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ADDRESSING THE NATION’S CYBERSECURITY 

CHALLENGES: REDUCING VULNERABILITIES 

REQUIRES STRATEGIC INVESTMENT AND 

IMMEDIATE ACTION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING 

THREATS, CYBERSECURITY AND 

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

APRIL 25, 2007 

Serial No. 110–30 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html 


Congress.#13
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi, Chairman 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California, 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

JANE HARMAN, California 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin 

Islands 

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

HENRY CUELLAR, Texas 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York 

AL GREEN, Texas 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

VACANCY 

PETER T. KING, New York 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana 

TOM DAVIS, Virginia 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

BOBBY JINDAL, Louisiana 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

DAVID DAVIS, Tennessee 

JESSICA HERRERA-FLANIGAN, Staff Director & General Counsel 

ROSALINE COHEN, Chief Counsel 

MICHAEL TWINCHEK, Chief Clerk 

ROBERT O’CONNOR, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS, CYBERSECURITY, AND 

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island, Chairman 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, U.S. Virgin 

Islands 

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina 

AL GREEN, Texas 

VACANCY 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi (Ex 

Officio) 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PETER T. KING, New York (Ex Officio) 

JACOB OLCOTT, Director & Counsel 

DR. CHRIS BECK, Senior Advisor for Science & Technology 

CARLA ZAMUDIO-DOLAN, Clerk 

DR. DIANE BERRY, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member 

(II) 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS 

The Honorable James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Rhode Island, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, 

Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 1 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 3 

The Honorable Michael T. McCaul, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Texas, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, 

Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology ...................................................... 4 

The Honorable Bob Etheridge, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of North Carolina ................................................................................................. 39 

The Honorable Al Green, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Texas ..................................................................................................................... 37 

WITNESSES

Dr. Daniel E. Geer, Jr., Principal, Geer Risk Services, LLC: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 11 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 14 

Dr. James Andrew Lewis, Director and Senior Fellow, Technology and Public 

Policy Program, center for Strategic and International Studies: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 8 

Dr. Douglas Maughan, Program Manager, Cyber Security R&D, Department 

of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 23 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 25 

Mr. O. Sami Saydjari, President, Professionals for Cyber Defense Chief 

Executive Officer, Cyber Defense Agency, LLC: 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 16 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 18 

APPENDIXES

Appendix I: For the Record 

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress from 

the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Committee on Homeland 

Security, Opening Statement .......................................................................... 43 

Appendix II: Selected Major Reports on Cyber Security Research and 

Development ......................................................................................................... 45 

(1) 

ADDRESSING THE NATION’S CYBERSECURITY 

CHALLENGES: REDUCING VULNERABILITIES 

REQUIRES STRATEGIC INVESTMENT AND 

IMMEDIATE ACTION 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS, CYBERSECURITY, 

AND SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:11 p.m., in room 

1539, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. James R. Langevin 

[chairman of the subcommittee], presiding. 

Present: Representatives Langevin, Etheridge, Green and 

McCaul. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. The subcommittee will come to order. 

The subcommittee is meeting today to receive testimony on Addressing the Nation’s Cybersecurity Challenges: Reducing 

Vulnerabilities Requires Strategic Investment and Immediate Action. 

Good afternoon, and I want to welcome you to the Subcommittee 

on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology 

hearing on a need to reduce vulnerabilities in our national critical 

infrastructure through investment and action. I would like to begin 

by thanking witnesses who appear before us today, and I appreciate your testimony. 

I think that last week was certainly an eye-opening experience 

for many of us up here. We learned that our Federal systems, in 

particular, and privately owned critical infrastructure are all extremely vulnerable to hacking. These vulnerabilities have significant and dangerous consequences. 

We learned that the Federal Government has little situational 

awareness of what is going on inside our systems. We cannot be 

sure how much information has been lost from our Federal systems, and we have no idea if hackers are still inside our systems, 

and we learned that our laws are powerless to stop intruders, even 

if compliance with FISMA does not make our systems more secure—I should say even if best compliance with FISMA doesn’t 

make our systems more secure. 

Now, this week, we are going to continue our conversation from 

last week to hear about some promising initiatives that are designed to reverse this trend of government failure. 

2 

I would like to take the opportunity to particularly thank Dr. 

Maughan for his service to our country in this field. Dr. Maughan 

is leading the cybersecurity research and development effort at the 

Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Under his leadership, DHS S&T has funded research that 

has resulted in almost one dozen open source and commercial products that provided capabilities such as secure thumb drives, root 

kit detection, worm and distributed denial of service detection, defenses against phishing, network vulnerability assessment, software analysis and security for process control systems. 

His research and development funding is targeting the critical 

problems that threaten the integrity, availability and reliability of 

our networks. Clearly, he plays a vital role in securing our natural 

cyberspace. 

But despite the criticality of this mission and the success of the 

program, I am troubled that this administration continues its effort 

to do what Chairman Thompson calls homeland security on the 

cheap. 

In the last 7 years, more than 20 reports from such entities as 

InfoSec, Research Council, the National Science Foundation and 

the National Institute of Justice, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the National Research Council and the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection have all urged the government to do more to drive, discover 

and deliver new solutions to address cyber vulnerabilities. But look 

at what this administration has done to cybersecurity and the research budget at the Department of Homeland Security. 

Though this program was slated to receive $22.7 million in fiscal 

year 2007, the actual number I received from S&T showed we only 

funded this program at $13 million. For fiscal year 2008, the President slashed the budget again, requesting $14.8 million. This is an 

$8 million cut from the previous year. 

Just listen to some of the important programs that are being cut 

or reduced in fiscal year 2007: The budget for the DNSSEC program, which adds security to the main system, was reduced 

$670,000. The budget for the secure protocols for routing infrastructure was zeroed out from its original amount of $2.4 million. 

The budget for the next generation cybersecurity technologies program, which addresses a variety of topic areas aimed at preventing, 

protecting against, detecting, responding to and recovering from 

large-scale high-impact cyber attacks, was reduced $1,625,000. 

Now, I don’t know who is responsible for these cuts, Under Secretary Cohen or Secretary Chertoff or the White House, but reducing this funding is a serious strategic error by this administration. 

Just to understand how little we are spending, for the sake of 

comparison, the FBI estimated that, in 2004, that cyber crime cost 

companies worldwide around $400 billion. In 2005, the agency estimated that U.S. businesses lost $67 billion. Of course, neither of 

these figures can measure the loss of Federal information off our 

networks which one day may cost us our technological advantage 

over other nations. And those figures don’t count the potential environmental losses if a successful attack on our control systems were 

to be carried out. 

3 

I am deeply troubled by the lack of foresight this administration 

has demonstrated. These efforts are simply too important to be cut. 

The Homeland Security Committee is working to demonstrate 

the importance of R&D funding in this administration. In our recent authorization bill, we included a provision that would increase 

the funding level for the DHS cybersecurity R&D portfolio to $50 

million. Democratic efforts over the last several years have been 

endorsed by many notable cyber experts, and I appreciate all of 

their input and their support. 

The tools that will improve or revolutionize our security will not 

just appear overnight. Investment today plants seeds for the future. But it is incumbent upon the Federal Government to take the 

leadership role in this effort. 

Again, I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us 

today, and I look forward to hearing your testimony. 

PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES R. LANGEVIN, CHAIRMAN

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS, CYBERSECURITY, AND SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science and Technology hearing on the need to reduce vulnerabilities 

in our national critical infrastructure through investment and action. 

• I’d like to begin by thanking the witnesses who appear before us today, and I 

appreciate your testimony. 

• I think last week was an eye opening experience for many of us up here. 

• We learned that our federal systems and privately owned critical infrastructure 

are all extremely vulnerable to hacking. These vulnerabilities have significant and 

dangerous consequences. 

• We learned that the federal government has little situational awareness of what 

is going on inside our systems. We cannot be sure how much information has been 

lost from our federal systems, and we have no idea if hackers are still inside our 

systems. 

• And we learned that our laws are powerless to stop intruders—even the best 

compliance with FISMA does not make our systems more secure. 

• This week, we’re going to continue our conversation from last week, and hear 

about some promising initiatives that are designed to reverse this trend of government failure. 

• I’d like to take the opportunity to particularly thank Dr. Maughan (‘‘MAWN’’) 

for his service to our country in this field. 

• Dr. Maughan is leading the cybersecurity research and development effort at 

the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. 

• Under his leadership, DHS S&T has funded research has resulted in almost one 

dozen open-source and commercial products that provide capabilities such as: 

• secure thumb drives, 

• root kit detection, 

• worm and distributed denial of service detection, 

• defenses against phishing, 

• network vulnerability assessment, 

• software analysis, and 

• security for process control systems. 

• His research and development funding is targeting the critical problems that 

threaten the integrity, availability, and reliability of our networks. Clearly, he plays 

a vital role in securing our national cyberspace. 

• But despite the criticality of this mission and the success of the program, I am 

troubled that this Administration continues its effort to do what Chairman Thompson calls ‘‘Homeland Security on the Cheap.’’ 

• In the last seven years, more than 20 reports from such entities as the 

INFOSEC Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the 

National Research Council and the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection have all urged the government to do more to drive, discover and deliver new solutions to address cyber vulnerabilities. 

4 

• But look at what this Administration has done to cybersecurity and the research budget at the Department of Homeland Security. 

• Though this program was slated to receive $22.7 million dollars in FY 2007, the 

actual numbers I’ve received from S&T show that we are only funding this program 

at $13 million dollars. 

• For FY 2008, the President slashed the budget again, requesting $14.8 million 

dollars. This is an $8 million cut from the previous year. 

• Just listen to some of the important programs that are being cut or reduced in 

FY 2007: 

• The budget for the DNSSEC program—which adds security to the Domain 

Name System—was reduced $670,000 dollars. 

• The budget for the Secure Protocols for the Routing Infrastructure was zeroed 

out from its original amount of $2.4 million dollars. 

• The budget for the Next Generation Cyber Security Technologies program, 

which addresses a variety of topic areas aimed at preventing, protecting 

against, detecting, responding to, and recovering from large-scale, high-impact 

cyber attacks was reduced $1.625 million dollars. 

• Now I don’t know who is responsible for these cuts—Under Secretary Cohen, 

or Secretary Chertoff, or the White House—but reducing this funding is a serious 

strategic error by this Administration. 

• Just to understand how little we’re spending for the sake of comparison, the 

FBI estimated in 2004 that cybercrime cost companies worldwide around $400 billion dollars. In 2005, the agency estimated that U.S. businesses lost $67 billion dollars. 

• Of course, neither of these figures can measure the loss of federal information 

off of our networks, which may one day cost us our technological advantage over 

other nations. 

• And those figures also don’t count the potential environmental losses if a successful attack on our control systems is carried out. 

• I am deeply troubled by the lack of foresight that this Administration has demonstrated. These efforts are simply too important to be cut. 

• The Homeland Security Committee is working to demonstrate the importance 

of R&D funding to this Administration. 

• In our recent authorization bill, we included a provision that would increase the 

funding level for the DHS cybersecurity R&D portfolio to $50 million dollars. 

• Democratic efforts over the last several years have been endorsed by many notable cyber experts, and I appreciate all of this support. 

• Ladies and gentlemen, the tools that will improve or revolutionize our security 

will not just appear overnight. Investment today plants seeds for the future, but it 

is incumbent upon the Federal government to take the leadership role in this effort. 

• I thank the witnesses for appearing before us today and look forward to their 

testimony. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. It is now my pleasure to recognize the ranking 

member, my partner in this effort in the subcommittee, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. McCaul, for purposes of an opening statement. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to commend you again for holding this set of hearings on 

cybersecurity, which is a very important issue that, in my view, 

has been overlooked to a large extent since September 11th. Last 

week, we heard from several government agencies about their experiences with hackers breaking into their networks. It is a serious 

problem, and it is happening more often than we realize. As I have 

said before, I believe a cyber attack could be at least if not more 

devastating to our country than a weapon of mass destruction. 

Unfortunately, right now, we are not doing what we need to do 

to defend ourselves from this threat. Today, we focus on how we 

respond to these attacks and how we develop the tools and procedures to protect the information upon which our Nation depends. 

Securing our networks may not get as much attention as going to 

war, but it is just as important when we consider the aspect of 

cyber warfare and the lack of our preparedness. 

5 

We have gathered some of the best minds here today in this 

country to discuss how we as a country should respond to this challenge of defending our information systems, and I look forward to 

their testimony. 

After our hearing last week, I met with a number of CEOs of 

leading cybersecurity companies and heard their perspectives on 

this complex issue; and it is clear that we must marshal our resources and focus on this problem. We have not provided information security the attention it deserves; and with the help of experts 

such as those we have before us here today, I believe we can improve the situation and provide the sense of urgency to stimulate 

new progress in securing the Nation’s information systems. 

I thank the Chair, and I look forward to the testimony. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I thank the gentleman. 

All the members as they arrive will be allowed to submit, according to the committee rules, opening statements for the record, and 

then we will begin to questions after the testimony. 

Again, I would like to turn to our panel right now. I want to welcome our first panel of witnesses. 

Our first witness, James Lewis, directs CSIS Technology and 

Public Policy Program. He is a senior fellow. Before joining CSIS, 

he was a career diplomat who worked on a range of national security issues during his Federal service. 

Our second witness, Dr. Daniel Geer, spent 10 years in clinical 

and research medical computing, followed by 5 years running MIT’s 

Project Athena. Afterwards, he worked in the research division of 

the then Digital Equipment Corporation and then a series of entrepreneurial endeavors. 

Our third witness is Mr. Sami Saydjari, who is the founder and 

chief executive officer of Cyber Defense Agency, creators of systematic defenses for high-value systems against aggressive cyber attack. Before founding this cyber defense agency, Mr. Saydjari was 

a senior staff scientist in SRI International’s Computer Science 

Laboratory. 

Our fourth witness, Dr. Douglas Maughan, is the Cyber Security 

Program Manager at the Department of Homeland Security 

Science and Technology Directorate. Prior to his appointment at 

DHS, Dr. Maughan was a program manager in the Advanced Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or 

DARPA. 

Without objection, the witness’s full statements will be inserted 

into the record; and I will now ask each witness to summarize the 

testimony for 5μminutes, beginning with Dr. Lewis. 

Before we do that, though, I just wanted to remind everyone of 

the committee rules that testimony is supposed to be submitted 

48μhours in advance. DHS didn’t get their testimony in to us until 

about 7:30 this morning. And I have said before I understand DHS 

and other government departments need to get—it is not solely on 

the witness’s shoulders to get it in. I know OMB has to clear the 

testimony. But this is happening regularly from DHS. And I know 

Chairman Thompson is doing an internal investigation right now 

to find out what the problem is. We just can’t do business like this 

if we don’t have testimony in a timely fashion. 

6 

Mr. LANGEVIN. With that, I will turn it over to Dr. Lewis for your 

opening statement. Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES ANDREW LEWIS, DIRECTOR AND SENIOR 

FELLOW, TECHNOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY PROGRAM, 

CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the 

committee for this opportunity to testify. 

You heard last week about the problems at various agencies, and 

I think that testimony highlighted that securing networks in the 

United States for cyber attack is one of the greatest challenges we 

face. 

Cyber security can seem intractable. It is a problem that in the 

past attracted exaggeration, and this combination of intractable 

and exaggeration can sometimes create indifference. One way to 

overcome this indifference is to put cybersecurity in the right context. 

Our networks face two sets of risks. The first involves espionage. 

The second involves the potential interruption of services, particularly Federal services. 

The most important for me is espionage cybersecurity, is primarily a spy story. Cyber espionage poses the greatest threat to the 

U.S. Hacking into computer networks, which are vulnerable and 

likely to remain so for years, provides new low-cost and low-risk 

opportunities for foreign intelligence agencies. U.S. networks are 

very vulnerable. Several nations have exploited these 

vulnerabilities to gain valuable information. These efforts and our 

inadequate response have damaged national security. 

Unlike cyber espionage, the threat of disruption of services remains hypothetical. I would not take too much comfort from this, 

Mr. Chairman. Because if an opponent can hack into a network to 

steal information, they can hack into and plant malicious software 

that could be triggered during a crisis. We should assume in the 

event of a conflict our opponents will seek to disrupt our networks 

and data. 

I would like to point out that, although we have a long litany of 

threats, the question as to whether the U.S. was better off before 

it depended so heavily on computer networks can be answered in 

the negative. The benefits from the greater use of networks and 

computers outweigh the damage from poor cyber security. However 

the porousness of our Federal networks reduces those benefits, and 

greater attention cybersecurity would improve both national security and economic performance and close off an avenue of asymmetric opportunity for our opponents. 

