RE: Ada and cybersecurity

[tmoran@acm.org]

> >CSPAN-2 had todays hearings of the House Technology(etc) committee, ...
> This is what I was getting at when I asked about the use of Ada to protect
> against worms etc. I suspect that the place to start is to ask DoD or NSF
  When Congressman Putnam asked witnesses "what should the government do",
someone suggested a government lab to test and issue "secure"
certificates, another suggested more education of young people so they
won't be hackers, etc.  I doubt a government lab could find obscure holes
much faster than they are found now, and I'm quite sure the the small
fraction of a percent of "young crackers" can't be reduced to zero by any
reasonable education campaign.  One thing I didn't hear (but then I didn't
listen to the entire hearings) was any comment about better software
development tools, such as cutting down on buffer overflows (etc.) with
Ada.  So perhaps we can expect a continuing low level of security, ever
more expensive worms, plus the government spending more of our children's
money ineffectively.  Congress is unlikely to come up with good ideas
if nobody suggests any to them.