The Cisco 7600 OSR consists of a 256 Gbps switching fabric and a 30 million packets per second (mpps) forwarding engine. Its breadth of IP services comes from Cisco IOS, which provides features such as security, enhanced QoS, and destination sensitive services. In addition, the Cisco 7600 OSR allows the migration of existing port adapters from Cisco 7500 series routers, via the Cisco FlexWAN module, giving service providers one the industry’s widest array of interface options in any single platform. This provides service providers great flexibility in deploying the Cisco 7600 OSR for a variety of applications, protects their investment in existing systems, and gives them a practical migration path to the New World Optical Internet.

A Revolutionary Platform For Evolving Networks

The Cisco 7600 OSR helps service providers break through service and bandwidth barriers today, while designing networks to scale for future growth. The Cisco 7600 OSR achieves this through “adaptive network processing,” or the ability to evolve the platform for new IP services without hardware upgrades. Unlike fixed, ASIC-based platforms, which are hardware encoded, the Cisco 7600 OSR relies on the highly flexible Parallel eXpress Forwarding (PXF) technology for scalable performance of services. PXF is a patented, Cisco-developed network processor capable of line-rate IP services delivery that can support new IP services through periodic software upgrades. Each OSM has two PXF processors capable of 12 mpps of IP services delivery per interface card.

“IP+Optical combines the dynamism of the Internet world with the foundation of the transport world, creating an infrastructure that can deliver the services that service providers need,” said Lele Nardin, vice president of the Internet Systems Business Unit at Cisco. “Cisco will continue to add innovative solutions on top of this solid foundation to make service providers better equipped to meet the constantly escalating and changing customer demands for new networking services.”

Pricing and Availability

The base Cisco 7600 OSR system is list priced at $73,000 and the entry level system, with interfaces, start at $100,000. The interfaces modules are priced between $27,000 to $180,000. The Cisco 7600 OSR is available now worldwide.

coconutBattery — This little app tells you more info about your battery’s quality of life. Namely, I’ve been having a frustrating problem — my laptop acts like it’s at 0% and shuts down, even when the power meter reads upwards of 10-30%… According to coconutBattery, my battery’s only operating about 80% of its original capacity. Maybe that’s my problem… It also allows you to save its stats so you can monitor your battery over time.

coconutWifi — Many Mac controls are easier to use than Windows — but the Airport card isn’t always one of them. Unlike on a Windows machine, it doesn’t tell you which networks in the area are encrypted. This little app changes that with a handy icon telling you how many open networks are available, and not only that — it also lets you know what channels they’re all using. Now I can easily increase the range of my network by setting it to an unused channel.

Excuse me, I have to go play with my new utility toys…

You will discern a certain amount of enthusiasm for blocking, and for a “something must be done” approach. However, in coming to their conclusions, they do not, in my view, seem to have listened too hard to the evidence, or sought out expertise elsewhere in the world…

Google/YouTube told them that 10 hours of video was posted every minute, and the amount is increasing. In the oral evidence session an MP helpfully suggested: “That video content is tagged. You do not need to look at every single minute of video content. Surely you could have people who would look at the video content which is tagged with labels which suggest it could be inappropriate.” Of course “happy_slapping.wmv” or “fluffy_bunnies.avi” must always contain exactly what it says on the tin (not!) but unaccountably Google said it was a “fair suggestion”, so perhaps my cynicism is misplaced.

However, back to blocking.

I submitted some evidence of my own, which the committee summarised, reasonably accurately:

Dr Richard Clayton, a researcher in the Security Group of the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge University and author of several academic papers on methods for blocking access to Internet content, pointed out that there was no single blocking method which was both inexpensive and discerning enough to block access to only one part of a large website (such as FaceBook). In his view, the fatal flaw of all network-level blocking schemes was the ease with which they could be overcome, either by encrypting content or by the use of proxy services hosted outside the UK.

The committee’s conclusion, having read this was:

At a time of rapid technological change, it is difficult to judge whether blocking access to Internet content at network level by Internet service providers is likely to become ineffective in the near future. However, this is not a reason for not doing so while it is still effective for the overwhelming majority of users.

which I suppose logically means that the committee thinks that blocking should now be discarded as a policy option — but somehow I think that isn’t their intended meaning.

