In another exercise, the DOD found that 63 percent of test attacks on its own systems went undetected. In February, the FBI raided the homes of two California high school sophomores. To make the Pentagon attack hard to trace, the hackers routed it through the United Arab Emirates. They were directed by a teenage hacker in Israel. To help industries fend off hacker attacks, both foreign and domestic, the government has created the National Infrastructure Protection Center, to be staffed by 125 people from the FBI, other agencies, and industry.
Recent events make clear that tighter defenses are needed.
A year ago, a boy only 14 with a home computer disabled control-tower communications at a Worcester, Mass., airport for six hours. Jim Trainor, executive director of security at Bell Atlantic, says the loopholes the teenager exploited have been closed. But no computer environment is totally secure. You will never get there.