U.S. military invites vetted experts to 'Hack the Pentagon'

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-pentagon-idUSKCN0W40H8

by stephenhuey • 10 years ago

65 21 10 years ago

reuters.com

dj-wonk• 10 years ago

Details and rules were still being worked out but the competition could involve monetary awards, the Pentagon said.

What do you all think are some decent choices for details and rules?

toast0• 10 years ago

If you find Tic Tac Toe and Chess, it's OK to play those; if you find Global Thermonuclear War, it's not OK to play that.

junto• 10 years ago

"The only winning move is not to play."

TACIXAT• 10 years ago

Is there any info on where to sign up?

Edit: From the press release:

The pilot program will launch in April and the department will provide more details on requirements for participation and other ground rules in the coming weeks.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/...

nanocyber2• 10 years ago

What could possibly go wrong? :D

I do think this is an interesting effort, and I've met Chris Lynch in his DDS capacity. It's terribly interesting to see a Senior Executive government employee with Silicon Valley cred, who wears hoodies/jeans/sneakers to meet Admirals and Generals, who are (in terms of rank equivalency) his peers. Literally the first time I've seen someone knuckle-bump an Admiral rather than shake his hand after a meeting.

I think there is some value in this culture-clash/disruption, but I also know of some government-employed very skillful hackers who resent the assumption that non-government hackers are by-default more skillful than them.

lynchseattle• 10 years ago

fist bump

nanocyber2• 10 years ago

LoLs! I stand corrected! :)

mtgx• 10 years ago

How about "Hack the OPM"? Let's start with the easy stuff first.

nickpsecurity• 10 years ago

I'm going for firmware and processor errata if they let me in on this. Their failure will be so expensive that I'll finally have the numbers to justify either semi-custom work from Intel/AMD for legacy or a multi-core, secure RISC-V. :)

tantalor• 10 years ago

From the "what, they weren't doing that already?" department.

starshadowx2• 10 years ago

They had their own internal groups, but this is now open to external pentesters.

hanniabu• 10 years ago

Pentesters, I like the term. Clever combination

dogma1138• 10 years ago

They've always used external pens, but through contracts. This seems to be more like an "open" bug bounty program which just requires prior vetting for obvious reasons.

dajohnson89• 10 years ago

So basically they're crowdsourcing penetration testing.

alfiedotwtf• 10 years ago

That's called "being on the internet"

fabulist• 10 years ago

It's also called bug bounties (see Hacker1, BugCrowd, synack)

Joof• 10 years ago

Soon nearly every pentagon employee will be social-engineered and compromised. People will begin to believe that every single system they access is a MITM or phishing attempt.

Bluestrike2• 10 years ago

Probably better than the alternative, since they'd at least be thinking about security as something more than an abstract "thing." If that. Then they just need to take that fear and find a way to funnel it into proper security education without that fear becoming crippling.

oxide• 10 years ago

I'm glad this is being implemented and not just considered.

U.S. military invites vetted experts to 'Hack the Pentagon'

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