[ISN] Pentagon Seeks High School Hackers

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 03:41:19 -0500 (CDT)
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/21/cybersecurity-students-hackers-technology-security-cybersecurity.html

By Andy Greenberg
Forbes.com
05.21.09

High school hackers, crackers and digital deviants: Uncle Sam wants you.

As part of a government information security review released as early as 
Friday, White House interim cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway likely 
will mention a new military-funded program aimed at leveraging an 
untapped resource: the U.S.' population of geeky high school and college 
students.

The so-called Cyber Challenge, which will be officially announced later 
this month, will create three new national competitions for high school 
and college students intended to foster a young generation of 
cybersecurity researchers. The contests will test skills applicable to 
both government and private industry: attacking and defending digital 
targets, stealing data, and tracing how others have stolen it.

The competitions, as planned, go far beyond mere academics. The Air 
Force will run a so-called Cyber Patriot competition focused on network 
defense, fending off a "Red Team" of hackers attempting to steal data 
from the participants' systems. The Department of Defense's Cyber Crime 
Center will expand its Digital Forensics Challenge, a program it has run 
since 2006, to include high school and college participants, tasking 
them with problems like tracing digital intrusions and reconstructing 
incomplete data sources.

[...]


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Received on Tue May 26 2009 - 01:41:19 PDT

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