Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Department of Homeland Security Wants Nerds For a New "Cyber Reserve'"

Posted by samzenpus on from the grabbing-geeks dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "Just three weeks after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told an audience at the Sea, Air and Space Museum that the U.S. is on the brink of a 'cyber Pearl Harbor,' the government has decided it needs to beef up the ranks of its digital defenses. It's assembling a league of extraordinary computer geeks for what will be known as the 'Cyber Reserve.'"

2 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Please, just stop... by SB9876 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ummmmmmm...
    Have you just not been reading anything at all about the pervasive SCADA security holes that keep popping up everywhere? Hooking industrial control hardware to the internet to centralize monitoring, control and update has been a huge industry movement. Combine that with a mindset in the SCADA industry and end users that is much more focused on reliability than security and you get the equivalent of thousands of pieces of hardware on the internet with the security equivalent of a wireless router with the default admin account and password.

    The SCADA security holes have only recently come to the attention of the industry. I can assure you that there's a giant collective brick being shat over it but fixing this stuff takes time.

    And foaming at the mouth about honest mistakes isn't going to solve anything.

  2. Re:If it worked like the Army reserve, I'd be in. by girlinatrainingbra · · Score: 5, Informative
    re: If it worked like the Army reserve, I'd be in. Think about it, you participate one weekend a month for ,,,

    .

    You do know that :

    -- quite a few of the reserves are actually deployed at the present;

    --a lot of the National Guard is called out and deployed at the present;

    -- a lot of people who have finished their tours are told that they must re-up.

    .

    Even if they are not deployed overseas, they are often activated to take the place on base of combat troops who are deployed overseas. So if you're part of the Ready Reserve, be ready to be deployed at any time of need. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just know about that ahead of time.