The Committee should perhaps have a look at this Australian report, which found that ISP level content filtering (and in Australia the politicians want to use ISP level filtering to provide a child-friendly Internet) did work (up to a point) at Tier 3 (the smallest) ISPs. The up-to-a-point is that unlike previous tests the systems didn’t completely wreck the browsing experience by slowing it down. However, the systems blocked only 85-98% of illegal material and similar percentages of material suitable for adults but not for younger children. Interestingly some products were better at different categories.

Getting that many sites wrong is really quite significant, so it’s difficult to see this as a ringing endorsement for blocking the web. Additionally, the Australian report found that the blocking was useless on “non-web” protocols (such as peer-to-peer) and their report specifically didn’t consider cost, or ease of circumvention — so it’s not just UK politicians not wanting to consider evidence on that topic!

Finally, I should note that the Culture Media and Sport Committee has also ignored some rather more recent academic work. The MPs have put into their report that they were horrified to discover that child sexual abuse images took 24 hours to remove in the UK. What (should they ever learn of it) will they make of the recent discovery by Tyler Moore and myself that shows that if the website is hosted abroad then a month is more to be expected?

Amazon EC2 allows us to rent dedicated servers (instances) on-demand to run applications, such as the forums.  Then we can run and host on EC2 any Linux application; but unlike classic hosting where folks install your application and set up your server for you, Amazon Web Services provide only the infrastructure.

Here are some links about AWS:

• Amazon EC2 Getting Started Guide
• Amazon EC2 Developer Resources
• Frequently Asked Questions for Amazon EC2
• AWS Developer Resource Center
• EC2 Articles and Tutorials
• EC2 Solutions Catalog
• Firefox Extension for Amazon EC2
• EC2 Forum

Maybe you will elevate your event processing application to the clouds?

Because of non-disclosure and other confidentiality contracts with various partners, vendors and manufacturers, we’ve had sealed lips for almost exactly 12 months. Now that it’s been made public by the media, I can share a little information with you and explain why I think you should be excited.

What cat is out of the bag now? HP ProCurve’s network access control solution leverages endpoint management technology from StillSecure’s Secure Access solution. Information Week spilled the beans, so to speak, in Mike Fratto’s recent 2008 NAC Survey Analytic Report. (See page 32)

Now, at this point, I can probably lump you into one of three groups… 1) You don’t care or have no clue what this means 2) You care but think this means HP ‘has no NAC’… or group 3) You know about StillSecure’s success and ProCurve’s integration and think this is a great combination.

I’m sure everyone will have their own opinion- I happen to be in Group 3. Why? Because HP has taken the power of their servers, leveraged a very solid endpoint management tool and incorporated a variety of other management and security features by way of their identity management solution.

• The endpoint security. StillSecure’s Safe Access solution has been winning awards and earning stars for years. You can probably Google it, or check out some of Shimel’s blog  posts, such as this one, with 4- and 5-star reviews from SC Magazine. In fact, just this year (and in previous years) Safe Access was voted Best Endpoint Security Solution by SC Magazine and has won numerous other awards and accolades from various analysts and media firms. They have a clean, user-friendly GUI, a solid Linux platform and a variety of testing methods, deployment options and switch integrations. (And no, you don’t need ProCurve switches, the NAC integration is ready for your Cisco, Extreme, or whatever you have).

• User management. Combine one of the highest-rated endpoint security solutions with ProCurve switches, the #2 leader in the switching market (and Magic Quadrant resident) and the full integration with ProCurve’s Identity Driven Manager platform and you have one amazingly capable access control system. With ProCurve IDM, you can integrate directly with their NAC 800 appliance to offer per-user (or per-group) ACLs, QoS, restrictions or priviliges. Rules can be identity-based, time-based, location-based, or a combination of all. And, IDM eases 802.1X integration by offering users a central management and repository for user settings and VLAN assignments; it really is ProCurve’s special sauce and a distinguishing feature.

• Switch security. The integration of advanced switch security functions, such as DHCP snooping, Dynamic ARP protection and dynamic IP lockdown gives ProCurve another leg-up to fight common known attacks for both in-line and out-of-band NAC deployments.

• Zero-day protection. It gets better, the new Dynamic Configuration Arbiter (DCA) functions in ProCurve’s Pro-vision switches gives customers the unique advantage of integrating the NAC and IDM with ProCurve’s Network Immunity Solution (NIM). NIM uses flow analysis from sFlow and network behaviour anomaly detection (NBAD) to detect and automatically remediate on the edge. In English, that means we can use ProCurve’s NIM to detect attacks and take action at the edge port, such as blocking the port, locking out the MAC address of the offender, rate-limiting, or even mirroring the traffic to an IDS for further inspection. The super-nice part is, all the sFlow and NBAD works on wireless too. (Hey Stiennon, did you hear that?)

