DARPA wants hacker help

DARPA wants hacker help

www.federalnewsradio.com

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for cybersecurity expertise in the most unlikely place: the hacker community. DARPA says it will fund independent security researchers and experimental projects, with the hopes of implementing cybersecurity projects faster. Awardees would also keep commercial rights over their work. NextGov reports the unconventional approach is meant to attract nontraditional players like hobbyists, startups and hackers.

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www.nextgov.com

So this project would take something like hacking and make it legal? When these people create some programming out of illegal activity, and our government sanctions it, and the people committing the sanctioned illegal acts get to keep the rights to the product as well?

That's like giving a mad scientist access to Level 4 biocontainment and letting them keep their creations. It's just absurd.

A vulnerability watch-list created by Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, now a wing of U.S. Cyber Command, showed that at one point, six of 17 vulnerabilities monitored by the task force could be traced to the security software itself being deployed to "fix" the system, such as antivirus suites.

So the other article even makes it abundantly clear that backdoors to the security software are rampant, and now we're going to let smaller organizations have the ability to implement their own as well?

Someone please pinch me, because this sounds insane and I must be dreaming.

www.federalnewsradio.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by sbctinfantry


So lets assume that x amount of hundreds million of residents have purchased their new next gen cell phones, and obviously have facebook accounts and gmail, so cross referencing it all is all a matter of well under 3 minutes on a global scale.

So you still assume that everything written above is hypothetical ?

Sorry, no bling bling, simple reality on my end.

reply to post by sbctinfantry


This world is crazy, and more and more nutjobs are in high positions. Hackers cause enough trouble and now they can experiment and create their own kind of like "frankenstein virus" backed by the state with guess who's money?

Very interesting, perhaps I should take a stab at it? S + F!

reply to post by tristar

This sounds like an indirect way to cultivate the anonymous crowd...which is actually a good strategy in that the people who do it because they want to will most likely always be better at it then the people who were "trained to".

Not suggesting anything on your front but this may be on the lines of the CIA recruiting intelligence agents through Playboy (true story...I had the dermned advertisement framed as a B-Day gift which has since been thrown away due to a bastage ex roommate)...

That said...I am still waiting for the automatic filters to be inflected with psychological interpretive skills...

Some things some humans can do better than automation...

Haven't read it all but I believe they are simply looking for pentesters....

Not too much to worry about and private firms do this all the time.

reply to post by sbctinfantry


You guys are getting a little hyped up about this.

As the article states, they are looking to implement security programs. They are not telling hackers to go make malicious code to hurt our computers. It's all about network security. You would also be wrong to think that none of these contractees work would ever be verified before implementation?

These hAcker types will be able to make a lot of money, which is what most of them are really after. But you know they will have to forfit some freedoms, especially if they know a secret to our nations IT. Expect to be monitored the rest of your life.

Originally posted by VonDoomen
reply to post by sbctinfantry

 

You guys are getting a little hyped up about this.

As the article states, they are looking to implement security programs. They are not telling hackers to go make malicious code to hurt our computers. It's all about network security. You would also be wrong to think that none of these contractees work would ever be verified before implementation?

These hAcker types will be able to make a lot of money, which is what most of them are really after. But you know they will have to forfit some freedoms, especially if they know a secret to our nations IT. Expect to be monitored the rest of your life.

My father used to do this type of work, needless to say, the entire family enjoyed the rewards of countless backdoors. One company was AOL back in the 90's, if you can remember how big they were back then.

I doubt I'm over reacting, nor am I reading into anything too much as I'm providing the actual text from one of the articles and discussing it.

If I am, then that is certainly the intent of the article and not me.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
reply to post by tristar

 

This sounds like an indirect way to cultivate the anonymous crowd...which is actually a good strategy in that the people who do it because they want to will most likely always be better at it then the people who were "trained to".

Not suggesting anything on your front but this may be on the lines of the CIA recruiting intelligence agents through Playboy (true story...I had the dermned advertisement framed as a B-Day gift which has since been thrown away due to a bastage ex roommate)...

That said...I am still waiting for the automatic filters to be inflected with psychological interpretive skills...

Some things some humans can do better than automation...

Humans are prone to errors, either minimal or major, given that we already know that, we already have a formula to counter the flaw within human interaction. Hence the drive for next gen interaction.

Remember,

Its far from effective to conceal in plain view as humans are so predictable.

Originally posted by tristar
Humans are prone to errors, either minimal or major, given that we already know that, we already have a formula to counter the flaw within human interaction. Hence the drive for next gen interaction.

Remember,

Its far from effective to conceal in plain view as humans are so predictable.

Human behaviour may be predictable but not necessarily human interpretation...granted the difference may be moot in day to day actions most of the time but there is a reason why advertising firms have a huge interest in psychology...and why they don't always succeed...

ha, classic ATS comments

"hacking" is not illegal, nor it is synonymous with "malicious". they are simply looking for network security pros and new solutions to old problems. do you have firewall implemented? how about traffic monitoring? what about antivirus? all these products are designed by so called hackers. anyone who knows ins and outs of TCP/IP stack and other networking protocols is a "hacker".

Originally posted by MemoryShock

Originally posted by tristar
Humans are prone to errors, either minimal or major, given that we already know that, we already have a formula to counter the flaw within human interaction. Hence the drive for next gen interaction.

Remember,

Its far from effective to conceal in plain view as humans are so predictable.

Human behaviour may be predictable but not necessarily human interpretation...granted the difference may be moot in day to day actions most of the time but there is a reason why advertising firms have a huge interest in psychology...and why they don't always succeed...

If they haven't succeeded then why within the E.U. the Asian market along with the U.S. that the telecommunication industry have the highest yield in profit ?

reply to post by delicatessen


The term " hacker" can be granted to anyone with minimal knowledge, its move beyond that term.


food for thought..

Originally posted by tristar
If they haven't succeeded then why within the E.U. the Asian market along with the U.S. that the telecommunication industry have the highest yield in profit ?

I stated that 'they' don't always succeed...which implies multiple companies and multiple attentions to demographics...unfortunately...success in that world is defined by profit and not any real attention to human psychology...as in the interest is more in how to get someone to react with their paycheck then it is in making their life better/easier/et cetera...I suppose, for the most part, that there is no realistic way to expect a corporate endeavor to assume individuality but the distinction is still there...in my humble opinion...

Indeed, the distinction between humans is ever so abundant, but it is something that has been and is ever so abundant since the majority or should i say the individual has implanted a sense of self preservation based on its social heirachy. Therefore, a process of implying applications on a psychological point is but a simple click and advertise.

Remember, what one seeks to achieve is not dependent upon his own achievements but rather on a groups approval.

Hmmm so let me see if i got this straight..

gary mcKinnon the wanna be hacker gets busted and they still haven't extradited him...

Now they send out a call to get hackers?

So the call goes like this...

"Hey DARPA... I been a hacker for x years, where do I sign up"

10 minutes later Feds are knocking at the door

reply to post by zorgon


Have you ever scuba dived ?

Originally posted by tristar
Have you ever scuba dived ?

Yup actually I have...

So... you have a place in mind?

reply to post by zorgon


Such a random question, but yet so to the point ...no ?