The Morgan Doctrine: Yes Martha, cyberwar is heating up!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Yes Martha, cyberwar is heating up!

Good thing my kids got me the movie entertainment package for Father's Day, as I previously recommended everyone get out the popcorn and Big Gulps for some real entertainment. In my Father's Day movie bag: 1 package each of Sweetly SOUR Belts, Hot Tamales, Junior Mints, Good & Plenty, Milk Duds, and 6 bags of microwavable ACT II popcorn with associated cardboard popcorn holders. The Sweetly SOUR Belts have me puckered up almost as much as recent headlines:

Senate votes to make illegal video streaming a felony, a position certain to infuriate the LulzSec DDoS script jockeys.
Japan Criminalizes Cybercrime: Make a Virus, Get Three Years in Jail. Sorry Sony, Nintendo and Sega. The guys effected by this spend most of their time figuring out video game hacks, so get set for some headline-seeking exploits.
Sega Hacked, 1.3 Million User Accounts Compromised. See #2 above.
Adobe Flash continues to be a prime target for cyber criminals.
Extortionist attacks oDesk by lifting their IP credentials. Just the tip of the ice berg. The next cyber criminals will learn from this moron's mistakes.
Pentagon building a cyberwar simulator. Lockheed won the contract. Yup, the same company that got hacked multiple times and lost terabytes of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter data.
Pakistani brags about hacking HP. Another fast gun, a modern day Billy The Kid. There'll be more where he came from. Heck, when you can't hold down a real job, you might as well get superstardom.
UK police arrest LulzSec hacker. Boy, that ought to bring some response.
LulzSec turns on itself. So much for discipline in an anarchist group. This is better than mud wrestling.
Entering The Dumbest Man in the U.S. Senate Competition is Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who proposed new cyber security regulations for banks. Heaven help us. How about taking off the shackles and giving banks some you-screw-with-me-then-I-screw-with-you power, Senator?
Bitcoin gets hacked for some serious money. Big bucks are just as easy to steal as small bucks.
Network Solutions, holder of the keys to the kingdom, gets whacked hard. Talk about guys who should know better.
Hack attack cripples thousands of Aussie websites. Not all bad news, since this might motivate them to become the first legal cyber privateer haven.
The Pentagon gets some truly asinine marching orders from the White House. Read the second paragraph and make your own value judgement. Hint: Shall we wait for a presidential meeting in order to make a decision on an enemy whose turnaround timeframe is measured in nanoseconds.
Team Poison is threatening to reveal LulzSec members' “pictures, addresses, passwords, IPs, phone numbers etc”. "Please Mom! I'm busy in the basement; tell those guys in dark suits at the front door that I don't live here."

Yum! I'm about to start on the Good & Plenty box. Next week will definitely be more entertaining than this week. Maybe the U.S. Congress will decide to perform in a Jackass sequel.

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Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?

Background: Welcome black hats, white hats and cyber swashbucklers

The Revolutionary War was fought, financed, and pretty well WON by bonded privateers, legalized pirates who were given Letters of Marque and Reprisal by the Continental Congress and authorized to attack, capture and monetize British ships. The purpose of this site is to explore the possibility of a modern-day doctrine much like the Monroe Doctrine, by means of which the U.S. government could legally and, more importantly, effectively stop international hackers. Current cybercrime law is not only ineffective, but downright stupid. My Linux servers are attacked hundreds of times a day (mostly from China and former USSR domains), yet if I retaliate against those servers with some creative technology at my disposal (I know some VERY smart guys), then I am in violation of federal law and subject to some onerous penalties. We need more than a new law. We need a new international doctrine. I call it The Morgan Doctrine, named after Morgan Rapier, a fictional character I've created (hey, this is my way of establishing ownership of the concept, should it ever see the light of day).

Why a new international doctrine? Simply, nothing else will work. Introduced on December 2, 1823, the Monroe Doctrine told the world to keep their hands off the Americas. Combine this with current legal thinking on "hot pursuit" of fugitives. In 1917 the US Army went into Mexico after Pancho Villa. More recently, in 1960 Israeli Mossad agents abducted Adolf Eichmann from Argentina. Granted, much of the world regards the Eichmann adventure as a violation of international law. I don't share that opinion and therefore use it as the third leg of my Monroe-Pancho-Aldof platform for The Morgan Doctrine.

If someone comes into your home and attacks or attempts to rob you, you may shoot them dead. You may do so as long as they expire on your property. But what about cyber criminals? They attack you in your home from their homes. Retaliate in kind, and you go to jail. The Morgan Doctrine states simply that if you attack my computers (or my banking assets held in US-based computers), then under a certain set of well-defined conditions, a licensed and bonded "cyber privateer" may attack you in your home country and split the proceeds with the U.S. government. For the sake of argument, let's call it a 50-50 split (heh heh).

Right now, American law enforcement is completely unequipped to deal with the sheer number international cyber hackers. Sure, I could report each of the thousand daily attacks to the FBI, as could the millions of other attackees in the USA. But the volume of such reports would make any meaningful resolution laughable. Not to mention that the FBI has no jurisdiction outside the USA. Yet to make such "enforcement" profitable to recognized (ie, "bonded" "deputized") privateers, as Heath Ledger's Joker said in his last role, "Now you're talking!" You raid our bank accounts, we raid yours. You make money from off-shore child pornography, we're going to loot your bank accounts and, with some REALLY creative black hat operations, you will be taken off the grid worldwide to the extent that you'll not even complete a cell phone conversation for the remainder of your miserable depraved life. Okay, that last part probably won't fly, but you get my drift.

The purpose of this site is to explore the mechanics, legalities and practicality of The Morgan Doctrine.

And I will be the sole arbiter of whether or not your comments get posted. As Mel Brooks wrote, "It's good to be king."