Rebuilding the Computer from Scratch to Defeat Cyber Warfare

The consequence has come to pass in the form of an epidemic of computer malware and rising concerns about cyberwarfare as a threat to global security, voiced alarmingly this month by the defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, who warned of a possible “cyber-Pearl Harbor” attack on the United States.

It is remarkable, then, that years after most of his contemporaries have retired, Dr. Neumann is still at it and has seized the opportunity to start over and redesign computers and software from a “clean slate.”

He is leading a team of researchers in an effort to completely rethink how to make computers and networks secure, in a five-year project financed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, with Robert N. Watson, a computer security researcher at Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory.

“I’ve been tilting at the same windmills for basically 40 years,” said Dr. Neumann recently during a lunchtime interview at a Chinese restaurant near his art-filled home in Palo Alto, Calif. “And I get the impression that most of the folks who are responsible don’t want to hear about complexity. They are interested in quick and dirty solutions.”

Source:  NYT > Science

Killing the Computer to Save It – New York Times


New York Times

Killing the Computer to Save It
New York Times
What the young math student took away was a deeply held philosophy of design that has remained with him for six decades and has been his governing principle of computing and computer security. For many of those years, Dr. Neumann (pronounced

“computer security” – read more

Precision Espionage miniFlame Malware Tied to Flame, Gauss – Threatpost (blog)

Precision Espionage miniFlame Malware Tied to Flame, Gauss
Threatpost (blog)
One of three previously unseen pieces of malware discovered during forensic analysis of the Flame malware command-and-control servers has been identified as a secondary surveillance tool deployed against specially identified targets, and only after an

flame malware – read more

We’ve Been Hacked: State Had Warnings – WLTX.com


WLTX.com

We've Been Hacked: State Had Warnings
WLTX.com
But even as a hacker was cracking into the state Department of Revenue database, the top expert for the state hired to assess computer security at 16 agencies was sounding notes of confidence. And the former FBI agent directed by Gov. Nikki Haley to
State computers hold wealth of personal informationGreenville News
Alert: Millions of SC Residents' Social Security Numbers StolenPatch.com

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