








Read
about cyber terrorism: "...The attacks were
'the equivalent of bombing a TV station because
you don’t like one of the newscasters,' Mikko Hyppönen, chief
research
officer of the Internet security firm F-Secure, said in a blog post.
'The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter,
LiveJournal and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of
this attack.'” At right: Some experts have doubts about the
missile shield concept, according to the I-BBC.
Where do really big vegetables fit in to nuclear
proliferation?

More on fires in Russia here.
Chernobyl,
Fires and Radiation
NYTIMES
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
August 11, 2010, 11:27 am
There are some heated headlines out there as fires spring up in the
zone contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. The
reality, according to specialists in environmental risk from fires and
radiation, is that any radiation contained in the resulting smoke and
other emissions is very unlikely to pose a significant health risk.
This very question came up two years ago when forest experts grew
concerned that the rise of uncontrollable wildfires in the region was
growing, mainly because foresters could not operate there. In May 2000,
hundreds of firefighters fought a big peat fire in the region. Belarus
officials concluded there was no rise in radiation levels. In an e-mail
exchange at the time, Robert Barish, a health physicist and radiation
consultant, sent the following input on radiation risk from forest
fires:
With respect to your question, in the case of forest fires, there is
remobilization of radioactive materials that have been deposited into
the plant material. The risks however, depend strongly on two factors:
First is how much of the deposited material has actually been taken up
by the trees/plants themselves. Some studies have shown that there is a
competing pathway for other minerals like potassium that lower the
concentration of cesium and strontium in the plant material to levels
that are significantly lower than they might be otherwise. Also some of
the material is leached back into the soil.
The second is the dispersal pattern. It is the latter that leads to a
very significant dilution of any radioactivity as it is spread through
huge volumes of air, thus significantly reducing its concentration.
A paper from the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology showed
an estimated inhalation dose of 1/10,000 to 1/100,000 of background
levels to firefighters confronting a wildfire near the Chernobyl site:
Forest fires in the territory contaminated as a result of
the Chernobyl accident: radioactive aerosol resuspension and exposure
of fire-fighters
V. A. Kashparov, S.
M. Lundina, A. M. Kadygriba, V. P. Protsaka, S. E. Levtchuka, V. I.
Yoschenkoa, V. A. Kashpurb and N. M. Talerko
Journal of
Environmental Radioactivity Volume 51, Issue 3, December 2000, Pages
281-298
I’ve sent a fresh query to a group of forest, fire and health
researchers to get more input on this question.
Page last updated at 09:44 GMT, Sunday,
5 April 2009 10:44 UK
Global map of
nuclear arsenals
• All numbers are estimates because exact numbers are top
secret.
• Strategic nuclear warheads are designed to target cities,
missile locations and military headquarters as part of a strategic
plan.
ISRAEL
Israeli authorities have never confirmed or denied the
country has nuclear weapons.
NORTH KOREA
The highly secretive state claims it has nuclear weapons, but
there is no information in the public domain that proves this.
IRAN
The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in 2003 there
had been covert nuclear activity to make fissile material and continues
to monitor Tehran's nuclear program.
SYRIA
US officials have claimed it is covertly seeking nuclear
weapons.
DEP will require Millstone to study new
cooling, discharge methods
DAY
Patricia Daddona
Article published Feb 17, 2010
A hearing officer with the state Department of Environmental Protection
today recommended renewing a water discharge permit for Millstone Power
Station that requires the owner to take several steps to protect marine
life in Long Island Sound.
Under the proposed permit, Dominion Nuclear Connecticut would be
allowed to discharge approximately 2.28 billion gallons of water a day
into the Sound, according to DEP hearing officer Janice Deshais. The
outdated, 12-year-old permit that the company is seeking to renew
allows up to 2.7 billion gallons a day. The two reactors typically use
about 2.2 billion gallons a day.
Millstone's plants discharge heated water into the Sound as they
generate electricity. They also trap and kill marine life at intakes
when they suck millions of gallons of water into the plants for cooling.
The new terms of the proposal call for installation by Jan. 1, 2011 of
new technology shown to reduce the intake of cooling water by about 40
percent during the spawning season for winter flounder, which typically
runs from early April to mid-May.
The permit also requires a detailed assessment by late summer of 2012
of all available technologies,known in a related federal court case as
the best technologies available to minimize harm to the environment.
Dominion also must study the feasibility of installing fine mesh
screens to help prevent the death of winter flounder larvae.
According to DEP, the permit would not be issued unless the company
also conducts a detailed study of how to improve the natural
reproduction of winter flounder in the Niantic River and actively
participates in the Nitrogen Work Group DEP has set up. That group is
examining the effects of nitrogen loading on aquatic life and the river.
The terms reached by Deshais are based on an agreement reached in
September 2008 between DEP staff, Dominion, and two environmental
groups, Connecticut Fund for the Environment, Inc. and Soundkeeper, Inc.
This permit proposal represents the proposed final decision following
public hearings in December 2008 on the matter, said DEP Spokesman
Dennis Schain.
The commissioner typically makes the final decision, but since former
commissioner Gina McCarthy was leaving her post and current
Commissioner Amey Marrella had been involved in working out permit
provisions as deputy, Marrella cannot be final decision maker, said
Schain. Susan Frechette, now deputy commissioner, is charged with
making that final decision, he said.
There's no required timetable for the decision, Schain said.

Yucca Mountain’s death just a few steps away - Steve Marcus /
FILE
Administration Cannot Drop Bid for Nuclear Waste Dump in Nevada, Panel
Finds
NYTIMES
By MATTHEW L. WALD
June 29, 2010
WASHINGTON — In a setback for the Obama administration, a panel of
judges at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled on Tuesday that the
Energy Department could not withdraw its application to open a nuclear
waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Making good on a campaign pledge by President Obama, the Energy
Department had formally sought to drop its plan for Yucca Mountain, a
volcanic structure about 100 miles from Las Vegas. But states with
major accumulations of waste from nuclear weapons production had
petitioned to prevent the department from doing so.
In a 47-page decision, the three-member panel of administrative judges
said the Energy Department lacked the authority to drop the petition
because it would flout a law passed by Congress.
In the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, Congress directed the Energy
Department to file the application and the commission to consider it
and “issue a final, merits-based decision approving or disapproving the
construction,” the judges said. “Unless Congress directs otherwise,
D.O.E. may not single-handedly derail the legislated decision-making
process.”
The effect of the decision is unclear for now. Congress would have to
appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars a year for the Energy
Department to pursue the application. But the president’s budget for
next year proposes no money at all; and while some members of the House
are eager to appropriate funds, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid
of Nevada, is adamantly opposed to the project.
Yet the decision could keep the application alive long enough for the
politics to change.
That would not end the debate over scientific and engineering issues
related to the project, which is markedly different from the waste
burial strategy being pursued in other countries. Some experts say the
geology of the Nevada site, selected by Congress in 1987, is
unsuitable. The Energy Department would have to convince the commission
that the repository could contain the waste for hundreds of thousands
of years.
The three-judge panel noted that the Energy Department was not claiming
that Yucca was unsafe or that there was anything wrong with the
86,000-page application, but was saying only that the site was “not a
workable option.”
The decision on Tuesday could be overruled by the five-member Nuclear
Regulatory Commission itself. The commission is studying the order,
said a commission spokesman, Eliot Brenner.
President Obama had promised in his election campaign to drop the Yucca
Mountain plans if he were elected. But the states of Washington and
South Carolina, with major stores of waste, had petitioned to prevent
the Energy Department from withdrawing the application. So did the
Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade association; several
counties in Nevada; and the National Association of Regulatory Utility
Commissioners, made up of state officials who sit on public service
commissions.
The state officials are concerned because the Energy Department’s waste
program has been mostly financed by electricity consumers, who pay
one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour into a nuclear waste fund. The
state commissioners have also asked that payments to the fund be
suspended because there is now effectively no program to find a burial
spot. About $10 billion has been spent so far.
In announcing his intention to give up on the Yucca Mountain plan, Mr.
Obama said he would establish a commission to seek solutions to nuclear
waste. But the commission, which began meeting this year, is not
looking for alternative sites but considering ways of recycling and
reusing some of the waste.
That could reduce the number of repositories needed, but at least one
would still be required; national policy still dictates that the waste
should eventually be buried.
Stephanie Mueller, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said the agency
was “confident that we have the legal authority to withdraw the
application for the Yucca Mountain repository.”
“We believe the administrative board’s decision is wrong and believe
that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will reverse that decision,” Ms.
Mueller said.
But Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said
the ruling signaled that the Yucca Mountain licensing effort would
continue.
The Obama administration promised Monday it
would withdraw the
application to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
Yucca Mountain Sun coverage
By Lisa Mascaro (contact), Stephanie Tavares
(contact)
Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010 | 2 a.m.
Washington — The long and tortured effort to build a national burial
ground at Yucca Mountain for highly radioactive waste will be halted
once and for all, the Obama administration promised Monday, saying it
would withdraw the application to build the project and starve it of
funds.
And the coup de grace, maybe many years from now: plugging the tunnel
into the mountain and sealing inside, forever, not nuclear waste but a
giant boring machine that became an icon for the vexed project.
The government has poured $38 billion into the effort, claiming it had
found the perfect place to house the Earth’s most dangerous garbage but
failing in its effort to prove its case. Now that search will be
renewed.
