DHS Seeks "Ethical Hackers" To Protect Federal Net Infrastructure 133
Death Metal sends this excerpt from an AP report:
"General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could 'think like the bad guy.' Applicants, it said, must understand hackers' tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. In the Pentagon's budget request submitted last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon will increase the number of cyberexperts it can train each year from 80 to 250 by 2011. With warnings that the US is ill-prepared for a cyberattack, the White House conducted a 60-day study of how the government can better manage and use technology (PDF) to protect everything from the electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems, and nuclear launch codes. ... Nadia Short, vice president at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, said the job posting for ethical hackers fills a critical need for the government."
A useless gesture (Score:2, Interesting)
The only black hats who would be interested in this type of work are script kiddies looking for a legal outlet for their elite skills.
But if these kids are the experts, who is going to develop the hacking tools?
Civilans Need Not Apply. (Score:4, Interesting)
Too bad they don't provide a link of where to apply.
Worse for some of us is the typical stumbling block for us well skilled civilians who haven't worked for the government yet. I just skimmed through the GD listings for "Defense/Military Intelligence Analysis" and "Information Technology". They all require at least TS/SCI
Since I haven't worked for the government, nor for any company who would sponsor security clearance, I can't even apply for these jobs. It's not that would be excluded. Anything in my history is trivial at best. I've held many secrets. I've ensured privileged data has never been released. I've joked with friends about things I've told them. They say "You can't keep a secret", but I've always responded "Those are the secrets I could tell. You'll never know the secrets I can't."
Us civilians are stuck. We're well qualified for the jobs, but we'll never be considered if we apply for the jobs. This is a perfect example. I spent years intercepting, analyzing, and protecting against people doing "bad things". I'm well versed in what the "bad guys" can do, and used their own tools and methods against myself to ensure my defenses were up to par. For example, it's one thing to know my firewalls can block any unwanted traffic. It's another thing to poke a huge glaring hole in the firewall for myself to attack, and then proceed to attack.
I've posed as an inside attacker. I've posed as an outside attacker. I see what each can get away with, and protected against both.
I won't claim that I know everything. No one does. But people come to me asking "What the hell is this?" and I can give them a practical off-the-cuff response, and a detailed response after a good analysis. Most of the time, they match.
Without the clearance, I'd never be allowed to use these skills for a position like that. I know if I ever got my foot in the door, things would be different. Until then, I do my job well for civilian clients
Then again, none of you know me. Maybe I have TS/SCI with EBI and FSP. If I had it, would you know? :) Bragging rights aside, if I were to announce my clearance, that indicates that I may have access to information that someone may want, which could put myself, my family, my friends, and my neighbors at risk. Don't get too anxious, officially my clearance is "none" and my work history is "civilian". :) I'd like to correct that some day, so if any real recruiters read this, feel free to find me. It won't be hard for you. Check the file for "Smythe, JW (alias)"
Re:Ethical "Hackers".. of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Beat me to it. However the blame for the misnomer lies not in the media. A benign exploit was called a hack, but a hack causing damage was called a crack. That meant those who performed cracks were initially called 'crackers', a term that already had a racial connotation. They couldn't call them 'crackheads' either. Both the media and 'crackers' adopted the next closest related term.
Kinda sad that it's difficult to find a derogatory name for something because all relevant options are already in widespread use...
Written by a PHB (Score:4, Interesting)
Clearly written by a technologically illiterate PHB. Any good security person worth his/her salt can think like the bad guy and knows hackers tools. They also know the difference between what the term "hacker" really means and what the knucklehead who wrote this ad thinks it means.
Re:airline flight systems, and nuclear launch code (Score:5, Interesting)
Your question is your answer.
You'll find, even in the happiest secure network, there can be a security hole.
Think of this. It shouldn't happen, but I know it has. You have two networks jacks on your wall. One is green. One is red. Unclassified machines can be plugged into the green one. Classified machines an be plugged into the red one. A user who's annoyed that he can't be on both with the same machine, yet has two network interfaces on his PC plugs into both.
Now, your nice secure network has a compromise. If that unclassified machine, on the unclassified network, becomes compromised, they have a nice portal into the classified network.
Just because your network doesn't have any connections to the outside world, doesn't mean you shouldn't treat it as if it has a public IP on the Internet.
