[First off, see the section on 'strike back technology'. This article fits the previous debunking.] http://www.us.net/signal/Archive/May98/make-may.html May 1998 SIGNAL Magazine 1998 Make-My-Day Server Throws Gauntlet to Network Hackers Virtual machine attacks, reintegrates and subsumes network-attached host computers' operating systems. By Clarence A. Robinson, Jr. A radical digital life form functioning as a virtual machine quietly protects information networks by watching for the earliest signs of an attack. When an outsider attempts network penetration, this information warfare battle management server shifts instantly from passive background monitoring to heightened readiness. If required, the digital mechanism provides an aggressive offensive capability. ["Radical digital life form"? Sci-fi or reality?] Bushwhackers along the information highway are quickly learning that their attacks can provoke a devastating response. This new digital life form, a nonlinear algorithm hosted on a server, functions like a biological organism with an attitude--a very hostile attitude! While recently undergoing prototype testing, the Blitzkrieg server detected a high probability of attack on U.S. Internet sites from hackers in another country. The server immediately took action to pre-empt and prepare for an anticipated assault before retaliating. [I don't know where to begin with this. This is so fundamentally wrong it is amusing. "nonlinear algorithm", "digital life form", "hostile attitude"? These terms make it seem like a near sentient lifeform. I think we can safely say AI has not gotten that far yet.] The Blitzkrieg server generates retaliatory options based on integral information warfare rules of engagement from the company that perfected the technology. The server's nonlinear computing algorithm will self-organize and self-heal, recognize an infiltration, isolate it, adapt to it and create a totally different networking route to overcome an invasion. An inherent capability creates [This is something that a team of security consultants can barely do, let alone this mythical program. "self-heal"? Do hackers hurt software in that capacity? Doubt it.] strong network survivability, while also holding numerous offensive options in reserve. These options could eventually end in the destruction of an attacker's network resources. Deployed as a node within existing networks, the Blitzkrieg server is a self-programmed, fault-immune, ubiquitous virus-like system. The technology involved addresses the information [More neat terms and sci-fi lingo. Fault-immune? I don't think anyone has ever created a fault-immune system.] operations challenge of provably optimal, distributed, complex data analysis and intelligent, adaptive network resource orchestration, according to Laurence F. Wood. He is the Blitzkrieg server's inventor, a quantum physics theorist and chief scientist for the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Network Waffen Und Munistionsfabriken Group (network weapons munitions factories). The company is a subsidiary of FutureVision Group Corporation. [I can't help but wonder if this was written as sci-fi and adapted as a technology article. All of those qualifications mean nothing as far as computer programming.] Wood views the Blitzkrieg server as an offensive weapon for information warfare, even though it offers extremely strong network protection. He reveals that the nonlinear algorithm provides methods of permanently damaging the platforms of those seeking to conduct an attack. "Our internal system [Permanently damaging the platforms? This can't be done with any remote attack against a machine, let alone this server.] exercises show that a collective Blitzkrieg server offensive is similar to an attack of a biological killer virus with an overall collective objective and agenda." "The server's virus-like sole objective is rampant, aggressive proliferation," Wood reports. A Central Intelligence Agency information security specialist calls the server's digital life form "potentially more dangerous than nuclear weapons." One federal law enforcement agent calls the system a computer virus with an attitude, while another agent considers it scary. [A quote from the CIA and FBI on this technology.. of course we are given no names for either of them.] Wood's previous involvement in Defense Department artificial intelligence programs as a senior scientist for GTE Government Systems, Needham Heights, Massachusetts, set the stage for the Blitzkrieg server's technology. As a complexity scientist and holder of numerous patents, he founded GTE's advanced machine intelligence technology information warfare laboratory. While at GTE, Wood's learning and recognition system (LARS) developed for the Defense Department was used to solve a number of intractable information warfare problems. He is also a visiting scientist at a number of national laboratories, universities and corporations. The Sante Fe company uses the NWM acronym, Wood notes. The group's name is in memory of the Deutsche Waffen und Munistionsfabriken corporation, whose Jewish owners were sent to Nazi concentration camps and whose resources were dispersed, he clarifies. Lisa S. Wood is the company's chief executive officer, and her activities have provided more than $1 million in private funding for the company. She also heads the parent corporation. John R. Messier, who recently retired as president of the $1.5 billion GTE Government Systems, is now the president of NWM, which is rapidly becoming engaged in information warfare operations with industry, government agencies and law enforcement organizations. Wood anticipates that the Blitzkrieg server will be involved in scenario-driven demonstrations during TechNet '98, June 9-11, at the Washington, D.C., Convention Center. Using a mission planning system, NWM expects to provide dynamic three-dimensional perspective of a battle management system within the context of the Joint Vision 2010 template in relation to network-centric