“The administration has determined that Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is not
a workable option for a nuclear waste repository and will discontinue
its program to construct a repository at the mountain in 2010,” White
House in budget documents said.
Marty Malsch, an attorney who has fought the project for years on
behalf of Nevada, said if the application withdrawal is approved, “It
would mean, effectively, that’s the end of it.”
“Yucca, as Yucca, is dead.”
Energy Secretary Steven Chu emphasized that he will seek the withdrawal
“with prejudice” — a legal definition that prohibits the project from
being resubmitted later, ending speculation that the project could be
revived when a more dump-friendly administration inhabits the White
House.
Nevadans who have opposed Yucca Mountain repository since Congress
singled it out more than 20 years ago think the endgame is set.
“This is the day we put the Champagne on ice — we’ll pop the cork after
the motion is heard and decided,” said Richard Bryan, former Democratic
governor and senator who led efforts to stop the dump.
“It’s a great day for the state and a great testament to the state
hanging tough and staying the course.”
Former Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn said, “It has been a long time
coming.”
But before the Champagne begins to flow, several steps must be taken.
• First, the Energy Department must, within 30 days, submit to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s three-judge panel its request to
withdraw the application with prejudice.
The panel is reviewing the application to license the waste dump, a
painstaking process that began in 2008 and could take at least four
years to complete. Citing Obama’s intent pull the plug, the Energy
Department asked the panel Monday for a stay in those hearings, “to
avoid the unnecessary expenditure of resources,” according to the legal
papers.
In a sign of the possible debate, White Pine County indicated in a
legal filing it will oppose the motion for the stay. Several other
Nevada counties remain neutral or are supportive, according to legal
documents.
• Next, the three-judge panel will consider the withdrawal application
— a key document that would outline the terms of withdrawal and whether
the site could be reconsidered in the future.
The nuclear industry has been the primary champions of the dump, and
the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main lobby, would not say
if it plans to challenge the withdrawal application. A spokesman said
the withdrawal language will be “of paramount importance,” hinting at
the industry’s desire to keep a dump at Yucca Mountain on the back
burner.
“The industry does not support the termination of this program, but
believes that, if it is going to happen, it should occur in an orderly
manner to permit the licensing process to be restarted if ever
warranted,” said Marvin Fertel, the institute’s CEO.
• Finally, the panel would issue a ruling that could be appealed, and
any decision would be reviewed by the full Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.
The commission is made up of political appointees — three Democrats,
two Republicans — and is headed by Gregory Jaczko, who specialized in
nuclear energy issues on the staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
before being tapped for the job.
Yet even with these final, potentially arduous, steps still to come,
those who have fought the dump are confident that if the Obama
administration continues on the course it has outlined, a Yucca
repository will never exist.
By withdrawing the application, the administration would take the legal
action necessary to halt the project — a move with even more teeth than
if the energy secretary were to declare the site unsuitable, which had
always been an option.
Malsch said that if the energy secretary were to declare the site
unsuitable but then fail to pull the license, “you always would have
wondered. This makes it clear that changing the mind is out of the
question.”
A Yucca dump’s obituary has been written before, but Monday’s
developments provided the strongest indications yet that the project is
ending.
The Obama administration’s decision was not a complete surprise. As a
presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign told the Las
Vegas Sun he would withdraw the application if elected.
Yet the administration did not do so after taking office last year,
even as Obama severely cut the Yucca Mountain budget. The federal
government appeared hesitant to pull the plug because it faces mounting
legal liability for failing to take the waste off nuclear power
companies’ hands, as required by law. Already several utilities have
successfully sued the government for failing to open a Yucca repository
in 1998 as promised.
But over the past several days, Obama sought to assure the nuclear
industry he is on its side even as he prepared to deliver a devastating
blow to its long-promised dump.
In his State of the Union address last week, Obama welcomed “a new
generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” And
Friday the administration announced the formation of a new commission
headed by Lee Hamilton and Brent Scowcroft that will come up with Plan
B — alternatives to a dump at Yucca Mountain. Also, Obama’s new budget
triples to $54 billion the federal loan guarantees available for
financing new nuclear power plants.
With so many sweeteners, the industry’s opposition to a Yucca dump’s
demise may be muted.
Reid, who has worked closely with Obama and Chu on Yucca, on Monday
thanked Obama “for keeping his word to Nevadans.”
Although the 2011 budget would eliminate the project, it provides at
least $55 million for a newly merged office to close the site. Yucca’s
staff has been slashed from 1,400 last year to 625 today, with just 127
working in Las Vegas.
The tunnel into the repository has long been closed, with a chain-link
fence across the openings.
Bruce Breslow, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear
Projects, which has fought the dump, said the site needs to be
remediated and returned to its original condition, as required by law.
The buildings need to be removed, the boring holes that have made Swiss
cheese of the mountain top need to be patched up and the entrance
tunnels need to be filled “with two giant corks, or however they’re
going to do it,” Breslow said.
Eventually, the state also would need to untangle its many lawsuits
against the federal government.
Yet while a Yucca dump may be done, Nevada may not be safe from the
nation’s nuclear waste.
The new commission promises it will not consider Yucca Mountain as it
seeks alternatives, but the rest of Nevada’s desert could be open
ground for waste storage or a waste reprocessing facility.
Some members of the Republican political establishment in Nevada have
long envisioned a nuclear waste facility in the desert, and several
candidates hoping to unseat Reid in the fall election, including Sue
Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, want to explore waste reprocessing ideas.
Yet Yucca Mountain as the end destination for the waste would be no
more. Even though Yucca Mountain remains in law as the chosen site for
the nation’s nuclear waste, without a project application the law is
moot, legal experts said.
Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said that if the president follows
through and pulls the application, it will be “all but impossible for
this threat to one day return from the grave.”
We
first heard another version of this old saying from
former First Selectman Jim Daniel - "the good is the enemy of the
better."

In Asia, Obama,
Medvedev see nuclear pact progress
YAHOO
By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press Writer
November 15, 2009
SINGAPORE – President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States and
Russia would have a replacement treaty on reducing nuclear arms ready
for approval by year's end, an announcement designed as an upbeat
ending to a summit with Asia-Pacific leaders.
While publicizing progress with Russia on arms control — part of
Obama's agenda to advance nuclear disarmament — the president and other
leaders bowed to the obvious on climate change. They discussed a
compromise agreement for a 192-nation gathering next month in
Copenhagen, indirectly admitting that the meeting would not produce a
new global treaty to reduce the heat-trapping carbon emissions that are
warming the planet.
Nearing the end of his two days in Singapore, Obama also attended a
second summit with leaders of the 10 southeast Asian countries that
make up the ASEAN group. Obama was the first U.S. president to sit in
on the meetings, that included a senior leader of Myanmar — part of a
shift in U.S. policy away from isolating the repressive Myanmar
military government.
Afterward, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama told the
gathering, Myanmar Gen. Thein Sein included, that his government must
free long-detained democracy leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi
and other political prisoners.
Obama "brought that up directly with that government," Gibbs
said. While Myanmar ranks high among nations that suppress human
rights, a joint statement by the United States and the ASEAN group made
no mention of Suu Kyi.
The whirlwind of summitry is part of Obama's first presidential trip to
the region. Its emphasis on big issues like climate change, disarmament
and the economic crisis is part of Obama's approach to persuade new
emerging powers like China — where he headed later Sunday — to share in
the burden of managing global challenges. The change in emphasis
has helped Obama shift relations to a more positive footing, away from
disputes over human rights and the Chinese military buildup that have
unsteadied ties. In Shanghai on Monday, Obama will address an audience
of students from several universities and field questions from them and
from submissions to the U.S. Embassy's Web site.
Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met on the sidelines of the
Asia-Pacific summit of APEC nations to announced good progress in
negotiations on an updated pact to replace the START nuclear arms
agreement that expires on Dec. 5.
Sitting, gesturing and leaning toward his Russian counterpart, Obama
said the pair discussed a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty and described "excellent progress over the last
several months."
"I'm confident that if we work hard and with a sense of urgency, we'll
be able to get that done," Obama said, adding technical issues remain.
Medvedev said he hoped negotiators would "finalize the text of the
document by December."
Obama and Medvedev agreed in April to reach a new nuclear arms
reduction pact to replace and expand upon the one that was signed by
former President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Michael
Gorbachev.
During a July summit in Moscow, Obama and Medvedev further agreed to
cut the number of nuclear warheads each nation possesses to between
1,500 and 1,675 within seven years. U.S. officials say the two
nations now have agreed on the broad outlines of a new treaty, which
could be signed during Obama's travels to Europe in early December to
accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
It still was not clear if Obama would use that same trip to attend the
Copenhagen climate summit, given that any agreement reached on cutting
greenhouse gas emissions would serve only as an interim, political
document.
"There was an assessment by the leaders that it is unrealistic to
expect a full internationally, legally binding agreement could be
negotiated between now and Copenhagen which starts in 22 days," said
Michael Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for
international economic matters.
The prime minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the
U.N.-sponsored climate conference's chairman, flew overnight to
Singapore to present a proposal shifting the goal of the meeting to a
"politically binding" agreement, in hopes of breathing life into the
struggling process. A fully binding legal agreement would be left
to a second meeting next year in Mexico City, Froman said.
