[145159] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
nytimes: academic paper or cyberwarfare?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Sun Mar 21 10:15:09 2010
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:42:37 -0400
An article in The New York Times today indirectly highlights the
misunderstanding of the way that researchers try to make things more
secure, which is generally by trying to figure out and point out the
insecurities.
First few paragraphs:
Academic Paper in China Sets Off Alarms in U.S.
By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID BARBOZA
It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate
engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as
a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.
Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told
the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be
concerned because =E2=80=9CChinese researchers at the Institute of Syste=
ms
Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on
how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would
cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.=E2=80=9D
When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had
indeed published =E2=80=9CCascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the
U.S. Power Grid=E2=80=9D in an international journal called Safety Scien=
ce
last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways
to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential
vulnerabilities.
=E2=80=9CWe usually say =E2=80=98attack=E2=80=99 so you can see what wou=
ld happen,=E2=80=9D he
said. =E2=80=9CMy emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to=
find
a solution to make the network safer and better protected.=E2=80=9D And
independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true:
Mr. Wang=E2=80=99s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no=
way
could be used to take down a power grid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/world/asia/21grid.html
--=20
Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
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