While the U.S. is better off than it was 10 years ago, the improvement has been unequally distributed among agencies and 

companies. Some are secure; some are not. There have been serious 

efforts in the national security community to make networks more 

secure, and our most sensitive military and intelligence functions 

are probably secure. Some crucial civil networks are also more secure than they were. 

Some efforts to improve cybersecurity have not had the benefits 

we expected. It is possible to hack into a computer running software that has met the common criteria, that has the common criVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
7 

teria certification, on a network that has met the requirements of 

ISO 19779, the standard for cybersecurity, and at an agency that 

has gotten good marks on FISMA. In other words, you can meet 

all the formal requirements and still be vulnerable. 

How do we change this? There is no silver bullet. There is no single program that will improve security. The Federal Government, 

for example, is a complex enterprise, with thousands of networks 

and hundreds of thousands of computers. No single agency controls 

this network; and while some Federal networks are among the 

most secure in the world, others are routinely penetrated. Some 

use advanced technologies, others are legacy systems dating back 

years and which, for all practical purposes, cannot be secured. 

The core of the problem is organizational. The Department of 

Homeland Security, the Federal CIO Council, and the Office of 

Management and Budget all play a role in securing Federal networks. But cybersecurity remains a low priority at many agencies. 

Along with a better organization for cybersecurity, the U.S. needs 

a better strategy. We did have a national cybersecurity strategy in 

2003, but it is outdated. A new strategy would have to be more 

comprehensive, and I would like to detail some of the things I 

think that strategy should include. 

First, we would benefit from streamlining government processes. 

There are too many groups and committees, and too few of them 

have any real authority. 

Second, the U.S. can do more to improve agency practices for network security. Cybersecurity is still a third-tier priority at many 

agencies. If gangs of foreigners broke into the State or Commerce 

Departments and carried off dozens of file cabinets, there would be 

a huge outcry. When the same thing happens in cyberspace, we 

shrug it off. Agencies need to be held accountable for following best 

practices in network security. 

Third, better identity management would improve cybersecurity 

security. As long as it is easy to impersonate someone on the Internet, networks will never be secure. HSBD 12 and Real ID can offer 

some benefits. 

Fourth, the government should address software assurance. We 

recently did a study at CSIS that looked at how companies write 

software. While most of them do a pretty good job and all of them 

have some very useful practices, the practices aren’t evenly applied; 

and if the government could find a way to spread these best practices to make software more secure, it would have a real benefit. 

Finally, the U.S. can take steps to keep itself at the forefront of 

technology. This goes beyond funding cybersecurity research. While 

we spend more on R&D than other countries, it may not be enough 

to maintain our lead. These steps—better organization, better practices for coding, better identity management, attention to continuity of government and renewed support for technological leadership—can make networks more secure. 

Congressional oversight is critical with this. Without Congress to 

press senior leadership at Federal agencies, we will wait much 

longer for progress than would otherwise be the case. 

It has been 12 years since the U.S. became concerned with 

vulnerabilities in computer networks. There has been some imVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
8 

provement, but not enough. We have an opportunity to change this 

in the next few years. 

I thank the committee for the opportunity to testify. Thank you 

for entering my comments into the record, and I will be happy to 

take your questions. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Dr. Lewis. 

[The statement of Mr. Lewis follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. JAMES A. LEWIS

I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to testify on the cybersecurity challenge the United faces. Cybersecurity is one of those problems that seem 

to be intractable. It is also a problem that, in the past, seemed to attract exaggeration and hyperbole. The combination is not ideal for creating effective policies, in 

part because the blend of intractability and exaggeration can create indifference. 

One way to overcome this indifference is to put cyber security in the right context. 

The context is not an ‘electronic Pearl Harbor’ but the risk of loss of valuable information and the disruption of data and services. For Federal networks, the context 

for cybersecurity involves espionage and potential interruptions in the delivery of 

Federal services. 

The security of Federal networks has serious implications for homeland security 

as Federal network security affects both continuity of government and the operations of critical infrastructure. This alone justifies extra attention to government 

networks. In addition, measures that improve the security of Federal networks will 

also benefit private sector networks. My own view is that the security of Federal 

networks is the most serious cybersecurity challenge we face, more serious than the 

risks to critical infrastructure or from cybercrime. 

The most important of these challenges come from espionage. Cybersecurity is primarily a spy story. Cyber-espionage poses the greatest current threat to the United 

States. Hacking is the extension of signals intelligence into new and untrammeled 

areas. Foreign intelligence agencies must weep with joy when they contemplate U.S. 

government networks. We have thoughtfully placed sensitive information on these 

networks and then failed to secure them adequately. This is not a hypothetical problem. The last twenty years have seen an unparalleled looting of U.S. government’s 

databases. 

The reliance upon information technology has changed the nature of espionage. 

Information is more valuable. Nations will use the traditional means of espionage 

(infiltration and recruitment) to obtain access to information, but information technologies have created a gigantic new opportunity. Hacking into computer networks 

(which are vulnerable and likely to remain so for years) provides new, low cost and 

low risk opportunities for espionage. Eight or nine countries have the advanced 

technical skills needed for these operations and smaller countries could hire hackers 

from the criminal world—we know of at least one instance where this has occurred. 

Conflict in cyberspace is clandestine, so it can be difficult to assess our opponents’ 

intentions and capabilities. It is easier to assess the vulnerability of U.S. systems 

and the consequences of an information attack. U.S. networks are very vulnerable. 

Even highly sensitive networks used for command and control or intelligence are not 

invulnerable. From an intelligence perspective, several nations, have exploited the 

vulnerabilities of U.S. government networks to gain valuable information. These foreign intelligence efforts and the inadequate U.S. response have damaged national 

security. 

You heard last week about some of the problems that some agencies face. Their 

testimony highlights that securing Federal networks from cyber attack is one of the 

greatest challenges facing the United States, and that the scope of the challenge and 

the threat to national security are difficult to appreciate fully. Several incidents that 

occurred in the past few months help to illustrate the scale of the problem. In December and January 2006, for example, the Naval War College, the National Defense University, and other DOD facilities had to take computer networks offline 

after a foreign entity infected them with spyware. Before the last shuttle launch, 

NASA had to block e-mail attachments to avoid outsider attempts to gain access before a Shuttle launch. And as you heard last week, the Department of Commerce 

had to all of the computers at the Bureau of Industry and Security offline after they 

were hacked and infected with spyware. 

In contrast to espionage, the threat of the disruption of services remains hypothetical. Cyber-espionage is a routine occurrence, but there have been no disruption 

of services. We should not take much comfort from this, however. If an opponent 

9 

can hack in to Federal networks to steal information, they are likely to also be able 

to hack in to implant malicious software that could be triggered in a crisis to disrupt 

services or to scramble data. It is safe to assume that many of our potential opponents are planning informational attacks to disrupt U.S. government services and 

databases. 

It is easy to overstate the effect of this disruption, but a cyberattack that increases uncertainty in the mind of an opponent degrades that opponent’s effectiveness. This is a classic intelligence strategy, and cyber attacks on information systems provide new and expanded means to execute it. Denial and deception can 

make opponents certain that they know what is happening when, in fact, what they 

believe is wrong, or it can make them unsure that they know what is happening. 

Finding ways to inject false information into the planning and decision processes of 

an opponent, or manipulating information that is already in that system to make 

it untrustworthy, can provide military advantage. In the event of a conflict, our opponents will pursue an informational strategy that seeks to expand uncertainty and 

confusion and this will likely involve efforts to disrupt Federal networks. 

This litany of threats and risks might lead some to ask if the U.S. was better off 

before it depended so heavily on computer networks. The answer to that question 

is no. The benefits to the U.S. that come from the greater use of networks and computers outweigh the damage from poor cybersecurity. It is better to have networks 

than to be without them, and the use of computer networks provides the U.S an 

advantage in its economy and its military operations. However, the porousness of 

our Federal networks erodes those benefits. Greater attention to cybersecurity 

would increase the benefits our nation gains from networks and close off an avenue 

of asymmetric advantage to our opponents. 

There have been serious efforts in the national security community to make their 

networks more secure. Our most sensitive military and intelligence functions are 

probably secure. Some civil crucial networks are more secure—much attention has 

been paid to Fedwire, the Federal Reserves electronic funds transfer system, for example. But, as you heard last week, many agency networks remain poorly secured, 

and it is safe to say that reams of diplomatic, scientific, administrative and defense 

industrial information at the various agencies have not been adequately secured. In 

looking at the security of Federal networks, it is fair to say that while the U.S. is 

better off than it was five years ago or ten years ago, the improvement has been 

unevenly distributed among agencies. Some are secure, most are not. 

Additionally, some efforts to improve cybersecurity have not had the benefits we 

expected. It is quite possible for our opponents to hack a computer running software 

that has Common Criteria certification, on a network that has met the requirements 

of ISO 19779, at an agency that has gotten good marks on FISMA. In other words, 

you can meet all the formal requirements and still be vulnerable. 

Network security is also a dynamic situation, dynamic in the sense that attacks 

are continuous and continuously changing. We should applaud those agencies that 

have, after some months, discovered their networks have been hacked and have 

taken steps to undo that hack, but our next question should be, ‘‘and now what are 

you doing.’’ Attacks on Federal networks are continuous, and fixing one problem 

does not mean that we have checked the box and can turn our attention elsewhere. 

How doe we change this situation? There is no silver bullet, no single program 

or effort that will remedy this problem. Increased funding will not improve security. 

The Federal Government is a complex enterprise, with thousands of networks and 

hundreds of thousands of computers. No single agency has control of this collection 

of networks. Some Federal networks are among the most secure in the world, although even these are not immune from attack. Others are routinely penetrated. 

Some systems use the most advanced technologies. Others are legacy systems, running programs that may date back many years and which, for all practical purposes, 

cannot be secured. 

Making networks more secure is a large and complex problem. The core of the 

problem is organizational. Although it has been more than a decade since the Marsh 

report on the risks posed by cyber attack to critical infrastructure, and although 

there has been progress, the Federal Government is still disorganized when it comes 

to cyber security. The Department of Homeland Security, the Federal CIO Council, 

and the Office of Management and Budget all play a role in securing Federal networks. But cybersecurity remains a low priority and an afterthought for many agencies, and the Federal response to cybersecurity remains largely ad hoc and dispersed. 

Along with better organization, the U.S. also needs a better strategy. There is, 

of course, a National Cyber Strategy from 2003, but that strategy is now outdated. 

It shifted too much of the burden for security to the private sector and did not resolve key issues regarding responsibility within the government. A new, comprehenVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
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sive cyber security strategy for the Federal Government would need to include a 

number of complementary measures to reduce vulnerabilities. The following paragraphs provide a brief outline of some of the major elements of this approach. 

Rationalizing and streamlining governmental processes for improving cybersecurity is essential. There are too many interagency groups and committees working 

on the same problem, often with the same people, and few of them have the authority to make any real progress. The U.S. does not need a new White House cyber 

czar, but it does need to do more to direct and coordinate efforts by the various 

agencies. The recent creation of a cybersecurity Policy Coordinating Committee at 

the National Security Council is an important first step. 

Second, the U.S. can do more in the area of improving agency practices when it 

comes to networks security. Cybersecurity is still a third tier priority at many agencies. If gangs of foreigners broke into the State or Commerce Departments and carried off dozens of file cabinets, there would be a crisis. When the same thing happens in cyberspace, we shrug it off as another of those annoying computer glitches 

we must live with. Agencies need to be held accountable for breaches. Our current 

approach is to treat losses of information through inadequate security as something 

that is separate from the performance of senior officials. 

The separation between the national security agencies and civilian agencies needs 

to be reduced. The national security agencies do better at security, but there is no 

good mechanism for sharing their expertise and experience with the civilian agencies. Developing better ways to coordinate network security efforts between agencies 

and to identify, share and enforce best practices for Federal network security across 

agencies would reduce risk and damage. 

Better identity management would also help improve cybersecurity. As long as it 

is easy to impersonate someone else on the internet, networks will never be secure. 

In this, initiatives like HSPD 12 and the Real ID Act offer the possibility to reduce 

risk. HSPD–12 mandated strong identity procedures and credential for the Federal 

Government and its contractors HSPD–12, along with Real ID, lay the foundation 

for robust authentication of identity. Much remains to be done, but the U.S. has 

begun to adjust how it manages identities to fit digital technologies and this will 

improve security. 

Continued attention to continuity of operations and continuity of government can 

mitigate the risk of disruption of Federal services. As part of a Federal cybersecurity 

strategy, this would entail measures to keep networks operating at some minimal 

level and to provide continued access to data. This is an area where there has also 

been some progress. 

One new area the government can begin to address is how to improve software 

assurance. This means creating processes for transparency, evaluation and coordination in the production of more secure software for government use. In considering 

this, let me refer to an episode from American history, when the U.S. faced a similar 

problem and what it did about it. This story has an unlikely hero—Herbert Hoover. 

Hoover may have been a terrible or unlucky President, but he was a great Secretary 

of Commerce. One of the things he did in the 1920’s as Secretary of Commerce was 

call a number of leading companies from different sectors - automobiles, electrical 

equipment and so on, to the Commerce Department and say that they had to come 

up with a means to improve quality and interoperability in their products. This was 

the start of the industry-led standards process. 

We need something similar to happen for security and software production. There 

are existing standards bodies for software. These standards are aimed at products— 

how they perform and how they interoperate. The U.S. does not need to duplicate 

them. What we need is a new means for understanding how to produce software 

in ways that can assure security. 

CSIS recently did a study that looked at how some of the larger IT companies 

write software. We found considerable attention to security among the companies, 

and that each company had a set of ‘best practices’ for software assurance that 

make their products more secure. We also found that each company’s best practices 

were somewhat different, and that these practices were sometimes unevenly applied. 

Finding a way to extend commercial best practices for assurance would benefit 

both Federal networks and the private sector. The procedures companies use as part 

of their software production process internal reviews and testing for performance 

and security, external testing and red-teaming, and the use of software review tools 

(some commercial, some proprietary and developed by the software company itself) 

to find vulnerabilities or errors. These practices offer the building blocks for an approach that could reduce vulnerabilities. 

The key to these new processes should be to build upon what is already done 

within the private sector when it comes to software. Software producers realize the 

11 

importance their customers place on assurance and security and have adjusted their 

internal procedures to meet this market demand. While there is much commonality 

and overlap in what companies do, each company approaches the issues of assurance and security somewhat differently. From these differences, we can extract best 

practices and requirements that will address, as part of a larger solution set, the 

risks posed by foreign involvement in software production. 

Please note that I am saying best practices, not standards. An attempt to have 

the government mandate standards for software production and then enforce them 

would damage the American economy without producing any benefit for security. So 

new regulations, new government standards are not the solution. However, the government could encourage industry to use best practices for making secure software 

by linking practices to its acquisitions policies. If the Federal Government gave preference in its acquisitions to software that was developed with trustworthy processes, 

it would provide an incentive that would benefit both the Federal and the commercial markets. 

Companies are making serious efforts to improve software assurance, but the government needs to be able to understand and guide those efforts. Traditional approaches to governance—command and control or heavy regulation—would increase 

assurance at an unacceptable cost. Software assurance may be the effort that promises the greatest returns to cybersecurity. The U.S. needs news ways to let the government and the private sector work together to develop some generalized set of 

best practices for software production, and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security are involved in some interesting work in this area. 

Finally, the U.S. can take steps to keep itself at the forefront of technology. This 

goes beyond simply funding more cyber-security research. Overall, the U.S. invests 

more than other nations in research, but this investment may not be enough, in an 

era of increased international competition, to preserve leadership. Federal investment in the research that undergirds technological innovation offers tremendous returns for both the economy and for security. Innovation makes life more difficult for 

opponents. Measures that improve the climate for innovation in the U.S. also help 

build a skilled domestic workforce. 

These steps—better Federal organization, best practices for coding combined with 

acquisitions, better identity management, attention to continuity of government and 

renewed support for technological leadership—can form a coherent strategy for improving the security of Federal networks and cybersecurity in general. Being able 

to articulate a strategy is important, but implementation will always be a challenge. 

In this, Congressional oversight is critical to this. Without Congress to press senior 

leadership at Federal agencies to do better, progress will take much longer than 

would otherwise be the case. 

It has been more than twelve years since the U.S. became concerned with the 

vulnerabilities created by its use of computer networks. There has been some improvement in that time, but not enough. We have an opportunity in the next few 

years to change this with improved Federal organization and better strategies. Our 

goal should not be perfect security, but to gain more advantage than our opponents 

from the use of information technology. 

