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In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

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Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#81

Post by dm2 »

__john wrote: post #22

So I can off some first hand perspective here. >Do the military "cyberwarriors" even have local admin rights on their machines? We don't, hell I don't even have access to some of the basic tools I need (i.e. version control) >Hackers don't sign up for active duty military. They do, I've met the smartest people I know in the military . The hacker types never stay though they either get kicked out because they don't wa…

Many hackers / security researchers wouldn't mind working for the military but they don't have the desire to go through basic training and learn the things that will be unnecessary to their main job.

If I were to join the military right now wanting to work on computer systems, how long would it take before I'm actually preforming that role, or would they have to "break" me first? Hackers have no desire to do that when they can easily stay in the private sector and earn twice the pay and have a nice cushy office to work out of.

There should be some kind of alternate route to joining the military for officer and specialization roles (in my opinion of course, I am certainly interested to here if anyone has objections). Give me a few tests, an interview, a basic physical, a polygraph, and some IT training to get familiar with the systems and let me go to work. High pay isn't really an issue for me personally as long as I enjoy the work and am constantly learning or teaching.

Having access to that information is a huge responsibility. There have been spies at all ranks that have done large amounts of harm to the US military. It is absolutely necessary to lock down machines and have strict security checks over each other a logging of everything.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#82

Post by rdl »

zachrose wrote: post #49
phaus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low-ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qua…

The NSA has no problem paying for top talent, but they do it by going through consulting firms. It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market. As we're constantly told by the tech media, you should prefer five $200,000 people to ten $100,000 people, or—god forbid—50+ people writing PowerShell scripts for minimum wage.

Doctors and pilots get paid reasonably well by the military (especially once training, liability, etc. is factored in). We could probably do something reasonable in infosec.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#83

Post by phaus »

georgemcbay wrote: post #53
phaus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we're trying to use uniformed military troops to hack servers remotely, we deserve to lose any 'cyber war.' Not all Soldiers are incompetent. Some of the most brilliant people I've met are people that I met while I was in the Army. China has created numerous units that focus on offensive hacking, and they are wildly successful. Now, to clarify, I'm not saying that we should have troops performing cyber attacks, I…

I know some people who were in the military who are very smart and technical, so I don't doubt there are some good people in there. On the other hand, while this is admittedly very anecdotal, one really obvious common thread that I see in the vast majority of great hackers I've met has been a distrust (if not borderline disdain) for authority and seemingly needless process; which I have to imagine (having never serve…

>On the other hand, while this is admittedly very anecdotal, one really obvious common thread that I see in the vast majority of great hackers I've met has been a distrust (if not borderline disdain) for authority and seemingly needless process

You are right, and I am one of those people, but there are some brilliant people out there who for some strange reason I cannot comprehend, love every fucking thing about the military. There are also those of us who do feel the way you described, that stay because we foolishly think we might some day be able to make the military a better place.

Where I work now, there are lots of former military members. All of us are happy that we don't have to deal with the bureaucracy, but most of us don't regret the time we did spend in the service.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#84

Post by [deleted] »

nitrogen wrote: post #55
phaus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'll just use a python wrapper around libpcap then. Must be nice, last government SOC I worked in, we could only script with powershell 1.0 installed. Sadly, that was just a year ago. We had tcpdump and Wireshark, but we weren't allowed to capture anything with it.

We had tcpdump and Wireshark, but we weren't allowed to capture anything with it. So how does anybody know there isn't data exfiltration going on?

[deleted]

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#85

Post by phaus »

socceroos wrote: post #58
phaus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I mean no disrespect to the soldiery, but why use soldiers for this, and not the DIA/NSA/CIA/various other TLAs? I specifically said that I wasn't advocating this as a military mission. I was just stating that if it was a military mission, the Soldiers themselves wouldn't be the reason that it fails. >Grunts wearing camouflage sitting in front of a laptop trying to outbrain someone seems humorously perverse. A grunt…

I guarantee you will not attract the best talent if your vision includes them wearing camouflage.

Not every talented person thinks the exact same way that you do. Its a fact that the way the military operates automatically excludes a large part of the talent pool that simply doesn't want to deal with all the bullshit, but everyone has their own set of priorities.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#86

Post by phaus »

rdl wrote: post #82
zachrose wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NSA has no problem paying for top talent, but they do it by going through consulting firms. It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market. As we're constantly told by the tech media, you should prefer five $200,000 people to ten $100,000 people, or—god forbid—50+ people writing PowerShell scripts for minimum wage.