• Full integration. Unlike some of the other network-based NAC vendors, ProCurve has done an exceptional job of integrating these features and we’ll continue to see more integration in future revisions of the softwares and as more TNC/TCG integration frameworks are released (such as IF-MAP).

I think the strong integration with the infrastructure and the ability to leverage a mature endpoint integrity will make HP a ‘real’ player in the NAC market moving forward.

Not to knock other NAC solutions- Choosing a NAC is like selecting the perfect wine for your dish- there’s no 1 ‘right’ choice for all occasions. Each have their advantages and disadvantages. There are several that have special sauces and you’ll actually be seeing more on that soon…

# # #

Stephouse steps into Portland, Ore., void: Local firm Stephouse has built out 5 sq mi of business-grade wireless availability in downtown Portland and 2 sq mi in an underserved part of north Portland using Proxim gear for both Wi-Fi and WiMax service. Wi-Fi use is $20 per month or 1 free hour per day up to 10 free hours per month. The offering seems to focus on the business side, though, in competition with services like Towerstream. Prices aren't listed on the company's site.

Hartford drops Wi-Fi effort: Connecticut's trouble capital city has given up on city-wide Wi-Fi. No surprise. No firms ready to build for free, no money, no tangible goals. My wife grew up in the suburb to the west--West Hartford, prosaically enough--and speculates that the lack of county-oriented government in Connecticut has doomed Hartford to be a civic wasteland. It's recovering a bit as housing affordability goes up, and there's more going on in the city than there used to be. But there won't be Wi-Fi. Incidentally, the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, home of one of the world's first bloggers, is near financial ruin. It's a great piece of American history; I'm hoping it's saved again--it's had many lives since Twain built it and went bankrupt.

The Sopranokovs 

The Russian mob comes to town with a new scam—medical identity theft. 

When FBI special agent Ted Price peered through the window of a dingy brick storefront on Southwest Morrison Street in March, it was what he didn’t see that caught his attention. 

The business, called UnimedCorner, claimed to provide ailing seniors with orthotics—braces and other devices to correct foot, joint and back problems. 

Price and other federal investigators were skeptical. 

On Unimed’s showroom floor, Price saw wheelchairs, motorized scooters, a variety of canes and, on the walls, a selection of amateurish paintings and framed photographs. There was no evidence, however, of the kinds of equipment for which Unimed had billed Medicare nearly $2 million in the previous couple of months. 

“I observed wheelchairs and canes through the window but did not see any orthotics in the store,” Price later wrote in a search-warrant affidavit. “It is a sign of fraud that the store is not stocking the items [for which] it is billing.” 

By the time Price arrived on the scene, the company’s owner, a shadowy Russian immigrant named Alexandr Shcherbakov, was long gone. 

Today, Shcherbakov’s store sits undisturbed. The message light on the phone blinks, dead potted plants droop and a stuffed toy monkey slumps in a glass display case. 

And behind the cash register hangs a framed poster of television’s best-known mobsters, the Sopranos. 

From interviews and information presented in federal affidavits, it is clear Shcherbakov moved to Oregon to commit a crime elegant and lucrative enough to make Tony Soprano envious: medical identity theft. 

... 

“Medical identity theft is the new frontier for organized crime,” says Alex Johnson, a former FBI agent who investigates fraud for Regence BlueShield. “Pretty much anybody can set up a mom-and-pop operation and start cranking out claims.” Someday, most Americans will need a cane, wheelchair, home hospital bed or another of the items healthcare professionals call “durable medical equipment,” or DME. 

For those over 64 and without private insurance, there’s a good chance federally funded Medicare will pick up the tab for that equipment. Last year, according to federal statistics, Medicare spent $8.6 billion on DME. 

Here’s the way the system is supposed to work: A doctor prescribes a device such as a wheelchair for a patient, who presents his prescription to a DME supplier. The supplier provides the equipment and bills Medicare, which typically pays 80 percent of the cost. Unlike pharmacists, who fill prescriptions under strict scrutiny of state and federal watchdogs, DME suppliers are lightly regulated. “DME is very vulnerable to fraud,” says Consuelo Woodhead, the chief healthcare fraud prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t require any background in medicine, any kind of professional licensure or appreciable capital. 

