The Government has Z4CK!

After completing the hacker fiction book titled Z4CK by Kevin Milne, I began to wonder if a program like Z4CK would ever come to existence. I knew it was possible, but it would require a very talented programmer and a team to keep it updated with all types of exploits.

In the book, Duncan creates a script kiddies dream, a one click hack all program. With this program, Duncan could point it at any computer or network and within a short period of time extract all of its sensitive data and take over, then destroy it’s hardware if he wanted to. When word got out about his program, he got his marbles kicked in but managed to escape. The man-hunt began. Blah Blah.. read the book (good read):

Click Me For The Book

Anyways, after finishing the book I found a news article that said the Government was in the process of finishing a program just like it! Here’s a quote from the article:

As the US military strives to boost its ability to wage cyber warfare, it’s looking for ways to make it easier for non-expert soldiers on the front lines to wreak havoc on enemy networks.

Enter a new generation of attack devices that is packaged to be brought into the battlefield and used by non-specialists to penetrate satellites, voice over internet networks, and supervisory control and data acquisition systems. Aviation Week recently got a peek at one device and provided a rich description of its features.

The device is designed to allow US forces to test enemy networks for a wide range of vulnerabilities and then synthesize the results so they can be acted on quickly. It offers touch-screen dashboards and sliders to make enumeration and penetration more intuitive. One display shows a schematic of an enemy network and identifies its nodes. A sliding lever can be moved to increase an attack or dial it down to reduce collateral damage.

Imagine having that kind of power. That’s some crazy shit!

A sliding lever can be moved to increase an attack or dial it down to reduce collateral damage.

I’m assuming they are talking about a DDOS attack in the above quote. With the amount of computers and bandwidth the government has access to, they could take down literally any network their little heart desires.

Cyber warfare is the future. Now instead of sending a bomb to the enemy, we’ll just take out its means of communication, take control of its major resources and blame it on North Korea. All from the comfort of the Governments air conditioned offices.

What do you think about all of this? Let’s hear your opinion below:

Source: The Register