Pentagon taps into young hackers

In today’s world of espionage, cyber spying and cyber attacks are not to be taken lightly, and the Pentagon has decided it’s high time they build an army of geeks ready not only to defend the country’s networks – both private and federal – but also to go on the offensive, should the necessity arise. After all, we all know that the most effective defenders are also the best attackers…

So what’s the Pentagon’s strategy for growing the U.S.’s pool of skilled cyber security professionals from a meager 1,000 to 20,000-30,000? Tap into all those self-taught high school hackers, pecking away at their computers in basements across the country. The plan? Entice them to leave their basements, prove their mettle, fine-tune their skills and voila, the next generation of U.S. cyber counterintelligence is born.

Ok – the plan’s a little more technical and er, strategic than that. It goes by the name of Cyber Challenge, a military-funded program (which will be officially announced next month) whose purpose is to get geeky high school and college students ID’ed and trained as cyber security researchers.

The Cyber Challenge comprises three competitions to test the skills necessary for the cyber security needs of both government and the private industry, including attacking and defending digital targets, stealing data and figuring out how others have stolen it.

The competitions break down as follows:

1.    Cyber Patriot competition run by the Air Force: Focusing on testing network defense skills, participants will have to defend their systems from a Red invasion of hackers.
2.    Digital Forensics Challenge run by the Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center: Although this contest has been running since 2006, it’s never been open to student participants before; missions will include tracing digital intrusions and reconstructing incomplete data sources.
3.    Network Attack competition run by the non-federal, security-focused SANS Institute: Likely to be controversial, tasks include finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in software, compromising enemy systems and stealing data.

So what are the spoils? The uber talented winners will get to attend cyber training camps planned for next summer (operated by the military and funded in part by private companies) or take on coveted internships at agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), the Dept of Energy and the Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon.

Director of SANS Institute Alan Paller says blue chip companies like Verizon, AT&T and EMC are interested in sponsoring the program. As companies across industries have suffered cyber security breaches in increasing numbers over the last few years, they have a vested interest in growing the pool of cyber security talent. Paller also says that China is strides ahead of the U.S. when it comes to discovering and grooming young geeks. The Chinese government stages competitions like the Cyber Challenge regularly, and graduates of the programs are later found hacking into U.S. Department of Defense networks, bringing back reams of docs to the motherland.

Of course, there is the concern that once trained, high school hackers will use their cyber prowess to do evil, and thus the Challenge will generate a slew of cyber criminals – missing its goal entirely. “There probably could be a couple people we train that go to the dark side,” says Jim Christy, director of the Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center. “But we’ll catch them and send a message. The good guys will outweigh the bad.”

“As cyber security comes to the forefront, we’re going to start seeing fratricide between in agencies and the private sectors as everyone tries to recruit a small number of experts,” Christy says. “We have to grow this workforce.”

Paller meanwhile explains that offensive hacking is a crucial component of training. “Offense must inform defense,” he says. “We’d like it to be just training defenders, but if they don’t know how attacks are performed, they’ll be incompetent.”

Sounds like the government’s expecting some backlash to their new Hacker School, but they’ve got their arguments ready to sling back at the opposition. They’re simply being proactive in finding the talent necessary for the U.S. to remain competitive in the global cyber espionage war…

photos courtesy of flickr and foxnews.com (AP/Jae C. Hong)