Pentagon Seeks High School Hackers

As part of a government information security review released as early as Friday, White House interim cybersecurity chief Melissa Hathaway likely will mention a new military-funded program aimed at leveraging an untapped resource: the U.S.' population of geeky high school and college students.

The so-called Cyber Challenge, which will be officially announced later this month, will create three new national competitions for high school and college students intended to foster a young generation of cybersecurity researchers. The contests will test skills applicable to both government and private industry: attacking and defending digital targets, stealing data, and tracing how others have stolen it.

The competitions, as planned, go far beyond mere academics. The Air Force will run a so-called Cyber Patriot competition focused on network defense, fending off a "Red Team" of hackers attempting to steal data from the participants' systems. The Department of Defense's Cyber Crime Center will expand its Digital Forensics Challenge, a program it has run since 2006, to include high school and college participants, tasking them with problems like tracing digital intrusions and reconstructing incomplete data sources.

The security-focused SANS Institute, an independent organization, plans to organize what may be the most controversial of the three contests: the Network Attack Competition, which challenges students to find and exploit vulnerabilities in software, compromise enemy systems and steal data.

More is at stake in these games than mere geek glory. Talented entrants would be recruited for cyber training camps planned for summer 2010, nonprofit camps run by the military and funded in part by private companies, or internships at agencies including the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy or Carnegie Mellon's Computer

Call me paranoid, but I don't buy it. From my past experience, I'd say this nothing more than advertising for a round up. I wouldn't touch this offer with a ten foot pole. Forget about everything else and think of this as an effort to identify those with dangerous skills. Or, let's rephrase this... think of it as a competition to build the best home made bomb. Before somebody accuses me of being over the top, let us not forget that strong cryptography is categorized as a weapons system by the DoD... and for good reason. In addition, most of the "fun stuff" that can be done on networks is categorized as felony crime under USC Title 18.

I might be inclined to find out more about something like this, but with the recent new definitions of domestic terrorist, there's just no warm fuzzy between the (mostly freedom loving) hackers out there and the current administration. The timing of this seems just slightly suspicious.

The real clincher is that there are ALREADY AFSCs and MOSs for information warfare related career fields, and all one has to do is march his/her happy ass to a recruiting office and the ASVAB and express an interest to the recruiter.

The original Forbes article sounds just a tad like a public infomercial for Obama's "Civilian Defense Force"...or whatever they call it. DefCon types are NOT fond of "structure", law enforcement, or DoD.

...sounds fishy to me! :-)

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