I thank the committee again for the opportunity to testify. I ask that my entire 

statement be entered into the record, and I will be happy to take your questions. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Dr. Geer. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL E. GEER, JR., PRINCIPAL, GEER RISK 

SERVICES, LLC 

Mr. GEER. Thank you. 

I don’t do this every day, so I am just going to start with what 

I know of as the four verities of government, which is most exciting 

ideas are not important, most important ideas are not exciting, not 

every problem has a good solution, and every solution has a side 

effect. And that is amazingly true in the field that I work in, cybersecurity. Every bit of that is true. 

I am going to try to give you five priorities from my point of 

view. 

The first is, we need a system of security metrics, metrics that 

actually work. One of the great scientists of all time, Lord Calvin, 

said, and I have to read this: 

12 

When you can measure what you are talking about, and express 

it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot 

measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is a meager and unsatisfactory sort; it may be the beginning 

of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to 

the stage of science. 

As we stand here today, we do have some metrics. Most of them 

are imperfect—all of them are imperfect. A few are good enough for 

decision making. 

In late 2003, the NSF held a sequestered invitation-only workshop to determine the 10-year ‘‘grand challenges’’ in cybersecurity. 

One of those four grand challenges that we came up with one 

speaks directly to this: Within a decade, we must have a body of 

quantitative information risk management as sophisticated as 

quantitative financial risk management. That item actually was 

mine, and it was my pleasure to present it to House Science. 

Good metrics aren’t cooked in the kitchen. They don’t appear on 

demand. Like statistics, they can mislead. The purpose of risk 

management is to improve the future, not to explain the past. Security metrics are the servants of risk management, and risk management is about making decisions under uncertainty. Therefore, 

the metrics I am talking about, the only ones we are interested in, 

are those that support decision making about risk for the purpose 

of managing that risk. 

I would recommend that some sort of clearinghouse review of 

what we know how to measure and in particular how good what 

we know how to measure is at predicting the future would be a 

good thing to do right away. 

Second priority. The demand for security expertise outstrips the 

supply. 

Information security is, in my view, the hardest technical field on 

the planet. Nothing is stable, surprise is constant, and defenders 

are at a permanent structural disadvantage compared to the attack 

side. There is no fixing that. 

But because the demand for expertise so outstrips the supply, 

the fraction of practitioners who are charlatans is rising. Because 

the demands of expertise are so difficult, the training deficit is critical. We don’t have the time to create all the skills that are required. We have to steal them from other fields. 

The reason cybersecurity is not worse than it might otherwise be 

is because a substantial majority of those who are currently practicing were trained in other fields and, therefore, they bring the expertise of those other fields to this one. We are lucky that that is 

true. Civil engineers, public health people, actuaries, aircraft designers, lawyers, you name it, all of them can contribute something. 

We do not have the facility to train people from scratch at the 

rate at which we need it; and so anything you can do to encourage 

people to come into this field who are themselves smart, analytic, 

willing to operate under a high degree of uncertainty and convinced 

that this is worth doing, anything you can help with that, please 

do. 

Third priority. What you can’t see is more important than what 

you can. 

13 

Perhaps you got a taste of it last week. I was not aware of that 

hearing. I don’t follow this kind of thing. Let me be clear, the opposition is professional. It is not joyriders. It is not braggarts. It used 

to be, but it isn’t now. Because of the sheer complexity of modern 

networks, there is any number of places for people of ill-will or for 

computer software of ill-will to hide. And that is not getting better, 

and it won’t get better. 

The complexity for the most part is because product manufacturers are under competitive pressure to keep inserting new features 

into their products. This is not going to go away, and it is not 

something I would suggest that you attack. Were there no 

attackers, the way in which software is built would be a miracle 

of efficiency. The fact that there are attackers, the fact there are 

sentient opponents, the fact that this is not evolution but intelligent design of a nasty sort, that is what we have to work on. 

Complex systems tend to fail in complex manners. It is very hard 

to figure that out in advance. It is exceptionally hard. That is why 

I say it is probably the hardest field there is. 

In particular, I think what you need to do is to do something that 

I don’t like the sound of but I will say. Ignorance of the law is no 

defense on my part. My swimming pool is an attractive nuisance, 

whether I like it or not. I don’t think we can go much farther and 

say that I didn’t know it had a flaw is any kind of defense. And 

software licenses, to the last one of them, have that built into 

them, and it has to be addressed. 

The fourth one is we have to have some sort of information sharing. You all know about all of this. I am not going to belabor it. 

The model I would recommend to you is the Centers for Disease 

Control. They only have three things that matter: the mandatory 

reporting of communicable disease, the skill to separate statistical 

anomalies from true hot spots, and an away team to handle things 

like an outbreak of ebola. Beyond that, nothing matters. 

I would suggest that something like that needs to be done here. 

No general counsel acting rationally will ever share attack data. 

There is nothing but downside risk from where they are. 

So if I can give you a research grade problem to work on, the research grade problem is this: Find some way to do technical deidentification of attack data so that general counsel’s rational fear 

of sharing that data can be put aside under a technical guarantee. 

They do not and they will not believe your procedural guarantees. 

We have got to have a technical guarantee. This is a research 

grade problem that needs to be done. 

The fifth one and last one is perhaps the hardest of all, and that 

is accountability rather than access control. Access control is who 

you are, authentication, what you are allowed to do given who you 

are, authorization. It doesn’t scale. And if we try to make it scale— 

that is not to say everybody does it well as it is, but if we try to 

make that scale, the rate at which data and facilities and knobs to 

adjust are increasing is out of our ability to add to that full-blown 

access control going forward. 

We have to do something else. This is a free country. I didn’t 

have to ask anyone’s permission to be here, to get on the bus or 

what have you. But if I sufficiently badly screw up, then I will have 

to pay for it. We are in the physical world committed now to surVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
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veillance, whether we like it or not. You can’t live your life without 

metal detectors and cameras. We are going have to do that in this 

world. 

And if I may say so, please make sure that the surveillance we 

have to do is directed at data and computers and not at people. It 

is a choice we have to make, and it is an ugly choice. 

I will just say the five things again and be quiet. 

We need a system of security metrics, and it is a research grade 

problem. 

The demand for security expertise outstrips the supply, and it is 

both a training and a recruitment problem. 

What you can’t see is more important than what you can, and 

you can never mistake the absence of evidence for the evidence of 

absence. 

Information sharing that matters does not happen and cannot 

happen until we have technical guarantees, rather than procedural 

ones. 

And accountability is an idea whose time come, but—to steal 

Leon Uris’ phrase—it has a terrible beauty. 

Thank you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Dr. Geer. 

[The statement of Mr. Geer follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DANIEL E. GEER

Introduction 

The Nation’s cybersecurity challenges are profound and not easily addressed. Perfection is not possible; rather this is entirely a matter of risk management, not risk 

avoidance. Easy to say.Hard, though not impossible, to do. Starting yesterday would 

be good. Money alone will not solve anything. Policy alone will not solve anything. 

Fixing what isn’t broken will waste money capital and policy capital; fixing what 

is broken will require both. Wishful thinking, whether explicit or implicit, intentional or delusional, will allow the problem to get bigger. 

In the testimony which follows, I make no attempt to argue from first principles 

or to provide every supporting footnote that would be required to prove the assertions made; I don’t think you want it and the page limit prevents it. I do, however, 

have all the proof that can be had, and stake my professional reputation on what 

is said here. I trust that you have invited me because you are aware of that reputation and my bona fides in these matters. The material is brief in the hope that brevity increases the likelihood it will be read. This is not your last chance to get my 

attention; I hope it is not my last chance to get yours. 

Priority number one: A system of security metrics. 

‘‘You cannot manage what you cannot measure’’ is a cliche ́, but, happily,one of the 

great scientists of all time, William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, put it as well as it can 

be put: 

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you 

cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is a meagre and unsatisfactory 

kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely,in your 

thoughts, advanced to the stage of science. 

As we stand here today,we have some security metrics. None of them are perfected though many are good enough for decision making if, and only if, they are 

collected by persons whose aim is truth rather than positioning. In late 2003, the 

Computing Research Association and the National Science Foundation held an invitation-only workshop to determine the ten-year ‘‘grand challenges’’ for NSF investment in cybersecurity. Of the four grand challenges settled upon, one speaks directly to this: Within a decade, we must have a body of quantitative information 

risk management as sophisticated as the then existing body of financial risk management. That item was mine, and I had the honor of presenting it to this body immediately after the conclusion of the workshop. 

Good metrics are not cooked in the kitchen. They are not created simply because 

the Congress demands them. Like statistics, they can mislead. In your line of work, 

15 

you doubtless know this better than I and I know it well. The purpose of risk management is to improve the future, not to explain the past. Security metrics are the 

servants of risk management, and risk management is about making decisions 

under uncertainty.Therefore, the only security metrics we are interested in are 

those that support decision making about risk for the purpose of managing that 

risk. I urge the Congress to put explaining the past, particularly for the purpose 

of assigning blame, behind itself. Demanding report cards, legislating under the influence of adrenaline, imagining that cybersecurity is an end rather than merely a 

means—all these and more inevitably prolong a world in which we are procedurally 

correct but factually stupid. A clearinghouse review of what we know how to measure and how good what we know is at predicting the future would be a good start 

as we do not even know what it is that we do not know. 

Priority number two: The demand for security expertise outstrips the supply. 

Information security is perhaps the hardest technical field on the planet. Nothing 

is stable, surprise is constant, and all defenders work at a permanent, structural 

disadvantage compared to the attackers. Because the demands for expertise so outstrip the supply,the fraction of all practitioners who are charlatans is rising. Because the demands of expertise are so difficult, the training deficit is critical. We 

do not have the time to create, as if from scratch, all the skills required. We must 

steal them from other fields where parallel challenges exist. The reason cybersecurity is not worse is that a substantial majority of top security practitioners bring 

other skills into the field; in my own case, I am a biostatistician by training. Civil 

engineers, public health practitioners, actuaries, aircraft designers, lawyers, and on 

and on—they all have expertise we can use, and until we have a training regime 

sufficient to supply the unmet demand for security expertise we should be both 

grateful for the renaissance quality of the information security field and we should 

mine those other disciplines for everything we can steal. If you can help bring people into the field, especially from conversion, then please do so. In the meantime, 

do not believe all that you hear from so-called experts. Santayana had it right when 

he said that ‘‘Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect; it is shameful to give it up 

too soon, or to the first comer.’’ 

Priority number three: What you cannot see is more important than what 

you can. 

The opposition is professional. It is no longer joyriders or braggarts. Because of 

the sheer complexity of modern, distributed, interdigitated, networked computer systems, the number of hiding places for unwanted software and unwanted visitors is 

very large. The complexity,for the most part, comes from competitive pressure to 

add feature-richness to products; there is no market-leading product where one or 

a small group of people knows it in its entirety,and components from any pervasive 

system tend to be used and re-used in ways that even their designers did not anticipate. Were there no attackers, this would be a miracle of efficiency and goodness. 

But unlike any other industrial product, information systems are at risk not from 

accident, not from cosmic radiation, and not from clumsy operation but from sentient opponents. The risk is not, as some would blithely say, ‘‘evolving’’ if by evolving 

the speaker means to invoke the course of Nature. The risk is due to intelligent design, and there is nothing random about it. 

Because complex systems fail complexly, it is not possible to anticipate all the failure modes of large and therefore complex information systems. This complexity provides both opportunity and hiding places for attackers. Damping out complexity is 

not something that even the Congress can take on, but security failures come from 

it as surely as dawn comes from the east. Given that most software license agreements are an outrage, it is high time that security failures in software systems be 

deemed per se offenses. Just as my ignorance of the law is no defense and my swimming pool is an attractive nuisance whether I like it or not, ignorance of installed 

vulnerabilities can no longer be a defense for any party. 

Priority number four: Information sharing that matters. 

On the Internet every sociopath is your next door neighbor; you can never retreat 

to a safe neighborhood. Your ability to defend depends on your ability to know what 

the current threat profile is, both generally to all and specifically to yourself. For 

any given attack, you have zero ability to know whether you are a target of choice 

or a target of opportunity unless you share attack data with others. 

Our Centers for Disease Control lead the world, full stop. There are only three 

things that make this so: (1) Mandatory reporting of communicable disease, (2) Longitudinal analysis and the skill to separate statistical anomalies from genuine harbingers of important change, and (3) Away teams to handle outbreaks of, say, Ebola. 

16 

All the rest is details. Of the three, the one that matters most is the mandatory 

reporting of communicable disease, and explicitly on the grounds that individual 

medical privacy must yield when the public risk is above threshold. 

No General Counsel will share information risk data willingly, and no Chief Information Security Officer outranks his/her GC. Shared information does always carry 

some acute chance that it contains a previously unknown embarrassment, while any 

benefit from sharing is diffuse and delayed. Any person is risk averse when they 

don’t know what risk they are taking and more so when the risk is involuntary; the 

GC is rational to not share data, in other words. The Congress should be wary of 

legislating irrationality, as always. 

To get information shared the need is for a technical guarantee of harmlessness 

rather than a procedural guarantee. This is, in other words, a straight-up research 

question: How to provide technical de-identification of useful cybersecurity data so 

that that data can be shared with low or no risk to its source. Such technical protection should be open-sourced so that its strength can be independently evaluated a ́

priori rather than the ‘‘trust us’’ nature of a procedural guarantee. Fund this research. 

Priority number five: Accountability,not access control. 

Information is the coin of the economic realm, and information that is used is information that moves about. Winners have the most information in play; losers have 

too much. Security technology is the fine line between the most information in play 

and too much information in play. The conventional answer to protecting information is to in some way limit who can do what and to which. Authentication (who 

you are) and Authorization (what you can do, given who you are) represent the conventional approach, sometimes jointly called Access Control. The problem is, these 

technologies do not scale and if you try to have ever finer control over the avalanche 

of new data items appearing by the second, you will be contributing to the complexity that is the bane of security. 

What does scale is Accountability. In a free country,you don’t have to ask permission for much of anything, but that freedom is buttressed by the certain knowledge 

that if you sufficiently screw things then up you will have to pay. The economics 

of the access-control model of information security do not scale; rather economics 

favor an accountability model focused on the monitoring of information use rather 

than the gatekeeping of information access. This means surveillance of data use in 

the sense of being able to reconstruct how information is used when it is used badly. 

This does not mean to throw away our existing investment in access control, but 

further investment in that will only produce inefficiency and a false sense of security. 

We are, sadly if necessarily, making surveillance a commonplace of physical security; it is no longer possible to live in a world without cameras. We will have to, 

sadly if necessarily, make surveillance a commonplace of cybersecurity. As you consider how to make these dreadful choices, I suggest that the unit of observation be 

a datum, not a person, that if a surveillance system has to protect the digital world, 

that that surveillance be directed at data, not persons. If anything, this is risk management applied to risk management. 

Summary 

• We need a system of security metrics, and it is a research grade problem. 

• The demand for security expertise outstrips the supply,and it is a training 

problem and a recruitment problem. 

• What you cannot see is more important than what you can, and so the Congress must never mistake the absence of evidence for the evidence of absence, 

especially when it comes to information security. 

• Information sharing that matters does not and will not happen without research into technical guarantees of non-traceability. 

• Accountability is the idea whose time has come, but it has a terrible beauty. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Mr. Saydjari. 

STATEMENT OF O. SAMI SAYDJARI, PRESIDENT, 

PROFESSIONALS FOR CYBER DEFENSE CHIEF EXECUTIVE 

OFFICER, CYBER DEFENSE AGENCY, LLC 

Mr. SAYDJARI. Chairman Langevin, Ranking Member McCaul, 

members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to testify today on this matter of utmost national importance. 

17 

I come to you as the leader of the Professionals For Cyber Defense, a nonprofit group of recognized national cybersecurity leaders advocating for sound U.S. cyber defense policy. 

I have a written statement which, with your permission, I would 

like to enter into the record. I will briefly summarize it and look 

forward to responding to the committee’s questions. 

In 2002, more than 50 leading cyber defense experts signed a letter, feeling compelled to warn President Bush of strategic threat to 

our Nation from attacks to our information infrastructure. Our 

message was simple. I am going to repeat that message to you 

today. The U.S. faces a national strategic threat requiring a national strategic response, and you can help today. 

First, to a strategic threat. The lack of a strategic response must 

come, in our opinion, from a lack of belief in an established strategic threat. Even an uncertainty and a possibility of the strategic 

threat that we see demands immediate action to resolve that uncertainty to move forward on sound policy. Because of this, the Professionals for Cyber Defense developed and vetted a simulated strategic attack campaign against the United States to help establish 

the nature and effect of such an attack. 