Obama backed the approach, cautioning the group not to let the "perfect
be the enemy of the good," Froman said.
A major bill dealing with energy and climate in the U.S. Senate, a
domestic priority of Obama's, is bogged down with scant hope of
completion by next month. That would leave Obama little to show in
Copenhagen.
During his Asia trip, which continued later Sunday to China, Obama also
pushed for continued pressure on Iran and its nuclear program.
Appearing with Medvedev, Obama said "we are now running out of time."
"Unfortunately, so far it appears Iran has been unable to say yes," to
the proposal on uranium reprocessing, Obama said.
Medvedev continued: "We are prepared to work further and I hope our
joint work will reach a positive result. In case we fail, other options
remain on the table." He has said further sanctions against Iran were
possible if it did not open its nuclear program to inspections to prove
it was not trying to build a bomb.
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S.,
Britain, France, Russia and China — along with Germany have engaged
Iran on its nuclear program, most recently with a deal for it to ship
enriched uranium to Russia for further processing as fuel for an aging
reactor used for medical treatments. The United States and its
allies believe Iran is using it's nuclear program as a cover for
building a bomb. Tehran says it only wants to build nuclear reactors to
generate electricity.
Obama wrapped his official schedule in Singapore late Sunday afternoon
by meeting with Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of the
world's largest Muslim nation and Obama's home as a boy. Obama said he
was excited about the prospect of improving relations with Indonesia
and repeated his plan to visit next year.
He said, however, the schedule would depend on his family; he wanted to
plan a trip with "Michelle and the girls so they can take a look at
some of my old haunts."
Page last updated at 16:39 GMT,
Thursday, 17 September 2009
17:39 UK
US missile rethink
a huge shift
|
By Paul Reynolds, World affairs correspondent BBC News website
|

The decision by the Obama administration to drop plans to
base an
anti-ballistic missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic
is a huge shift in American foreign and defence policy.
There are several immediate implications. First,
it is a major signal, which has followed a number of others, that the
United States is adopting a far more cautious and flexible foreign
policy under President Obama than it did under President Bush.
President
Bush was determined on the European-based system and agreements had
been reached with Poland to base 10 anti-missile interceptors there and
with the Czechs for them to house the system's radar.
President
Obama ordered a review when he came into office. He has now been told
that Iran is concentrating less on long-range ballistic missiles that
might one day reach the United States and more on shorter range one
that could reach parts of Europe.
This has given him a
technological reason to change and he will use this to fend off
criticism that he has given in to Moscow. He was careful to say that
his military chiefs agreed with him.
Relations with Moscow
The
second effect will be on US relations with Russia. Here the picture
will be mixed. The Russians will be pleased and therefore relations
will be eased. The Russians had claimed the system might be a threat to
them, though the US said it would not. The US felt that the Russians
were simply making an excuse to meddle in the affairs of their near
neighbours.
But the Russians might also feel triumphant and conclude that
their tough approach is one that brings respect and results.
The
US might hope for spin-offs from more relaxed relations - in that the
Russians might be more willing to agree to increased sanctions against
Iran and might show greater flexibility in nuclear weapons and anti
missile talks. But neither is certain.
Third, this indicates
that the Obama team is looking closely at the claims for technology.
The experts have been having some doubts about the whole shield system.
Shorter range anti-missiles have proved promising. Perhaps
this
means he will also be looking sceptically at claims that Iran is
developing an actual nuclear weapon. That could mean a reluctance to
attack Iranian nuclear plants without rock-solid information, though
this would not necessarily stop the Israelis from doing so.
Not
that the president wishes to be seen as soft on Iran. He states that
his new proposals will be smarter and better in countering any threat
from Iranian missiles.
Hardliners 'let down'
Fourth,
the Polish and Czech governments might have mixed feelings. They had
invested considerable capital in agreeing to the system. Some
hardliners in Eastern Europe might feel let down.
Others might
be relieved. There will be debates about the long-term US commitment to
Europe. That is why the president mentioned Nato's article 5 in his
announcement - an attack on one will still be an attack on all.
Fifth,
on the military side, this heralds a shift of emphasis in the whole US
anti-missile defence strategy. It is not an end to it but it is a
change to it.
The emphasis will now be on regional and
shorter-range defence. The Israeli example might be a good one. The US
is co-operating with the Israelis on the Arrow anti-missile missile and
on a shorter range missile interceptor known as David's Sling.
Such
methods will now come to the fore. And the existing Aegis ship-based
defence, already deployed near Japan, will also have renewed
importance.

Attacking the edges of secure Internet
traffic
YAHOO
By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer
Fri Jul 30, 12:51 am ET
LAS VEGAS – Researchers have uncovered new ways that criminals can spy
on Internet users even if they're using secure connections to banks,
online retailers or other sensitive Web sites.
The attacks demonstrated at the Black Hat conference here show how
determined hackers can sniff around the edges of encrypted Internet
traffic to pick up clues about what their targets are up to.
It's like tapping a telephone conversation and hearing muffled voices
that hint at the tone of the conversation.
The problem lies in the way Web browsers handle Secure Sockets Layer,
or SSL, encryption technology, according to Robert Hansen and Josh
Sokol, who spoke to a packed room of several hundred security experts.
Encryption forms a kind of tunnel between a browser and a website's
servers. It scrambles data so it's indecipherable to prying eyes.
SSL is widely used on sites trafficking in sensitive information, such
as credit card numbers, and its presence is shown as a padlock in the
browser's address bar.
SSL is a widely attacked technology, but the approach by Hansen and
Sokol wasn't to break it. They wanted to see instead what they could
learn from what are essentially the breadcrumbs from people's secure
Internet surfing that browsers leave behind and that skilled hackers
can follow.
Their attacks would yield all sorts of information. It could be
relatively minor, such as browser settings or the number of Web pages
visited. It could be quite substantial, including whether someone is
vulnerable to having the "cookies" that store usernames and passwords
misappropriated by hackers to log into secure sites.
Hansen said all major browsers are affected by at least some of the
issues.
"This points to a larger problem — we need to reconsider how we do
electronic commerce," he said in an interview before the conference, an
annual gathering devoted to exposing the latest computer-security
vulnerabilities.
For the average Internet user, the research reinforces the importance
of being careful on public Wi-Fi networks, where an attacker could
plant himself in a position to look at your traffic. For the attacks to
work, the attacker must first have access to the victim's network.
Hansen and Sokol outlined two dozen problems they found. They
acknowledged attacks using those weaknesses would be hard to pull off.
The vulnerabilities arise out of the fact people can surf the Internet
with multiple tabs open in their browsers at the same time, and that
unsecured traffic in one tab can affect secure traffic in another tab,
said Hansen, chief executive of consulting firm SecTheory. Sokol is a
security manager at National Instruments Corp.
Their talk isn't the first time researchers have looked at ways to
scour secure Internet traffic for clues about what's happening behind
the curtain of encryption. It does expand on existing research in key
ways, though.
"Nobody's getting hacked with this tomorrow, but it's innovative
research," said Jon Miller, an SSL expert who wasn't involved in the
research.
Miller, director of Accuvant Labs, praised Hansen and Sokol for taking
a different approach to attacking SSL.
"Everybody's knocking on the front door, and this is, 'let's take a
look at the windows,'" he said. "I never would have thought about doing
something like this in a million years. I would have thought it would
be a waste of time. It's neat because it's a little different."
Another popular talk at Black Hat concerned a new attack affecting
potentially millions of home routers. The attack could be used to
launch the kinds of attacks described by Hansen and Sokol.
Researcher Craig Heffner examined 30 different types of home routers
from companies including Actiontec Electronics Inc. and Cisco Systems
Inc.'s Linksys and found that more than half of them were vulnerable to
his attack.
He tricked Web browsers that use those routers into letting him access
administrative menus that only the routers' owners should be able to
see. Heffner said the vulnerability is in the browsers and illustrates
a larger security problem involving how browsers determine that the
sites they visit are trustworthy.
The caveat is he has to first trick someone into visiting a malicious
site, and it helps if the victim hasn't changed the router's default
password.
Still: "Once you're on the router, you're invisible — you can do all
kinds of things," such as controlling where the victim goes on the
Internet, Heffner said.
US
unveils plan to make online
transactions safer
YAHOO
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
26 June 2010
WASHINGTON – In the murky world of the Internet, how do you ever really
know who you're talking to, who you're buying from or if your bank can
actually tell it's you when you log in to pay a bill?
Amid growing instances of identity theft, bank account breaches and
sophisticated Internet scams, the government is looking for ways to
make those transactions in cyberspace more secure. But officials
must tread carefully, as efforts to create identity cards, personal
certificates or other systems of identifiers raise privacy worries and
fears of Big Brother tracking its citizens online. In a draft
plan released Friday, the White House laid out an argument for a
yet-undeveloped, voluntary identification system and set up a website
to gather input from experts and everyday Internet users on how it
should be structured.
The website was already getting votes, snipes and suggestions Friday
afternoon — underscoring the incendiary nature of any discussion of
Internet regulation or formal structure.
"The technology that has brought many benefits to our society and has
empowered us to do so much has also empowered those who are driven to
cause harm," said White House cyber coordinator Howard Schmidt in a
blog posting Friday outlining the need for better security online.
