X-Force Command Cyber Tactical Operations Center | Hacker News Reader

X-Force Command Cyber Tactical Operations Center

ibm.com

37 pointsTomte50 comments

rather offtopic but this rolling marketing gag is powered by a Peterbuilt 579 (why is the logo blacked out??) and only weighs 23 tons. The 579 can easily haul more than double this. https://www.peterbilt.com/trucks/highway/model-579

this is a class 8 truck which retails for around $150,000 new and has a 12 liter PACCAR MX13 engine with ~450HP and 1800FP of torque. Collision mitigation, advanced cruise radar, and an all aluminum cab in standard or automatic transmission.

however- on the infographic this says its powered by a Mercedes Actros? Do they have another one of these things rolling around Europe as well?

Drivers can expect to see around 7mpg. Was this really a good investment on the part of IBM? Do you explicitly need a cyber truck to come to your office for security or do people use the internet these days? "X-Force Cyber Command" sounds like something you'd see on sunday morning cartoons.

> Do you explicitly need a cyber truck to come to your office for security or do people use the internet these days? "X-Force Cyber Command" sounds like something you'd see on sunday morning cartoons.

For marketing to the US government, this kind of show-off and showmanship is standard.

I didn't believe it could be this dumb, but it was. Anyone who's technical knows you don't need this fluff to do "the cyber", and it's more likely to just get in the way, but everyone goes along with it because you can be getting paid 6 digits to sit around and do nothing all day for months at a cyber workstation of the future.

Disclaimer: I know nothing and this is an honest questions.

I wonder if they intend to be able to use the tractor for power in situations where external power is lacking. Powering, and more importantly and power-hungry, cooling "23 tons" of equipment wouldn't be the lightest task.

the solution is to outfit the truck with a custom rear diff with a power take-off. Such configurations exist and are expensive, generally governing the truck to 55mph or so after they are set up. You would also be running the engine, which burns through expensive EPA media like CO2, NOX, and sulfur scrubbers (which arent required if youre just running a generator.)

if i had to guess, most of that 40 some kilowatts of power generated is going directly to HVAC. trailers are not insulated, so the heat from servers as well as the hot air from the X-Force sales team will need to be managed.

Ideally you'd park this thing in an arena outfitted with 480 3 phase hookups. Put the generator into bypass, and just use it to condition power you get from the venue. Alternatively, flood a parking lot with fresh hot diesel fumes and hope hypoxia works its magic to convince people IBM is serious.

Doubtful. The generator appears to be hanging off the front of the trailer. It's probably not impossible to put a PTO generator on the truck too but it would show up as some lumpy gear on the truck between the cab and trailer, with ventilation. There would also need to be extra ventilation for the engine.

> however- on the infographic this says its powered by a Mercedes Actros? Do they have another one of these things rolling around Europe as well?

Probably got a deal on the merc after they did the promo video...

It's particularly in systems like these where they usually leave SSH w/ password login, or an oudated Teamviewer install. [1]

Realistically, I can see this working. For Disney. For use in action movies. In fact, "23 tons of cyber capabilities" is exactly the thing I would expect to hear from an action movie.

[1]: https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/pen-testing-sh...

Everything in that website is like some action movie ad: cool black truck, acronyms, liberal use of military words, elite team, and quotes like these

"See how we built this unique cyber experience – the baddest thing on wheels."

"The world’s only full-scale, air-gapped cyber range that can accommodate your entire incident command staff and fusion team. Experience immersive simulations directed by an elite training force."

"Learn from highly-skilled, battle-tested experts, who lead you through intense drills based on real-world attacks."

I'm pumped up! (asks for prices) ...well, maybe next year.

Well, it's a setup for LARPing (see recent encrypted email thread) cybersecurity with execs as a flashy sales pitch, so the film prop aesthetic is the main feature. It's literally a roadshow. I'm just a bit disappointed that the trailer can't deploy an autonomous Tesla Cybertruck manned by David Hasselhoff.

