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WorldCom and
Enron get off the hook, but a single grad student discovers why academic
research can lead to serious trouble.
Who is this guy’s faculty advisor?
KWC Dissertation Could Be
Security Threat
By Laura Blumenfeld,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page A01 @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23689-2003Jul7.html Sean Gorman's
professor called his dissertation "tedious and unimportant." Gorman
didn't talk about it when he went on dates because "it was so boring
they'd start staring up at the ceiling." But since the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, Gorman's work has become so compelling that companies want to seize
it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda operatives -- if
they could get their hands on it -- would find a terrorist treasure map. Tinkering on a laptop,
wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University
graduate student has 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 zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. 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?" In the background, he plays the
Beastie Boys. For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding
field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security
reasons.
His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society
and a secure society. "I'm
this grad student," said Gorman, 29, amazed by his
transformation from geek to cybercommando. "Never in my wildest dreams
would I have imagined I'd be briefing government officials and private-sector
CEOs." Invariably, he said,
they suggest his work be classified. "Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does
this mean I have to redo my PhD?" he said. "They're worried about
national security. I'm worried about getting my degree." For academics,
there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman's case,
there's a new concern: publish and perish. "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. The Washington Post has agreed not to print the results of Gorman's
research, at the insistence of GMU. Some argue that the critical targets should
be publicized, because it would force the government and industry to protect
them. "It's a tricky balance," said Michael Vatis,
founder and first director of the National Infrastructure Protection Center.
Vatis noted the dangerous time gap between exposing the weaknesses and patching
them: "But I don't think security through obscurity is a winning strategy." (end of
excerpt) |
