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Grad Student's Work Reveals National Infrastructure
CodeHog writes "The WP reports about a student working on a PhD and how it relates to national (US) security. Very interesting that he has been able to get all this information. It raises some very challenging questions, should some of this information be classified?"
In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.
He's got the right to party!
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Free your mind.
This software is used in the firmware of WMDs! It should be taken of the public internet immediatley!
I can't figure out how to download his dissertation. I want to judge for myself whether "tedious and unimportant" is an apt description.
You're either "land of the free", or you are not. So either live up to the hype, or change the tagline. Can't have it both ways, with a closed society fueled on fear, claming to be "free".
[jole]
After this kind of publicity, he'll have some job offers coming in, I guarantee it.
I'd tell 'em to classify it all they want, just looks BETTER on the resume...
For instance, this is not the first time Sean Gorman has been talked about:
Article in Science Daily
Plus, someone with the same email address has posts in rec.sports.rowing...
The bottom line is that if you know where to look, you can find out lots of stuff. Classifying this guy's dissertation isn't going to prevent someone else (from anywhere on the planet) using the same tools he did to do the same things he did.
We either have to control all information (hello, Mr. Orwell!) or accept that information can't be controlled and plan accordingly. It's been said many times before, but security through obsucrity just doesn't work.
libertarianswag.com
I work for Transport for London (Transport Authority in London, UK, duh), and, after 9/11 my boss asked me to print out a huge map of the city and put a little sticky label over every "potential terrorist target". Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, the big wheel thing, ministry of defence, big office blocks, army barracks, more palaces....
After three hours I was running out of sticky labels and was very scared.
But hey, look on the bright side, maybe it'll never happen!!!
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
You cannot keep information like this secure forever, or even very long. Someone will always have this information. The question is, will we allow the US government to to deprive us of our liberties to the extent that the gov't really can keep this information for ourselves, and only let it out when it's in their interest for a building to get bombed, or do we fight to keep information free?
People who claim this information is a security risk are looking at things the wrong way round.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. -- Samuel Butler
Is what kind of database and what kind of software he has used to create the program that is the basis of his PhD.
On a more serious note, I think his work is great. While it certainly has serious security implications, it could also be used by ISPs, telcos, power companies, etc. to disseminate information on outages and/or find the root causes of problems.
Ah, well... I suppose we'll never see the results... but I do hope he gets his PhD.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Did anyone else think that this article had a dark undertone of government and corporerations looking to lock down information in the name of security. I mean, some of this information is important and may have benefits to the general public.
The scariest line is that they wanted to burn his research. Flash backs of 1984 flashed in my mind.
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Free your mind.
Some people might wonder why in the world you'd need to have maps of electrical grids and fibre lines...
I'm working on the periphery of the emergency response industry, and suffice it to say, any infrastructure data is vital as hell for responding to major natural disasters like quakes, hurricanes and tornadoes.
Tossing all this "scary" data into the classified domain will hammer on emergency responders' ability to effectively map this stuff.
It's vital, and I think the anti-"security through obscurity" comment in the article hits the nail on the head...
It's very interesting the way that an assemblage of publicly available information is suddenly a matter of national security. This must be based on the assumption that evildoers are never grad students.
From the article, all of the data he compiled was obtained from public sources. If anybody else wanted to replicate the work, it would only take their time. I'd imagine that you could get all the information you need through public records for building permits and right of way use. I mean, squelching the person who took the time to compile it all isn't going to do much good unless you classify every public record the US has for infrastructure.
"Tedious and boring?" He's got an application that can actually do some of the stuff Hollywood hackers have been doing for years. How could anyone think that's boring?
"Tank, find a structural drawing of this building. Find it fast."
In a word, No.
Those who would exploit it for ill already have the data, or can easily obtain it. Classsifying the data now would only hide it from those with reasonable use; and would allow for mistakes or security lapses to be covered up.
If you don't think authorities - whomever they might be - won't abuse the privlege of 'classifying' data, then you have some big surprises in store...
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
With all this information, maybe he can tell me when they're going install my damn DSL line...
The other interesting thing this brings up is the student's right to earn a living and do what he enjoys vs. the national security implications of this. Like he says, putting classified down on a resume doesn't get you very far, especially outside the Military/Intelligence arena.
The other thing is that, yes, he did put all of the together, but according to the article the raw data he used is all available on the internet. Who's to day that Al Qadea hasn't hasn't already done the research to create their own version of his map. In that case this work could very well prove to be a map of what to defend.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Correlating information is what gives you the bigger picture. Sure, it might be a secuirty threat as a whole, but it's been made up of snippets of information gleaned individually that probably aren't much use on their own.