There are barriers of entry in other medical fields, but not in DME.” To operate, DME suppliers simply need a place of business, a business license and liability insurance. Unlike pharmacists, DME suppliers operate under an honor system: The feds count on them to supply the equipment they claim to provide to the beneficiaries who need it. 

That honor system is not working. 

The epicenter of DME fraud, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services, is South Florida, where Medicare billing for DME quadrupled from 2002 to 2006 to $1.7 billion. Investigators found much of that increase was due to fraud. In 2006, federal inspectors revoked the licenses of 634 DME suppliers in South Florida, nearly half the DME dealers in the region. 

Later the same year, raids in Southern California yielded similar results: The feds shut down 95 DME suppliers. Many of the DME suppliers shut down around Los Angeles were run by immigrants from the former Soviet Union. It’s probably no coincidence that when the feds raided Los Angeles DME suppliers, some Angelenos fled to cities where there was less scrutiny—such as Portland.

Weldon, who is currently being investigated by the FBI over alleged corruption during his time in office, visited Libya in March to discuss a possible military deal, according to a letter describing the trip from Weldon to Defense Solutions CEO Timothy Ringgold. In May, Weldon, together with Ringgold and another company representative, traveled to Moscow to discuss working with Russia's weapons-export agency on arms sales to the Middle East.

Both trips were part of the company's effort to tap into the growing -- and often legally murky -- market for selling weapons from former Eastern Bloc countries to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Ex-Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., is helping broker deals between Russian weapons suppliers and the Iraqi and Libyan governments through his company, Defense Solutions.
Photo: H. Rumph Jr/AP

The Russians want to sell weapons to Iraq directly, but "must go slow on Iraq because of political reasons" and want to work with an "intermediary" like Defense Solutions, CEO Ringgold subsequently wrote to colleagues. "They have not spoken with any American company that can offer the quid pro quo that we can or that has the connections in Russia that we have," he boasted.

A few years ago, an American company proposing to sell weapons to Libya might have triggered a congressional hearing. So, too, would have a proposal to conduct arms deals with Russia, which the United States has accused of selling high-tech weapons to Syria and Iran.

However, U.S. government efforts to rapidly equip countries like Afghanistan and Iraq -- which have largely Soviet-origin weapons -- have created legal ambiguities and loopholes in export controls that didn't exist in years past and given rise to a new class of arms trade middlemen. So, even though both Libya and the Russian arms export agency are on official U.S. blacklists, government officials and analysts involved in weapons sales say the rules have become unclear as the push to equip allies in the global war on terror has blazed new but uncertain legal ground.

Eagerly stepping into that virgin territory is Defense Solutions, a Pennsylvania-based company that is carving out a small but lucrative niche in a new international arms bazaar. The firm boasts as its advisors a number of influential Washington insiders, such as retired General Barry McCaffrey, the former White House drug czar.

Helping the firm make key connections is Curt Weldon, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania at the center of an FBI investigation into alleged conflicts of interest during his time in office. Weldon, now a key executive at Defense Solutions, is working with the company to set up these weapons deals.

Defense Solutions has also proposed refurbishing Libya's BTR-60 armored personnel carriers, according to a sales proposal seen by Wired.com. Defense Solutions denies drafting a sales proposal to Libya.

It's an unusual, if not an entirely unexpected chapter for Weldon, whose time in office included frequent trips to Russia. As an influential member of the House Armed Services Committee, Weldon pushed for multibillion-dollar defense programs, like ballistic missile defense, and earned a reputation as a foreign policy gadfly, boasting of his contacts with officials in nations labeled by the administration as "rogue states" such as Libya and North Korea. Weldon's wild claims about a 9/11 cover-up and his sensationalist book warning of an Iranian terror plot, sometimes earned him official scorn and public ridicule, but it was accusations that he steered contracts to Eastern European businesses linked to his daughter's lobbying firm that drew the government's attention.

Weldon was voted out of office in 2006 just weeks after the FBI raided his daughter's home, and that of one of her associates.

Weldon did not respond to e-mails and phone requests to be interviewed or comment for this article. But in a 2006 interview, before the FBI probe was public, Weldon spoke enthusiastically about setting up a "front company" to work with the Russian arms agency, Rosoboronexport. Weldon hoped this company could sell weapons to the Middle East, and other regions, particularly to countries where the U.S. has strained relations. He claimed the director of Rosoboronexport approached him to work with "an American company that would act as a front for weapons these nations want to buy."

