I’m finally getting around to reading Wired’s May 2009 story on Marc Weber Tobias, “The Ultimate Lock Picker Hacks Pentagon, Beats Corporate Security for Fun and Profit.” Many of you have probably read it already, but it raises a host of interesting questions. For example, when should a vulnerability be publicized? (For completists, Wired ran another story on Tobias in February 2005: “The Lock Busters.”)
From the category archives:
Articles of interest
In the May 11, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell penned a fascinating study of what happens when underdogs break the rules. The article has relevance to red teaming as Gladwell examines the studies of political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft: [click to continue ...]
The most popular analogy in international affairs is World War II. Politicians are either strong-willed Churchills or lily-livered Chamberlains, treacherous allies are Quislings, and villains of the month are either actual or potential Hitlers. The defense field has its own World War II analogy–the interwar period from 1918 to the late 30s. In this period of time, new methods of war such as blitzkrieg, deep battle, and strategic bombing developed and matured. For this reason, defense reformers often state that we are in a interwar that heralds a new form of conflict. [click to continue ...]
New Red Team Journal contributing editor Ned Moran debunks the hype attending China’s Kylin operating system on his course blog. We are pleased Ned has joined the RTJ team and look forward to the insight and expertise he will bring, particularly in the area of cyber security.
Red Team Journal advisory board member Dr. Randy Borum recently posted a new entry on his blog addressing violent extremist ideologies. Dr. Borum will be posting regularly on the site, and we encourage RTJ readers to visit often.
My frequent collaborator and Red Team Journal contributor John P. Sullivan has a new article with James Wirtz in Homeland Security Affairs Journal on the growth of metropolitan police networks:
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, police forces across the globe have developed new domestic and international counter-terrorism strategies, while international police agencies have likewise stepped up their efforts to combat terrorism. Because of the nature of the threat, many of these activities require greater international cooperation, leading police organizations to act more independently in relation to the dictates of the national governments of their respective states. As a result of this bureaucratic autonomy, local police forces are developing and sharing expert ‘systems of knowledge’ with fellow professionals across national boundaries.
Granted, as Alice Hills argues, cultural and institutional gaps can frustrate attempts to spread “systems of knowledge” among global police forces. But I do believe, as Sullivan and Wirtz point out, that there is such a thing as a transnational ethos of law enforcement that can aid in the construction of global policing networks. One last point: while globalization and technology as well as forward-thinking policy has aided the rise of network policing, there is an interesting parallel to an earlier age of policing. In a chapter of Countering Terrorism and WMD, Lindsay Clutterbuck compares Al Qaeda to the anarchists who terrorized Europe and America one hundred years ago. Response was at first fragmented, but a transnational network of Western police soon sprung up to counter the anarchist threat. One of Clutterbuck’s most interesting observations was the role played by American and British liason officers who set up shop in respective foreign capitols to network with other constables and gather leads.
Network forms of organization makes this kind of collaboration much easier and more effective than it was in the industrial age–and it’s still the best chance we have of countering transnational gangs and terrorism.
Last month The New York Times published an op-ed by B.R. Myers about the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il that tacitly addresses the limits of red teaming. In the essay, Myers discusses why observers have misinterpreted the dictator and how security analysts often incorrectly link events to thoughts that in actuality are groundless. [click to continue ...]
Red teamers will want to read Coyne and Horn’s article “Predicting Your Competitor’s Reaction” in the April 2009 Harvard Business Review. Although the authors use the term competitor analysis instead of red teaming, they are describing the same activity. [click to continue ...]
