WASHINGTON: Buffeted by millions of digital scans and attacks each day, federal authorities are looking for hackers _ not to prosecute them, but to pay them to secure the nation's networks.General Dynamics Information Technology put out an ad last month on behalf of the Homeland Security Department seeking someone who could ``think like the bad guy.'' Applicants, it said, must understand hackers' tools and tactics and be able to analyze Internet traffic and identify vulnerabilities in the federal systems. And in the Pentagon's budget request submitted last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates hung out his own help-wanted sign, saying the Pentagon will increase the number of cyber experts it can train each year from 80 to 250 by 2011.Amid dire warnings that the U.S. is ill-prepared for a cyber attack, the White House conducted a 60-day study of how the government can better manage and use technology to protect everything from the nation's electrical grid and stock markets to tax data, airline flight systems, and nuclear launch codes.President Barack Obama appointed former Bush administration aide Melissa Hathaway to head the effort, and her report was delivered Friday, the White House said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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