Cybersecurity: When Hackers Went to the Hill -- Revisiting the L0pht Hearings of 1998

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cyber-vault/2019-01-09/cybersecurity-when-hackers-went-hill-revisiting-l0pht-hearings-1998

Published: Jan 9, 2019
Briefing Book #655
Edited by Rosemary Tropeano

For more information, contact:
202-994-7000 or nsarchiv (at) gwu.edu

Landmark Senate Hearings Exposed Risks and Threats That Are Still Being 
Confronted

Declassified Records Offer Roadmap to Often Incomplete U.S. Government and 
Industry Response

Washington, D.C., January 9, 2019 - More than 20 years ago, in May 1998, seven 
hackers from the Boston-based "hacker think tank" L0pht Heavy Industries, 
appeared alongside Dr. Peter Neumann, a private sector expert on computer 
security, before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs for one of the 
first-ever[1] Congressional hearings focusing specifically on cybersecurity. 
The hearing covered a wide array of topics, addressing the breadth of 
challenges posed by cybersecurity rather than providing a detailed look at any 
single problem. The Committee held two more hearings in a series on 
cybersecurity in 1998, looking at information security in the Department of 
Defense, and electronic warfare and cybersecurity within the Social Security 
Administration and Veterans Affairs, respectively.

Today, the Cyber Vault project at the National Security Archive is posting 
these ground-breaking hearings along with a variety of subsequent official 
reports, testimony, and related materials that trace the evolution of U.S. 
government and public awareness of and approaches to the challenges, problems, 
and threats posed by the world of cyber.  These records - a fraction of the 
documentation that constitutes the Cyber Vault Library - have been gathered 
from Federal agencies, the U.S. Congress, the courts, and private industry. 
Together they offer a glimpse into the scope and complexities of the issues, 
but also serve as a reminder that many of the basic security questions raised 
two decades ago by L0pht and other experts still lack meaningful answers.

Some of the topics addressed during the first hearing, like the complications 
arising from the Y2K problem, have been dealt with in the intervening 20 years. 
A number of significant problems, such as insider threat, remain, though in 
some cases they have been mitigated, for example by access control and legal 
measures.

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