The U.S. military believes the work of a Calgary hacker may be its best bet to protect its computer networks from so-called cyber-terrorist attacks. And although Theo de Raadt is happy to have more than $2-million (U.S.) in research support from the U.S. military’s research and development office, the source of that funding has made him more than a little uneasy. “I actually am fairly uncomfortable about it, even if our firm stipulation was that they cannot tell us what to do. We are simply doing what we do anyways — securing software — and they have no say in the matter,” Mr. de Raadt said in a recent e-mail exchange. “I try to convince myself that our grant means a half of a cruise missile doesn’t get built.” The grant comes from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the R&D arm of the U.S. military, whose most widely known invention would be the Internet. For this grant, DARPA is interested in testing the security of commercial software systems against the security of open source software projects. Full Story
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