DHS and NSA getting married?

Fri Oct 22 15:50:46 UTC 2010

> From: christopher.morrow at gmail.com
> Sent: Friday, October 22, 2010 8:05 AM
> To: George Bonser
> Cc: NANOG
> Subject: Re: DHS and NSA getting married?
> 
> are any of the civilian agencies really prepared/capable of dealing
> with 'cyber attack'? it seems fairly natural that a 'cyber attack' (on
> the gov't, or it's pieces/parts) is equivalent to an 'attack' on same.
> We don't arm the NIST folks with Ar-15's and send them over the hill,
> we do that with marines.
> 
> -chris

"cyber attack" wasn't what caught my eye.  It was the notion of NSA
having a domestic role defined in policy that I thought was different
here.

I do believe there are a lot of people who are afraid of "cyber attack"
but aren't exactly sure what that would look like.  A cyber attack might
go completely unnoticed until it is too late.  The enabling pieces of
such an attack might already be deployed on computers and inside various
devices people are buying, who knows.  The notion that you are going to
stop some invading army of packets might be completely off the mark.  It
might look more like millions of pieces of equipment suddenly going dark
or misbehaving for no apparent reason or might be coordinated with some
physical action.  A lot of people got caught short with those AT&T cable
cuts in the SF Bay a while back.  