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The expectations for most of us is that the military takes its job seriously.

Our course, we also expect that the rest of us don't, as evidenced by Bill Maudlin, Beetle Bailey, MASH, Dr. Strangelove and Catch-22.  (So, it's alright to admit that you too do tell "war stories.")

But, to the point of this particular blog:

PC World, among others, recently reported on the effort by Wired magazine to decode the code on the U.S. Cyber Command seal. On the seal’s inner gold ring is a code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a

Wired magazine challenged its readers to be the first to decode the cryptic message and offered a prize of a Danger Room T-shirt or a ticket to the International Spy Museum for the first to do so.

As it turns out, the real meaning of the cypher isn't very exciting at all, unless government gobbledygook gets your adrenaline flowing. Accordingly, the figures in the gold ring translate into this:

"USCYBERCOM plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."

Now if this combination of geekiness humor and bureaucratic messaging isn't just so appropriate to that oxymoron "military intelligence," I don't know what isn't.

A House Armed Services subcommittee today approved a measure authorizing a significant boost in spending for special operations as part of a bill setting national security policy for fiscal 2010.

With the assessment by the GAO (glad someone's accountable) that the nation's information security is "at risk" from cyber threats, also comes an assessment on how difficult it is to do non-kinetic cyber activity, like shooting behind the rabbits.

This weekend, students from the UWT's Institute of Technology will be participating in the 2nd Annual Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition on the Microsoft campus.

Members of the student organization, the Grey Hat Group, will be presented with a preconfigured systems of a fictitious company that they are tasked to operate. Then, as described by the competition's web site.

The evil red team, which sits next door, however, will attempt to vandalize and break into this network. The student teams need to defend against the attacks of this red team. In particular, the goals for each team are to:

• fulfill assigned business tasks (so-called injects)
• keep services operational
• prevent break-ins by the red team

Students are scored based on the goals above. The team with the most points of the two day event will be the winner of the Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition and will proceed to the National competition.

Justin Carton, the Grey Hat Group president, has been working the group through practice sessions to get them all prepared. However, a former founder of the GHG and alumni to the program here at the Institute, Mary Jane Kelly, will be part of the "evil red team". She and another alumni John Hernandez, both from Casaba Security, will be tough to handle.

The Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, the University of Washington and Microsoft are helping to put on the event. You have undoubtedly heard of the last two but perhaps not the first. The CIAC is a Pacific Northwest research, education, industry and government community that provides innovation and leadership in the protection of critical public and private information infrastructure, and provides well educated information assurance and cybersecurity at all professional levels.

Guest Author: Andrew Fry, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma. Good luck to all.