Same as a bomb really, component parts are pretty common; chemicals, circuitry. It's about knowing how to connect stuff together to make it a bomb. 9/11 was flying lessons, plane timetables, GPS and box cutters. Each on their own is pretty harmless until you join the dots...
Same with information, connected together in the right way, it's just as dangerous. Ask the CIA or any intelligence agency...
the same questions have been asked about some of Tom Clancy's work. I remember reading that he was paid a visit by the FBI asking where he got his classified information, only it turned out everything he used was publicly available. My thought is that suppressing information will not prevent terrorism, only when would-be terrorists change the way they think of the free world will it stop. /rant
Is everyone forgetting that a part of the price of freedom is safety? An open society is a vulnerable society in some ways. The same vulnerability keeps society safe from itself and its own excesses.
Of course if we classified everything like this no one would have a road map to destruction. But they could still poison the water supply, blow up buildings and cause untold grief. They could still locate some of the bottlenecks themselves and exploit them.
Like so many things the government/corporations seek to classify, the real people they don't want to know are the ordinary people. It puts me in mind of the many "the area bombed last night is classified...we don't want to give the enemy important information" remarks we see. Like the enemy doesn't know they were bombed...
When Tom Clancy published the Hunt for Red October the US Navy wanted to nail him because they thought he stole some confidential info about their submarine ops.
It turned out that he got all his info from public domain sources. And they could not do much about it. He just knew where to search.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Gorman's work and the access he used is vital - if I'm paying for two links that should be separate, I need to know that I can really check that we have separated physical facilities.
There are a lot more backhoe operators than terrorists - and historically, the chances of a backhoe impact on infrastructure are pretty high.
I do not understand why the information would be classified. Our national highways are critical infrastructure, without which we would all be brought to a standstill, yet maps of them are readily available online or at any bookstore.
Could you imagine if the locations of communications infrastructure were classified? Would you need clearance to set up a node? Would you need to pay to have every line technicican get a full background check? This reminds me of the reaction of "security" people when they see WHOIS entries for their companies for the first time. Their foreheads are usually bruised for weeks because of the knee jerking. The first thing they want to do is take it down. They forget that a certain level of openness is neccesary for a system that benefits everyone.
The whole point of a privatised distributed communications infrastructure is that a terrorist or enemy state cannot cripple the entire thing. Now if the people at banks and government insititutions have not done a good job of ensuring redundancy and disaster recovery then it's their own fault. The solution is to fix it, not suppress information about it.
Obviously, no one recommends mailing al-qaeda a copy of the telecom/data infrastructure, but this exposes a major flaw with what's going on and we would be foolish to ignore it or suppress it.
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
From the article:
"This is why CEOs of major power companies don't sleep well these days," [CEO of power co. Pepco Holdings] Derrick said, flattening the pages with his fist. "Why in the world have we been so stupid as a country to have all this information in the public domain? Does that openness still make sense? It sure as hell doesn't to me."
Because security through obscurity is just as brainless an alternative for the physical infrastructure as it is for virtual infrastructure.
Hiding things doesn't make them safe. It makes them safe until found. With the added bonus of fostering the kind of clandestine, repressive, bitter societal climate that our govnt seems bent on pursuing these days.
You want to protect something? 1) Make it less desirable as a target (i.e. take away people's reasons for attacking in the first place). 2) Build in redundancies to dilute vulnerability. 3) Monitor, patrol, survey in an open and visible manner
Cliff S. in "The Cukoos Egg" tails down a spy selling secrets to the russians. Most of the info he steals is *NOT* classified, but by having *ALL* the info, he can piece together something he doesn't know:
1. New fighter being developed
2. Contract awarded to company X
3. Rifle through purchase orders for titanium and other strategic parts.
4. Get shipping info on said parts
5. now you know the facility where it will be built.
6. find airline reservations from company in question
7. look for engineers and test personell.
8. find nearest test base from point of arrival.
9. Fighter X will be built in location A and tested at location B, between arrival date and departure date.
Needless to say, this is why more things have become classified since the early 80's
meh
People are _SO_ freaking paranoid these days. Having access to a database like this could be enormously helpful to a great range of people. But all people think about is, "What will al Queda do with it?"
Since 2000 about 3,000 people have died in terrorist attacks. About 175,000 have died in car accidents. About what should we be worried?
Well, that's just it: Classifying data is different from making it sensitive and just not handing it out to anyone. Plenty of data is already designated as "sensitive" (see HAZUS at FEMA for example).