Our findings are sobering. The U.S. is vulnerable to strategically 

crippling cyber attacks from nation-state adversaries. The level of 

devastation to our economy and to our way of life is potentially disastrous. The ripping of our social fabric will be on an order that 

we only glimpsed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We will 

move from being a superpower to a third world country practically 

overnight. We are a Nation unprepared to defend ourselves against 

this strategic threat and recover from it when it happens. 

Therefore, the PCD recommends that the United States engage 

in a national threat assessment immediately to verify our findings 

and move forward. The critical IT infrastructure is as legitimate a 

part of our territory as physical land. We depend upon it now for 

our survival, just like land in the industrial and agrarian ages. 

Cyberspace controls real-world critical assets like power generators, power distribution, oil and gas pipelines. The information age 

requires us to defend this digital territory. Therefore, the government must provide for the common defense of this new territory. 

This is not a matter of big government versus small government. 

It is not a matter of interfering or controlling the private sector. 

The private sector openly has declared that they desperately need 

the government’s help against defending against nation-state adversaries. There are a lack of incentives for the private sector to 

solve this problem on their own, just as there is a lack of incentive 

to solve this problem to defend our land. 

Second, the strategy response. An effective strategy response is 

a multi-billion dollar national priority investment run by the country’s best expert focused on defensive capabilities as soon as possible. This will require an unprecedented level of collaboration between government and the private sector. Think in terms of a national cyber militia, where our private sector and government are 

working hand in hand to defend our critical systems against nation-state adversaries. 

We must start now. The capabilities will take a minimum of 3- 

years to establish and will take beyond that to put into effect. We 

18 

cannot wait until we are in the middle of a disaster to begin this 

development of these capabilities. 

A program of this order requires a very, very large ante. We esti- mate a $500 million ante to begin this program is essential. 

The organization is inherently multi-agency. Ultimately, we will 

need a centralized national level, top talent, agile, small special 

projects office to coordinate and run this effort throughout this program. 

Third, Congress can help today by doing three things: 

First, support required funding levels. We are talking about $50 

million for the Department of Homeland Security R&D. That is an 

order of magnitude off for the ante. We are in deep trouble. 

Second, advocate this initiative to agency heads in a formal letter 

to motivate immediate discretionary investment to begin to jump 

start this program right away. 

Third, lead the way by commissioning blue ribbon panels and 

special investigative committees to help establish momentum. Inaction isn’t an option for any of us who know the stakes and are entrusted by the people to provide for the common defense and to protect the future of this great Nation. 

The PCD stands ready to help. 

Thank you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Saydjari. 

[The statement of Mr. Saydjari follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF O. SAMI SAYDJARI

Chairman Langevin, Ranking Member McCaul, and Members of the Subcommittee, it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to testify before you on an issue 

that is of utmost national urgency. I come to you as the leader of the Professionals 

for Cyber Defense, a non-profit group of recognized national cyber security leaders 

dedicated to advocating for the development of a sound cyber defense policy for the 

United States. 

Summary. (1) The US is vulnerable to a strategically crippling cyber attack from nation-state-class adversaries. Cyber space primarily controls 

our real-world critical assets and is as legitimate a part of our territory as 

physical land, thus the government must provide for the common defense of 

this new territory. (2) A strategic multi-billion-dollar investment run by the 

country’s best experts can mitigate this risk if we start now with $500 million. (3) Congress can help today by supporting this funding level, advocating this initiative to Agency heads in a formal letter to motivate immediate discretionary investment, and leading the way by commissioning 

blue-ribbon panels and special investigative committees to help establish 

momentum. 

Imagine the lights in this room suddenly go out, and we lose all power. We try 

to use our cell phones, but the lines of communication are dead. We try to access 

the Internet with our battery-powered laptops, but the Internet, too, is down. After 

a while, we venture out into the streets to investigate if this power outage is affecting more than just our building, and the power is indeed out as far as the eye can 

see. A passer-by tells us the banks are closed and the ATMs aren’t working. The 

streets are jammed because the traffic lights are out, and people are trying to leave 

their workplaces en masse. Day turns to night, but the power hasn’t returned. Radio 

and TV stations aren’t broadcasting. The telephone and Internet still aren’t working, so there’s no way to check in with loved ones. After a long, restless night, morning comes, but we still don’t have power or communication. People are beginning 

to panic, and local law enforcement can’t restore order. As another day turns to 

night, looting starts, and the traffic jams get worse. Word begins to spread that the 

US has been attacked—not by a conventional weapon, but by a cyber weapon. As 

a result, our national power grid, telecommunications, and financial systems have 

been disrupted—worse yet, they won’t be back in a few hours or days, but in 

months. The airports and train stations have closed. Food production has ceased. 

The water supply is rapidly deteriorating. Banks are closed so people’s life savings 

19 

are out of reach and worthless. The only things of value now are gasoline, food and 

water, and firewood traded on the black market. We’ve gone from being a superpower to a third-world nation practically overnight. 

We saw what happened to the social fabric when Hurricane Katrina wiped out 

the infrastructure in a relatively small portion of our country: chaos ensued and the 

impact lasted a long time. What would be left after months of recovery from such 

devastation nationwide? Such strategic cyber attack scenarios are plausible and 

thus worthy of urgent attention. We are a nation unprepared to properly defend ourselves and recover from a strategic cyber attack. 

My purpose today is to make a case for congressional action to support a major 

government initiative that could mitigate the risk of a devastating strategic cyber 

attack against the US. To understand the plausibility of such attacks without undertaking any action would be unconscionable. Even uncertainty by government 

leaders regarding such plausibility demands immediate action to remove the uncertainty and enable responsible policy decisions. The only rational approach to address 

a problem of this magnitude and scale is a concerted high-priority government program on the order of the Manhattan Project. Failure to embark on such a program 

now will have disastrous consequences to our national interests sooner rather than 

later. 

I will now review the case for action our group made in a letter to President 

George W. Bush in 2002, highlight the true nature of the national strategic 

threat in a realistic cyber attack campaign called Dark Angel, outline the only reasonable strategic countermeasure in the form of an urgent, high-priority, multibillion-dollar national program that we’ve dubbed the ‘‘Cyber Manhattan Project,’’ 

point to some recent promising but woefully underfunded cross-agency analysis 

and planning that affirms both the grave situation and the need for a national 

program, and then I’ll close with some recommendations on moving forward. 

Background. In 1939, Albert Einstein felt duty-bound to warn President Franklin Roosevelt of a strategic threat to the country from nuclear weapons and the need 

for immediate action. In 2002, more than 50 leading cyber defense experts similarly 

felt compelled to warn President Bush of a strategic threat of a different kind, one 

to our critical information infrastructure. On 11 September 2001, terrorists used our 

air transport infrastructure against us and made a serious impact on both our economy and sense of security. Against a strong country such as the US, frontal attacks 

make little sense, but our vulnerability to infrastructure attacks makes such attacks 

increasingly likely. 

The signers included a former Director of Central Intelligence, a former Director 

of the National Security Agency, a former Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and many of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers. 

We warned President Bush that (a) the situation was grave, with nation-states such 

as China developing serious offensive capabilities, (b) a national initiative with priority, top talent, funding, and focus on par with the Manhattan Project was urgently 

needed to create cyber defense capabilities in close partnership with industry, (c) 

threading together components of national exercises, results from accidental information system failures, and actual cyber attacks, one could create devastating scenarios of strategic damage to the US, and (d) that the private-sector economy 

wouldn’t solve the problem without government leadership because of a lack of incentive to do so. Since we signed the letter, little has changed with respect to the 

situation or the trend. It’s time to move forward. 

A subset of the signers formed a group called the Professionals for Cyber Defense 

(PCD) to engage in continuous advocacy. In summer 2002, the PCD panel reviewed 

the President’s draft National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. They found that the 

plan offered valuable advice to counter lower-grade threats but that it had a fundamental flaw in its unstated premise that there was no strategic national threat. In 

response, we recommended that the government urgently initiate a scientific 

process to establish the scale, gravity, and validity of the national strategic 

threat of cyber war against our nation. We expected that such a process would 

validate the repeated warnings from the technical community in reports from the 

Defense Science Board, National Academy of Sciences, and the President’s Commission. 

But in our dialogue with the government, we learned of two barriers to aggressive 

action: (1) the perception that government investment would require ‘‘big government’’ private-sector interference, and (2) the case for national strategic vulnerability wasn’t yet credible to senior leadership. In retrospect, on the first issue, we 

failed to realize that government leadership simply did not see cyber space as a territory on which we deeply depend and that must be protected and defended—rather, 

some people in leadership positions viewed it as an optional digital playground of 

20 

bits and bytes for exchanging personal messages or looking at hobby information. 

But this isn’t a matter of ‘‘big government’’ versus ‘‘small government’’; it’s a matter 

of our government stepping up to its constitutionally required duty to defend the 

US against threats beyond the capabilities and means of the private sector. We 

deeply understood the second issue, which is why we advocated for an urgent national-scale analysis of the vulnerability as the starting point for a program plan. 

In September 2002, the panel decided to sketch a case for action in the form of a 

realistic strategic cyber attack campaign against the US called ‘‘Dark Angel.’’ This 

sketch was intended to be a starting point because it could demonstrate the problem’s gravity. 

The Threat: Dark Angel. What is the problem, and what is the solution? For 

the problem, we must ask if a strategic national vulnerability exists, what its scope 

is, and how bad ‘‘bad’’ can get. Without understanding the detailed nature of the 

problem, the efficacy of any proposed strategy is unknown. We must also ask why 

any proposed national strategy will solve the problem, and what happens if it 

doesn’t. These seem like childishly simple questions, but the answers have been elusive. Indications are that national economic devastation is quite possible, and when 

we’re in the middle of the disaster isn’t the time to start thinking about how to respond. Preparing for cyber war will take in excess of three years and require infrastructure instrumentation for critical computer systems, experienced cadres of defenders who are well trained and exercised, control systems to execute strategic responses, effective architectures to mitigate risk, and a national program to create 

defensive capabilities. Thus, understanding the problem is an immediate need. 

Planning. The small PCD planning team included a campaign planner, two experts in the financial sector, three in electrical power, and one in transportation. 

We assumed only unclassified critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. Our intent was 

to illustrate the damage a robust campaign that used multiple attack paths could 

cause and to create a plan with sufficient detail to convince experts in the domain. 

The plan took roughly 30 days to create. We assumed the adversary had three years 

of preparation, $500 million, and 30 days to actually execute the attack. The attack 

campaign’s goal was to destabilize the US and depress the economy with attacks 

on critical infrastructure, thus reducing our ability to project military power, depleting our will to fight, and creating panic and distrust in the government. 

Our strategic campaign objectives included crippling rail transportation, rupturing 

oil and gas pipelines with improper control (for example, with cyber attacks similar 

to the one on the Soviet Trans-Siberian pipeline causing a three kiloton explosion, 

as described in ‘‘At the Abyss’’ by Thomas Reed), and creating widespread power 

outages by destroying hard-to-replace generators and power-line transformers with 

improper computer control commands. We also simulated attacks on financial services sectors, thus creating mass confusion in transaction settlement systems, flooded 

911 systems with computer-controlled false alarms to create widespread panic, and 

disabled Internet service by performing denial-of-service attacks on the 13 main Domain Name Servers (as has already been partially done in actual cyber attacks). 

In the simulated campaign, we spoofed attack attribution when possible to focus 

attention in the wrong direction; used lethal first strikes (for example, by hitting 

first responders and backups before hitting primary cyber targets); used a rolling 

attack barrage to interfere with recovery processes; delayed attacking instruments, 

such as the Internet, until that means was no longer needed in the campaign; 

bought cyber mercenaries and insiders as needed to gain capabilities and access; 

used non-cyber (physical) attacks on ‘‘tough’’ targets as needed; used psychological 

operations to create distrust in infrastructure and manipulate public opinion; and 

hampered the military by disrupting civilian re-supply chains. 

Our simulated attacks were vetted with experts in each of the key critical infrastructure domains. The essence of the plan and its likely effects were verified. There 

was some uncertainty about the consequences of some attacks—even now—but this 

was due to a lack of knowledge among the entire community to fully assess such 

consequences. It would be hubris to think our adversaries don’t already have 

a plan in place that’s substantially better than our brief sketch or that their 

capabilities to execute such an attack aren’t improving. 

Follow-on. A proper national strategic threat assessment would parallel that of 

Dark Angel, and would involve top industry experts and business leaders, mix in 

military campaign planners, and mix in economists, policy makers, and others as 

needed. Sharing across industry should be encouraged and rewarded. From a management perspective, the assessment should carry presidential authority and priority. There should be three separate teams: one for planning and completing a concrete plan, one to execute the plan to the extent needed for demonstration purposes, 

and one to review the results for validity. 

21 

The assessment must start from the premise built into Dark Angel: that cyber 

warfare will be economic and social warfare. Diagnosis of the source of 

vulnerabilities must be included and reflect that the organization and design of our 

production systems will often be more important than cyber defense technology in 

determining the nature and extent of the destruction. What to defend and what 

kinds of damages to prevent are not self-evident without such an assessment. 

For illustrative purposes, we estimate the resources needed for six critical infra- structure domains would take about $70 million, 300 top-talent experts, and 9 calendar months. The final report would be a definitive estimate of our true national strategic vulnerability to cyber attacks, a compelling case for action, 

and the basis of a prioritized program plan. 

Countermeasure: Cyber Manhattan Project. As part of our dialogue with the 

government in 2002, we elaborated on the proper solution to the strategic vulnerability sketched out by our Dark Angel analysis. Cyber war defense requires orders 

of magnitude more government involvement and resources to avoid overwhelming 

national damages from strategic attacks. We recommended that the government (1) 

step up to a strong defense role against serious attacks, (2) focus on countering strategic attacks that have real-world effects, (3) develop a top-down architecture and 

engineered approach to the defined problem, (4) acknowledge that current technology is insufficient to defend against cyber war, and (5) divide the cost burden 

between the owner (to protect critical private cyber assets) and the government (to 

protect the integrity of the national commons). 

As mentioned earlier, we chose the name ‘‘Cyber Manhattan Project’’ to reflect the 

urgency, priority, focus, top-talent, and funding levels needed. We acknowledge that 

aspects of the analogy are inapt, such as the fact that (1) there is no single, easily 

measurable artifact (such as a bomb), (2) a broad spectrum of talent and organizations must be involved, (3) much of the work must be conducted without classification constraint, and (4) once an initial capability is achieved, a continued investment 

will be needed to maintain our cyber defense’s effectiveness. We sketch the program 

below. 

Vision. We must rapidly overcome our nation’s vulnerability to coordinated strategic cyber attacks from serious enemies. 

Project Description. We need an aggressive, goal-directed, high-priority, national 

program to address the high-level threats that endanger the national well-being. To 

do this, we must engage the brightest scientists, business experts, and engineers, 

and provide them with adequate resources. To guide the program with strategic objectives, we need a top-down architecture that establishes concrete cyber defense capabilities on a specific timeline, including near-term capabilities within three years. 

Capabilities. Some cyber defense capabilities to include are as follows: (1) capability to create system resiliency and quickly recover from inevitable partially successful attacks; (2) a national cyber Command, Control, Communication, and Computer Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) system to measure 

and control mechanisms at multiple echelon levels; (3) a national threat assessment 

capability to drive decisions at some ‘‘required’’ level; (4) cyber firebreak mechanisms and architectures to slow down attacks and reduce potential damage; (5) capability to gather intelligence and inject uncertainty through strategic deception; (6) 

capability to model and simulate the enemy, thereby honing our defenses before incurring damaging strategic cyber attacks; and (7) capability to identify and understand available and acceptable responses from technical, strategic, legal, economic, 

and political perspectives. 

Urgency. Major potential adversaries are actively pursuing cyber war capabilities, 

which indicates the increasing probability of future cyber campaigns. Moreover, (a) 

current cyber defenses and best practices are ineffective, (b) active measures to shut 

down our adversaries’ abilities to attack through physical access will drive them to 

cyber space, and (c) we face potentially greater vulnerability and lethality from combined cyber and physical attacks. Finally, developing a defense to this threat is 

a multiyear effort, so we can’t wait until we find ourselves suffering in the 

midst of our first major strategic attack campaign. 

Priority. A major initiative on the order of the Cyber Manhattan Project is the 

right path to address our current situation. The offensive threat is growing, so defense must be fielded at a faster rate. A top-down approach with a driving architect 

can address the problem and achieve the requisite objectives, but bottom-up efforts, 

even if coordinated, leave gaps because there’s no ownership of key parts of the 

problem. Cyber defense mechanisms must integrate into a coordinated system, and 

cyber defense operations must comprise a fully integrated defensive force. For sucVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
22 

cess, the creation of national cyber defense capabilities must be a national funding 

priority. Can you imagine the original Manhattan Project succeeding without such 

a focus? 

