Experts: U.S. needs to defend its "cyber turf"

Experts: U.S. needs to defend its "cyber turf"
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2009-03-11

It's high time that the United States drew a line around its networks and pledged to defend its interests in cyberspace.

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Experts: U.S. needs to defend its "cyber turf" 2009-03-12
In the cloud

Experts: U.S. needs to defend its "cyber turf" 2009-03-12
Anonymous

Experts: U.S. needs to defend its "cyber turf" 2009-03-13
Anonymous

I am not surprised that Microsoft and others are against the NSA being the point agency on cybersecurity. NSA developed Security Enhanced Linux, which has been adopted by a number of Linux distributions. If NSA is chosen to lead cybersecurity, you can bet NSA will want to switch most, if not all, security related computers from Windows to SE Linux. Even Microsoft uses Linux to secure their global networks because Windows is very difficult and costly secure.

The argument Microsoft used against having NSA lead cybersecurity is really about keeping a very lucrative Windows contract at DHS and not about ensuring keeping the United States secure. Case in point - DHS has a few thousand successful cyber break ins every month, DHS uses Windows. It takes anywhere from two minutes to a few weeks to break into Windows. It takes at least three months to break into Linux. It takes even longer to break into NSA's SE Linux. Windows is very susceptible to viruses. It was the MSBlaster virus that caused the August 2003 blackout. Linux is susceptible to very few viruses and there are no spyware for Linux. Give me liberty, give me NSA.

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