The plan, he said, envisions a future in which people would be able to
get a secure identifier — such as a smart identity card or a digital
certificate — from a variety of service providers. Customers could then
use the card or identifier to prove who they are as they make their
online transactions.
"Digital authentication has been the holy grail of Internet security
policy since the early '90s," said James Lewis, cyber security expert
and senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and
International Studies. This latest effort, he said, has a better chance
of succeeding than previous tries, "but we need to see how much
opposition it runs into and whether people will actually use it even if
it gets deployed."
Ari Schwartz, vice president at the Center for Democracy and
Technology, said the unfettered openness of the Internet is what
allowed it to grow and prosper but also created security gaps that need
to be addressed. But any move to improve identity systems raises many
concerns.
"The whole thing is very difficult to do and privacy is one of the more
difficult pieces of it," said Schwartz, adding that the system has to
balance efforts to maintain privacy while still finding out enough
about someone to ensure his identity.
The government, he said, is correct to try to plan ways to move toward
better security, rather than letting it just happen with no
coordination.
But cyber security experts also argued that the technologies for
creating such identifiers already exist and are already used in
different ways by businesses, particularly banks.
"The vision they put forth is already realized and commercially
available," said Roger Thornton, a cyber security expert and chief
technology officer for California-based Fortify Software.
He noted that banks already use sophisticated fingerprinting processes
to identify a customer who signs in. The system knows if a customer is
using a different computer and will often require additional
identification if that computer has not been used for the banking
website before.
But many companies don't bother with the more expensive or complex
identification systems.
So, said Thornton, "the opportunity is there to make things more
interoperable and more uniform."
The draft plan is part of an administration effort to promote cyber
security both within the government and among society as a whole.
Lawmakers have introduced a number of bills aimed at furthering those
goals, and the White House plan was met with initial support from one
of the authors of Senate computer security legislation.
The White House Blog: The National Strategy for Trusted
Identities in Cyberspace
Posted by Howard A. Schmidt on June 25, 2010 at 02:00 PM EDT
Cyberspace has become an indispensible component of everyday life for
all Americans. We have all witnessed how the application and use
of this technology has increased exponentially over the years.
Cyberspace includes the networks in our homes, businesses, schools, and
our Nation’s critical infrastructure. It is where we exchange
information, buy and sell products and services, and enable many other
types of transactions across a wide range of sectors. But not all
components of this technology have kept up with the pace of
growth. Privacy and security require greater emphasis moving
forward; and because of this, the technology that has brought many
benefits to our society and has empowered us to do so much -- has also
empowered those who are driven to cause harm.
Today, I am pleased to announce the latest step in moving our Nation
forward in securing our cyberspace with the release of the draft
National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC).
This first draft of NSTIC was developed in collaboration with key
government agencies, business leaders and privacy advocates. What has
emerged is a blueprint to reduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities and
improve online privacy protections through the use of trusted digital
identities.
The NSTIC, which is in response to one of the near term action items in
the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review, calls for the creation of an
online environment, or an Identity Ecosystem as we refer to it in the
strategy, where individuals and organizations can complete online
transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and
the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on. For
example, no longer should individuals have to remember an
ever-expanding and potentially insecure list of usernames and passwords
to login into various online services. Through the strategy we seek to
enable a future where individuals can voluntarily choose to obtain a
secure, interoperable, and privacy-enhancing credential (e.g., a smart
identity card, a digital certificate on their cell phone, etc) from a
variety of service providers – both public and private – to
authenticate themselves online for different types of transactions
(e.g., online banking, accessing electronic health records, sending
email, etc.). Another key concept in the strategy is that the Identity
Ecosystem is user-centric – that means you, as a user, will be able to
have more control of the private information you use to authenticate
yourself on-line, and generally will not have to reveal more than is
necessary to do so.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a key partner in the
development of the strategy, has posted the draft NSTIC at
www.nstic.ideascale.com. Over the next three weeks (through July 19th),
DHS will be collecting comments from any interested members of the
general public on the strategy. I encourage you to go to this website,
submit an idea for the strategy, comment on someone else’s idea, or
vote on an idea. Your input is valuable to the ultimate success of this
document. The NSTIC will be finalized later this fall.
Thank you for your input!
Howard A. Schmidt is the Cybersecurity Coordinator and Special
Assistant to the President

White House sees no cyber
attack on Wall Street
YAHOO
By DANIEL WAGNER, AP Business Writer
Sun May 9, 12:45 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The White House's homeland security and counterterrorism
adviser says there is no evidence that a cyber attack was behind the
chaos that shook Wall Street last Thursday.
John Brennan told "Fox News Sunday" that officials have uncovered no
links suggesting that cyber attacks caused turbulence that sent the Dow
Jones industrials plunging almost 1,000 points before staging a partial
recovery at the end of the day.
The market already was weak because of the spreading European debt
crisis. Some have speculated that a typographical error might have
triggered the massive computerized sell-off.
Regulators and market officials are scouring millions of trades to
understand what caused the volatility. The Securities and Exchange
Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are relying on
self-regulatory offices at the New York Stock Exchange and elsewhere to
help them identify questionable trades.
In a joint statement Friday, the SEC and CFTC identified one possible
cause for Thursday's plunge: Conflicting trading rules for different
markets.
Markets generally write and enforce their own varying rules, under the
oversight of the SEC and CFTC.
The SEC will meet Monday with representatives from major exchanges,
according to Joe Ratterman, CEO of BATS Global Markets, one of the
largest U.S. trading networks. Ratterman said Friday that SEC officials
called him at his Kansas City, Mo., office late Thursday and again on
Friday seeking information on the unusual trading. BATS had to cancel
540 trades.
New York Stock Exchange Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer told CNBC on
Friday that his exchange canceled 4,000 trades. Nasdaq declined to give
a number. Direct Edge, the third-largest U.S. exchange, reviewed some
of the 10 million trades made Thursday and found 2,000 that had to be
canceled.
Nasdaq OMX Group and NYSE Euronext in a joint statement Sunday said
they are committed to working closely with each other, the Securities
and Exchange Commission and other regulators to determine the cause of
Thursday's market plunge and develop effective ways to make the markets
more stable.
Obama to Name Chief of
Cybersecurity
NYTIMES
By JOHN MARKOFF
December 22, 2009
Nearly seven months after highlighting the vulnerability of banking,
energy and communications systems to Internet attacks, the White House
on Tuesday is expected to name a technology industry veteran to
coordinate competing efforts to improve the nation’s cybersecurity in
both military and civilian life.
The decision to appoint Howard A. Schmidt, an industry executive with
government experience who served as a cybersecurity adviser in the Bush
administration and who also has a military and law enforcement
background, is seen as a compromise between factions. Government
officials and industry executives say there has been a
behind-the-scenes dispute over whether strict new regulations are
necessary to protect the network that increasingly weaves together the
vast majority of the world’s computers.
Mr. Schmidt will report to the National Security Council — not both to
the council and to the National Economic Council, as previously
planned, an administration official said on Monday. Mr. Schmidt will
also “have regular access to the president,” said the official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized
to talk publicly about the appointment.
Cybersecurity has taken on new urgency this year in the face of a
growing range of cyberattacks and reports of vulnerabilities in
business and military computing systems. Indeed, at the May 29
announcement of his administration’s decision to create the position of
cybersecurity coordinator, Mr. Obama described how during his
presidential campaign computer intruders had “gained access to e-mails
and a range of campaign files, from policy position papers to travel
plans.”
“It was,” he said, “a powerful reminder: in this information age, one
of your greatest strengths — in our case, our ability to communicate to
a wide range of supporters through the Internet — could also be one of
your greatest vulnerabilities.”
After reviewing the nation’s cybersecurity preparedness, the White
House said it would create the position of cybersecurity coordinator to
harmonize the nation’s various efforts to “deter, prevent, detect and
defend” against cyberattacks.
The administration’s decision to appoint Mr. Schmidt was slowed by a
tug of war among political, military, intelligence and business
interests, said people with direct knowledge of the selection process.
Industry officials, for example, have expressed concern that new
regulations would dampen innovation.
In recent months the administration has been criticized by lawmakers
and others for not moving more quickly to fill the position. Experts on
the issue had questioned how effective a cybercoordinator could be if
forced to report to two governmental councils without direct access to
the president.
“I’ve come away with a strong sense that Vivek Kundra, chief
information officer, and Aneesh Chopra, the chief technology officer,
and participants at the N.S.C. are aligned on this effort,” said Vinton
Cerf, a co-author of the original Internet standards who has been
consulted by the administration in choosing a “cyberczar.”
The White House official also said that criticisms that the
administration had been frozen on cybersecurity policies while waiting
for the appointment of a cybersecurity chief were inaccurate, citing a
range of initiatives now under way at various agencies to improve
cybersecurity. In November the White House met with a Russian
delegation of cybersecurity officials in an effort to build cooperation
on international law enforcement issues.
One significant difference in the Obama administration’s approach to
cybersecurity and that of the previous administration has been the
degree of secrecy about strategy and policy issues. In the Bush
administration, cybersecurity decisions were made in a highly
classified fashion. What remains unclear, however, is how the new
administration will balance cybersecurity decisions between military
and civilian organizations.
