Flow My Thoughts, The IT Professor Said

Doctor of Security

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23689-2003Jul7.html

The tension between what can be known and what should be known is exemplified by the example of a PhD student, whose dissertation has mapped every part of the USA economy to its connecting fibre-optic network. Since all the data were gathered from public information, no direct security breach resulted from their compilation and interpretation.

Both corporations and the government, however, are eager to suppress these research results, and the university involved will only allow publication of the most general information about this topic. This is a major problem, in that suppression is antithetical to the benefits which open research generates, so we may have a bad precedent here.

It is equally understandable why those in authority should object to vulnerabilities being easily known, although ultimately the only justification for continued censorship here is to give the responsible parties the time to cure the identified defects. Previous examples in this regard do not give rise to undue confidence that those in control will "do the right thing".

To the extent that the defects are not capable of correction, a posture of public ignorance is at least questionable and at worst, objectionable.