Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
Re: FBI's InfraGard
From: Vin McLellan <vin () shore net>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 12:00:40 -0400
At 05:22 PM 4/16/99 -0400, Stout, Bill reported:
FBI Tries To Protect IT Systems From Intrusions Friday, April 16, 1999 "The FBI is set to launch a national rollout of InfraGard, apartnership of businesses, the bureau, and its NationalInfrastructure Protection Center. The alliance is designed to protect IT systems from hacker attacks and other intrusions by providing a network for sharing information about attacks and how to thwart them...
I'm told that InfraGard is simply a networked attempt to organize the FBI's Ole Boy Network -- the retired ex-FBI agents who are expected to be more loyal to the Bureau than they are to their current corporate employers. They wire the old ex-Feebees into a privileged rumor network in the hope that they will more readily toss in tips and rumors about IT attacks and threats -- if not about their own employers, then about competitors, the brother-in-law's firm, stories they heard at the bar, etc. They are getting desperate to hear about the sort of attacks that no corporate officer in his right mind is gonna report to the Bureau. InfraGard is probably only one of several parallel efforts to get various classes of professionals to place the FBI's bureaucratic interests above the interests of their employers or clients. Things like this are the price paid for putting the Infrastructure Protection Center in such a reactive agency, in the hands of guys always working to boost their arrest count-- rather somewhere it could generally enhance and foster strong security among, respectively, venders and users. _Vin
...InfraGard was formed as part of the federal government's effort to protect the nation's critical information systems. It's designed to ultimately serve as a national clearinghouse of information about security intrusions and vulnerabilities, and to offer tools to help detect and prevent attacks." http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK19990416S0001 <http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK19990416S0001> Bill Stout
-------- "Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege." _A Thinking Man's Creed for Crypto _vbm * Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin () shore net> * 53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548
Current thread:
- FBI's InfraGard Stout, Bill (Apr 17)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: FBI's InfraGard Vin McLellan (Apr 20)
- solaris + tis Anderson Alves de Albuquerque (Apr 21)
- Re: FBI's InfraGard George Jones (Apr 29)
- Re: FBI's InfraGard Joseph S D Yao (Apr 29)
- Re: FBI's InfraGard Vin McLellan (Apr 29)
- RE: FBI's InfraGard Russ (Apr 29)