Feasibility. Not only is the creation of national cyber defense capabilities critically 

urgent and important, it’s also feasible. (1) Technically, many effective defensive 

technologies exist but are in research stages and must be transitioned to operational 

use; some already have limited field testing, and others already exist to address 

broad classes of novel attacks. Moreover, the required computational resources for 

intensive activities such as correlation of attack and modeling/simulating attack 

strategies and tactics are available today. Ongoing research sponsored by the likes 

of NSA, NSF, DOD, DNI, DHS, and others is beginning to address additional hard 

science problems. (2) Economically, we can make a national business case for investing in a program intended to avoid the expected financial losses from strategic cyber 

attacks and ensure the proper public-private sharing of the burden. (3) Operationally, we can manage the complex infrastructure though judicious use of automation 

with a capable cadre of defenders. Through a combination of reasonable fire-codelike cyber security standards, improved operational guidance, and trained/experienced personnel, we would also be able to contain mission and cost impacts in the 

short term while we develop new capabilities. (4) Politically, public awareness of the 

threat is likely to make needed investments and standards acceptable. Industry is 

increasingly aware that nation-state-level attacks are a concern beyond their current ability to handle, yet they threaten business continuity. With proper financial 

incentives and partnering for workable solutions, industry is likely to openly embrace government involvement and protection. (5) Finally, from a schedule perspective, a phased rollout of capabilities based on threat prioritization and available 

technologies is also feasible. Success is certainly not assured, but the alternative is 

to begin radically reducing our dependency on computing systems, which would seriously degrade our national competitiveness and suppress economic growth. The 

cyber vulnerabilities in our infrastructures have become deeply embedded and widespread through the economic forces that drive individual companies to reduce costs 

by adopting the most widely available and interoperable technologies. It won’t be 

easy to develop a cyber infrastructure that can resist strategic attacks—it will require short-term actions as well as a long-term plan and a willingness to keep that 

plan in focus over a number of years. 

Plan of Action. We recommend assigning a government lead responsible for creating a plan. The PCD offers to work with this lead and recommends a three-month 

deadline for developing a ‘‘blueprint’’ to launch the project, including technical and 

program management aspects. We also recommend jumpstarting a multiyear program now with as much seed funding as possible. 

The PCD hasn’t worked out a full recommendation for how a Cyber Manhattan 

Project, which would inherently involve multiple agencies, ought to be organized 

and managed. A few points of consensus, though, appear to be emerging. (1) Distributing a surge of funding to the myriad bureaucracies that currently fund cyber defense won’t work in the long run. Each bureaucracy pulls in a different direction, 

making focused investment nearly impossible, although a jumpstart in 2007/2008 

might have to start this way out of sheer practicality. (2) Centralizing funding and 

government-wide responsibility in one existing department or agency with its own 

mission will likely cause the funding to be spent by that bureaucracy’s priorities, 

to the detriment of national interest. (3) Creating a whole new department or agency might fall into the too-hard-to-do pile, given the tremendous distractions and 

delays involved (as we’ve seen with the startup of the Department of Homeland Security). 

Eventually, what we need is a centralized, light-weight, high-level controlling 

body to create a focused effort on national cyber defense capabilities. One thought 

has been to create a special projects office accountable to and operating with the 

authority of the White House, with an elite staff of 200 people, at least half of the 

overall program budget, and some purview over the spending of the other half distributed and executed by existing organizations. 

Recent Developments. Recent activities tend to echo and affirm the PCD’s earlier findings. In November 2006, in response to concerns of inherent computer system vulnerabilities and escalating threats, more than 60 experts in system security, 

processor design, operating systems, programming languages, networking, and applications from diverse backgrounds in academia, government, and industry met to 

consider past, current, and possible future approaches to building systems with improved security. Findings from this Safe Computing Workshop included the following: (1) attackers rule, disasters are likely; (2) short-term measures are essential 

but insufficient; (2) market forces won’t change the balance; (3) usability and manVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
23 

ageability must be part of the solution; (4) new technology can catalyze major 

changes; and (5) only a national initiative will make a real difference. 

The workshop participants also concluded that the timing of such an investment 

is particularly good now because (1) significant advances in technology have dramatically increased hardware processing, memory, and communication capacity; (2) 

there’s a growing understanding of the problem among the public and government 

leadership as everyday cyber attacks like spam, phishing, and identity theft become 

increasingly painful; (3) industry’s interest in cyber security continues to grow as 

the community becomes more adept at making a business case for improvements; 

(4) escalating attacks and damages are increasing across the globe; (5) major software vendors are willing to delay the release of their products for more than a year 

to forestall security embarrassments; and (6) without a major change in direction, 

adversaries will be able to exploit current weaknesses in US cyber security and 

could deal a critical blow to our country’s major industrial sectors, such as banking, 

energy, and telecommunications. The workshop participants found a compelling and urgent need to dramatically reduce the vulnerability of the national information infrastructure to attack, and that major, strategic investments could significantly reduce our vulnerability over a five-year period. 

Closing Remarks. 

Smoking Gun. Some of you might think, what’s the rush? Where’s the smoking 

gun—the indication of a major assault on US cyber infrastructure? Surely, it’s coming, and it’s no doubt already in its planning stages. We suggest three reasons for 

why this is so. First, strategic long-term damage requires substantial planning and 

very well-timed execution. Creating the capabilities and placing the required assets 

(such as insiders) takes time, certainly years. Second, when such a cyber attack 

weapon is created, it’s in some sense a one-time-use strategic option. One wouldn’t 

use it lightly, nor would one want to tip one’s hand about it until it’s really needed: 

such weapons may well be deployed already, and we wouldn’t know it (perhaps a 

sleeper cell of insiders and/or malicious software embedded in our critical infrastructure). Finally, our current cyber infrastructure offers a wealth of highly valuable 

knowledge (such as advanced research results). As adversaries conduct espionage, 

they’re also mapping our cyber space and gaining great experimental and training 

experience that will enable future strategic attacks. It’s in the interests of our adversaries to preserve their upper hand for as long as possible and keep tapping into 

these important attributes. Moreover, such nation-state network exploitations are 

becoming increasingly obvious to the point that the mainstream press regularly covers them. 

Secrecy. We don’t advocate that a Cyber Manhattan Project be shrouded in secrecy: doing so would be unnecessary and deleterious to the program goals. The nation’s best minds must work on this difficult problem, and many of them are to be 

found outside government in academia and industry. Excluding those minds by 

making the program secret would only decrease our chances of success. Obviously, 

it makes some sense to maintain the element of surprise about the details of some 

of our planned defenses, but these should be carefully thought out and very limited 

in scope. A design that counts on its own secrecy to succeed isn’t a robust design 

at all: we all know how fleeting secrets can be. 

Stakes. But what if we don’t do this? Ladies and gentleman, based on the vetted 

Dark Angel scenarios, we could compromise our country as we know it if we make 

a misstep today. Inaction isn’t an option for any of us who now know these stakes 

and are entrusted by the people to provide for the common defense and protect the 

future of our great country. Thank you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Dr. Maughan. 

STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS MAUGHAN, PROGRAM MANAGER, 

CYBER SECURITY R&D, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND 

SECURITY, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DIRECTORATE 

Mr. MAUGHAN. Chairman Langevin, Ranking Member McCaul, 

members of the subcommittee, thank you and good afternoon. 

Today, I will be sharing with you information on the cybersecurity research and development program in the Department of 

Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. I also will 

outline for you critical areas where new research and development 

24 

efforts are needed. Details of the Directorate’s program are included in my written testimony. I will provide a brief summary. 

The program’s mission is to drive cybersecurity improvements in 

existing and emerging technologies; discover solutions to detect, 

prevent and respond to attacks on our critical infrastructure; and 

deliver new, tested solutions for cybersecurity threats, making 

them widely available to all sectors. 

Unlike other government programs, we cover all phases of the 

R&D lifecycle, not just research, but research, development, testing, evaluation and transition. Because our research is unclassified, 

we produce solutions that can be implemented for our customers in 

both the public and private sectors. We aim for results that can 

have impact in every home and business in the U.S. and throughout the world because cyber threats affect everyone. 

Consider the following: Cybersecurity breaches have real economic consequences. Internet users who shop online spend an estimated $8 billion per month. But according to a recent Consumer 

Reports survey, 86 percent of American internet users have 

changed their behavior due to fears of online theft; 25 percent have 

stopped shopping online altogether for that reason. 

A 2005 Cybersecurity Industry Alliance study found that 65 percent of American voters indicated that the government needs to do 

more to protect our information and systems from cybersecurity 

threats. Worldwide cyber attacks were estimated by the Congressional Research Service at a cost of $226 billion in 2003. The cost 

impact of these attacks is most certainly higher today. 

The DHS Cybersecurity Research and Development Program 

budget totaled $13 million in fiscal year 2007. The President has 

requested $14.8 million for fiscal year 2008. I would like to share 

with you some positive results that we have accomplished. 

We have funded small businesses and universities to solve nearterm cybersecurity problems, such as malicious code detection, insecure wireless networks, open source software vulnerabilities and 

identity theft. 

We have funded research that has led to more than 10 open 

source and commercial products in the past 3 years alone. Examples include secure thumb drives, root kit detectors and security solutions for process control systems. We have brought together entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and system integrators to speed 

the transition of these innovative cybersecurity solutions for commercial and government use. 

We have created a cybersecurity testing environment comprised 

of a test network and test data sets containing real traffic data to 

support the research community. 

And we have led an international effort to advance the deployment of critical solutions required to secure the Internet infrastructure as called for in the National Strategy to Secure Cyber Space. 

We need to continue our efforts to bring these important cybersecurity solutions forward, but more is needed. The DHS Science and 

Technology Cybersecurity Program, in concert with our customers, 

has identified five research areas as priorities which we will continue to address as we face the future. 

25 

We need to develop more secure versions of basic Internet protocols and architectures to ensure that the Internet works safely the 

way users expect it to. 

We need to create new ways to detect and contain attacks and 

develop resilient systems and detect and mitigate insider threats. 

We need to build research infrastructure and tools to support cybersecurity research and development efforts. 

We need to find new technologies to reduce the vulnerabilities in 

our process control systems that underlie our Nation’s critical infrastructure. 

And we need to develop trusted systems and the metrics to assess them. 

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, the good news 

is we are making progress. The Directorate’s research and development results show promise, and I look forward to working with you 

to address the security needs of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. 

Thank you. I look forward to answering any questions you may 

have. 

[The statement of Mr. Maughan follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. DOUGLAS MAUGHAN

Chairman Langevin, Ranking Member McCaul and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you and good afternoon. Today, I will be sharing with you three 

important aspects of our work in cyber security research and development in the 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, 

including our efforts to: 

• Drive security improvements in existing technologies and emerging systems. 

• Discover solutions to detect, prevent and respond to cyber attacks on 

the Nation’s critical infrastructure. 

• Deliver new, tested solutions for cyber security threats and make them 

widely available to all sectors through technology transfer and other methods. 

The S&T Cyber Security R&D goes through the full R&D lifecycle—research, development, testing, evaluation and transition—to produce unclassified solutions that 

can be implemented for our customers in both the public and private sectors. Therefore, we are able to move these solutions from the lab to real life, so they reach the 

U.S. businesses and citizens who need them to secure their networks. It means that 

the results of our research can have an enormous impact in every home and business in the United States, as well as throughout our government and the world. In 

the past three years alone, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate has funded 

research that today is realized in more than 10 open-source and commercial products that provide capabilities such as: secure thumb drives, root kit detection, worm 

and distributed denial of service detection, defenses against phishing, network vulnerability assessment, software analysis, and security for process control systems. 

Cyber threats pose an ever-growing risk to our national and economic security. 

We face enormous challenges in our ability to meet or even anticipate those threats. 

Today, I hope to describe briefly for you: the scope of the problem; and the positive 

steps we are taking to drive, discover and deliver new solutions. 

The events of September 11, 2001, made clear that the security of our Nation and 

our economy are intertwined. The majority of government communications utilize 

private-sector networks, including critical infrastructures—such as information technology, communications, financial services, electricity, and oil and gas systems. 

These networks have proven interdependencies that are critical to response capabilities as well as business operations. The systems of these sectors have converged and 

are interconnected. For example, if the electrical grids fail, that failure impacts the 

communications systems, which in turn can hamper financial networks. 

The Internet connects all other networks, including our Nation’s critical infrastructure. It has become the central nervous system for our government, our citizens 

and our industries. When it is attacked, the effects can ripple far and wide. Although the Internet was developed to provide ‘‘essential minimum communications’’ 

in the event of a nuclear attack, it was not designed with security in mind. Thus, 

the technology that is deployed over most of the Internet today has vulnerabilities 

26 

that can be exploited, endangering all the connecting networks, including our critical infrastructures. 

Beyond the Internet, few of the technologies we use every day are adequately protected against malicious attacks. Cell phones, PDAs, and wireless networks are vulnerable, as are the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems underlying our critical infrastructure. Attacks on these technologies have forced us 

into a defensive posture, and the financial costs are significant. Attackers can reach 

our business and government systems through the maze of networks connected by 

the Internet. 

A 2004 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report stated that cyber attacks on 

publicly traded firms resulted in losses of 1 percent to 5 percent on the firms’ stock 

price in the days following an attack. For the average New York Stock Exchange 

company, this means shareholder losses in the range of $50 million to $200 million. 

CRS reported that total losses worldwide in 2003 attributed to viruses, worms, and 

all other hostile digital attacks were $226 billion. These attacks can come from 

rogue actors (such as script kiddies, disgruntled employees, and organized crime), 

terrorists, insiders, and other nation states. 

But it is not just companies and governments at risk: Our citizens also are vulnerable. Government action can help protect U.S. consumers who, in many cases, cannot adequately protect themselves from threats that come from our cyber infrastructure. Countering these threats requires the deployment of new technologies across 

the global infrastructure. 

Americans make extensive use of the Internet. March 2007 global statistics indicate there are more than 210 million Americans—70 percent of our total population—using the Internet. On their private computers, our citizens are targeted by 

viruses, worms, and phishing schemes. Their computers may be used as launching 

pads for attacks against other systems, unbeknownst to the computer owner. To 

date, more than 150 million records containing personally identifiable information 

have been exposed since January 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. 

According to a 2005 Consumer Reports survey in the U.S., 86 percent of Americans who go online have made at least one behavior change due to fears about online theft. 29 percent have cut back on shopping online, and another 25 percent 

have stopped shopping online altogether. A 2006 survey from the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) found that Internet users who do shop online indicate that 

they spend an average of $116 per month per person—an estimated $8 billion per 

month in total—but that half of all users avoid making purchases because of fear 

of identify theft or compromise of financial information. 

Indeed, citizens want the Federal government to bring forward cyber security protections. A 2005 survey of U.S. voters—both Internet users and non-users—conducted by CSIA found that respondents look to the U.S. government to help with 

cyber security issues. Sixty-five percent of the respondents indicated that the government needs to do more to protect information and systems. 

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Cyber Security program serves all of these customers, which include both DHS internal components and private sector entities: Cyber Security and Communications (which includes the National Cyber Security Division and the National Communications System), U. S. Secret Service, DHS Chief Information Officer (CIO), Internet infrastructure owners and operators, critical infrastructure providers, and the information security research community. The Directorate leads the government’s charge in funding cyber security research and development that results in deployable security solutions, as directed by the President in the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. 

Our research and development funding is targeting the critical problems that 

threaten the integrity, availability, and reliability of our networks. We provide solutions and research resources that advance our understanding of cyber security risks. 

Our goals are: 

• To protect our national and economic security interests and secure our homeland. 

• To enable the government, industry, and citizens to make better-informed decisions about cyber security risks. 

• To provide the resources needed to counter and mitigate these risks. 

The United States played a formative role in the Internet’s creation, and is home 

to ten of the thirteen root servers that control the communications flowing over the 

Internet. However, today’s security vulnerabilities cannot be addressed in isolation. 

Today, there are 243 countries connected to the Internet and approximately 1.2 billion online users worldwide. It is a global problem that affects governments, businesses, and citizens. To get this important work done, the S&T Cyber Security R&D 

program carefully collaborates with private industry, Federal agencies and other 

27 

governmental entities, and private-sector partners in other nations, reflecting the 

truly global nature of the Internet. 

