DOD Kicks Up Cybersecurity Efforts

codingOgre writes "The US Army will try to secure an entire computer network against a team led by the NSA. They are cadets at West Point competing against military academies and other schools in a four-day Cyber Defense Exercise this week. I would have to think that this would be a lot of fun! I would like to see what the NSA and friends could throw at my network, although one would think they wouldn't reveal all their cards...like the backdoor into any Windows box :)" In a related story, jkinney3 writes: "The feds are wising up to the needs for a verifiable, secure code base for all of the DOD stuff, according to Government Computing News. A proposed solution 'would create a single executive organization responsible for software integrity and information assurance.' Joe Jarzombek, deputy director for software assurance in DOD's Information Assurance Directorate, said 'DOD possesses so many millions of lines of code in countless thousands of packages, that it would take years of effort and millions of dollars just to identify what was developed where.' I'm envisioning a lot of Bugzilla installations."

Comments

My prediction: A Chocolate Bar

[strictnein]

I think that the NSA will win this one by falling back on the oldest hacker trick in the book: social engineering

Give one of the system admins a call, saying you're one of their higher ups and you need something done

Of course the NSA are much sneakier bastards than that... so we'll see what they come up with. I'm just hoping the cadets are aware of that very valid tactic.