Weldon called the proposal an "unbelievable offer."

The administration, he acknowledged at the time, did not welcome the idea of an American company selling Russian weapons to potentially unfriendly countries. But two years later, Weldon, now a private citizen and chief strategic officer for Defense Solutions, appears to be working on precisely that sort of deal. And whether illegal or not, Defense Solutions' business represents a new phenomenon in the international arms trade business.

In years past arms brokers -- firms or individuals who serve as middlemen to facilitate weapons sales between countries -- were largely the stuff of spy thrillers. Unlike traditional American defense companies, like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, which typically sell weapons directly to NATO countries or other governments regarded as friendly to the United States, brokers are often small outfits run by people with sometimes questionable experience and reputations they will sell to anyone. One of the most infamous arms brokers, a Russian named Viktor Bout, is charged by the United States, United Nations, Interpol and others of funneling arms to terrorists and rebels around the world. He was recently arrested in Thailand. The United States is requesting his extradition on charges of supplying arms to a terrorist organization.

Two Marines lower the trim vane on the front of an Iraqi BMP-1 mechanized infantry combat vehicle that was captured during Operation Desert Storm. The American defense consulting firm Defense Solutions has proposed refurbishing Libya's aging fleet of BMP-1s. Defense Solutions denies drafting a sales proposal to Libya.

But ironically, Iraq has fueled a new market for these professional middlemen; the United States is funneling billions of dollars into modernizing Iraq's army so that the country's government can fend for itself after coalition troops withdraw. And Iraq's largely Soviet-equipped military is a natural market for Eastern European countries brimming with old or out-of-date equipment they would like to unload. The middlemen, in these cases, serve a key role by allowing the U.S. government to do business with an American company, which in turn buys equipment from Eastern Bloc countries in deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it financed with U.S. taxpayer dollars.

One of Defense Solutions' sales -- a deal to sell Hungarian-owed T-72 tanks to Iraq in 2005 -- was typical of these new foreign military sales. But on the more questionable side is the company's plans to work with Rosoboronexport, which is barred from doing business with the U.S. government, and Libya, which is still on the State Department's arms embargo list.

The Eastern European-Middle East arms-brokering business, while in some cases sanctioned by the U.S. government, has run into problems, including outright corruption and quality. Defense contractor Dale Stoffel, the president of Wye Oak Technology, and another American were gunned down in Iraq in December 2004 after Stoffel alleged that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense was involved in a kickback scheme. Like Defense Solutions, the company Stoffel worked for was refurbishing the Iraq's army Eastern Bloc equipment.

Another problem is quality. Weapons from the former Soviet Bloc, which the U.S. military euphemistically calls "nonstandard equipment," have been flagged as substandard, acknowledges Brigadier General Charles Luckey, who is in charge of security assistance at Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. In an interview from Iraq, Brigadier General Luckey said: "One of the frustrating things about buying nonstandard [weapons], is that I'm the guy who has to deal with the fact that some broker I've never heard of allowed weapons to get to Iraq before they were inspected."

Defense Solutions is carving a new niche in the arms trade, selling Soviet-made weapons to Middle Eastern countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. Defense Solutions sold Hungarian-owed T-72 tanks to Iraq in 2005.

In one high-profile case, Iraqi officials alleged that a corrupt firm sold them $400 million in shoddy helicopters from Poland. More recently, a company led by a 21-year-old and a former masseur was offered a U.S. government contract worth nearly $300 million to sell ammunition to Afghanistan. The ammunition turned out to be outdated and of dubious origin and several people connected with the company have been indicted. A congressional investigation concluded that the company, which was on a State Department watch list, was able to take advantage of regulatory loopholes by using middlemen.

For those concerned about illicit arms trade, this new wave of weapons deals is rife with the potential for corruption and abuse, but for companies eager to pursue markets once regarded as dubious, it represents a lucrative business opportunity. The problem in these cases, according to those familiar with arms sales, is that it's no longer clear what's legal and what's not.

Rachel Stohl, an expert on international arms trade and a senior analyst at Center for Defense Information, says that in many ways, the rush to equip Iraq has led the United States to throw caution to the wind. She points to a report by the Government Accountability Office last year that found that some 190,000 weapons sold to Iraq have gone missing. "I think the reality is we won't know, until way after the fact, about all of these irregularities with the Iraq weapons provision program," she said. "We were providing them all these assault rifles that have gone missing. Why? They were not following the standard procedures that were in place."

