hultberg.org: LinkLog

Another type of network effect: the scary type

I can't decide which is more scary. The confirmation of our vulnerable high tech society through this dissertation or the naive reactions from various officials and CEOs upon learning about it.

This is no news to anyone who has been working in the IT, telco or electricity sector the past years: We live in a networked, interconnected and oh so vulnerable society where we depend on a lot of gadgets, cables and network nodes in order to lead this comfortable life.

Not everyone seems to be aware of this. In fact, reading samples from a recently finished (not yet published, if it ever will be) dissertation by an American grad student (Sean Gorman) mapping the American infrastructure geographically, government officials response was that it should simply be classified:

When Gorman and Schintler presented their findings to government officials, Mc Carthy recalled: "they said, 'Pssh, let's scarf this up and classify it.'"

Yeah, that probably rids us of the problem that a student mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. ... He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?"

Gorman compiled his interactive map using material he found in open sources on the Internet. None of it was classified.

"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief. "The fiber-optic network is our country's nervous system." Every fiber, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things. "You don't want to give terrorists a road map to blow that up," he said.

No, that's true. Especially considering that you most likely don't need a hedge clipper or even have to go near some of those important nervous-system nodes in order to cause them serious harm. Build your own HERF-cannon using ordinary hardware parts with a budget of $500.

Sean Gorman's problem is not however the implications of his dissertation. Like so many other grad students he worries about getting a job.

"Is this going to completely squash me?" he said, biting his fingernail. GMU has determined that he will publish only the most general aspects of his work. "Academics make their name as an expert in something. . . . If I can't talk about it, it's hard to get hired. It's hard to put 'classified' on your list of publications on your résumé."

True. But somehow I don't think Gorman will have a problem finding a job.

TechNews.com: Dissertation Could Be Security Threat

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