There are legal issues and international coordination issues that need to be addressed, but there are also complex technical problems that need to be solved. The 

price tag for this research and development is high, but it is minimal compared to 

the cost of cyber attacks today. Let me restate for the members of the Subcommittee 

that worldwide cyber attacks were estimated by CRS at a cost of $226 billion in 

2003. The cost impact is most certainly higher today. The Department of Homeland 

Security’s Science and Technology Directorate’s cyber security research and development budget totaled $13 million in FY 2007 and the President has requested $14.8 

million for Fiscal Year 2008. 

Today, I’m going to discuss three important areas where we are: 

• Driving security improvements to address critical weaknesses in the Internet’s infrastructure 

• Discovering new solutions for emerging cyber security threats, by incubating 

ideas and innovation in safe testing environments and public-private partnerships 

• Delivering new technologies tested in a real-world environment and making 

them widely available for real-world users in all sectors 

I also will describe for you those research areas identified in concert with our customers that are ongoing priorities which we will continue to address in FY2007, FY 

2008 and beyond: 

Driving Security Improvements to Address Critical Weaknesses 

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate is 

leading efforts to secure two of the Nation’s major technology vulnerabilities: security weaknesses in the Internet’s domain name system, or DNS, and vulnerabilities 

in the Internet routing system. Attacks against these two parts of the Internet infrastructure are particularly insidious because computer users cannot detect them. 

Attack traffic is estimated to have skyrocketed 150-fold since 2000. 

Both domain name system and routing vulnerabilities can deny service to small 

or large portions of the Internet, make tracking and tracing Internet communications very difficult, or allow communications to be redirected without the user’s 

knowledge. In the dot-com and dot-net domains alone, domain name queries are 

made an average of 24 billion times a day, yet Internet users have no guarantee 

that they will reach the Web site they want when they enter its address in a browser. Symantec’s most recent Internet Security Threat Report notes that, in the first 

six months of 2006, spam made up 54 percent of all monitored e-mail traffic. Much 

of that spam takes advantage of weaknesses in the routing system, and uses it to 

mask spammers’ identities, making it difficult, if not impossible, to track them down 

and prosecute them. 

U.S. government leadership in addressing these critical vulnerabilities is essential, and the President’s National Strategy calls on DHS to drive the efforts to bring 

solutions forward. By working in a collaborative effort across Federal agencies, private industry, and global Internet owners and operators, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate has made progress toward addressing these problems. In cooperation with NIST and the Department of Commerce, our Directorate leads the 

effort to develop domain name security extensions (DNSSEC), and we work with 

international counterparts and key technical groups to develop improvements to the 

standards that govern addressing and routing. 

Both of these infrastructure security problems have, or soon will have, solutions 

driven by our government’s leadership. The remaining challenge lies in convincing 

the many owners and users of the Internet to deploy them, from private industry 

and foreign governments to our own state, local and federal agencies in the U.S. 

New requirements under the Federal Information Security Management Act 

(FISMA) call for DNS security extensions to be deployed across all federal agencies 

and their contractors. A few other countries, notably Sweden, have already deployed 

the important DNS security solution. 

The private sector also is starting to follow the government’s lead. Two major corporations working in software and information security also have announced plans 

to include DNS security extensions in their products going forward. Microsoft, which 

supplies the operating system for the vast majority of the U.S. government’s desktop 

computers, will include the new DNS security protocols in a forthcoming upgrade 

of its software. VeriSign also has announced that it will include the DNS security 

protocols as part of an expansion that will enable it to handle more than four trillion domain name system queries per day. Many more government agencies and industries must take similar steps if we are to secure the Internet infrastructure. 

28 

The government has a special role to play in coordinating the deployment of these 

solutions. The S&T Cyber Security R&D program is positioned to carry this work 

forward. Building on our research and development efforts, the government can play 

an even greater leadership role by taking steps to ensure the government-wide deployment of DNS security extensions and secure routing technologies, when available. 

Discovering New Solutions for Emerging Cyber Security Threats 

We cannot focus solely on known problems. One of the most important aspects of 

cyber security R&D involves understanding new threats and risks, and discovering 

solutions that will help us protect our Nation’s cyber infrastructure. Because the research we conduct is unclassified, it can be deployed by the private sector. The S&T 

Cyber Security R&D program funds two efforts that provide a safe environment for 

cyber security research. Using small business innovation research funding and other 

programs in our Directorate, we also provide funding that helps bring forward the 

next generation of cyber solutions so they can be adapted for wider use against 

emerging threats. With more than 30 small business innovation research grants in 

progress today, as well as other funds, we are incubating ideas that emanate from 

small companies and devising solutions for emerging problems that will affect major 

sectors. 

The need to create, test, and learn from potential threats poses a problem in 

itself. We want to test threats to the Internet, but if we conduct such R&D testing 

on the actual Internet, we could inadvertently put it at risk. To provide scientifically 

rigorous testing for next-generation cyber defense technologies, the DHS Science 

and Technology Directorate funds a cyber security testing environment, comprised 

of a test network, and test data sets containing real-traffic data. 

The network, called the Cyber Defense Technology Experiment Research Testbed 

Program, or DETER, offers cyber security researchers a way to run experiments on 

a secure ‘‘virtual Internet,’’ keeping the Internet safe. This testbed was jointly funded with NSF and now more than 50 organizations from more than 20 states—which 

includes major research universities, national laboratories and high-tech companies—are using the DETER test bed. The test bed began with 200 systems, and has 

been increasing by 200 per year with a goal of 1,000 systems spread across six sites 

by FY09. 

In addition to a test network, researchers need data sets to use for testing their 

solutions. These data sets, however, have not existed, impeding effective testing of 

potential technologies. For example, the most widely used data source today was 

created in 1998 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Traffic data that is nine years old cannot be used to analyze today’s attacks, viruses, 

malicious code, and traffic patterns. 

The S&T Cyber Security R&D program created and funded the Protected Repository for Defense of Infrastructure Against Cyber Threats, or PREDICT program, to 

serve as a repository for a collection of datasets that can be used for testing new 

ideas and solutions. PREDICT provides datasets for information security testing 

and for the evaluation of maturing network technologies, to help advance them toward commercial development. The PREDICT data repository also is designed to 

hold datasets which can be collected from private companies, without violating their 

proprietary concerns, for sharing with network security researchers. The PREDICT 

program has taken groundbreaking steps to ensure that data privacy is protected, 

including reviewing the project with major privacy organizations. 

As I noted earlier, another critical area of focus for the DHS Science and Technology Directorate is the development and deployment of the next generation of 

cyber security technologies that we need if we are to effectively face emerging 

threats to our Nation’s critical infrastructure. We solicit research proposals for new 

technologies, prototype technologies and mature technologies, so that our investment yields solutions that are poised for commercial adoption. Under the first round 

of this research funding effort, we awarded $13.8 million. The $13.8 million funded 

projects in 12 states: California, Delaware, Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, 

Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia. 

Let me give you some examples of projects we’ve funded in this area: 

• In California, Stanford University researchers are identifying and fixing serious bugs in open source code for freely available software. Widely used, open 

source software makes up a large part of the Nation’s cyber-infrastructure, and 

this effort has lead to tools that are available through a commercial company 

named Coverity, located in San Francisco and Boston. 

• In Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan’s researchers are working on a secure crisis response system using handheld devices. Using low-cost disposable 

handheld devices, first responders will be able to have a secure mobile coordinaVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
29 

tion and syndication channel—a lightweight means for interagency communication and coordination using industry-standard wireless and cell phone technologies, while keeping data transmission secure. This project partners with 

Lucent Technologies for commercial deployment. 

• At Dartmouth College, researchers are analyzing wireless traffic to detect and 

respond to attacks on a WiFi network. The project is working with Aruba Networks of Sunnyvale, California, a very large wireless vendor in the United 

States, to develop and deploy an operational prototype and evaluate it with 

real-time users. 

Additionally, we are partnering with the financial sector to assess the economic 

impact that a cyber security attack might have on individual enterprises, and developing tools to help financial companies assess and manage the risks that such a disruption of service could create. 

Working with companies like Citigroup and Pershing LLC, a brokerage subsidiary 

of the Bank of New York, we have created a prototype of a risk management tool 

for the finance sector. It is designed to help create a computer simulation of a financial enterprise and its value chains, and how they interconnect with other institutions. Once it is finalized, the tool will allow them to create and run disruption scenarios tailored to their business operations, using their own proprietary data as well 

as generic data for the rest of the financial sector. In this way, they can find out 

specifically how a cyber security event or attack will affect their business, using 

real-time sector data while protecting their companies’ proprietary data. 

I want to underscore the special role that government funding has played in developing this prototype. No single financial company would build such a tool and 

share it with competitors; however, because of support from our Directorate, the entire financial sector will be able to assess and protect itself against emerging cyber 

security threats, protecting our Nation’s critical infrastructure. 

Delivering New, Tested Technologies Widely Available for All Sectors 

New cyber security solutions do not appear in products automatically. Technology 

transfer from the lab to the marketplace is a vital and unique aspect of our Directorate’s cyber security R&D effort. The S&T Cyber Security R&D program extends 

beyond knowledge and the proof of whether security solutions are feasible. Based 

on this foundation of rigorous research and development, we create public-private 

partnerships, acting as a catalyst to deliver new, tested technology solutions for 

cyber security threats and make them widely available for use in all sectors. 

One important test we have conducted focused on handheld wireless devices, like 

the BlackBerry and other mobile data communications devices. These devices are 

expected to proliferate within government agencies. According to a 2005 survey in 

Government Computing News, 40 percent of all government managers report that 

they use some form of handheld wireless device. Hundreds of thousands of these devices are currently employed in government business, yet today, most mobile data 

architectures cannot sufficiently assure high-level government security. 

To address those issues, and to identify the needs in infrastructure protection and 

border security, we conducted an experiment under the bilateral Public Security 

Technical Program between the United States and Canada. It is just one of many 

efforts by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate to evaluate technologies in 

a real-world environment and pass on the results to real-world users. Our research 

was looking for new technology for mobile data encryption across the US-Canada 

border, to learn whether additional security measures would slow down communications across the borders, and to help first responders tackle their tasks efficiently 

while keeping their messages secure. We tested four products of interest, including 

the BlackBerry, and learned a great deal about what does and doesn’t work, particularly situations in which messages were delayed, or data were not transmitted. 

Another important public-private partnership is Project LOGIIC, which stands for 

Linking Oil and Gas Industry to Improve Cyber security. The goal is to reduce 

vulnerabilities in the oil and gas process control system environments. The first 

demonstration under this project showed how to correlate and analyze abnormal 

events to identify and prevent cyber security threats. 

Project LOGIIC is a model for government-industry technology integration and 

demonstration efforts to address critical research and development needs. The oil 

and gas industry contributed the requirements, operational expertise, project management, and product vendor channels. DHS provided the national security perspective on threats, access to long-term security research, independent researchers with 

technical expertise, and testing facilities. Technology pilot deployments under this 

program were launched in June of 2006. A planning meeting for the second phase 

of the LOGIIC partnership took place in March of this year. 

30 

Our Directorate also convenes a group called the Identity Theft Technology Council, which meets three times a year to bring together government, venture capital 

firms, financial sector representatives, academics working in identity theft, and entrepreneurs. Together, we discuss problems, research issues, available technologies, 

and stay abreast of emerging threats and new opportunities. As a result, venture 

capital firms and the companies that they fund can connect with government and 

larger private-sector entities to move emerging security solutions forward. The 

Council also works closely with the Anti-Phishing Working Group, and has issued 

two reports: one on phishing and one on malware. 

To help technology move out of government research and development, we have 

sponsored three different types of transition forums: • At the System Integrator Forum, researchers funded by the DHS Science and 

Technology Directorate were provided an opportunity to demonstrate their technology to an audience of major system integrators, including Perot Systems/ 

EDS, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics, all of whom responded enthusiastically. 

• The Emerging Security Technology Forum provided an opportunity for commercial developers to demonstrate their technology to an audience of government early adopters. Our Directorate evaluated 24 commercial technology products to defend against distributed denial of service and worm attacks, and selected 12 for presentation to an audience of government and industry CIOs and 

potential customers. 

• Finally, the IT Security Entrepreneurs Forum—jointly sponsored with the 

Kauffman Foundation—provided small businesses and entrepreneurs an opportunity to learn value propositions and business plan development from the venture capital community and how to open doors into government procurement 

channels. Chief information officers attended from companies like Sun and Oracle. 

The impact of these forums cannot be overstated. They are unique within the federal system. We bring researchers directly to the private sector, so they can demonstrate their technologies in front of more than 100 companies at a time. As I mentioned earlier, this has led to more than 10 commercial cyber security products— 

real cyber security solutions that can be widely used by government, industry and 

citizens around the world. These forums assist projects funded by our Science and 

Technology Directorate to transfer technology to larger, established security technology companies. Finally, they also help commercial companies provide technology 

to DHS and other government agencies. 

Driving, Discovering and Delivering Cyber Security Solutions: The Path 

Forward 

In the last seven years, more than 20 reports from such entities as the INFOSEC 

Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, the National 

Infrastructure Advisory Council, the National Research Council and the President’s 

Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection have urged the government to do 

more to drive, discover and deliver new solutions to address cyber vulnerabilities. 

More recently, academic organizations, such as the Computing Research Association, and industry groups, such as the Cyber Security Industry Alliance and the 

Internet Security Alliance, also have called for increased funding for cyber security 

research and development. In addition, the Federal Government has recently produced the Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research and 

Development, which includes cyber security R&D priorities of all agencies and departments that participate in the Network and Information Technology Research 

and Development (NITRD) committee. 

To date, I believe that the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate has made excellent progress toward meeting some of the goals 

outlined in the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. We need to stay the course 

and bring these important research and development products into the marketplace. 

But more needs to be done if we are to counter the negative forces that threaten 

our cyber security. 

Based on the previously cited reports which reflect the views of the professional 

community and in concert with our customers, the DHS S&T Cyber Security program has identified the following research areas as priorities which we will continue 

to address in FY2007, FY 2008 and beyond: 

• We must continue to advance the development and accelerate the deployment 

of more secure versions of fundamental Internet protocols and architectures, including those for the domain name system and routing protocols described earlier. 

31 

• We must improve and create new technologies for detecting attacks or 

intrusions, including monitoring technologies. • We must improve and create new methods for mitigation and recovery, 

including techniques for containment of attacks and development of resilient 

networks and systems that degrade gracefully. 

• We must develop and support infrastructure and tools to support cyber 

security research and development efforts, including modeling and measurement, test beds, and data sets for assessment of new cyber security technologies, such as the DETER and PREDICT programs I described earlier. 

• We must assist the development and support of new technologies to reduce vulnerabilities in process control systems. 

• We must test, evaluate, and facilitate the transfer of new technologies associated with the engineering of less vulnerable software and securing 

the IT software development lifecycle. 

• We need research to identify new solutions to address malicious software, such as botnets and other ‘‘malware,’’ for which no secure solutions currently exist. 

• We must develop trusted systems, new hardware and software architectures for security, and develop cyber security metrics. • We must develop tools that will allow us to visualize network data so we can see where attacks are coming from and diagnose cyber security problems 

faster and with more accuracy. 

• We must develop new ways to detect and mitigate insider threats in 

cyber security. 

• We must develop the architecture and solutions that will allow us to 

handle identity management on a wider scale than is currently possible. 

I want to stress for the Subcommittee that research and development involves 

both promise and progress. The promise lies in our ability to identify threats and 

potential solutions. But as long as these vital research and development questions 

remain unanswered, they threaten all of the progress we have made to date, creating weaknesses and vulnerabilities that further complicate our task. The same is 

true for the areas where we have already made valuable steps forward. 

We need to deploy the important infrastructure protections we have helped to develop—across the government and throughout the private sector—and provide incentives for industry to partner in R&D efforts. We need to move forward the already identified next-generation cyber technology research projects that take aim at 

weaknesses we know today. And we must continue to deliver tested technologies 

that can become commercially available products, to extend the benefits of our research and offer protection against cyber threats to homes and businesses across the 

Nation. 

The good news, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, is that our research and development efforts show promise in addressing the Nation’s cyber security needs. I look forward to working with you to advance our R&D efforts and address the security needs of our Nation’s critical infrastructure. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I want to thank the panel for their testimony. 

I want to remind each member he or she will have 5 minutes to 

question the panel, and I now recognize myself for questions. 

Dr. Saydjari, let me begin with you. You gave a pretty sobering 

assessment which you laid out. I would like to ask the panel to 

comment on what Dr. Saydjari testified to and if you agree with 

the assessment. If not, would you expand on that? Dr. Geer. 

Mr. GEER. Well, sure. The threat is real. We have been, to a 

large degree, lucky that we haven’t seen it in grander form, that 

there hasn’t been a major episode. 