operations. Wood and Messier explain that, after only two weeks of on-line operational testing, the Blitzkrieg server determined a high probability that a hacker attack would be targeted at specific U.S. corporations and California state government installations. The server predicted that the network attack would be from Japanese nationals with the help of U.S. collaborators affiliated with the 2600 international hacker group. [So now the program (while installed on a single network), can guess the patterns and activities worldwide, and say that 'Japanese nationals' and 'collaborators with the 2600 international hacker group' will attack something? This is pure bullshit, and negligent slander.] The Blitzkrieg server's actions to pre-empt and prepare for the projected attack included the automatic modification of the T-1 firewall packet inbound filter parameters, locking down of the network file system, critical database backup and Internet access exclusion, Wood illustrates. He continues that other server actions involved user account lock down and removal, password changes, focused monitoring and analysis of specific types of real-time and historical Internet traffic. Anticipating the attack, the Blitzkrieg system's physical and virtual resident memory lock battle switch began execution of a priority increase and an automatic shutdown of nonessential system processes and applications. Three days after the server's prediction, Wood claims, "on Sunday August 18, 1997, at 3 a.m., a massive attack from Japan was launched. A diversionary Internet SPAM attack lasted three weeks. The attack's ferocity increased every week, affecting thousands of individuals in the United States and hundreds of Fortune 500 companies." [So it predicted a SPAM attack? No way. Any other documentation for this supposed attack?] One San Francisco company without firewall protection was severely crippled, compromising its electronic mail system. The functions of more than 80 computers in a distributed network also were destroyed. A company official seeking individual and corporate anonymity confirmed to SIGNAL, during an interview, that the attack was extremely hazardous and that Wood's Blitzkrieg server played a crucial role in assisting the company--restoring and protecting its network at a particularly vulnerable point. "NWM operations, as a result of the Blitzkrieg server, were unaffected by the attack, which greatly intensified when the Japanese nationals realized that we appeared to be invulnerable," Wood offers. He continues that NWM officials assisted the company under attack with damage control. Because of U.S. Department of State sensitivities where Japanese nationals are concerned, a decision was made to avoid diplomatic or legal action. After learning of the Blitzkrieg server's performance in thwarting the attackers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) elicited technical details and obtained a white paper from NWM. The server's unique technology enabled it to indicate that there was inside help for the attack on the San Francisco company. The FBI determined that a disgruntled employee attending the 2600 hackers' convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, sought assistance from hackers in Japan to attack the company. [More bull. The convention in Las Vegas is called Defcon, and is organized by Jeff Moss. People affiliated with 2600 attend the conference, but have basically nothing to do with the con.] With the end of what Wood describes as a highly sophisticated, well prepared, distributed, semiautomatic attack by Japanese hackers, the Blitzkrieg server automatically returned NWM systems under its protection to full production status. "The server, displaying its 'I Am Watching' logo, returned to a passive background offensive monitoring system." The company assisted by NWM is now seeking to acquire a commercial version of the Blitzkrieg server, called a Parabellum server. Five additional major U.S. corporations are also seeking to become test sites for Parabellum servers. Current efforts by all large defense contractors and government agencies that specialize in defensive information operations as their primary focus are likened by Wood to the Maginot Line along France's border with Germany. Those fortifications were bypassed and captured by the Germans in 1940. "In order to prevent disasters, which are coming, we must have the equivalent of an electronic warfare carrier battle group protecting the eight critical infrastructures of the United States," he stresses. The eight critical infrastructures that depend on the public information highway are telecommunications, electrical power systems, storage and transportation of gas and oil, banking and finance, transportation, water supply systems, emergency systems and continuity of government. Deployed as a node within conventional networks, the Blitzkrieg server technology addresses the challenge of a distributed network attack and a defense using a new provably optimal method, Wood warrants. The Blitzkrieg algorithm is implemented within a Microsoft Backoffice Windows NT server; however, the technology could run on any platform, he explains. The NT server is augmented by the Blitzkrieg server virtual machine, reconfigurable processing units and three-dimensional OpenGL graphics acceleration hardware. Upon powering up for the first time after a Blitzkrieg server virtual machine installation, the NT server operating system is attacked and subsumed by the Blitzkrieg server's software and optional hardware. The newly integrated technology turns the NT server into a high-performance NWM Blitzkrieg server. In a graphical server or workstation application development environment, the information warfare system is ready for operational deployment and network assimilation. [What does it being graphical have to do with anything? These attacks are launched via network protocols, that have nothing to do with graphics.] Subject to authenticated user discretion, the Blitzkrieg server attaches