In May the administration’s cybersecurity review was not specific about
transforming the administration’s goals into practical realities. At
the time Mr. Obama did not explain how he planned to go about resolving
the running turf wars among the Pentagon, the National Security Agency,
the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies over the conduct
of defensive and offensive cyberoperations.
Mr. Schmidt is the chief executive officer of the Information Security
Forum, a nonprofit computer security trade association based in London.
He has served as chief information security officer at eBay and chief
security officer at Microsoft. In the Bush administration, he was the
vice chairman of the president’s Critical Infrastructure Protection
Board and a special adviser for cyberspace security.
He also served in the Air Force and the Army in computer security roles
and led a computer forensics team for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation at the National Drug Intelligence Center.
----------------------

Schmidt talked here (not in the story below).
ISF Panelists Spar Over Security vs.
Anonymity
By Renay San Miguel
TechNewsWorld
Part of the ECT News Network
11/03/09 11:08 AM PT
Can the Web's big-time masters of malware really be tracked down? How
risky is cloud computing to network security? And what challenges await
the Obama administration's plans to lock down the nation's electronic
infrastructure -- while at the same time creating a "smart grid?"
Left to right: Howard Schmidt, Mary Ann Davidson, Greg Garcia, Bruce
Schneier and Alexander Seger
An experienced panel of computer security experts representing
industry, governments and law enforcement batted around possible
answers to those questions Monday during a "guru fireside" session that
was a highlight of the Information Security Forum's 20th World
Congress. Some 500 ISF members are in Vancouver, British Columbia, this
week for keynote speeches and sessions focusing on the latest trends in
information security.
The "guru" panel included Mary Ann Davidson, chief security officer for
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL); Bruce Schneier, an oft-quoted cryptologist and
author; Greg Garcia of Garcia Strategies, who was the first U.S.
Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications under former
Pres. George W. Bush; and Alexander Seger, head of the economic crime
division of the 47-member Council of Europe. ISF president/CEO Howard
A. Schmidt, a former Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) security executive and
the nation's first cybersecurity czar immediately after the Sept. 11
attacks, hosted the panel.
Schneier, chief technology officer for BT Counterpane Security, is
known to speak his mind regarding issues of privacy, government
regulation of networks and law enforcement techniques. He's written
extensively on those subjects for The New York Times, the Guardian,
Forbes and Wired. So it probably came as no surprise to the other
panelists, and the audience, when he challenged Seger's contention that
law enforcement officials need legislation and regulatory weapons to
help them track down large-scale hackers and identity thieves.
"I'm sorry, but you're not going to be able to track attacks," Schneier
said. "I would like it to be different, but you can't do it."
"You can, Bruce, but it's very hard to do," interjected Garcia.
"You cannot take a [data] bit and backtrack it to where it came from,"
Schneier maintained. "You don't know who's in front of the keyboard
sending it out there. You cannot do it, a bit does not have location
specificity. It's a bit. It's not that you can't have identification.
Banks work great, corporate networks work great. But you cannot make a
system that doesn't have anonymity."
Web Anonymity, 'Smart Grid' Risks
All the panelists were asked to give their take on present trends in
cybersecurity and technology overall, and Schneier's emphasis on
anonymity with Garcia and Seger was a continuation of his thesis that
anonymity is not inherently bad, but trying to punish anonymity in the
search for Web safety is dangerous. "You make it harder for the naive
or the innocent to do things, and no harder for criminals or the
determined," he said. "That isn't to say you can't have identity. You
can build a network with different degrees of working well -- bank
accounts, Facebook accounts, you can have different levels of identity,
but you're not making anonymity go away."
Closed platforms, Schneier added, will be the rule -- which opens up a
world of focusing on services rather than devices -- and the government
would have more clout if it cleaned up its own networks and used its
buying power to demand better products from vendors. "If big government
comes out with a contract for a secure laptop or a firewall or database
or OS, and has a list of security requirements, then the contract will
be big enough that vendors will need to meet those requirements and
produce more secure products."
Moving health and medical records online concern both Schneier and
Davidson, and Davidson added that "smart grid" plans are another
potential risk. "Figure out what problem you're trying to solve before
you throw technology at it," she said. "Now we want to put everybody's
house on the grid without thinking about the neighborhood kid knocking
you off the grid, or being subject to attacks. I don't think people
understand the risk they're exposing us to by doing that. "
Medical
records online could also pose threats by hackers changing those
records or using them to blackmail the innocent.
"Not that I think we should stop all progress, but my concerns are that
we are coming up the awareness curve to some degree that this is
infrastructure that needs to be both defensive and self-defending,
which is a different construct than what we have now," Davidson said.
Cybersecurity Is Not a Red/Blue Issue
The good news in Washington, D.C., is that cybersecurity does not
appear to be a partisan political issue, Garcia said. The Obama
administration has basically affirmed the strategy Download Free eBook
- The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales that he
and others in the Bush administration had worked on to place
network/infrastructure protection on a higher level of priority. "Now
it is incumbent upon this administration take that strategy, which is
on pretty firm conceptual footing, and now turn it into something that
is operational, executable and well-organized," Garcia said. "That's
what's lacking now. We were not well organized in the Bush
administration because we had too much mission creep from other
organizations involved," including various aspects of the military, the
intelligence community and the State Department.
Whoever ends up with the job of White House-level cybersecurity adviser
-- promised by President Obama -- will need to lay out the roles and
responsibilities for those agencies with a stake in network protection.
The picture is cloudier regarding the enterprise, Garcia said. Hackers
and cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in their use of
technology, and some companies still aren't taking network security
seriously. "They are doing risk assessments and saying they'll consider
a cyberattack as a cost of doing business. I think that's potentially
dangerous thinking," he said.
Also potentially dangerous: relying on cloud computing for protecting
personal and corporate data without first asking a lot of questions
regarding security, Davidson said. "It's not about whether somebody
does a service for you, that's a business decision. But when something
is important to you and you hand it off, you still need to answer basic
questions -- 'where is my data? who has access to it?' And if you
cannot answer those questions, this whole idea of the cloud, 'just
trust us,' is silly."
---------------------

FROM THE INTERNET: Cyber
Conference Focuses on Protecting Company Assets
The practice of surfing the Web from your work terminal may
come to an end, according to cyber security expert Howard A. Schmidt.
Schmidt, the former head of online security for Microsoft and eBay,
explained that many companies are mistakenly confident about the
security of their computer networks and the proprietary information
they hold.
"Firewalls and anti-virus packages are great first steps, but we’re
finding tremendous vulnerabilities in software and firmware," he said
in a keynote speech on Jan. 7 at the International Conference on Cyber
Security at Fordham. "Instead of enjoying the benefit of a new piece of
software, we have to install it and then watch it."
To stem the tide of hackers and other cyber criminals who want to
commit economic espionage, Schmidt suggested that industries foster
closer relationships with the federal government.
"Workplaces are designed to be open environments, and the general
consensus is that when the government gets involved it will make things
more difficult," he said. "But that’s not the case."
Schmidt said that the government can help protect the assets of
corporations by crafting cyber crime laws and working with other
nations to standardize those laws around the globe, as well as using
law enforcement officers to track cyber criminals across national
borders.
Corporations also must take more responsibility for their own online
security, he said, which may lead to the restriction or outright end of
personal Web surfing at work. The practice has been tolerated, if not
outright encouraged, by companies thus far.
"We’re starting to see the security implications of allowing someone
unfettered access to the Web from within the network," he said, "and
we’re beginning to hear complaints, like, 'You took away my outlet for
watching baseball games while I work.' But like government systems,
it’s difficult to allow that access and still maintain the level of
security that’s necessary.'
Schmidt, the current president of the Information Security Forum, was
chairman of cyberspace security for the White House and chief security
strategist in the Department of Homeland Security...
Fordham University, NYC
1/09
------------------------
FROM THE INTERNET: Did the Weston Police officers
study with him at U. N.H.?
Western International
University Graduation 2007- Sean's (r.) video

Commencement speaker (l.), 2007,
Western International University, and the following information
comes from the video taken by Sean's family of that graduation
ceremony. Schmidt addresses, live, the graduates about how he got
his college degree in his 30's and his master's in his 40's from the
University of Phoenix. The e-graduation speakers, via the
Internet, were, among others, Senator John McCain, Governor Janet
Napolitano of Arizona.
Howard A. Schmidt CISSP, CISM
President & CEO R & H Security Consulting LLC
Former Chair of President Bush’s Critical Infrastructure Protection
Board and
Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security for the White House
Howard A. Schmidt has had a long distinguished career in defense, law
enforcement and corporate security spanning almost 40 years. He has
served as Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer and
Chief Security Strategist for online auction giant eBay. He most
recently served in the position of Chief Security Strategist for the US
CERT Partners Program for the National Cyber Security Division,
Department of Homeland Security.
He retired from the White House after 31 years of public service in
local and federal government. He was appointed by President Bush as the
Vice Chair of the President’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board
and as the Special Adviser for Cyberspace Security for the White House
in December 2001. He assumed the role as the Chair in January 2003
until his retirement in May 2003.
Prior to the White House, Howard was chief security officer for
Microsoft Corp., where his duties included CISO, CSO and forming and
directing the Trustworthy Computing Security Strategies Group.
Before Microsoft, Mr. Schmidt was a supervisory special agent and
director of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)
Computer Forensic Lab and Computer Crime and Information Warfare
Division. While there, he established the first dedicated computer
forensic lab in the government.