What's happened more times than is funny is, some user decides he needs a wireless connection to his laptop, so he can put his laptop on another desk without an extra wire going to it. Since he's just a user, and picked up the AP at a retail store, he may not have set up security. "I'm 10 stories up in a secure building, I have nothing to worry about." Yup, nothing to worry about, until someone sits in the next building with a high gain antenna, and stumbles on the fact that there's an open AP begging for them to come in. Stores have been bitten by this. Schools have been bitten by this. Even banks have. Plenty of companies have had the same problem.
I found a school once that did this. I found their printers very quickly. I installed the drivers for the printer, and printed a simple note. "Your network has an unencrypted access point on it. It is allowing anyone to access your network. Please call your network security administrator to correct this."
I found a casino in Las Vegas did the same thing several years ago. I couldn't get in from outside, but from a legitimately purchased hotel room, I found I had access to every display board in the casino. I logged enough traffic to see how it worked. When I got home, I got a hold of the network security admin for the casino. I sent him the logs, the floor I was on, and exactly what I did. He thanked me for finding the mistake and not taking advantage of it. He said it was fixed within hours of my report. I'm sure it was an oversight when someone else did the install, and no one had ever looked at it as an outside hacker inside the building. Who would bother hack the casino network from a room in the hotel in Las Vegas. Oh ya, and DefCon was 3 months away. :) The only reason I was looking was, they didn't provide internet access in the rooms, and I was hoping to pick up an AP in the lobby or somewhere that was available for guests. Unfortunately, they didn't have one that I could reach the Internet with. No email for 3 days. :)
Always be a good guy. Never be a bad guy. If you find a problem, report it with details. Trust me, the guy who would have gotten fired over it would prefer to know about the problem first so he can fix it.
Actually (Score:3, Interesting)
an internal Microsoft job posting for a malware/security research position was done this way.
Hiring manager sends out an email, with an ip address, says there is a chat server listening on a port with a buffer overrun vuln in it. In n days he'll start reading over the resumes left in c:\ on the machine.
Re:Civilans Need Not Apply. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bragging rights aside, if I were to announce my clearance, that indicates that I may have access to information that someone may want, which could put myself, my family, my friends, and my neighbors at risk.
The waters are muddier than that. More often the reasons for something/position being classified carry no such risks. They can, but those are in a minority.
Example:
1976-77 I worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in the NTTF** building. I had to hold a Top Secret clearance while working there.
The reason? Some of the parts in my work area were classified.
I was a Logistics Technician, in the Logistics Dept., Yes, basically nothing more than a parts man working behind the parts counter.
The classified equipment?
Some bit of electronics that were encased in gold sheetmetal, called Gold Bricks. They were part of the satellite tracking control system, and kept locked up. I had no access without a dept. supervisor to unlock them for me.
They were not classified due to the technology, they were classified due to their cost. They ranged from several hundred-thousand dollars apiece to several million apiece.
FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
Security clearances aren't classified. They are prerequisites to have access to classified material, but the clearances themselves aren't. So if you had a TS clearance, sure we could know. You'd be free to tell us if you liked. You couldn't tell us about the classified material you saw, of course, but the clearance itself would be no secret at all.
As a practical matter there's no way to keep such a thing a secret due to the nature of the SSBI. More or less what they do is talk to everyone you've ever known, and in various cases talk to people they've known. They tell people the reason too, because they ask questions such as "Do you think this person could be trusted with national secrets?"
I've known more than a few people with security clearances and it was never any kind of secret. It wasn't like they'd walk up and say "Hi my name is Bob, I have a clearance," but if it came up in conversation or you asked they'd be happy to tell you.
Re:A useless gesture (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I gather the best ones now are the ones that skulk around bank computer networks legally, catch is, if they are any good that are way out of the professionally paranoid price range as well as being a poor psychological fit. Of course there are likely quite a few failures from that market, you know the ones that were quietly let go but still have an untarnished resume. I am sure there is an internal banking security clique that keeps track of these not quite so good.
So they can start their recruiting efforts there, ex-bank computer network almost security 'er' professionals, better 2nd rate than none at all ;D. As for "it's a trap", unless it's for prosecution, it is hardly worth while as one big 'payoff' and you end up with a gaping hole in your digital artery bleeding out secrets like there's no tomorrow. Best bet for finding security flaws, tasty irresistible honey pots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(computing) [wikipedia.org] at every network location, ones with known live monitored states, misinformation and data that can be tracked to the end use location (flagged credit card details etc.), "minefield" ;D.