Spurred by either or both patriotic altruism and the chance to collect up to $80,000 in awards, 19 friendly hackers have filed more than 100 security vulnerability issues within the Defense Travel System (DTS). The program, conducted April 1 through 29, was part of the Defense Department’s “Hack the Pentagon” initiative — aimed at rooting out cyber threats before unfriendly entities could get a chance to exploit them. To date, more than 3,000 such vulnerabilities with the Defense Department have been exposed through the initiative.
Military and civilian Pentagon employees use DTS at more than 9,500 worldwide sites.
“Security of these [DTS] systems is mission-critical. The … challenge helped uncover vulnerabilities we wouldn’t have found otherwise,” said Jack Messer, who heads the project for the Defense Manpower Data Center.