Infrastructure data is often sensitive. First responders can certainly get it. However, if DoD and/or DHS go haywire and classify it, only those with Secret (or better) clearance level can get it.
And your average "first responder" fireman isn't going to possess a secret clearance...
As for currentness, you'd be surprised. Much of the interesting infrastructure (major emergency facilities, dams, etc) doesn't change very often.
Killing people causes terror, because nobody wants to get killed. Cutting off infrastructure causes annoyance, because it happens regularly already. And when it happens, people will get by like they always have.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I think you failed to notice the joke....
I thought the whole point of the Internet, being a packet-switched network, was that it could survive damage... like from nuclear war.
So now we're worried that a terrorist with a scissors is gonna bring it down?
He's able to leverage the data so that he can see gains (I'm thinking an entire career) while the folks that have lots to lose (banks, utilities, transportation, US gov) pay for him to help show their achilies heels and bottlenecks.
If 25 telcos happen to be sharing the same 'pipe' of fibre, it may not be a terrorist that breaks that connection... regardless of who severs that line, it ain't good for the telcos -- and the telcos should be using his data to reduce risks.
Insurance companies and actuaries for corporations and governments love this kind of stuff, as do operations research people. Tell me how much it'll cost to reduce risk to this level, or: I have $10,000,000 -- how can I spend it to ensure that the worst case scenario isn't as bad.
Hopefully the information doesn't become classified; hopefully, it's used over the next few years to sure up the bottlenecks and other weak points, making the infrastructure far more robust in the following years.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
...between all the pieces of information being publicly available and all the information being publicly available.
From most of the comments so far, it appears the majority of people seem to think that this guy's PhD took about as long to compile as mapping a route from coast to coast with MapQuest. Hello? I imagine there was quite a bit of work put into compiling this information, and that not just anyone would have the time, persistence or devotion to duplicate the complilation. So yes, there is a HUGE difference between the information being available scattered across the 'net and having it all compiled, cross referenced and searchable in one easily downloaded program.
And IMHO, you most definitely can had a compilation of 100% publicly available information be classified as a threat to national security.
And personally, I don't believe there is a "publicly beneficial" use for this info in its compiled form that couldn't be easily be satisfied with the publicly available pieces - if a link is severed, you only need the info for the area of the problem (where the tornado hit, for example), not for the whole country. And the utilities that would be effected and responsible for the repairs would have the info they need anyhow.
I think the biggest value to the public of this information is the fact that it exists and that this can be done. The information itself is only important to those who would protect it or exploit it.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
For the right price, you can just buy the data from Platts - power line rights of ways, water pipes, etc. Once you have the data, you can throw it into any GIS software (purchased for the right price). Example: you need to get the natural gas pipline information to the road repair crews, so when they dig they're sure they won't hit anything... all this data used to be open, because noone thought you could do anything with it.
So what if I know where the local 500KV transformer yard is located over the 3rd hill on the left, who in their right mind would want to damage it? Then we realized how many people in the world really aren't in their right minds... I'm not complaining that this data should be bottled up again; what was really lacking was the chain of custody of who accessed the data, and for what purpose.
The smartest thing they could do, is use his information and go through each weakness and look to secure it as much as possible. Many of them may look at that as cost prohibitive and just try to obsure the information and hope no one finds it.
I'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
With all this concern over whether the "terrorists" should be allowed to know where all of our weak spots are, where is the concern for our real weak spot: creating more terrorists? If we could just figure out how to stop behaving so idiotically and stomping all over the world, we wouldn't have to worry quite so badly about being open with our information. Granted, there would still be people who want to do damage, but not nearly as many.
An open, friendly society breeds safety simply by virtue of not pissing so many people off to the point where they want to do unsafe things. On the other hand, greed, power-lust and secrecy just breeds more conflict. With less secrecy, greed and power-lust become a lot more difficult to hide, and therefore more difficult to perpetrate. This information, as well as so much more, should be out in the open.
Besides, if he got it, it already is, as has been pointed out.
Actually, it would be easy for me to put "classified" on my list of publications on my résumé. It is just the "mostly as bullshit" part that wouldn't do me any good.
The problem is that terrorism is all about using simple means to get effective results. It is practically impossible to prevent all possible types of terrorist attacks.
If you've got an imagination, try thinking about what you would do if you were a terrorist. If you really wanted to create havoc, you wouldn't necessarily do it by stuff like cutting communications cables. What you would want to do is make the man on the street afraid to do basic everyday things. I've thought about it a bit (let me emphasise - just as an entertaining mental exercise!) and I think there are things that a single person or small group could do that would cause chaos in a big city. And they are things that don't require access to any particular technology. Relatively simple things. But I'm not going to post those types of ideas on a public forum like this.