But Iraq and Afghanistan aren't the only markets available to arms brokers like Defense Solutions. The gradual normalization of relations with Libya opens another door into a quasi-legal area of sales.

Like Iraq, Libya has a substantial arsenal of Soviet-origin military weapons, offering a potential market for brokers working with Russia and other former Soviet states. But even when there's not an outright ban, sales to the Middle East are often fraught with controversy, particularly to countries like Libya, which was under international sanction for more than a decade. Even as sanctions against it have been lifted, European companies proposing to sell arms to Libya have faced steep criticism, particularly since the country is still ruled by dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who took power in a military coup in 1969.

While the United States lifted Libya's "state sponsor of terrorism" designation in 2006, other restrictions, such as on the sale of arms, remain in place. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that exports of "lethal munitions" to Libya, such as tanks or related equipment, are still banned, although sales of nonlethal equipment are now allowed on a case-by-case basis.

In late March, Weldon traveled to Libya for a weeklong trip at the invitation of the Gaddafi Foundation, a group run by the son of Libya's leader, and the chairman of Libya's foreign affairs committee, according to the report he sent to Defense Solutions (.pdf), a copy of which was obtained by Wired.com. The trip reports states: "Agreement reached for Weldon to quickly return to Libya for meetings with son [of Libyan leader Gaddafi] Morti regarding defense and security cooperation."

A document dated April 16, just two weeks after Weldon's trip, outlines Defense Solutions' proposal to Libya to refurbish the country's fleet of armored vehicles, including its T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, and BTR-60 armored personnel carriers. A copy of the sales proposal, also provided to Wired.com, is on Defense Solutions' letterhead, appears to bear the signature of company CEO Timothy Ringgold, and is addressed to Libya's defense procurement council. "Defense Solutions is committed to delivering a full end-to-end solution to its clients," the proposal states. "Besides refurbishing these vehicles, we are capable of providing a full logistics support package, including a two year supply of spare parts, maintenance and repair services, and operator, maintenance, and repair training."

In an interview with Wired.com, Ringgold admitted that he's interested in doing business in Libya and confirms receiving Weldon's trip report from Libya, but denies drafting or signing an arms-sale proposal. "I've never made such a document to Libya," Ringgold insisted, after being read the proposal, and told that his signature is on it.

In addition to the Libyan arms-deal document, Wired.com has also reviewed copies of e-mails from Ringgold discussing the Libyan deal.

While Ringgold denies proposing an arms sale to Libya, he is open about speaking with Rosoboronexport, which has been on a U.S. government sanctions list since 2006, after the Russian state agency allegedly violated the Iran and Syria Nonproliferation Act. An April e-mail provided to Wired.com describes Ringgold, Weldon and Stephan Minikes, a senior advisor to Defense Solutions and a former ambassador, meeting with Rosoboronexport. The conversations included a number of potential deals, including supplying Mi-17 helicopters to Afghanistan and spare parts for Iraq's infantry fighting vehicles. Ringgold wrote to colleagues following the visit, describing the meetings as a "spectacular success," saying the Russian agency "has the ability to undercut all cost proposals from brokers."

Ringgold confirmed those discussions and said that his company has sought to do business with Rosoboronexport. Asked whether Ringgold considers his dealings with Russia to be legal, he argued that U.S. companies could work with Rosoboronexport on a "case-by-case" basis. "The particular purpose of the meeting we had -- and I want to be crystal clear -- was in response to a U.S. government requirement," he said.

A number of officials at the State Department and in the Pentagon, when contacted for this article, could not say whether working with Rosoboronexport is legal or not. A Pentagon spokeswoman said she was familiar with the issue, but deferred the question to the State Department. When asked about Rosoboronexport's status on the blacklist, John Herzberg, a State Department spokesman replied: "What's on there is on there."

Asked whether, given the ban, there was any way a company could legally work with Rosoboronexport, as Ringgold suggested, Herzberg provided an equivocal answer. "At the stage of the process we're at, I'm unable to give you an answer," he said. "You can try elsewhere in government, and maybe they'll be braver than me."

In an interview from Iraq, General Luckey conceded it was a murky area, but said, "My understanding is they are currently on our no-go list."