to an existing network and immediately infects it, Wood observes. "This 'infection' assimilates all other nodes attached to the network in a process that is intentionally transparent to the host computer irrespective of any antivirus preventive or protective mechanism," he emphasizes. The Blitzkrieg server virtual machine reintegrates and subsumes the operating system of all network-attached host computers. Following successful host assimilation, the server virtual machine installs itself as an invisible part of the native operating system on the infected computer, Wood discloses. Encrypted multichannel communication is immediately established with the parent Blitzkrieg server and all other assimilated nodes--the components of an intelligent network collective, he assures. [Ugh. This is complete bull again. There is absolutely NO way a program can do this, and affect so many operating systems. If three companies share network space, how can it even tell which are which? It can't.] This initial communication authenticates the remote virtual machine to the collective from which it draws its operational orders, Wood points out. The orders can be delayed, leaving the remote virtual machine in a benign, hidden state until its capabilities are required by the collective. The collective's encrypted messages appear as meaningless noise to conventional network resources and monitoring devices. When the Blitzkrieg server virtual machine is transferred, the evolved encrypted problem-solving dynamic state moves with it as well. "As the wind is to a puff of smoke, no trace of the virtual ["evolved encrypted problem-solving dynamic state"? Sci-fi at work.] machine, its dynamic problem-solving state or its historical activities remain upon transfer from a network host unless ordered by the collective," Wood declares. No ability exists for the Blitzkrieg server to access network resources, such as files and hardware, directly. Rather, the operating system of an assimilated computer on the network is orchestrated to [Yet this article says the server can permanantly damage hardware. If it can't access files and hardware..] provide access to data. "The virus-like operation of the server harnesses the functions of the host operating system to access external local and network resources. Potential Blitzkrieg server virtual machine threats are either disabled, monitored or made unaware of the virus-like network collective," Wood confirms. Subsequent, secure and continual communication between all Blitzkrieg server virtual machines within the collective provides a detailed analysis of the capabilities, Wood offers, "such as software and hardware resources of all network assimilated machines. This detailed network resource knowledge is made available to the entire collective for orchestrated computational and offensive or defensive purposes." Once the assimilation process begins, the server processing collective is ready to conduct complex data analysis, offensive or defensive operations, or all three. At the heart of the Blitzkrieg server are what Wood calls self-programmed adaptive automatacapsids--variable length string transformation rules. The rules have extremely power-adaptive, problem-solving qualities and self-healing and regenerative properties. "When examined on an individual basis, no automatacapsid in and of itself has any meaning. The automatacapsid only has value in the context of the distributed Blitzkrieg server network collective," Wood discloses. The adaptive automatacapsids, like fragments of a living virus without a host cell, transform one another and data, and they spontaneously generate or regenerate new automatacapsids to meet every conceivable complex data analysis need. "No single automatacapsid or group of them, either located locally or on a distant network node, is required to complete the problem-solving process," Wood contends. "If pieces of the problem-solving, nonlinear puzzle are missing or have been destroyed--perhaps intentionally destroyed by the Blitzkrieg server collective--they are dynamically regenerated from only partial information. "The adaptive, automated, self-enhancing functionality renders the Blitzkrieg server and all of its distributed virtual machine extensions completely fault immune and invulnerable to attack," Wood proclaims. The automatacapsids execute and operate to Wood's discovery--the unified general equation of motion, or UGEM. [More signs of snake-oil! "invulnerable to attack". We know that no system is immune to attack.] The discovery of UGEM took place during fundamental research in resolving problems in quantum measurement theory and its relation to the quantum classical transition process. UGEM involves the laws that govern and control the complexity of all self-organization in nature. "The result is the first true virus-like collective digital life form--the information operations Blitzkrieg server," Wood asserts. Industry and government officials believe that, in an era of information war, attacks against soft nonmilitary U.S. commercial electronic targets could have a devastating effect on economic growth. This fear is inhibiting the widespread adoption of electronic commerce, Wood insists. Each of the Blitzkrieg server's automatacapsids behaves according to the 10 self-organizing laws of UGEM. A corresponding "I Am Watching" nonlinear detection and problem-solving capability emerges. This process is considered sufficient to remain invulnerable while protecting and providing damage control from its passive background offensive monitoring mode. Additional information on the Network Waffen Und Munistionfabriken Group is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.fvg.com Server: ns1.inficad.com Address: 207.19.74.3 *** ns1.inficad.com can't find www.fvg.com And a URL to no additional information. FutureVision Group Inc (FVG-DOM) 1406 Hyde Park Road Santa Fe, NM 87501 Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Wood, Laurence F (LW110) LFW@FVG.COM 505-820-7983 (FAX) 505-820-7982