So Chertoff is speaking at the RSA conference and we’re getting more play regarding a Cyber Manhattan Project. This idea is anything but new. In 1997, Winn Schwartau established a groundswell on the same issue but couldn’t secure adequate government support despite having pulled together some of the top minds in the industry. Several years ago, Richard Clarke (while still at the White House) asked several of us to do the same thing again, resulting in the Cyberconflict Studies Association (which is not rolling in government grants for our important research). It is hard to get excited over the words being thrown around again given the lack of support for other initiatives.
The federal government has launched a cyber security “Manhattan Project,” U.S. homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday, because online attacks can be a form of “devastating warfare”, and equivalent in damage to “physical destruction of the worst kind.”
Speaking to hundreds of security professionals at the RSA security conference, Chertoff cited last year’s denial-of-service attacks against Estonia, and hypothetical hack attacks on financial networks and air traffic control systems, as proof that a federal strategy was needed. [Link —>]