If there is one thing that September 11th should have taught us it is that terrorists don't need access to fancy technology. People are maybe going to slam me down for this, but I beleive one of the main abilities of an effective terrorist is a good imagination and - to use a cliche - the ability to think "outside the box".
So what's my point? My point is that passing laws and banning things (and invading countries and dropping bombs) isn't the best way to combat terrorism.
Terrorism is a symptom of a disease. You can try to combat the symptom, but it will never be cured if the disease is not cured. I always thought that they way Tony Blair and the rest of them tackled the Northern Ireland situation was very sensible. They did not take the easy route - the easy route is to say "we will not be influenced by terrorists", and "shoot to kill" - that was Thatchers approach. It didn't work. More recently, the actual disease has been tackled rather than the symptoms, and although there isn't peace in N.Ireland yet, things are much better now than they were a decade or so ago.
I'm afraid that Bush is taking the "hard man" approach to terrorism like Thatcher did. I'm afraid that the war on terrorism is going to be a very long one.
The infrastructure is all interconnected... High voltage lines and their rights of way are used for fiber optic cable runs, Oil and gas pipelines and their rights of way are used for fiber optic runs, same for railway rights of way... because they all have the same basic need, to go from point A to point B, without crossing anyone else's properties. Start correllating telco/internet outages with railroad derailings (which tend to dig up the right of way), and you'll see what I mean. I have known for 10 years, the easiest way to cripple "the typical city" (since the fire in chicago, that destroyed the phone Central Office!) -Jazz
-- All That's Evil in the Geek Space
You'd be surprised at how easy it is to penetrate the security of a lot of facilities.
For instance, I worked in one somewhat secure facility that requires ID bages with magnetic stripes to get in and out.
Only thing is, they had one door to the facility that didn't have a card reader attached to it. It was for the union guys that worked in the shop, who according to contract, could not be required to swipe an ID badge.
Which is fine, because to get into any place but the shop you have to have a card swipe anyway.
Only thing is, the doors between the shop and the badge-secured office area were kept open more often than not. And even if they weren't there was one interior door that you could use to access the service tunnel that wasn't carded either.
So you could walk into the service tunnel. Once there, you could get into the badge-coded office area because the doors near the elevator that takes you to the office area had to be kept open for ADA compliance (a wheelchair user couldn't be expected to swipe their card and open the door, apparently)
So once in the elevator, you were free and clear. You just got in the building without a single card swipe. And though there are cameras, anyone walking around with anything that looked *close* to the visible badges around their neck/clipped to their lapel, etc. were ignored.
I simply observed my surroundings and in less than a day of working there, I knew how to get in and out of the facility without going through security. Even if I left my security pass at home, I could get in and out, no problem. I've noticed similar scenarios in hospitals or banks other places where tight security is supposed to be the rule but the people working there just don't think this stuff through.
My journal has hot
From the Clancy FAQ:2 0CIA%20and%20FBI.htm
http://www.clancyfaq.com/Clancy%20contacted%20by%
The implications, however, in the post-Sept. 11 world, were enough....
In this post-September 11th world, I'm getting REALLY sick of that phrase.
"I either want less corruption, or more chance
to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
Sorry, couldn't resist. I grew up in the USSR where everything was classified - so here is a map story for you.
Map information was classified and map publishers were required to add deliberately inaccurate information to their maps. You would have whole cities that were not on the map or shown a couple of hundred km away from their real location. This was done in the name of national security, so the enemy (US) would not be able to use maps to plan a nuclear strike or sabotage military installations.
The enemy of course just used satellite imaging to create their own maps and ended up with better maps of Russia than the Russians had. In the 80s folks who needed maps (geologists, archeologists, hikers, ...) would try really hard to get their hands on foreign made maps, because they were so much more accurate.
Security by obscurity is counterproductive...
Conpanies (i.e. financial institutions) don't mind compiling scads of public information on us until they can tell what brand of hemorrhoid cream you use, but when we do the same thing to them, they scream bloody murder.
Hmmm.....
If you locked up all of the infomation he's compiled, you'd shut down the Economy just as effectively as using that same infomation to blow up critical infrastructure points. The real point of his data is that he also allows the good guys to see just whwre the choke points are so that they can design backup plans and structures.
As Ghandi said (and I'd bet he'd be on the terrorist watch list if he was doing his work today).
