Pierluigi Paganini
June 20, 2016
Recently we have reported the first results of the “Hack the Pentagon” program that allowed the discovery of numerous flaws in the computers of the US Government. News of the day is that the high school student David Dworken from Washington DC has hacked into Pentagon computer systems. Dworken revealed to have spent 10-15 hours a day attempting to hack the US Defense Department websites, and he succeeded!
Dworken has discovered six vulnerabilities in the US military’s website between classes at the Maret High School.
In response, the Pentagon thanked the young expert and offered him internships. Dworken was one of two people (the second one is Craig Arendt, a security consultant at Stratum Security) praised by the Secretary of Defense Ash Carter for finding the security issued in the Pentagon systems and now he has been approached by Government recruiters to discuss internships.
Carter praised the work of ethical hackers explaining the importance of their role in the protection national infrastructure.
“We know that state-sponsored actors and black-hat hackers want to challenge and exploit our networks … what we didn’t fully appreciate before this pilot was how many white hat hackers there are who want to make a difference,” he explained.
The US Government is encouraging white hat hackers in testing government networks under “controlled” programs such has Hack the Pentagon.
In some cases, the hackers have been rewarded up to $US15,000 for disclosures of the worst vulnerabilities, but Dworken did not receive any money because the bugs he has found were already known to the US authorities. He says he will now study computer science at university after turning down internships.
Dworken confirmed his intention of studying computer science at university after turning down internships.
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Security Affairs – (US Government, hacking)