Before AFOSI, Mr. Schmidt was with the FBI at the National Drug
Intelligence Center, where he headed the Computer Exploitation Team. He
is recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of computer forensics
and computer evidence collection. Before working at the FBI, Mr.
Schmidt was a city police officer from 1983 to 1994 for the Chandler
Police Department in Arizona.
Mr. Schmidt served with the U.S. Air Force in various roles from 1967
to 1983, both in active duty and in the civil service. He had served in
the Arizona Air National Guard from 1989 until 1998 when he transferred
to the U.S. Army Reserves as a Special Agent, Criminal Investigation
Division where he continues to serve. He has testified as an expert
witness in federal and military courts in the areas of computer crime,
computer forensics and Internet crime.
Mr. Schmidt had also served as the international president of the
Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) and the first president
of the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center
(IT-ISAC). He is a former executive board member of the International
Organization of Computer Evidence, and served as the co-chairman of the
Federal Computer Investigations Committee. He is a member of the
American Academy of Forensic Scientists. He serves as an advisory board
member for the Technical Research Institute of the National White
Collar Crime Center, and was a distinguished special lecturer at the
University of New Haven, Conn., teaching a graduate certificate course
in forensic computing.
He served as an augmented member to the President’s Committee of
Advisors on Science and Technology in the formation of an Institute for
Information Infrastructure Protection. He has testified before
congressional committees on computer security and cyber crime, and has
been instrumental in the creation of public and private partnerships
and information-sharing initiatives. He is regularly featured on CNN,
CNBC, Fox TV as well as a number of local media outlets talking about
cyber-security. He is a co-author of the Black Book on Corporate
Security.
Mr. Schmidt has been appointed to the Information Security Privacy
Advisory Board (ISPAB) to advise the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST), the Secretary of Commerce and the Director of
the Office of Management and Budget on information security and privacy
issues pertaining to Federal Government information systems, including
thorough review of proposed standards and guidelines developed by NIST.
Howard holds board positions on a number of corporate boards in both an
advisory and director positions and recently has assumed the role as
Chairman of the Board for Electronics Lifestyle Integration (ELI).
Mr. Schmidt holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration (BSBA)
and a master’s degree in organizational management (MAOM) from the
University of Phoenix. He also holds an Honorary Doctorate degree in
Humane Letters. Howard is an Adjunct Professor at GA Tech with the
GTISC.
2006
US cyber-security tsar steps down
I-BBC
Page last updated at 09:24 GMT,
Tuesday, 4 August 2009 10:24 UK
The White House's acting cyber-security tsar has resigned from her
post, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Melissa Hathaway told the paper she was leaving for "personal reasons"
and would return to the private sector.
The former strategist was appointed as acting national cyber-adviser in
February and was expected to be offered the post of full time.
President Barack Obama has said that cyber-security is a high priority
for his administration.
In May, the President announced plans for securing American computer
networks against cyber attacks.
In recent years, US government and military bodies have reported
attempts to infiltrate systems by hackers.
He announced the creation of a cyber-security office in the White
House, and said he would personally appoint a "cyber-tsar".
Ms Hathaway was widely regarded as the person to fill that post after
taking on the role as acting senior director for cyberspace for the
National Security and Homeland Security Councils in February.
In April she completed a review of cyber-security for the Obama
administration.
At the time, Ms Hathaway said the job ahead was "a marathon, not a
sprint."
Her successor has not yet been named by the White House.

Melissa Hathaway tackles cybersecurity Mission Impossible
The Last Watchdog
Posted on | April 25, 2009
There was no way
Melissa Hathaway was going to steal Pres. Obama’s thunder at the RSA
Conference on security in San Francisco last week. Expectations ran
high that Hathaway would divulge details from the exhaustive 60-day
review of cybersecurity policy she just recently delivered to senior
White House officials.
But her report remains under review by Obama. Hathaway, nonetheless,
gamely took to the stage Wednesday afternoon, April 22, in front of
several thousand tech industry executives, software engineers, computer
scientists, analysts and reporters at the RSA Conference on security.
The audience arrived early to jockey for good seats. Compensating,
somewhat, for the meager steak she would deliver, Hathaway opened with
some Hollywood sizzle.
As Hathaway arrived at the podium, the theme from Mission Impossible
blared over the over PA.
Dum;
dum, dum, dum. Dum; dum, dum, dum . . .
Hathaway stepped back and looked up
at the giant video screens. Images appeared correlating to instructions
from a disembodied voice:
Good afternoon Melissa Hathaway. The
digital infrastructure shown here supports critical public services and
is vital to the global economy . . . Criminals, terrorists and foreign
adversaries have devised plans to use flaws in the infrastructure to
hold the economy hostage, disrupt our government and threaten public
safety. Your mission, Melissa, should you decide to accept it, is to
assemble a team of experts, engage every possible stakeholder group and
devise a strategy to work together for the common good . . . Please
begin immediately. This Blackberry will self destruct in 60 days. Good
luck.
Beginning of the beginning
melissahathaway_cropAfter joking about which of her three Blackberries
might blow up, Hathaway for the next 30 minutes stood stiff behind the
podium, reading word-for-word from her prepared statement, which you
can see here. She did call for “a White House organizational
structure that can effectively address cyberspace-related issues, ” and
noted that her recommendations to the president include “an
action plan,” derived from 40 meetings with “stakeholder groups” and a
review of more than 100 reports.
“When the report is made public you will see that there is a lot of
work for us to do together and an ambitious action plan to accomplish
our goals,” she said. “Sixty days’ work is just the beginning of the
beginning.”
She concluded by issuing a rallying cry for a “holistic approach” to
stemming rising cyber threats. “We need to sow the seeds for a national
dialogue, nurture them, even see them in our dreams, to help this
critical conversation grow,” she said.
Hathaway, who is 40, has two sons, 8 and 9. She took no questions from
the audience.
As the crowd filed out of the massive main auditorium at Moscone
Convention Center, I definitely heard some grumbling about lack of
substance in her speech. But protocals tied Hathaway’s hands. I
spoke to three Hathaway admirers who’ve actually worked with her. One
was Rod Beckstrom, who resigned last month as a top cybersecurity
official in the Department of Homeland Security. Beckstrom credited
Hathaway for delivering a “very professional speech,” noting that he
was encouraged by the “values of collaboration that were espoused,
particularly working with international partners, which I think is
critical.”
Beckstrom, who resigned in protest to being marginalized by the
National Security Agency, received a small measure of vindication when
NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander said in an earlier RSA keynote
that the NSA does not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government.
“It was nice to see the messaging changing,” say Beckstrom.
Familiar themes
Another Hathaway fan: Dennis P. Gilbert, a principal from Booz
Allen Hamilton’s Herndon, Virg. offices. Hathaway spent 15 years at
Booz Allen building her reputation as a management consultant with an
uncanny knack for getting military and intelligence policy wonks to
collaborate. Gilbert told me he first encountered Hathaway in 1999 when
he was was an Air Force Lt. Col., and Hathaway was an up-and-coming
consultant on information warfare.
Gilbert recalls Hathaway as “resilient and determined” — and a
political agnostic. To this day, he says, he doesn’t know if she’s a
Democrat or Republican. “We worked with combatant commanders, and all
the joint forces commanders, and with a lot of the special agencies to
come up with our recommendations. And basically all of them were
implemented, and a lot of them turned into programs that are funded
today, 10 years later,” says Gilbert.
The projects Gilbert and Hathaway tackled generally involved
integrating massive amounts of data from multiple sources and turning
the data into something useful. “One of the things we looked at was
second and third order of effects, the notion that everything was
connected through the Internet, and when you do something, everything
is affected,” recalled Gilbert. “We looked at what the ripple effect
would be across the DoD, across government, maybe even across the
private sector.”
Sound familiar? “Ten years ago we found everything is integrated,
beyond sometimes what we even understood,” says Gilbert . “We had to
look at things holistically to solve the problem. You can see how those
types of themes are in the problem set that we have today. Everything
is interconnected. I definitely see the parallel.”
Yoda of cybersecurity
The skills Hathaway demonstrated in getting bull-headed military
brass and intelligence officials to play nice ultimately got her
called up to the big leagues of presidential politics. In March 2007,
she was recruited to do the grunt work of marshaling support for
President Bush’s then-top secret Comprehensive National Cyber Security
Initiative. This required getting big bureaucracies and the
military branches to buy into Bush’s secretive $30 billion plan to keep
foreign cyberspies from continuing to clean out government
databases.
Meanwhile, in the same time frame, but on a separate track, a
bi-partisan collection of 60 tech industry executives, military
officials and a handful of lawmakers formed a special commission to
hammer out a consensus view of what U.S. cybersecurity policy should
look like. The commission, convened by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), ultimately delivered this stack of
recommendations, titled “Securing Cyberspace for the 44th President,”
to Obama last December. The CSIS report has since been downloaded more
than 35,000 times.
Hathaway became and something of an ad hoc member of the CSIS
commission; she debriefed the commissioners regularly about what
Bush was up to, and continued doing so as Obama’s go-to
cybersecurity expert. CSIS commissioner, Tom Kellermann,
has worked closely with Hathaway over the course of the past year and a
half.