Now, at least, these companies are clear that they need to get their ISPs to use different fiber lines to deliver their data. It's not like they couldn't have known this before. It's just that now they have it at their fingertips.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
1) As many people have pointed and will continue to point out, classifying the report won't make any difference because people can re-create the work. And this wouldn't take much effort, because an attacker has no need to map the entire US, they can pick whatever area is convenient for them.
2) Slowing down internet connections doesn't scare people. Temporarily cutting corporate offices off from the grid doesn't scare anyone (save, perhaps, the CEO). Think how much more terror-bang a terrorist could get for his buck with a 9mm in mall. That would terrify people and significantly damage the economy. Attacking communications infrastructure isn't "terrorism," it's something else. It's guerilla warfare, directed against an economy rather than a person, I suppose. If our "war" descends to this point, we are totally screwed, as it is impossible to defend (or even think of) all the economically "soft" targets.
3) In the end, the security of all civillians and civillian infrastructure depends on good will. Well, that, and fear of punishment. But the latter doesn't apply to acts of international sabatoge and/or murder. I am sick of all this talk about defending our civillian infrastructure, securing the homeland, etc. It can't happen. Until there is a soldier in body armor with a rifle every few yards down every street in the USA, this goal will not be achieved. That isn't the society any of us want to live in. We haven't put any effort into civillian security up to this point, and I say: Good for us. We didn't need to, because the general good will of human beings was protecting us. Our effort would be better spent restoring *that* state of things, rather than moving toward the soldier-on-every-corner model. For those who would like to call me naive, I ask you: why has there not been an attack on soft infrastructure before? Why has there never been a wave of men with 9mms in malls? These things are undefended. The only reason it hasn't happened is that no one ever wanted to do it.
Three good reasons why it is a waste of time and effort to classify this fellow's dissertation. I'll let others cover the reasons why classifying it is damaging to security, an open society, and democracy.
What's good for the syndicate is good for the country. --Milo Minderbinder
He's worked hard on his research and doesn't want it to get seen by him, his professor, and a few miscellaneous others. He wants to be proud and publish his results...
Why does he have to publish to be proud? I'd be pretty damn proud to have my work classified.
You are making his work seem trivial and it's not.
His own professor called the work "tedious and unimportant." Do you have more knowledge about this work than this guy's professor?
Good for you. When you come up with something that the government thinks should be classified, you be as proud as you like and keep it all to yourself. The title and subject matter of what is classified will also probably be classified because letting people know about what was classified is likely to be deemed sensitive information that should be classified. See where this is going?
Sean Gorman wants to graduate with his degree, publish and continue academic research. It's not unreasonable that he would want others to see the product of what he's been on working for years. Part of completing a PhD is to do a defense of your research, which usually is before a panel of peers and professors who have some knowledge of the area you are studying. Dissertation defenses are usually open to the public (read "other students and academics" because few people tend to be interested in specific disserations) which means that potentially anyone can sit in and learn about the subject matter. If his research is classified then none of that can take place because it would be illegal for anyone to read the paper or hear about its contents without first getting clearance from the government.
Just because his professor lacks imagination, vision and insight (not uncommon in academic circles I assure you) it doesn't mean this prof is right. Maybe his prof is tedious and unimportant. There are lots of people who said the same sort of thing about the Internet. Even "visionary" Bill Gates is on record as saying the the Internet is a fad, though he quickly changed his tune. History is full of brilliant people whose work went unrecognized because it was considered fringe, tedious and unimportant. In this case, based on the attention this research is getting, there are obviously many people who think otherwise.
His professor, John McCarthy, thought that the research was important enough to introduce Gorman to national security contacts, so the "tedious and unimportant" line smells like a red herring. The article also talks about how the university is trying to get government funding beacuse it wants to develop a ''relationship'' with the Department of Homeland Security.
From the article:
"The government uses research funding as a carrot to induce people to refrain from speech they would otherwise engage in," said Kathleen Sullivan, dean of Stanford Law School. "If it were a command, it would be unconstitutional."
I amazes me how often the bureaucrats in the Intelligence Comunity ignore what they already know.
The nth Country Expiriment proved that once knowlege is available to the public, and similar results can be obtained without knowlege of the methods used in previous successes.
If this grad student could compile this information, then so could sombody else, and it's probable that sombody already has.
This information should be used to point out the weaknesses inherent in our infrastructure, and show where this infrastructure needs to be diversified. IMHO, attempts to improve security by centralizing comunications and power distribution are doomed to failure, and will only make us weaker. Micro supliers and home based power generation would make terrorist attacks against the power grid inconsequential. The weaknesses in comunications infrastructure can probably only be cured by creating a third alternative (community high-band?) to the cablemodem and telephone company monopolies on delivering service.
Read, L