IDAHO FALLS, Idaho--Jason Larsen types in a few lines of computer code to hack into the controls of a nearby chemical plant. Then he finds an online video camera inside and confirms that he has pumped up a pressure value.

"It's the challenge. It's you finding the flaws," he said when asked about his motivation. "It's you against the defenders. It comes from a deep-seeded need to find out how things work."

Larsen, 31, who wears his hair long and has braces on his teeth, is a computer hacker with a twist. His goal is not to wreak havoc, but to boost security for America's pipelines, railroads, utilities and other infrastructure, part of a project backed by the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, or INEEL.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Idaho lab last month launched a new cybersecurity center where expert hackers such as Larsen test computing vulnerabilities. Spread across 890 square miles in a remote area of eastern Idaho, the lab gives experts access to an entire isolated infrastructure such as the one Larsen hacked into.

"I don't think people have an understanding of what could be the impact of cyberattacks," Paul Kearns, director of INEEL, told Reuters. "They don't understand the threat."

In recent months, U.S. security officials have warned that the nation is not prepared against cyberterrorism.

"I am confident that there is no system connected to the Internet, either by modem or fixed connection, that can't be hacked into," said Laurin Dodd, who oversees INEEL's national security programs.

He added that only a computing system totally isolated from the outside, such as that used by the CIA, would be immune to hacking.
Full story...


Source : Reuters

quote:


..."I don't think people have an understanding of what could be the impact of cyberattacks,"...

One more excuse reasoning more upcoming restrictions on civil rights...

(in reply to SiliconFreak)

Yup...it somehow reminds me on US government...using similar words to describe threat of nuclear weapons (never found ones) in Iraq...they used almost the exact sentence...if i remember right...it was just like...""We don't think people have an understanding of what could be the impact of weapons of mass destruction if they came in hands of terrorists""...and then they stated that Saddam was cooperating with them already (altough again never proven so!)... What a mess, huh?

Well enough politics and other mambo-jumbo...lets rock'n'roll...

(in reply to sp)