, looking for exploits, intercepting traffic. Probably very boring, nothing like what it is hyped up to be. Maybe it's just me, but I'd love to see the media portray the real, unhyped world of hackers (or just anything to do with computers), but that would be too boring for the masses.

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