Doctors and pilots get paid reasonably well by the military (especially once training, liability, etc. is factored in). We could probably do something reasonable in infosec.

>Doctors and pilots get paid reasonably well by the military.

Doctors are officers. This means that they get paid much more than Soldiers, but its still a laughably low amount when you compare it to a civilian doctor's salary.

Pilots are also officers. Their salaries are closer to the civilian world, but they are still probably a little low.

I don't think the Army is about to convert tens of thousands of IT specialists and Intel analysts from enlisted Soldiers to commissioned officers. Even if they did, the majority of them would still be making well below market rate.

Even the officer ranks that pay competitively require 10-20 years of service. At that point you are going to have a salary that's comparable to a civilian security analyst with a couple years' experience.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#87

Post by phaus »

zachrose wrote: post #52
phaus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market. Infantrymen won't have marketable skills, but we are talking about military security analysts. These guys often do have skills equivalent to their civilian counterparts. You seem to be making the same assumption that many others in this thread have: that all Soldiers are infantrymen of…

The link upthread of us shows that annual pay for federal cybersecurity professionals is about on par with industry [1], especially when considering geography/cost of living. My surprise had more to do with learning that cyberwarefare reservists exist, let alone enlisted soldiers. (I'm not familiar with the military.) [1]: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/R... p.64

>My surprise had more to do with learning that cyberwarefare reservists exist..

I can see how you would be surprised. It seems counter-intuitive, but its actually normal for reservists in technical fields to be better at their jobs than the military. The best example I can think of is the field of aviation. Many reserve pilots are commercial pilots that get to fly 1000s of hours each year. Their full-time military counterparts don't get to fly their fancy fighter jets very often, because its really expensive.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#88

Post by phaus »

sailfast wrote: post #72
thefreeman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how the military cannot afford to compete with the private sector. This is where wars will be won now (or soon). It's pretty important to defend ourselves. And we have trillions of dollars...

I think this is a prime example of how pay scales recruiting policies are very difficult to apply across a multi million person organization. If you change the rules for cyber positions, you must consider changing them for all positions. Rank and pay scales are the same across any GS position and across military ranks at this point - perhaps we should think about paying those with key skills more money, but that argu…

>If you change the rules for cyber positions, you must consider changing them for all positions. Rank and pay scales are the same across any GS position and across military ranks at this point..

This isn't entirely true. Unlike the military pay scale, the GS pay scale does have ways to pay certain fields more money. Its not very much in most cases, but its there. IT jobs generally get you 10% more than other fields.

The only GS jobs I know of that get a substantial about of extra money are the Scientific and Medical jobs. There are special codes that allow them to add at least another 50k-100k to their income, depending on the specific type of position that they hold.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#89

Post by phaus »

walshemj wrote: post #75
phaus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low-ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qua…

But they would not be low ranking soldiers all IT professionals would have to start at officer level - I did work at one ex civil service tech company and our grades still had a mapping to military and civilservice ones.

>But they would not be low ranking soldiers all IT professionals would have to start at officer level.

Officer income is higher than Enlisted income, but it still starts at around 34k for a single person. Depending on where you live, its probably going to be about 46k for someone that's married. That's still pretty low for the type of people they are looking for.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#90

Post by rdl »

phaus wrote: post #86
rdl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors and pilots get paid reasonably well by the military (especially once training, liability, etc. is factored in). We could probably do something reasonable in infosec.

>Doctors and pilots get paid reasonably well by the military. Doctors are officers. This means that they get paid much more than Soldiers, but its still a laughably low amount when you compare it to a civilian doctor's salary. Pilots are also officers. Their salaries are closer to the civilian world, but they are still probably a little low. I don't think the Army is about to convert tens of thousands of IT specialis…

The people I interacted with most were Healthcare Information Systems Officers (70D), who were generally O-2 to O-4. Given that they tended to be fairly early career and living in low cost areas of the country, with college paid, it was a pretty good deal for them.

I think flexibility is the real problem with military hiring, not absolute pay levels.

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