Why the Pentagon is asking you to hack

Many private companies often use the experience of hackers "friendly" to find holes in your system.

Following the example, for the first time, the Pentagon has invited external experts to enter their systems cybersecurity.

The decision came after the United States Secretary of Defense recognized the need for strong encryption amid a dispute over a phone between the FBI and Apple.

• 7 questions to understand the historical dispute between Apple and the iPhone FBI San Bernardino

Ash asked Carter tech firms and the US government to work together.

The United States Department of Defense launched its project "Hacking the Pentagon" on Wednesday, inviting external hackers to test the security aa put some of their public websites.

According to news agency Reuters, the program is similar to that used by many companies, which offer incentives to computer hackers s to identify and report safety problems.

The Pentagon said it was also considering offering financial rewards.

digital defenses

"I am confident that this innovative initiative will strengthen our digital defenses and ultimately enhance our national security," Carter said.

The Pentagon has tested many of their own networks using so -called "red teams"internal, but this initiative will open part of its vast network of computer systems abroad.

However, the Pentagon said other sensitive networks and key weapons programs will not be included in the scheme , at least initially.

"The goal is not to compromise any aspect of our critical systems, but our cyber security challenge in a new and innovative way," said one defense official told Reuters.

The official said he expected to enroll thousands of participants before the opening of the pilot program in April.

During a visit to Silicon Valley on Tuesday, Carter stressed the support of the country's military to data security and strong encryption.

Speaking on the day that Apple and the FBI were presented to the US Congress by the refusal of the first to help the agency to unlock an iPhone, the senior official said the Pentagon considers the strong fundamental encryption.

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Reuters reported that Carter declined to comment directly on the dispute and said that no case should drive policy decisions. But he called for greater cooperation between Silicon Valley and Washington on data security.

Defense Secretary said that a lack of cooperation would allow China, Russia and other countries that are not in favor of a free internet establish new global standards, according to the news agency.

"We must not allow the solutions to this broader how to handle data security as a society, an issue to be driven by one particular case," Carter told reporters after a speech at the Club of Commonwealth of San Francisco. "It would not be reasonable."

In his speech, Carter said: ".. It 's easy to see wrong ways to do this One would be a written law hastily by anger or pain Another would be to have the rules written by Russia or China ..."

On the same day it was announced that the Turing Award was given to a pair of cryptographers whose ideas helped make the Internet possible.

According to Associated Press, the recipients -Whitfield Diffie, former security chief of Sun Microsystems, and Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University said that giving governments control over encrypted communications would all at risk.

The couple received US $ 1 million for his contributions to the computer with ideas for public key cryptography and digital signatures, which were introduced in 1976.

The concepts are applied today to all kinds of data, from online communications and financial transactions, to infrastructure connected to the Internet as power plants, the AP reported.

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