While I do agree with you on the IBM truck remarks, I find myself heavily disagreeing with the "PGP / SMTP over TLS" is LARPing" gentleman.

For one, he makes the argument that it's all a theater. Is it broken ? Yes. Does it provide some non-negligeable level of confidentiality ? Absolutely. Is it "broken" in some way or another ? Yes. But that doesn't mean we should just fall back to regular plain unencrypted email when PGP MAKES MORE SENSE. I myself don't use PGP when it doesn't really make sense. But when sending a security vulnerability, I'd say it's pretty safe to assume you're not LARPing at that point. Sure, maybe they know you're sending a PoC. But that will at least delay them for a couple of days (or hours if you're a high value target).

A comment on that thread expressed exactly what I feel and what I assume what most of security minded people feel: Sure, it is not perfect. But if I want perfect-secrect (as perfect as it theoretically gets anyway), I'm going to use Signal. But when your company has e-mail as the main communication form, it doesn't make much sense to use another form of communication, it will hinder productivity and obstruct your company's processes.

All in all, LARPing is a strong word. If anything, we should applaud the effort confidentiality-minded people put up, and push for better protocols.

You're probably aware, but the obvious counterargument people make to what you've said is that for some people such as activists under repressive regimes they would rather not be able to email than email under the mistaken belief what they were sending is highly secure. TFA on that article said the risk is non-technical users seeing technical users use PGP and assuming it's a good option when there are high stakes.

I hadn't thought about that possibility. But I think it's arguably more of a cultural and informational, rather than a technical thing.

But I do agree that when the stakes are high, mistakes like these can mean life or death. But again, that can be solved by trying to better the general understanding of confidential communication systems.

I agree with most of that, which is why I think LARPing is a fair metaphor. It succinctly gets across that this is a cool thing for techies but not for general usage when it's safety critical.

I wonder if they got the idea from the "Die Hard" movie? Says "20 worksations"... Even with the trailer folding out, that sounds crowded. "gestural controlled" displays... and a telescoping light tower!

Everything necessary to convince the CEO that "Action is Being Taken" when they're troubled by something "cyber" they can't be bothered to understand.

https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/DXGD7N9K

* Also, the "infographic" shows a different tractor than the pics.

From the PDF in that page: "Feel the adrenaline rush of an intense, immersive, gamified experience with your entire cross-functional team."

I get that when sending an OTA update to an entire fleet, and I am just using a 2012 laptop.

I had a similar thought when I read that : "Try live patching kernels in production, that'll get you going"

Reminds me of in the 1980's of running a big map reduce based system from home on the biggest super mini cluster in the UK

Set up the text only portable terminal in the hall of my parents house next to the phone line kick off the run and slowly see at 300 baud all the systems start to run hoping that they would all pass the initial stage and successfully start the mapping phase.

We're definitely going to laugh on how ridiculous and over-the-top this is, but we live in an age of spectacle. If I'm getting a cybersecurity seminar or training session, I'd rather it come rolling in like Gordon Ramsay than something standard and boring.

If its entertaining, maybe people will pay attention to it more? Communication can be an engineering problem too.

> The IBM® X-Force® Command Cyber Tactical Operations Center (C-TOC) provides the industry’s first mobile cyber range and watch floor, with 23 tons of cyber capabilities on wheels, wherever they are needed.

Nice to see good cyber-security is now so commodified we can sell it by the tonne </sarcasm>

It’s easy to roll eyes at this.

I’m curious if anyone knows of a situation where having a “cyber NOC” situation room was actually useful?

Major corporations are building them and hiring “Cyber Resilience” teams. Is it all fluff, or is my cynicism causing me to miss key enterprise threat models and communication needs?

"Putting cybercrime on the road to ruin". Bless whoever had to type that sentence and keep a straight face.

