New Site Unmasks Chatroulette Players

By JENNA WORTHAM
From http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/

I have a confession to make. I’m addicted to Chatroulette, the buzz-generating Web site created by a Russian teenager that pairs anonymous strangers with each other in a video chat room.

For me, Chatroulette offers a welcome break from the daily digital footprints I leave across the Web on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz, where every comment, tweet and “like” is tied back to my real-world identity. Chatroulette is intended to be comfortably anonymous, and it also has the sheen of nostalgia. It’s reminiscent of my earliest encounters with the Internet – firing off messages about schoolwork and television shows in AOL chat rooms and chattering with my World of Warcraft guildmates about their families, jobs and weekend plans.

But now a service called Chatroulette Map, a mash-up of the site with Google Maps, is peeling back some of the anonymity of the users cruising through the site.

Chatroulette Map,which first bubbled up on blogs like Laughing Squid, grabs screenshots of people using the service and, using their IP address and geolocation tools, plots their location on a global map. (Note: Some images may not be work-safe.)

On one hand, Chatroulette Map offers a riveting snapshot of the people who are trying out the service. But on the other, it strips away some of the voyeuristic appeal of being able to peer into a random stranger’s home and life without revealing much information about yourself.

Of course, playing Chatroulette is not without some risk. My colleague Nick Bilton aptly described it as “speed-dating tens of thousands of perfect strangers — some clothed, some not.” The upside to Chatroulette Map is that some of those users might think twice about getting unclothed, making the service more family friendly and less jarring for its users.

On the other hand, the service raises privacy concerns for people using Chatroulette. A recent update on Chatroulette Map reads: ”We’ve decided, at least for the time being, to hide I.P. and host information as some user-identifiable information was found in some entries.”

I’ve reached out to the creators of Chatroulette Map for comment and will update if they respond.

Der CyberKrieg- German Cyberwarfare

A New Breed of Soldier?: gutter (CC Licensed)

Just outside the small town of Rheinbach, the German army has begun preparations for a new kind of war. Following on the heels of attacks against the Internet infrastructure of Estonia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as a large scale hacking attack by China against a number of European countries, the German army, or Bundeswehr, has established its first unit dedicated solely to cyber war. According to a new article in Der Spiegel, the unit is still considered secret, and will work on both defensive and offensive operations.

But a technologically advanced nation developing a unit for cyber war is not itself unique. Rather, the fact that even Germany plans on developing these capabilities signals that the age of cyber war has finally arrived.

“Other than Britian and France, European countries have not been very out front about their war-making capabilities,” said Martin Libicki, author of Conquest in Cyberspace and a senior policy research at the Rand Corporation. “Since Germany is very careful about these things, the fact that they actually announced that they're doing it may mean it’s not as everyday as it seems.”

Instead, the creation of the secret unit signals that Germany will join the larger shift by many militaries towards acknowledging the importance of cyber war. According to Scott Borg, Director and Chief Economist of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a non-profit founded by the US government that now independently consults with the government and businesses, about a dozen countries have developed cyber war capabilities.

With the Russian cyber attack that took out Estonia’s banking, government ministries and Internet for several days in 2007, the wired world joined the land, sea and air as a standard battlefield in modern war. After the 2007 Estonia incident, Russians launched cyber attacks against Georgia during their 2008 war, and then took down the Internet of Kyrgyzstan on January 18th of this year. Since 2007, cyber attacks have been used in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, between Indian and Pakistan, and between China and Taiwan and Japan.

Der Speigel said that the Bundeswehr unit, lead by Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel, consists of 79 computer scientists recruited from the Bundeswehr’s universities and training centers.

And while the unit won’t become fully operational until next year, Germany has a long history of cyber war. According to James Lewis, Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the first case of cyber war in history occurred when the KGB hired German hackers to break into the US Department of Defense (DoD) computer system.

The impetus for creating this unit came from a spate of recent cyber attacks against Germany. In 2007, attempts by Chinese hackers to conduct industrial espionage against Germany became so bad that during a state visit to Germany, German chancellor Angela Merkel publicly asked Chinese officials to stop. Additionally, Germany has engaged in some spats over gas pipelines with Russia, a country that has launched cyber attacks every year since 2007.

“Russia has demonstrated the willingness to use cyber space, and I'm sure Germany is concerned about Russia's use of cyber force as a negotiating tactic,” said O. Sami Saydjari, chairman of the Professionals for Cyber Defense.

Of course, the creation of this new German unit isn’t the only sign that countries are paying more attention to the Internet battlefield. Just last month, the DoD published its Quadrennial Roles and Missions Report. The Report, which the DoD uses to help Congress formulate the military budget for the coming years, highlighted four areas of particular importance. Three of the areas were the obvious choices of counter-insurgency, unmanned aerial vehicles and supply. The forth area was cyber war. Looks like Germany might not be the only country increasing its focus on fighting this popular new kind of war.