http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55649,00.html

Associated Press
2:05 p.m. Oct. 8, 2002 PDT

PITTSBURGH -- The Defense Department is giving Carnegie Mellon
University $35.5 million to develop tools and tactics for fighting
cyberterrorism.

The inventions to be researched and engineered at the top computer
science school would serve equally well in battling hackers and
Internet crooks.

"These problems have always existed. Terrorism only increased the
visibility of these problems," said Pradeep Khosla, who heads the
university's electrical and computer engineering department and
directs the new Center for Computer and Communications Security.

The 5-year grant, combined with other federal, state and private
funding, gives the center an $8 million budget this year.

Better technology is needed so Internet users can verify the identity
of others and keep hackers from infiltrating computer networks, said
Khosla.

The center is already researching ways to engineer artificial
intelligence into hardware so that components such as disk drives
could take countermeasures in a hacker attack. Such components would
shut down and even automatically report an incident to network
administrators

Researchers are also studying how to use signatures, fingerprints,
iris patterns, face recognition technology and voice scans to confirm
the identity of computer users.

Khosla believes some combination of those technologies will likely be
used in the future.

"You may wear a mask so you look like me, but it's not likely that
you're going to look like me, sign (your name) like me and sound like
me," he said.

Some of the technologies could even be used outside cyberspace. For
example, computer-linked cameras could confirm the identity of an
airline pilot and place the plane on autopilot if someone else took
the controls or if the pilot unexpectedly left the camera's view,
Khosla said.

-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org

To unsubscribe email majordomoattrition.org with 'unsubscribe isn'
in the BODY of the mail.

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]