After hearing Hathaway’s Mission Impossible keynote at RSA,
Kellermann, Vice-President of Security Awareness at Core Security
Techonologies, had this to say: “I have utmost faith in her
holistic vision and I have utmost faith in her leadership style.”
Kellerman says that the appointment of a cabinet-level cybersecurity
adviser to lead the holistic charge, appears to still be on the table,
despite Obama already having named a White House CTO and CSO.
What’s more, Kellermann believes the White House is giving Hathaway
serious consideration as a darkhorse candidate for the nation’s
top cybersecurity job; she’s said to be vying against two, and possibly
three, longtime Beltway power brokers. If it were up to
Kellermann, Hathaway would be the slam dunk choice
for cybersecurity czar.
Melissa
Hathaway Challenged by Cyber Security
Defensetech.org
Kevin Coleman
February 9, 2009
As part of President Obama’s cyber security plan, the White House is
planning on announcing that Melissa Hathaway, the current top cyber
security adviser, will oversee a 60-day review of federal cyber
security efforts. Insiders have stated that after this assignment, she
will likely be offered the position of cyber czar. Hathaway serves as
the cyber coordination executive at the office of the Director of
National Intelligence (DNI) and was senior adviser to former Director
of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. She is also as chair on the
National Cyber Study Group, as well as a senior-level interagency body
that played a lead role in the development of President Bush's
Comprehensive National Cyber security Initiative.
Hathaway has her work cut out for her. Researchers recently concluded
the average number of unique new infected sites grew from
100,000-200,000 a day to 200,000-300,000 a day and this trend is
expected to continue for the foreseeable future. In addition, the world
recently witnessed the third cyber attack against a country
(Kyrgyzstan). Many cyber security experts have stated that the threat
of attack by traditional artillery and nuclear warfare has been
replaced by cyber attacks aimed at Internet targets for gathering
intelligence and disrupting communications. "We are in a new age of
warfare," stated one cyber Intelligence analyst I talked with on the
subject. She went on to say that "cyber attacks are likely to proceed
any conventional attack or at least done in coordination with a
conventional or nuclear attack."
Can the United States defend our networks against cyber-attack? That
was just one of the many questions President Obama's pick for CIA
Director Leon Panetta was asked in his confirmation hearings. It is
clear Hathaway will have her hands full. The United States is by far
the most reliant on computer technology and the internet, as such it
faces so many challenges securing cyber space and defend and protect
the country against cyber attacks. Hathaway is a firm believer that
government and the private sector must join together to address this
national security threat. She is well aware that threats to government
systems stem from both technology and from the policies, practices and
procedures that govern how people use that technology.
Cyberwar: U.S. Weighs Risks of Civilian Harm in Cyberwarfare
NYTIMES
By JOHN MARKOFF and THOM SHANKER
August 2, 2009
It would have been the most far-reaching case of computer sabotage in
history. In 2003, the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies made
plans for a cyberattack to freeze billions of dollars in the bank
accounts of Saddam Hussein and cripple his government’s financial
system before the United States invaded Iraq. He would have no money
for war supplies. No money to pay troops.
“We knew we could pull it off — we had the tools,” said one senior
official who worked at the Pentagon when the highly classified plan was
developed.
But the attack never got the green light. Bush administration officials
worried that the effects would not be limited to Iraq but instead
create worldwide financial havoc, spreading across the Middle East to
Europe and perhaps to the United States.
Fears of such collateral damage are at the heart of the debate as the
Obama administration and its Pentagon leadership struggle to develop
rules and tactics for carrying out attacks in cyberspace.
While the Bush administration seriously studied computer-network
attacks, the Obama administration is the first to elevate cybersecurity
— both defending American computer networks and attacking those of
adversaries — to the level of a White House director, whose appointment
is expected in coming weeks.
But senior White House officials remain so concerned about the risks of
unintended harm to civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure in
an attack on computer networks that they decline any official comment
on the topic. And senior Defense Department officials and military
officers directly involved in planning for the Pentagon’s new “cyber
command” acknowledge that the risk of collateral damage is one of their
chief concerns.
“We are deeply concerned about the second- and third-order effects of
certain types of computer network operations, as well as about laws of
war that require attacks be proportional to the threat,” said one
senior officer.
This officer, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the classified nature of the work, also acknowledged that
these concerns had restrained the military from carrying out a number
of proposed missions. “In some ways, we are self-deterred today because
we really haven’t answered that yet in the world of cyber,” the officer
said.
In interviews over recent weeks, a number of current and retired White
House officials, Pentagon civilians and military officers disclosed
details of classified missions — some only considered and some put into
action — that illustrate why this issue is so difficult.
Although the digital attack on Iraq’s financial system was not carried
out, the American military and its partners in the intelligence
agencies did receive approval to degrade Iraq’s military and government
communications systems in the early hours of the war in 2003. And that
attack did produce collateral damage.
Besides blowing up cellphone towers and communications grids, the
offensive included electronic jamming and digital attacks against
Iraq’s telephone networks. American officials also contacted
international communications companies that provided satellite phone
and cellphone coverage to Iraq to alert them to possible jamming and
ask their assistance in turning off certain channels.
Officials now acknowledge that the communications offensive temporarily
disrupted telephone service in countries around Iraq that shared its
cellphone and satellite telephone systems. That limited damage was
deemed acceptable by the Bush administration.
Another such event took place in the late 1990s, according to a former
military researcher. The American military attacked a Serbian
telecommunications network and accidentally affected the Intelsat
satellite communications system, whose service was hampered for several
days.
These missions, which remain highly classified, are being scrutinized
today as the Obama administration and the Pentagon move into new arenas
of cyberoperations. Few details have been reported previously; mention
of the proposal for a digital offensive against Iraq’s financial and
banking systems appeared with little notice on Newsmax.com, a news Web
site, in 2003.
The government concerns evoke those at the dawn of the nuclear era,
when questions of military effectiveness, legality and morality were
raised about radiation spreading to civilians far beyond any zone of
combat.
“If you don’t know the consequences of a counterstrike against innocent
third parties, it makes it very difficult to authorize one,” said James
Lewis, a cyberwarfare specialist at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington.
But some military strategists argue that these uncertainties have led
to excess caution on the part of Pentagon planners.
“Policy makers are tremendously sensitive to collateral damage by
virtual weapons, but not nearly sensitive enough to damage by kinetic”
— conventional — “weapons,” said John Arquilla, an expert in military
strategy at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. “The
cyberwarriors are held back by extremely restrictive rules of
engagement.”
Despite analogies that have been drawn between biological weapons and
cyberweapons, Mr. Arquilla argues that “cyberweapons are disruptive and
not destructive.”
That view is challenged by some legal and technical experts.
“It’s virtually certain that there will be unintended consequences,”
said Herbert Lin, a senior scientist at the National Research Council
and author of a recent report on offensive cyberwarfare. “If you don’t
know what a computer you attack is doing, you could do something bad.”
Mark Seiden, a Silicon Valley computer security specialist who was a
co-author of the National Research Council report, said, “The chances
are very high that you will inevitably hit civilian targets — the
worst-case scenario is taking out a hospital which is sharing a network
with some other agency.”
And while such attacks are unlikely to leave smoking craters,
electronic attacks on communications networks and data centers could
have broader, life-threatening consequences where power grids and
critical infrastructure like water treatment plants are increasingly
controlled by computer networks.
Over the centuries, rules governing combat have been drawn together in
customary practice as well as official legal documents, like the Geneva
Conventions and the United Nations charter. These laws govern when it
is legitimate to go to war, and set rules for how any conflict may be
waged. Two traditional military limits now are being applied to
cyberwar: proportionality, which is a rule that, in layman’s terms,
argues that if you slap me, I cannot blow up your house; and collateral
damage, which requires militaries to limit civilian deaths and injuries.
“Cyberwar is problematic from the point of view of the laws of war,”
said Jack L. Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School. “The U.N.
charter basically says that a nation cannot use force against the
territorial integrity or political independence of any other nation.
But what kinds of cyberattacks count as force is a hard question,
because force is not clearly defined.”

Sunk by N. Korea during maneuvers by U.S/S. Korea ships.
Abnormal radiation detected near
Korean border
YAHOO
By HYUNG-JIN KIM, Associated Press Writer
21 June 2010
SEOUL, South Korea – Abnormally high radiation levels were detected
near the border between the two Koreas days after North Korea claimed
to have mastered a complex technology key to manufacturing a hydrogen
bomb, Seoul said Monday.
The Science Ministry said its investigation ruled out a nuclear test by
North Korea, but failed to determine the source of the radiation. It
said there was no evidence of a strong earthquake, which follows an
atomic explosion.
On May 12, North Korea claimed its scientists succeeded in creating a
nuclear fusion reaction — a technology necessary to manufacture a
hydrogen bomb. In its announcement, the North did not say how it would
use the technology, only calling it a "breakthrough toward the
development of new energy."
South Korean experts doubted the North actually made such a
breakthrough. Scientists around the world have been experimenting with
fusion for decades, but it has yet to be developed into a viable energy
alternative.
On May 15, however, the atmospheric concentration of xenon — an inert
gas released after a nuclear explosion or and radioactive leakage from
a nuclear power plant — on the South Korean side their shared border
was found to be eight times higher than normal, according to South
Korea's Science Ministry.
