US urged to recruit master hackers to wage cyber war on America's foes

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/10/us-master-hackers-al-qaida

By Rory Carroll in Monterey
guardian.co.uk
10 July 2012

Instead of prosecuting elite computer hackers, the US government should 
recruit them to launch cyber-attacks against Islamist terrorists and 
other foes, according to a leading military thinker and government 
adviser.

The brilliance of hacking experts could be put to use on behalf of the 
US in the same way as German rocket scientists were enlisted after the 
second world war, said John Arquilla, a professor of defence analysis at 
the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in an 
interview with the Guardian.

He said that the US had fallen behind in the cyber race and needed to 
set up a "new Bletchley Park" of computer whizzes and codecrackers to 
detect, track and disrupt enemy networks. "If this was being done, the 
war on terror would be over," he said.

Arquilla, who invented the term cyberwarfare two decades ago, said a few 
master hackers had already been recruited but more were needed.

"Let's just say that in some places you find guys with body piercings 
and non-regulation haircuts. But most of these sorts of guys can't be 
vetted in the traditional way. We need a new institutional culture that 
allows us to reach out to them."

[...]


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