One could say that—it is quite natural for most people—I expect 

everybody in this room, certainly my family, for example, to say 

that, because nothing big has happened that they are aware of, 

that somehow the risk must not be as great as people like Dr. 

Saydjari or myself or other members of the panel say it is. 

If you would accept the idea that if we have ever escaped a bad 

event sheerly by luck, that at least you can put behind yourself the 

argument that the absence of any major episode to date is reassuring, I can give you one thought experiment that illustrates that 

32 

we have at least once avoided major disaster by accident. It would 

be this. 

9/11 riveted the country. Everybody paid attention, et cetera. A 

week later a then-the-worst-we-had-ever-seen virus came by, something called Nimda. Like most virus writers, the person involved— 

like most good virus writers, amongst other things this person left 

behind what is called a back door, an ability to reenter the computer that they had previously invaded, but by simpler means. So 

even if it turned out we knew how Nimda got in in the first place 

and we closed that door, there would be another door remaining behind. A little bit like if I broke into your house and made a house 

key. 

That idea of leaving behind a new back door is interesting. 

Nimda at the time spread faster than we had ever seen anything 

spread. Hands down the fastest we had ever seen. Since then, there 

have been faster still, but at the time it was the fastest we had 

ever seen. 

Since all old viruses can be found somewhere on the Internet at 

any given time, they never actually go away, let me bring one of 

them up. 

In 2001, a great deal of the Internet was still dial-up. A lot of 

people accessed it by dial-up. There is a virus called E911 which 

causes your modem to dial 911 constantly. When I call you on the 

telephone, the line doesn’t drop until I hang up. When I call 911 

on the telephone, the line doesn’t drop until you hang up, because 

you don’t want the police to be able to say who was I talking to 

when somebody cuts the wire. Consequently, you can saturate a 

911 console. 

Where we got lucky, no clown had the bright idea to chase the 

Nimda virus using its newly installed back door and install the 

E911 virus cross-country. Because, if they had, all 911 services in 

the U.S. would have gone off the air in a matter of a couple of 

hours. That would have had, if nothing else, been a gran mal seizure of the public confidence. 

So if you accept the argument that we have at least once escaped 

a major event by dumb luck, then I think you can put behind yourself any argument that is it really a big deal or not. It really is a 

big deal if at least once we can show we have escaped a major 

problem by dumb luck, and I think I just gave you one. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

Dr. LEWIS. 

Mr. LEWIS. Thank you. 

I am the skunk at the party here because I don’t really agree 

with this. Part of the reason I don’t agree with it is because I do 

have some military experience, not as a member of the military but 

as somebody who worked closely with them; and I know how hard 

it is to derail a country. Even a third-world country turns out to 

be much harder than we might suspect. Let me tell you the reasons 

that I do think that. 

While we do face serious problems on the informational side, on 

the intelligence side, I think some of the other risks are easy to 

overestimate. Some of the research that I would base this on comes 

out of the strategy bombing survey that was conducted at the end 

33 

of the World War II by the United States, and I would be happy 

to provide the committee with additional information. 

The first thing you have to ask yourself, though, is how resilient 

is a country? If there is one attack, people don’t sit around; they 

respond. And so how long will it take people to get back on line 

or to restore some kind of service? 

The second thing you want to ask is, a very big country turns 

out to be hard to derail; and you have all had this experience. The 

experience I usually refer to is Charlotte, North Carolina, which 

was taken off line for a week. No one knows about it because of 

snowfall and they had electronic power outrageous and all that. 

You can remove major cities from the power grid and telecommunications network. It has no effect on our military power or, 

honestly, on our economy. A lot of this has to do with political leadership and culture. 

One of the things I have said in the past is, if we were perhaps 

one of the more feeble European countries, if we were a more excitable country, when there was an outbreak maybe we would collapse. We have seen that happen. We have seen it happen in the 

past. But I think Americans are a little tougher. A lot depends on 

the leadership they see. If their leaders say the right things, they 

will respond the right way. 

Finally, you want to ask yourself how interconnected are networks. There are few networks that are tightly interconnected, 

whether it is electrical, telecom, the financial network. These are 

things where you could have a national level attack and you could 

have that kind of affect, but most of the other stuff isn’t that connected. So if you knock out one city or one State or one water company, you are not going to have a national effect. 

So, for me, we need to look at the informational attacks, we need 

to look at espionage, and we need to look at a few critical networks 

that are interconnected. That is where there is risk. I am a little 

more relaxed on some of the other things. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Dr. Maughan. 

Mr. MAUGHAN. I would have to say I agree with Mr. Saydjari in 

his discussion. 

I will remind you that our enemies are going to continue advancing their capabilities and their technologies. And so while we may 

decide to sit still and that we are OK they are going to continue 

to advance and things are only going to get worse. I believe the investment that he called for is at a bare minimum to just keep up 

and may not even get us ahead. 

Mr. GEER. May I add something, if I could, on this? 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Briefly, please. 

Mr. GEER. This is a definitional question, perhaps, back to you. 

An attack that breaks things versus an attack that breaks public 

confidence, what I spoke to was something that breaks public confidence. I think the public confidence in, for example, our financial 

networks can be broken without making the entire network lay 

down and stay down. And so I guess perhaps what we should be 

pushed about is define collapse or define breakage. We may be in 

violent agreement once we get past that. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Dr. Saydjari, would you care to comment on what 

you heard, particularly with Dr. Lewis’ comments? 

34 

Mr. SAYDJARI. Yes, I would. 

I think, first, I would point out there are 50 of the Nation’s leaders signing this letter of the President estimating this risk at this 

level, including a former DCI, a former director of NSA and a 

former director of DARPA. That is no small level of talent in making this estimation. 

The second thing I would point out is that we did a very detailed 

analysis for this very reason, because there are people who believe 

that the threat is overestimated. We took a risk in developing this 

mock campaign against the United States to develop it to prove 

that this is possible, and so we believe that there is evidence that 

stands that says that this threat is possible. Every part of that attack analysis was vetted with various government agencies and the 

various sectors that were involved in the attack, including power, 

including oil and gas, financial service sectors and telecommunications. 

We believe firmly in our analysis, and we believe that it stands 

on its own merits, and we invite an independent evaluation and an 

extension. That is indeed what we meant by calling for a national 

threat assessment to validate our findings and extend them so that 

we can develop sound policy and settle this debate as to whether 

the threat is higher or lower than what we are estimating. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

I am going to have other questions for the panel that you may 

have to respond to in writing, but my time is expired so I am going 

to yield to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. McCaul, for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MCCAUL. I thank the Chair. 

There is so much to talk about here I sometimes don’t know 

where to start. I am going to have to leave after this for a briefing 

from General Petraeus. So if the Chair would indulge me, I would 

like to throw everything out in one question. 

Dr. Geer, you said what you can’t see is more important than 

what you can; and I agree with that. I think the threat of the Trojan horse in this scenario is perhaps more devastating than what 

we can see. 

Dr. Lewis, you talked about foreign agents broke into the Department of Defense and stole file cabinets. That would cause hysteria 

in the media. And yet we know we have intrusions in the Federal 

Government’s networks, and I don’t know if we have an idea as to 

what is being stolen. 

You talked about metrics. I don’t think we can gauge or hold accountable if we don’t know what they are taking. A technical idea 

of attack data. We don’t know where these attacks are coming 

from, but we know they are coming. And there are several levels 

of these attacks. One may be purely for mischief, one could be 

criminal, another espionage. As you point out, I think we talked a 

little bit about China and its willingness and capacity to steal information, steal secrets, intellectual property theft. 

But the last scenario that Mr. Saydjari really kind of focuses on 

is one that really keeps me up at night, and that is the idea of a 

cyber attack that is along the lines of warfare. An attack we know 

that our own military is capable of doing and shutting down power 

grids in other countries, yet we don’t know what some of these 

rogue nations, what their capacity and capability really is. We do 

35 

know that any nation with a power grid can probably figure out 

how to shut it down. 

I think the ramifications are—I know, Dr. Lewis, maybe there 

has been some exaggeration, but maybe not. To the extent this 

country could be shut down, albeit temporarily, I think the destruction it would cause is very clear. 

The idea of a national threat assessment just to gauge where are 

we, you threw a number out that is about 10 times more than what 

we authorize in R&D for cybersecurity. And I throw this out to the 

panel, and I appreciate the Chair indulging me on the time, but if 

you could talk, first of all, Mr. Saydjari, about the threat assessment that you did and what the results were and then possibly 

talk about—when you say vulnerable to nation-state adversaries, 

who do you think they are, specifically? And then I will open it up 

to the panel for just a full discussion. 

Mr. SAYDJARI. Sure. The development that we do is called Dark 

Angel. This was a mock attack by seven of the leaders, Professionals for Cyber Defense, this nonprofit group; and we developed 

a detailed attack tree against our Nation. The purpose of it was to 

do a strategic blow to our country; and we looked at various domains, including the financial services sector, telecommunications, 

power, oil and gas. We looked at all of them. 

One of the things that has been lacking to date is sort of an isolated look at each of the domains. What we looked at is looking at 

it from a nation-state’s perspective about doing strategic damage 

and looking at the interconnections between those domains and 

doing a campaign, including rolling attacks on various symptoms. 

Once they recover, attack them again. Attack in a way that actually disables physical things, like power generators. 

We are not talking about small-scale power outages for a day or 

two. We are talking about destroying power generators by improper 

control. We are talking about blowing up transformers by improper 

control. And these generators and transformers take months to remanufacture. And, oh, by the way, some of them we can’t manufacture in the United States anymore. We have to go to Europe to get 

it. So if that attack happens in Europe at the same time, guess who 

is going to get priority on those transformers and power generators? 

So we did this detailed analysis. We have this very, very sophisticated attack tree that has been deeply vetted by various domain 

experts. We did this over the course of 30 days in response to a 

comment on the President’s national strategy to sort of put up our 

position that there was a serious national threat and we were 

forced into developing this scenario. And we believe it is absolutely 

compelling. 

Again, we don’t make this publicly available, but we invite a limited review to say, OK, you don’t think the threat is this bad? 

Great, come look at what we did, extend what we did. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Will the gentleman yield for one second? 

You said this is in the context of an attack from a nation-state. 

Could it also translate over into a rogue individual or individuals 

such as a terrorist group carrying out the same level of attack with 

the same type of catastrophic consequences? 

36 

Mr. SAYDJARI. Our assumption was a $500 million budget and 

about 3 years of preparation. So an individual certainly could not 

do this. But a transnational terrorist group like al-Qa’ida certainly 

could. In fact, that was our model as a transnational terrorist organization or a small nation-state. Certainly a large nation-state is 

well within their means and well within their patience. 

And I point out also that we are not just assuming cyber attacks, 

we are assuming insider attacks, we are assuming malicious code, 

we are assuming lifecycle attacks, where somebody attacks the 

code that is being developed and gets code that blows up on us on 

the fly at their discretion. So we are talking about a very sophisticated attack from a military perspective against the United States. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Again, that is my greatest fear, particularly if it 

comes from a terrorist rogue nation. Did you brief the Department 

of Homeland Security on this assessment? 

Mr. SAYDJARI. Yes, sir. In about the March or April time frame 

of 2005 we did do that briefing. And they politely heard our briefing, and we saw no follow-up activity or actions from that briefing. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Is that correct, Dr. Maughan? Was there no response? 

Mr. MAUGHAN. That briefing was provided to the National Cybersecurity Division, not to the Science and Technology Directorate. 

Mr. MCCAUL. And so you can’t answer on behalf of anything outside your Directorate? 

Mr. MAUGHAN. Correct. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Do you think the idea of a national threat assessment is a good idea? 

Mr. MAUGHAN. Yeah. The Department has been out doing physical assessments of a lot of the critical infrastructure owned and 

operated by the private sector. We should do a similar from a cyber 

perspective, both government and industry, given that industry 

owns and operates a significant portion of that infrastructure. 

Mr. MCCAUL. I personally think it would be a good idea to be 

able to measure that, as Dr. Geer talks about, the metrics. Can you 

comment about this kind of worst-case scenario? 

Mr. GEER. Sure. You mean, give you an example of one? 

Mr. MCCAUL. Yes. 

Mr. GEER. Do you want to take the Internet down this afternoon? 

Mr. MCCAUL. I kind of would like to stay out of jail. 

Mr. GEER. Well, so would I. Figure out how to worm IOS, which 

is the operating system for Cisco routers, which dominate the top 

level of the Internet. Go in and have them rewrite the EPROMs as 

fast as you can go. 50,000 cycles, they burn out, you now have to 

have to visit it with a soldering iron 3 minutes. 

Mr. MCCAUL. Dr. Maughan, do you consult with experts like Dr. 

Geer in terms of anticipating vulnerabilities? 

Mr. MAUGHAN. We do, and we try to bring in the experts every 

chance we can. 

Mr. MCCAUL. I would highly recommend it. 

Dr. Lewis, any comment. 

Mr. LEWIS. I want to take the contrary view again. Some of us 

call these weapons of mass annoyance. If we are talking in military 

terms, let’s talk in military terms. I am China and I go to make 

your traffic lights blink on and off for a week or so. Is that going 

37 

to stop the carrier battle groups from going to the Taiwan Straits? 

Is it going to reduce American military capabilities? Is it going to 

damage the American economy over the long term? The answer is 

no. 

So if you are a Chinese leader, you think I am going to do something, it is going to really irritate them, they will be mad, and I 

am not going to get any military benefit from it. And that is how 

I think about it. 

Now a rogue state, perhaps their calculus will be a little different. It is hard to predict when they are so crazy like in North 

Korea or Iran. A terrorist group probably doesn’t have the capabilities. 

But when you look at the people who are likely to do this, they 

are asking themselves, what do I get out of it? How likely is it to 

make me better off in a conflict? And, right now, they don’t think 

it is going to make them better off. 

Mr. MCCAUL. And I agree with you. China is all about espionage 

and intellectual property. But there are other organizations out 

there. And when teenagers can hack into computers, it is a little 

disturbing to think of the destruction that could be caused by someone who has this ability, someone who has it in the wrong hands. 

And I think when we know the terrorist’s main goal is to destroy 

preliminarily our financial markets, it raises the bar. 

That is really all I have, Mr. Chairman, but I want to thank all 

the witnesses for being here today. It has been very insightful. 

Thank you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you for 

hosting these important meetings and hearings. 

My question has to do with punishment. What has been your experience in terms of persons who are caught? How are they punished? 

Someone gave the example of someone breaking into an administrative office and taking files. My suspicion is we call that a felony 

and the person would be severely punished. What is your experience with reference to cyber theft? 

Mr. LEWIS. I have done a little research on that, and my experience and what I have learned from the FBI and from other law enforcement agencies is you are not going to be caught, and it is almost a risk-free crime. We don’t have a good metric. It is true. So 

is it 95 percent of the people who do this escape? Is it closer to 100 

percent? Is it a bit less? But the odds are, if you engage in a cyber 

attack, if you steal information, if you break into someone’s network, particularly if you do it from overseas, it is a risk-free event. 

Mr. GREEN. Any other opinions? Everybody is in agreement that 

it is risk free? 

What about encoding? Is that something that we can hope to 

have some sort of safety with, some sort of encryptions for specific 

areas of security concerns? 

Mr. GEER. I can say that, in the commercial sector, adoption of 

encryption at one level or another is going about as fast as it can 

go. That is not to say it is slow. They are spending money like 

crazy to encrypt. 

38 

The common thing that appears in the newspaper is I lost the 

laptop in the cab kind of thing or somebody broke into my house. 

That kind of thing is going as fast as it can go. I think that you 

probably will see in a matter of years nearly nothing that isn’t 

encrypted, where the general counsel is aware that the company 

has it. 

Beyond that, do you want all transactions and so forth, all communications over the net to be encrypted? Maybe. It is not a beall and an end-all. It helps. 

I think that you should remember that encryption is, generally 

speaking, no solution to the insider problem. So you might be able 

to get rid of a degree of the outsider problem, but you would not 

get rid of the insider problem by adopting full tilt encryption ideas. 

Mr. SAYDJARI. I would like to add to that. 

So encryption is a very valuable tool, particularly protecting information in transit. But one of our biggest problems is the security 

at the host. And, ultimately, the data has to be decrypted at the 

end machines to actually do something with it; and these are the 

places that we are most vulnerable. So I am a very strong advocate 

of getting encryption out there in a widespread way and making it 

available to the private sector and having it proliferate, and it will 

help. But I just want to make sure that we all understand that 

processing at the host and things like denial-of-service attacks on 

the availability of those hosts are affected in no way by encryption. 

