 COLUMN
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Security Adviser
P.J. Connolly
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Federal insecurities
IF YOU BELIEVE everything you read, the U.S. government's Web sites are going to be the next Pearl Harbor. Headlines scream, "Feds Under Attack," and members of Congress have another excuse to hold hearings and lay the groundwork for their presidential ambitions. Recent reports of the three-year-long Moonlight Maze attack against government systems (purportedly coming from Russia, but nobody's certain) -- as well as various Web site defacements from the "cyberwar" between Chinese and U.S. hackers following the recent tussle over the downed surveillance plane -- seem to justify these claims.
Obviously, it doesn't make the Feds look good when they can't control their own Web sites. It doesn't help that in late May the government's General Accounting Office (GAO) released its finding that the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) was severely understaffed, due in part to the Secret Service's resentment of the FBI's oversight of the NIPC. (At least, that's the conclusion I came to after reading the GAO's testimony before a Senate subcommittee.) Maybe a change is in order. Having followed the attempts of law enforcement to cope with computer crime, I have more respect for the tasseled folks from Treasury than the Fibbies in their wing tips, so perhaps the Secret Service will do a better job of running NIPC.
No matter who's minding the store, NIPC has some fundamental problems that won't go away soon. The top of the list is staffing; it's really hard to convince experienced computer security people to pass up good-paying jobs in the private sector for the rigors of life inside the Beltway and the insultingly low pay of the civil service schedules. Maybe by charging enough 13-year-olds with hacking into school servers, a sort of digital chain gang can be recruited. But that idea stopped being funny when a kid in New Jersey hung himself after his principal threatened him with jail.
A second problem may prove to be just as difficult. A lot of people don't like the U.S. government and what it stands for, and that doesn't depend on who's in the White House. By hacking, they're engaging in a form of nonviolent protest, which is something most people support until the street they're driving down (or the Web site they need) is blocked by a demonstration. To the Man, of course, they're committing all sorts of felonies and misdemeanors and are more dangerous to society than are rapists and thieves. But no matter which position you support -- I personally don't see the point of prison time unless you're trying to turn a casual criminal into a career one -- it's clear that the U.S. government is one of the most attractive targets on the Internet. If the people managing government Web sites forget that fact, then they're asking to be embarrassed.
P.J. Connolly (pj_connolly@infoworld.com) covers networking and security for the Test Center and believes that "good enough for government work" isn't. Get this column free via e-mail each week. Sign up at www.iwsubscribe.com/newsletters .
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