The steel is already up...Old News...
Posted on 05/22/2009 10:35:55 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
As a cyber space race looms, the military is looking for a few good geeks.
High school hackers, crackers and digital deviants: Uncle Sam wants you.
As part of a government information security review released as early as Friday, White House interim cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway likely will mention a new military-funded program aimed at leveraging an untapped resource: the U.S.' population of geeky high school and college students.
The so-called Cyber Challenge, which will be officially announced later this month, will create three new national competitions for high school and college students intended to foster a young generation of cybersecurity researchers. The contests will test skills applicable to both government and private industry: attacking and defending digital targets, stealing data, and tracing how others have stolen it.
The competitions, as planned, go far beyond mere academics. The Air Force will run a so-called Cyber Patriot competition focused on network defense, fending off a "Red Team" of hackers attempting to steal data from the participants' systems. The Department of Defense's Cyber Crime Center will expand its Digital Forensics Challenge, a program it has run since 2006, to include high school and college participants, tasking them with problems like tracing digital intrusions and reconstructing incomplete data sources.
The security-focused SANS Institute, an independent organization, plans to organize what may be the most controversial of the three contests: the Network Attack Competition, which challenges students to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software, compromise enemy systems and steal data.
More is at stake in these games than mere geek glory. Talented entrants would be recruited for cyber training camps planned for summer 2010, nonprofit camps run by the military and funded in part by private companies, or internships at agencies including the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy or Carnegie Mellon's Computer
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I’ll talk about a friend with this.
Bookmark
White hats need not apply.
Dude, bump.
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I suspect, in twenty years, we will come to regret this move. This group of high school hackers...who start out working for the US government in some capacity...will eventually decide that the US government itself might be a problem....and decide to take it down. Since they will have learned all of the weaknesses of our own networks...they will have the fast track to bringing down the US.
Super. Our critical infrastructure has been hacked / cracked in every dimension over the last half decade. Rather then employing known best practices in system development and operations, and hiring competent technologists, we challenge unvetted zit-faced teenagers to provide insight into protecting us from nothing short of a nuclear winter (in case you haven’t been keeping up, much of our core, mission critical infrastructure has been totally compromised by Chinese spies [most likely]).
the FedGov has used parallel efforts to find code breakers, why not this?
If it works, it works.
bump
Boomerang attack......:o)
Choose a random plaintext P and calculate . Request the encryptions of P and P' to obtain C = E(P) and C' = E(P') Calculate and Request the decryptions of D and D' to obtain Q = E − 1(D) and Q' = E − 1(D') Compare Q and Q'; when the differentials hold, .
Grinning...
Now Squantos, no hints...as the teachers used to say, “Every student should keep his eyes on his own paper.”
Good idea, but I would rather it got put on hold until we can get someone who doesn’t hate America back into the White House .
“Rather then employing known best practices in system development and operations, and hiring competent technologists, we challenge unvetted zit-faced teenagers to provide insight into protecting us ....”
If they’re brought aboard, they’re not unvetted, and that’s after ignoring the fallacy that we are not working both sides of the coin here. We could and should move more rapidly, but an effort like this does not and is not preventing us from hardening systems themselves.
Whose idea do you think this is? The Obammunist needs to control the internet not protect secrets in the Pentagon.
yitbos
The steel is already up...Old News...
Perhaps far easier to take down would be groups like ACORN.
And, why the implicit ageism? Shouldn’t seasoned hackers get a shot at this too?
Yes Ma’mn ......:o(
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High School Computer Geeks to be recruited by Uncle Sam?
Sounds like part of the plot of that stupid movie: TRANSFORMERS
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