Hacker Jeff Moss: Inter-agency turf war plagues cybersecurity effort
Friday, October 16, 2009
U.S. cybersecurity efforts have been fraught with turf battles and competition between the National Security Agency (NSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for top-flight personnel, DefCon founder Jeff Moss said in an interview with CNET News.
Moss, a professional hacker who earlier this year was appointed as a cybersecurity advisor on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, told CNET that NSA's historic role in protecting U.S. cyberspace has made it difficult for DHS to recruit people to its own efforts to protect domestic government computers.
"[NSA] generally usually win in the recruiting battles. They've got a lot of talent over there and DHS needs some of that talent and they need some of that expertise," Moss said. "So there's some sort of working arrangement being sorted out where until DHS can get their own talent pool sorted out NSA will send people over."
Moss also said the government's system for alerting civilians to a terrorist attack or other national emergency is inadequate. He suggested using Twitter, MySpace and social networks for distributing information.
The role of a White House cyber czar should also be one of a coordinator between the intelligence agencies, the military and civilian agencies, Moss said.
Melissa Hathaway, the former White House cybersecurity director, resigned in August and is now an adjunct to the Harvard Kennedy School's cybersecurity initiative.
Related News:
Nearly 3,000 smartcard phones infected - 3.19.2010
Nearly 3,000 memory cards in HTC Magic smartphones released by Vodafone were infected by malware before purchase, Vodafone Spain reported on Friday. The initial scare came last week when a researcher for Panda Security discovered the breach on her newly purhcased phone.
Google removes malware-spreading site from searches - 3.19.2010
Google announced on Friday that DealsDirect, Australia's largest discount estore, was temporarily blocked from direct access by users after the search engine detected malware on the site.
Facebook bigger threat to web security than Twitter - 3.19.2010
The amount of information available on a person's Facebook profile page makes the popular social networking site more dangerous than other popular competitors such as Twitter, according to AVG Technologies.
Web security professionals skeptical of national broadband - 3.18.2010
Leading web security experts believe that the recently released National Broadband Program is potentially a major risk to national web security. As more people move from dial-up and other slower forms of internet access, they will be exposed to malware and be unable to handle it.
Authorities call for increased URL regulation - 3.18.2010
In an effort to attack malware at the root of the problem, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency submitted a new list of recommendations to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers that would make it more difficult to register a domain on the web, according to IT World Canada.
|