South Korea subsequently looked for signs of a powerful, artificially
induced earthquake. Experts, however, found no signs of a such a quake
in North Korea, a ministry statement said.
"We determined that there was no possibility of an underground nuclear
test," it said. The ministry said the gas is not harmful.
While any fusion test would have registered seismic activity, according
to nuclear expert Whang Joo-ho of South Korea's Kyung Hee University,
the presence of xenon could also have come from a leak.
Since the wind was blowing from north to south when the xenon was
detected, a Science Ministry official said the gas could not have
originated from any nuclear power plants in South Korea.
But the official — speaking on condition of anonymity, citing
department policy — said the xenon could have come from Russia or
China. Whang agreed, saying a nuclear test or radioactive leakage would
be the only reasons that could explain the atmospheric concentration of
xenon reported by the ministry.
A Vienna-based United Nations agency, however, said no signs of
increased radioactivity were detected last month along the Korean
border.
"We have not registered anything that would raise any suspicion," said
Kirsten Haupt, a spokeswoman for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Organization, a U.N. agency that looks for signs of nuclear testing
worldwide.
Earlier Monday, South Korea's mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper
reported that North Korea may have conducted a small-sized nuclear
test, citing the abnormal radioactivity. The paper cited an atomic
expert it did not identify.
North Korea — which is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for
at least a half-dozen nuclear weapons, conducted two underground
nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnation and
U.N. sanctions.
The news of the detected radiation comes as tension is running high on
the Korean peninsula over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship
blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack. North Korea flatly denies the
allegation and has warned any punishment would trigger war, as the U.N.
Security Council reviews Seoul's request for action over the sinking.
NK
Test, US Treaty OK Could Set Off
Chain Reaction
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 26, 2009Filed at 1:43 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A decade after its defeat on the Senate floor, the
treaty to ban all atomic bomb tests has found new life in the age of
Obama, and at a time of renewed nuclear defiance by North Korea.
Monday's bomb test by the Pyongyang government ''underlines the urgency
of the entry into force of the (treaty) and the necessity of putting an
end to all nuclear explosions for all time,'' said the pact's chief
booster, Tibor Toth, who heads the U.N.-affiliated Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty Organization.
In the coming months in Washington -- and in other key capitals --
leaders will make cold strategic calculations as they weigh military
balances and the future role of doomsday weapons in deciding whether to
ratify the CTBT. Passage in the Senate this time around may set
dominoes toppling from Beijing to New Delhi and beyond, Toth said.
''The U.S. example will be defining,'' he told The Associated Press in
an interview at his Vienna headquarters.
Negotiated in the 1990s, the treaty specified 44 nuclear-capable states
-- from Algeria to Vietnam -- that must give full formal approval
before it can take effect, putting the power of international law and
the U.N. Security Council behind the ban. All but nine of those have
ratified, along with the governing bodies of 113 other nations.
Besides the U.S., the holdouts among the 44 are China, Egypt, India,
Indonesia, Iran, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan.
Although earlier treaties outlawed all but underground nuclear blasts
under 150 kilotons -- equivalent to 150,000 tons of TNT -- this one
would impose a blanket ban on any test anywhere, with compliance
overseen by Toth's agency.
It would end an era in which eight nations exploded 2,054 nuclear bombs
in the air, under water and below ground, from the mushroom cloud of
July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, N.M., and the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, to North Korea's underground blast on Monday, its second
test, estimated at a yield of a few kilotons.
The tests helped weapon designers build ever more compact, durable and
finely tuned bombs. Ending testing would put a cap on developing new
weapons, halting proliferation to more states and giving nuclear-armed
states more confidence to negotiate deep reductions, treaty proponents
say.
President Barack Obama endorsed this view in an agenda-setting speech
in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 5, when he said he would
''aggressively'' pursue Senate ratification. A vote may come next year,
after a lobbying campaign to win the required two-thirds Senate
majority.
Republicans controlled the upper house in 1999 when the pact was
rejected 51-48 on a largely party-line vote. The debate focused on
whether the treaty's monitoring system could detect clandestine nuclear
blasts, and whether the U.S. arsenal would remain safe and reliable
without tests.
Much has changed since then: The monitoring system has grown into a $1
billion, high-tech worldwide network, and the U.S. weapons stockpile
has been certified reliable annually since the 1990s, as the U.S. and
four other original nuclear powers -- Russia, Britain, France and China
-- have observed testing moratoriums.
The Senate has changed as well, with a 60-vote Democratic majority
likely, just seven short of two-thirds. Meanwhile, some influential
Republican voices have shifted to support the treaty, including former
secretaries of state Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz. Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz., said during his 2008 presidential campaign the treaty
deserved ''another look.''
''The climate is different and that's important,'' former Democratic
Sen. Sam Nunn, a leading arms-control advocate, told the AP. ''The fact
the president has made this a top priority means it's going to get a
lot more attention from the American public than it did the last time.''
And more attention from the rest of the world.
''If the U.S. keeps its promise to push for ratification of the CTBT,
it will serve as a catalyst for similar action by other states,''
Indonesia's U.N. ambassador, Marty Natalegawa, said May 5 at a
disarmament conference in New York.
Toth said Indonesia, which has no nuclear weapons, is one holdout
showing ''positive signs'' on ratification. Another is a big one: China.
''China supports early entry into force of the CTBT,'' Beijing's arms
control chief, Cheng Jingye, told the same U.N. conference.
It has been clear since 1999 that China withheld ratification because
the U.S. did. Toth said the Chinese now are ''closely following
developments in Washington'' and assure him they are preparing to
ratify.
If the U.S. Senate accedes, Obama pledges a diplomatic effort to bring
other governments aboard. Nuclear-armed India is a likely target, since
a recent U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear agreement gives Washington added
leverage with New Delhi.
The Indians' chief nuclear envoy, Shyam Saran, told the AP his country
wants to see broad movement toward abolition of nuclear arms before
committing to a test ban. Some analysts believe, however, that a CTBT
ratification by China, the Asian rival whose bomb motivated India to
build its own, might induce the Indian ''domino'' to follow suit.
And what about next-door Pakistan, with at least 40 nuclear warheads,
to traditional enemy India's 50 or more?
''Our response (on CTBT) depends very much on the position taken by
India,'' Zamir Akram, Pakistani ambassador to the Conference on
Disarmament in Geneva, told the AP.
In the Middle East, nuclear-armed Israel is known to have backed off
early ratification only because the U.S. did. Accession to this major
nuclear agreement might help lift the global embargo on civilian
nuclear trade with Israel. Egypt might then logically follow.
If Iran, accused of harboring plans for nuclear bombs, or North Korea,
with rudimentary weapons, remained holdouts, they would face
ever-growing isolation and international pressure to join.
Toth indicated he wouldn't be surprised by a North Korean ratification,
if Pyongyang sees all of the ''P-5'' -- the original nuclear powers --
behind the treaty and no longer demanding that North Korea accept
restrictions that they don't.
On the other hand, analysts say, a repeat failure to ratify in
Washington could send dominoes tumbling in the other direction. China
might feel a need to resume testing to perfect bombs for
multiple-warhead missiles, to match U.S. capabilities. A testing chain
reaction among nations might ensue.
''What the nuclear powers do, in fact, does affect the decisions of
other countries,'' veteran U.S. arms negotiator James Goodby told a
nonproliferation conference in Washington last month. ''And testing is
perhaps the most visible of nuclear weapons activities.''
------
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Charles J. Hanley has been reporting on nuclear arms
control since 1983.

Restart of Big
Particle Collider Now November
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:06 a.m. ET
July 30, 2009
GENEVA (AP) -- Repairs to two small helium leaks in the world's largest
atom smasher will delay the restart of the giant machine another month
until November, a spokesman for the operator said Thursday.
James Gillies said an additional setback to the timing could result if
some other problem is found, but the European Organization for Nuclear
Research is taking pains to make sure it avoids another major shutdown
like the electrical failure of Sept. 19.
''Essentially what's happening is we're proceeding with extreme
caution,'' Gillies told The Associated Press. ''We have to be
absolutely certain that when we switch on this time, it stays switched
on.''
The organization, which is known as CERN, has nearly finished examining
the 10,000 electrical interconnections like the one that failed in
September. Originally CERN said it expected to start test collisions in
April, but that start up date has been pushed back several times
already, most recently to October.
''Decisions will be taken as to whether there are more that need
repairing or not within the next couple of weeks, and when we know
that, we will be in a position to be a little bit more definitive about
what we plan to do for the rest of the year,'' Gillies said.
If a November start holds, it will still take until December for the
accelerator in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) circular tunnel under the
Swiss-French border to start producing collisions of subatomic
particles.
Only then will physicists be able to probe deeper into the makeup of
matter.
They hope the fragments that come off the collisions will show on a
tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called
Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that
formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly
cooling at that stage and matter was changing quickly.
The leaks currently being repaired were found in the system that uses
liquid helium to bring the temperature inside the accelerator to near
absolute zero, colder than outer space.
That low temperature makes it possible to use the massive
superconducting electromagnets that control the beams of particles that
will fly in both directions around the accelerator at near the speed of
light until the scientists make them collide.
CERN expects repairs and additional safety systems to cost about 40
million Swiss francs ($37 million) over the course of several years,
covered by the organization's budget. The overall Large Hadron Collider
project cost $10 billion.