This is hilarious, but honestly sign me up for the job where I get to setup an computer environment in the back of a semi. I don't think it will actually lead to any good, but it should be fun.

Imagine the vibration and ventilation problems. I was thinking "how long to unpack and set up once parked?" ... That number will be longer once this vehicle ages and travels a bit. If one wanted to make a thing like this operational while mobile that would be an even more exciting challenge.

If I was a hacker I would watch to see which companies bought these, knowing they are clueless about network security and probably soft targets.

Soft targets with lots of money.

Well, maybe not that much money. After all, they just gave most of it to IBM.

IBM is basically the corporate equivalent of assisted living? Old corporations turn to IBM to drain their finances until they die of old age?

This thing always made me laugh. It’s actually quite genius considering most of IBMs customers are going to eat it up, but goddamn imagine making a favorable decision on a multimillion dollar security contract because your exec team liked IBMs adult “cyber” escape room.

Someone's been watching Knight Rider re-runs, amirite?

(Thinking particularly of the tractor/trailer rig they use as K.I.T.T.'s mothership.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Rider_%281982_TV_series...

Does it have RISC technology? Because RISC technology is going to change everything.

This is 100% intentional hype. This is designed to be deployed at a trade show or outside corp headquarters. The video states that they built a "cyber security range" in ~2016, which generated 2,000 customers. This SOC is to showcase capabilities and sell whatever IBM is bundling. It also allows them to charge for on site incident response training.

I'm sure somebody somewhere will need to call IBM and have them drive a SOC to them in an emergency. Which, I'm sure, IBM will happily charge them a small fortune for. But this is marketing.

If that turned up outside your office unannounced because it was being used as part of a red team, it might kinda throw the whole red team operation.

"GOTTA BE STEALTHY !!!" rolls up in a massive truck

I can totally understand why they need a moving truck for their operation center.

It's a lot easier to find a fast working wifi when passing through all those coffee shops.

All the comments seem to be trashing IBM for this, but it's kinda cool! I mean sure, this is silly and impractical (a moving truck with a bunch of foldable chairs and laptops would do just fine) but that wasn't really the point, right?

In theory, there may be someone somewhere that needs something like this but this is intended as a cool demonstration piece.

The internet has solved the problem of computer researchers needing to be somewhere.

> "THE HIGH PRICE OF A NEW DAWN! X-Force is the CIA of the mutant world — one half intelligence branch, one half special ops. In a perfect world, there would be no need for an X-Force. We’re not there…yet."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMZi6nMqK8Y

I expect this kind of nonsense from US Cybercommand, but fun to see IBM getting into the tacti-cool LARP'ing scene too.

If you watch the video you can see that this is just a training and education tool. It's a simulator. Which honestly I do not think is a bad idea.The state of security in many places is horrible. People are being too harsh about this.

...if anything, they really should've named it "Tactical Cyber Operations Command Center".

...on second thought, I think I know why they didn't.

wait... this looks like "training" not proper production stuff... guess it cant be production... it would take IBM an age to roll this to an environment suffering a breach... it has to be training... looks interesting though...

> it would take IBM an age to roll this to an environment suffering a breach

No problem, that's where we use the X-Force Command Cyber Tactical Operations Center Helicopter.

It is training. He says so in the video.

Can't wait to hear about the first app hack in which they remote start this thing and turn the heat on full blast!

It would be really cool if you had kids and you could point to that beast as your office. I bet they have cool t-shirts too. And stickers.

Still think Sarges truck in Agents of Shield looked cooler.

This looks perfect for when you need IBM to help you cyber.

what next, a cyber MRAP?

You laugh but... https://twitter.com/RenditionSec/status/1093998957464817664

Thank you, this gave me the giggle I needed this morning.

International Boomer Machines

This is just silly irrelevant marketing. I’m not sure why we are advertising it on HN.

I guess because it's silly, that's very unusual for IBM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ChoHNEgRI

Reply on news.ycombinator.com