The confusion over debarred parties has even led the U.S. government into its own legal tangles, according to Jim McAleese, a Washington attorney who specializes in government contracting and foreign military sales. Because the Russian government violated U.S. nonproliferation laws, even NASA had to go to Congress to ensure it could work with Russia on Soyuz flights to the international space station. "What I'm warning you about is, don't be surprised by the confusion," McAleese said. "There are a whole bunch of different statutes that were adopted piecemeal and were never intended to be reconciled."

But it's the very ambiguity of the law that troubles those who monitor export control. "It's highly unusual to do anything with the Russians, particularly Rosoboronexport," said Scott Jones, director of Export Control Programs at the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia.

Legal or not, reputable American companies simply don't want to work with banned entities, Jones said, for fear of risking their reputations and business. "Even if it's not an outright prohibition, most companies don't want to put themselves in a liability situation that has really bad PR … and they stay away from it," Jones said. "But if that's your business, pimping out arms from the U.S. or Russia, that's the way it works, and you push as much as possible."

Finding any U.S. defense company working with the Russian government at this point would be "remarkable," Jones added.

In the meantime, the future for Weldon is unclear. The FBI investigation continues and Weldon's former chief of staff recently pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and is cooperating with the government, notes Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed a complaint against Weldon in 2004. Sloan speculated that Weldon may be charged with "honest service fraud" for misusing his office for personal gain. "It's an easier standard than bribery," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised [if he's charged] with bribery, but I think it will be honest services fraud."

Ringgold insists that he and Weldon are on the right side of the law. "Everything we do is in strict compliance with international and U.S. law and we operate only in the best interests of the U.S. government," he said. "I didn't serve 30 years in the United States Army to throw that away on a whim."

Asked if Weldon is still working for the company, Ringgold replied: "Absolutely, proudly so."

Disappointingly, the author sprinkles the usual super-secret uber-hacker spin throughout the article to make the Red Team seem mysterious and exclusive, with untouchable talent. It’s a little misleading. For starters, there’s the predictable question about success rates:

I’d heard from one of the Department of Defense clients who had previously worked with the NSA red team that OWNSAVAOG and his team had a success rate of close to 100 percent. “We don’t keep statistics on that,” OWNSAVAOG insisted when I pressed him on an internal measuring stick.

This is one of those statements that is difficult for the average reader to interpret. It’s intended to make the team sound like a crack squad of hackers, but in reality it’s the same statistic that every security consultancy cites during sales calls. The truth is, there’s a lot of wiggle room on what is considered “getting in” to the target. For example, some would say that brute forcing an FTP server and downloading some FOUO (For Official Use Only) documents constitutes penetrating the target. Others would disagree.

How about personnel? I thought this was an englightening and accurate statement from the unnamed NSA source:

And like any good geek at a desk talking to a guy with a really cool job, I wondered just where the NSA finds the members of its superhacker squad. “The bulk is military personnel, civilian government employees and a small cadre of contractors,” OWNSAVAOG says. The military guys mainly conduct the ops (the actual breaking and entering stuff), while the civilians and contractors mainly write code to support their endeavors. For those of you looking for a gig in the ultrasecret world of red teaming, this top hacker says the ideal profile is someone with “technical skills, an adversarial mind-set, perseverance and imagination.”

He basically admits that the team consists mostly of people who “run the tools” and only a handful that actually write the tools or do anything cutting-edge. It shouldn’t be that surprising; just as in any large consulting organization, you have some people who run scanners/tools and aren’t expected to be terribly analytical. While the Red Team almost certainly has some superstars, on the whole it is similar in both skillset and composition to a typical consultancy or enterprise security team.

In terms of attracting and retaining top talent, the Red Team faces the same challenges as the rest of the information security industry, with the built-in disadvantage of the government pay scale. If that wasn’t bad enough, they also have to compete with themselves (i.e. the rest of the NSA) for already scarce resources. Given these challenges, how could one realistically expect the Red Team to be as advanced as the article portrays?

Finally, let’s dispel the “super-secret” notion — unless things have changed significantly, the majority of Red Team operations are unclassified. Granted, detailed information is guarded, but you can find reports summarizing past operations if you dig around a bit. One would expect that an operation intended to be truly secretive would never make its way into Google search results.

I want to conclude by saying that this post is not intended to cast the Red Team itself in a negative light. I enjoyed my time there and had the opportunity to work with some smart people. The Red Team’s goals are worthy and noble; clearly, state-sponsored cyberterrorism is a growing concern and as a country we should be as prepared as possible. But realize that we have a long way to go.