SECURITY - Pentagon Seeks Hacker Help

"Pentagon asks hackers for help with cyber security" by Joseph Straw, Daily News 11/8/2011

The Pentagon agency that invented the Internet is asking the hacker community for help in eliminating Defense Department computer vulnerabilities.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, hosted a meeting this week for defense stakeholders and civilian computer experts, acknowledging that it has to start thinking differently about cyber security, Wired.com reported.

And the computer networks that run U.S. infrastructure are so vulnerable to cyber attack that the White House should think twice before even attacking emerging adversaries, a national security expert said.

Richard Clarke, who advised ex-Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, added that U.S. defense networks are "as porous as a colander."

Their Goliath scale leaves them especially vulnerable to tiny attacks, the Associated Press and Wired reported.

Clarke, who claims his early 2001 warnings to the Bush administration about the emerging threat of Al Qaeda went unheeded, issued the new warnings as tensions escalate between the U.S., Israel and their shared adversary Iran.

Last month Wired reported that a mundane virus called a key logger - one that surreptitiously records keyboard typing - was found on the computers used to remotely pilot Air Force drones targeting terrorists overseas.

In 2009 national security officials disclosed that Russian and Chinese agents had penetrated the U.S. electric grid and left behind software to help map the systems.