DARPA Enlists Hackers
It’s no secret that government initiatives around cybersecurity haven’t lived up to expectations. While they succeed in creating controversy – such as the recent hubbub over the so-called “Internet Kill Switch” (actually more like an “Internet Life Support” system) – cybersecurity initiatives have generally failed to work well with the dynamism and creativity that makes Internet security a problem: If the bad guys move faster than the good guys, the bad guys win, and nothing moves slower than the federal government. DARPA is making constructive steps to bridge theory and practice by reaching out to the hacker community:
The Defense Department plans to fund independent security researchers and experimental projects in a bid to invigorate the federal government’s “unsustainable” approach to cybersecurity, said Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Zatko made the announcement Jan. 28 in a keynote speech at ShmooCon, an annual security research conference in Washington.
The program, called Cyber Fast Track, will reward security research done within “a matter of months and at a small price tag.” Its emphasis on slimmer, unconventional solutions will rope in nontraditional players, such as hobbyists, startups and hacker spaces — a term the security community uses in reference to technology-oriented collectives and experimental spaces, Zatko said, in follow-up e-mail.
Zatko himself is a former member of a unique “hacker think tank” known as L0pht that frightened the Senate in 1998 by claiming it could shut down the Internet in 30 minutes. While the word “hacker” has many connotations ranging from good guy to bad guy, in essence a true hacker has mad computer skills and a willingness to take risks to check out a theory. The risk-taking side is what DARPA is apparently trying to harness.
History suggests that initiatives of this sort don’t end well, but the upsides are so great it’s worth a few government dollars to see if the current approach to building a hacker think tank can work. If nothing else, it shows that DARPA is on the ball.
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War is the only way you people will be judged the day of reconing is comming
Wars are fought on computers nowadays. And, as history has shown, those with the most intel usually come out victorious. With everything gone digital, it’s difficult to keep information safe. Like this article I found:
“Pennington University has recently paired up with Vault Revolution after recent allegations of grade tampering. According to a source close to the Dean’s office, the University took action against a dozen students last Thursday after it was made aware that a hacker, known only as “FreezerBurn,” sold grades for as much as $5,000. The students involved have been expelled, but the University is taking immediate measures to ensure this egregious breach in security never happens again. “Today, we’ve partnered with Vault Revolution to revamp our system’s security. The algorithm is based on non-mathematical characters, making it impossible for a hacker to reverse engineer the sequence. We hope this move will help restore prestige to Pennington University, and we look forward to setting a new standard in academic integrity, thanks to Vault Revolution.”