Since I started my college education, I've always had genuine interest in penetration testing. Dick Marcinko was a penetration tester, but not in the way that the average information security professional would expect. In fact, Richard “Dick” Marcinko, excuse my
French, was a badass outranking today’s badasses. With his wide range of
knowledge, skill, and training, Dick Marcinko could be put into the ranks with
Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee. His special operations team, Red Cell, was
responsible for exposing a variety of vulnerabilities via controversial methods
in a range of the United States’ vital security infrastructures. In my opinion,
Dick Marcinko operated with merit by identifying crucial loopholes in our
government’s physical security efforts.
Within his 30
years in the Navy, Richard Marcinko gained a variety of experience in every
aspect of expertise concerning special operations; from being a teletype
operator to working with Navy Underwater Demolition Teams, Marcinko did it all.
Using this experience, Marcinko created and commanded SEAL Team SIX, which became
the Navy’s first counter-terrorism special operations team. After the success
of this team, Marcinko founded another counter-terrorism unit named Red Cell.
Red Cell was and still is a top-notch security team with the capabilities to
expose vulnerabilities in security systems. His team was hired to test the
Navy’s anti-terrorism infrastructure, and did so very well. Marcinko and his
team successfully identified and abused vulnerabilities in extremely secure
areas. These areas included Air Force One, nuclear submarines, and Navy ships,
among other secure facilities. During these heists, the Red Cell team used
unorthodox methods of gaining access to some information that a real terrorist
may use. Unfortunately, many of the high ranking officials within the Navy did
not approve of him making fools out of them, and found ways of getting him
locked up in prison for more than a year for misappropriation of military funds
through “creative” bookkeeping.The fact that Dick
Marcinko was put in jail for these actions raises a question of whether he did
these things as a “Rogue Warrior” operating without merit, or someone who
simply identified weaknesses in the Navy’s “secure” facilities. Personally, I
think that Marcinko operated with merit by identifying crucial loopholes in our
government’s physical security efforts. The first reason that I believe this is
that Marcinko did not do these things without any sort of permission. He was hired by the United States Navy to find
these vulnerabilities that absolutely existed within the system. With the vast
amounts of training he had, the Navy should have expected that there would be
one, if not many, weaknesses in security that Dick could bring to their
attention. What Dick really did by exposing these faults, was to point out
weaknesses before a real terrorist figured them out and took advantage of them
in malicious ways instead of the more ethical approach that Marcinko took. If a
terrorist exploited the same vulnerabilities as Marcinko, there could have been
vast consequences that would far exceed that of Marcinko’s embarrassment of the
higher-ranking officials within the Navy. Unfortunately, the officials who were
“embarrassed” by his actions did not see the situation in the same light, and
therefore took an unreasonable course of action to put an innocent man in jail.
One fact that
could be argued to say that Dick Marcinko acted without merit is the fact that
he treated any captives extremely roughly including tossing them around,
kicking them, hitting them, etc. While this could be seen as an arrogant abuse
of power, I think it is a necessary procedure that must be evaluated before it
becomes a reality instead of just a drill. If the military hired Marcinko to test the military infrastructure for
vulnerabilities, Marcinko delivered results. Without going to the measures that
he did, he would not have been able to deliver the conclusions that he did. Had he not delivered results, he would have partially reassured the Navy that
everything was secure and that there was no threat against any real acts of terror on the
installations. Therefore, this extreme measure that Red Cell went to evaluate
military security weaknesses was absolutely necessary to have an accurate
assessment.
