Acting on Cyber ​​Security Threat, Alan Paller Dies at 76

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Paller’s pet project was the National Cyber ​​Scholarship Foundation, which hosted hacking challenges. for high school and university students. The idea was based in part on the example of China, which holds regular hacking competitions to identify its next generation of digital warriors.

Mr Paller: “We don’t have such a program in the United States – nothing” told The Times in 2013. “No one even teaches this in schools. If we can’t fix this problem, we’re in trouble.”

Its program offers college scholarship funds and free SANS training, with the goal of finding and developing 25,000 new “cyberstars” by 2025. Last year, Mr. Paller and Mr. Lyne released CyberStart, a new game that challenges students to keep track. Cybercriminals in exchange for $2 million in scholarship funds.

“People in this industry talk about public-private partnerships all day, but I can really only think of four examples, and two of them came from Alan,” said Tony Sager, former operations manager for the National Security Agency’s Directorate of Information Assurance. , which oversees cyber defense.

In 2001, Mr. Sager was with the NSA, working on Code Red, a computer virus that had spread to hundreds of thousands of computers in a single day. Addressing Code Red.

Mr. Sager was, but he could not argue that. “I said I was stupid if I said no,” he recalled, and replied, “Of course we are, Alan.”

Mr. Paller said he was holding a conference in Washington of the best minds in the industry. “He said: Come to this ballroom at 7 pm, bring what you want. We’ll have a snack.”

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