Mr. MAUGHAN. I would agree with what Mr. Saydjari has said. 

Cryptography is only going to do a small amount for us in a big 

picture. There are bigger problems to our end system’s vulnerability. Encryption is only one tool in the quiver of arrows that we 

have. 

Mr. GREEN. Is it fair to say that we may never be able to become 

completely secure because as we get better it seems that there is 

always a new thought or hype, idea, in terms of making the invulnerable vulnerable? 

A comment please. I like your smile, Dr. Geer. Let me hear your 

comment. 

Mr. GEER. No. Perfection is impossible because it involves dividing by zero and you can’t afford the cost. This is purely a risk management problem. 

If you really want my car, you can probably get it. I can lock it 

in the garage, I can lock the car, et cetera, et cetera. The guy with 

a blowtorch and a tow truck and a heavy lift helicopter can still 

probably get it. I can, however, make my neighbor’s car a lot more 

attractive than mine; and to a degree that is all that we can do 

here. All we can do is make it such that the people who want stuff 

that we do not want them to have, have to go somewhere else. 

Mr. GEER. And I know that sounds unfortunate, but I think that 

is the right mindset to have. Maybe you will have a happy surprise, and you do actually solve a problem on getting rid of smallpox or polio or something, but generally speaking, you cannot get 

rid of it. What you can do is make it harder. You can make them 

go somewhere else. 

Mr. GREEN. I see other smiles, so let us go with the next smiling 

face. 

39 

Mr. SAYDJARI. I completely agree with Dan. I think the threat is 

always going to be escalating. There is always going to be higher 

degrees of integration of our systems and new capabilities in our 

systems that will be attackable, and one thing, I think, we all have 

to understand here is that this is not a one-shot investment. So, 

when I talk about a multi-billion dollar program establishing a capability in 3 years, it is not done in 3 years. It is a sustaining investment to be actively engaged in the escalation that will inevitably happen as we have seen over the last 10 years. The level of 

sophistication of attacks has risen dramatically over the last 10 

years. The kinds of attacks we have seen in the wild are amazingly 

complex and amazingly sophisticated, and we will only see them 

get worse in terms of the level of damage they do. 

Mr. MAUGHAN. I was only going to agree with them. 

It is a cat-and-mouse game that we are playing with the bad 

guys, and we are never going to be able to secure our systems 100 

percent, and so the best we can do, as Dr. Geer said, is risk management and try to defend our systems as best we can. 

Mr. LEWIS. We are all in tremendous agreement here, but I want 

to put a little different cast on it, which is let us not think defensively. We cannot make them perfectly secure, but we just want to 

be in a position where we do better than our opponents. So that 

is a good goal. If we get more out of this than our opponents do, 

we win. 

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Etheridge, is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me thank 

you for holding this hearing. 

Gentlemen, what we are seeing in the 21st century is going to 

be a huge challenge. Last week, before this committee, we heard 

from Federal agencies—Commerce and State—talking about the attacks on their systems that were unexpected, but they may not 

have even been aware of them until well after they had occurred, 

and further, even after the illegal access was noticed, the date and 

duration of attacks could not be determined, and the extent of information compromised may never be known. That is what they 

shared with us. So my question to you is: 

Is it ever possible to determine after an attack the extent of the 

damage? You know, for example, can logs be altered or so-called 

rogue tunnels be constructed to hide the nature of the attack? Do 

you agree? The answer is ‘‘yes’’? Everybody agrees. OK. 

So my next question is: What tools do we have available to us 

to identify the attacks, which seem to me to be critical, and to 

check the authenticity of the date so that we know when the attacks occurred, and to the extent we know that, how can we deal 

with it? 

Who wants to tackle that first? 

Mr. GEER. One of the hardest questions for most of us in the 

commercial sector is: If you know something is going on, how do 

you pursue it? Because it is a very fine line between noticing it and 

then somehow finding yourself engaged in a countermeasure. You 

know, do I have the right to—I was at a workshop 2 weeks ago, 

40 

and there are a couple of other people in the room who were at this 

same workshop. If I discover what is called a ‘‘robot network’’—or 

a botnet—in my firm, if I discover that in my firm someone has 

taken over a number of computers and they are being used for purposes nefarious, do I have a right to disable that botnet? Do I have 

a right to poison the command and control system that it uses to 

operate? Do I have a right to take them off the air from where I 

sit? 

Now, at the moment, that is, I think, roughly equivalent to, 

‘‘well, if nobody knows, your general counsel would advise you not 

to,’’ but in this space, there is a very fine line between how do you 

defend yourself and what somebody else will later charge as vigilantism. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Let me interrupt you if I might. 

If, prior to the computer, my files were in file cabinets and you 

come and lift out those files and, in fact, take them with you, you 

are in trouble. 

Mr. GEER. Yes. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. This is the same kind of thing except you are 

doing it electronically from a remote site which may be two times 

removed. 

Mr. GEER. Yes, but the difference there is, if I steal your car or 

your files, you know they are gone. If I steal your data, you may 

not know it is gone until it is misused. So I have to be able to react 

when I discover that it is going on. Whether this is ‘‘the home is 

the castle, and I can shoot the intruder or not,’’ I mean, I do not 

know quite what to say here, but this is a problem. This is the fundamental problem on the commercial side. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Please. We are looking for some R&D, some way 

we can get there because this, to me, seems to be that key we have 

got to find to either lock the lock or unlock the lock that we have 

got to get to. 

Mr. SAYDJARI. So I think this is partly a question of intrusion detection systems, and the intrusion detection systems that are out 

there today really count on the attack’s having been seen in the 

wild before. They are called ‘‘signature-based schemes,’’ and they 

are ineffective in the sense that they are after the fact, and so a 

majority or certainly a very large number of attacks that are out 

there are not visible by these kinds of mechanisms, and that is a 

bad thing, and there is research, for example, on anomaly-based 

detection schemes that can characterize normal behavior and then 

look for the abnormal behavior, which is a deviation for that. So 

there is hope on that research line. 

I will also add that the community has been using what I would 

consider ad hoc sensors, sorts of things that were not really designed to be sensors for the most sophisticated kinds of attacks like 

the ones that we imagine and work through in the dark angel campaign. So what we really need to do as a community is to work 

backwards from the kinds of attacks we are most worried about to 

the kinds of sensors that we require to detect those. I mean it is 

like, you know, if we were trying to detect a nuclear launch just 

to kind of look for, you know, some warm sensations from somebody nearby. I mean we cannot just use those kinds of off-the-shelf 

kinds of sensors. We really need to rethink the way we do sensors. 

41 

Mr. LEWIS. Let me offer you a suggestion that is maybe a little 

less expensive and will not cost as much money. 

One of the problems that I think we have seen is sometimes 

there is knowledge in the national security communities and the 

national security agencies like defense or the intelligence community that does not get shared or does not get shared promptly or 

adequately with the civilian agencies. That might be an interesting 

thing for you to look at. So, if DOD figures out there is a problem, 

how does that percolate through the rest of the Federal system? 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. How do we get out of the tunnels and start sharing at the highest level? 

Mr. LEWIS. Exactly. So better coordination, better information— 

sharing, breaking that firewall between, say, some of the national 

security folks. That would help. 

The other thing that would help would be better network hygiene 

for lack of a better term. Now, that will not solve the problem, but 

it will reduce the number of incidents, and what you have got is 

some network administrators do a great job; other network administrators do not do as good a job. How do you get them all up to 

the a basic level? We have seen some cases where, at NASA or at 

DOD, grabbing the low-hanging fruit has significantly reduced the 

number of incidents. The systems are not secure. People are still 

intruding, but it is at a much lower level. 

Mr. SAYDJARI. If I could extend my remarks at one more level, 

a colleague of mine who is an expert in the power system advises 

me that, if we had an attack on our power control systems, we 

would never know it because there are no intrusion detection systems within those networks. So, when Dr. Lewis talks about the 

focus on the networks that are connected, I will tell you that every 

network is connected to every other network in some way, shape 

or fashion, whether it is through software development or actual 

connections, and so those networks are just as likely to be attacked. Well, of course, you need some insiders or you need some 

malicious software, but you can attack those networks, and those 

networks which are controlling our most critical assets are least 

sensored. That is a very bad thing that needs to change immediately. 

Mr. GEER. I like numbers. Can I give you a couple? 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Please. 

Mr. GEER. For average desktop machines—I am not talking 

about, for example, the power grid. For average desktop machines, 

my own calculation is that about 30 percent of them have something unwanted running on them. Vent Surf says 40 percent; 

Microsoft says two-thirds; IDC says three-quarters. So it is not like 

we are trying to preserve innocence. It is a little harder. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Yes. Well, you have scared me to death. Thank 

you. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for your 

testimony today. You, obviously, addressed and raised some very 

sobering and very serious issues, and we obviously have a lot of 

work to do. We look forward to speaking with you further. 

I am sure that other members of the committee, myself included, 

will have additional questions that we might want to pose to you, 

and we ask that you respond, if you would, in an expeditious manVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
42 

ner. If you could help us with that, we would be very grateful and 

would much appreciate it. Thank you very much, and I want to 

thank the witnesses for their testimony. 

Hearing no further business before the subcommittee, the subcommittee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(43) 

Appendix I: For the Record 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE BENNIE G. THOMPSON, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

• I thank the Chairman for holding another important hearing on cybersecurity. 

• It is clear that our government, working together with the private sector and 

academia, must do more to ensure that cybersecurity is a priority in our nation’s 

homeland security strategy. 

• In 1996, the United States government undertook the first national effort to secure our networks. 

• Unfortunately, I don’t believe that we are any further along today in our efforts 

to secure cyberspace. 

• Programs and initiatives that were developed over the past ten years have been 

dismantled and, in certain instances, are just now being re-created by the government. 

• We heard in last week’s hearing that ‘‘coordinating better cyber security practices across the Federal government’’ is one of Secretary Chertoff’s ‘‘highest priorities.’’ 

• But this rings hollow to me when I think about how long it took him to appoint 

an Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity. 

• I also wonder why the Secretary believes that the Department will be able to 

coordinate better cyber security practices across the Federal government, when his 

own Chief Information Officer just received a ‘‘D’’ in the recent FISMA grades. 

• So we have a lot of work to do, but fortunately we have some very capable people who can help. 

• I thank the witnesses for being here today and for their commitment to helping 

the Federal government move this issue in the right direction. 

• Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

(45) 

Appendix II: Selected Major Reports on Cyber 

Security Research and Development 

Biometric Research Agenda: Report of the NSF Workshop. Morgantown, West Virginia, April/May 2003, http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xweu9dx2qMsJ:www. 

wvu.edu/bknc/BiometricResearchAgenda.pdf+Biometric+Research+Agenda:+Report+ 

of+the+NSF+Workshop&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us. 

Coordination of Federal Cyber Security Research and Development, U.S Government 

Accountability Office, GAO–06–811, Sept. 2006, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ 

d06811.pdf. 

Creating a National Framework for Cybersecurity: An Analysis of Issues and Options, Eric A. Fischer, Congressional Research Service, Feb. 22, 2005, http:// 

www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/crs/rl32777.pdf. 

Critical Foundations: Protecting America’s Infrastructures. President’s Commission 

on Critical Infrastructure Protection, October 1997, 

www.fas.org/sgp/library/pccip.pdf. 

Critical Information Infrastructure Protection and the Law: An Overview of Key 

Issues. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 2003, http://www.cstb.org/publciip.html. 

Critical Infrastructure: Challenges Remain in Protecting Key Sectors, Testimony of 

Eileen R. Larence, Director, Homeland Security and Justice Issues, and David A. 

Powner, Director, Information Technology Management Issues, Before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO–07–626T, March 20, 

2007, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07626t.pdf. 

Critical Infrastructure Protection: Challenges and Efforts to Secure Control Systems, 

Testimony of Robert F. Dacey, Director, Information Security Issues, Before the 

Subcommittee on Technology Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and 

the Census, House Committee on Government Reform, U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO–04–628T, March 30, 2004, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ 

d04628t.pdf. 

Critical Infrastructure Protection: Challenges in Addressing Cybersecurity, Testimony of David A. Powner, Director Information Technology Management Issues, Before the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, 

and International Security, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO–05–827T, July 19, 

2005, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05827t.pdf. 

Cyber Security Research and Development Agenda. I3P, Dartmouth College, January 

2003, http://www.thei3p.org/repository/2003lCyberlSecuritylRDlAgenda.pdf. 

Electronic Crime Needs Assessment for State and Local Law Enforcement, National 

Institute of Justice Research Report, March 2001, http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/ 

nij/186276.pdf. 

Embedded, Everywhere: A Research Agenda for Networked Systems of Embedded 

Computers. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board,National Research 

Council, 2001, http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/publembedded.html. 

Hard Problems List. Infosec Research Council. September 1999 (and draft revision 

as of September 2004) Information Technology Research for Crisis Management. 

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 1999, 

http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/publcrisismanagement.html. 

High Confidence Software and Systems Research Needs. High Confidence Software 

and Systems Coordinating Group, Interagency Working Group onInformation TechVerDate Nov 24 2008 12:16 Jun 23, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\110-HRGS\110-30\43566.TXT HSEC PsN: DIANE
46 

nology Research and Development, January 2001, http://www.nitrd.gov/pubs/hcssresearch.pdf. 

IDs-Not That Easy. Questions About Nationwide Identity Systems. Computer 

Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 2002, http:// 

www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/publnationwideidentity.html. 

Information Sharing/Critical Infrastructure Protection Task Force Report, National 

Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, May 2000, 

http://www.ncs.gov/nstac/reports/2000/ISCIP-Final.pdf. 

Information Technology for Counterterrorism. Computer Science 

andTelecommunications Board, National Research Council, 2003, http:// 

www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/publcounterterrorism.html. 

Insider Threat Study: Computer System Sabotage in Critical Infrastructure Sectors, 

Michelle Keeney, Dawn Cappelli, et al, Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, May 2005, http://www.cert.org/cert/work/organizationallsecurity.html. 

Internet Domain Names: Background and Policy Issues, Lennard G. Kruger, Congressional Research Service, Sept. 22, 2005, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/ 

awcgate/crs/97–868.pdf. 

The Internet Under Crisis Conditions: Learning from September 11. Computer 

Science and Telecommunications Board, National ResearchCouncil, 2003, http:// 

www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/publinternet911.html. 

National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, Research and Development Exchange Workshop, Atlanta, Georgia, March 2003, http://www.ncs.gov/ 

nstac/rd/nstacl03lbos.html. 

National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, Research 

andDevelopment Exchange Workshop. Tulsa, Oklahoma, September 2000, http:// 

www.ncs.gov/nstac/reports/2001/R&DlExchange2000Proceedings.htm. 

National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, Research and Development Exchange Workshop. West Lafayette, Indiana, October 1998, http:// 

www.ncs.gov/nstac/reports/1998/R&DExchange.pdf. 

National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, The White House, February 2003, http:// 

www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb/. 

Protecting Systems Task Force Report on Enhancing the Nation’s Security Efforts, 

National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, May 2000, 

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:JkJUKZ9OmYsJ:www.ncs.gov/nstac/reports/2000/PSTF-Final.pdf+Protecting+Systems+Task+Force+Report+on+ 

Enhancing+the+Nation%E2%80%99s+Security+Efforts,+National+Security+ 

Telecommunications+Advisory+Committee,+May+2000,&hl=en&ct=clnk& 

cd=1&gl=us. 

Robust Cyber Defense. Study commissioned for DARPA ITO, Fall 2001. Slides available at: 

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/fbs/darpa.RobustCyberDefense.ppt. 

Technology Assessment: Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure Protection, U.S. 

Government Accountability Office, GAO–04–321, May 2004, http://www.gao.gov/ 

new.items/d04321.pdf. 

Trust in Cyberspace. Computer Science and Telecommunications Board,National Research Council, 1999, http://books.nap.edu/readingroom/books/trust/. 

Understanding the Insider Threat, Richard C. Brackney, Robert H. Anderson, 

Conference Proceedings of a March 2004 Workshop, RAND, National Security Division, http://www.rand.org/pubs/conflproceedings 

/2005/RANDlCF196.pdf. 

Who Goes There? Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy. Computer Science and 

Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 2003, http:// 

www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/publauthentication.html. 

Workshop on Scalable Cyber-Security Challenges in Large-Scale Networks: Deployment Obstacles. Large Scale Networking Coordinating Group,NITRD, Landsdowne, 

Virginia, March 2003, http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:mWKvtoq—xLoJ:cs. 

yale.edu/homes/jf/LSN-report.pdf+Workshop+on+Scalable+Cyber-Security+ 

Challenges+in+Large-Scale+Networks:&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us. 

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