COMPUTER
12
T H E K N OW N WO R L D
Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/09/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE
Honor Among
Thieves
F
or years, I have refused to
acknowledge that under-
graduates are worthy of rst
names. First names suggest
an intimacy with the adult
world that these senior adolescents
have not yet earned. They have not
demonstrated the qualities that
entitle them to a place in the com-
munity of educated men and women
and so they deserve only the formal
appellation of their family. Almstead.
Dumbacher. Hooper. Eilts. Garling-
house. Rasche. Only when they have
accomplished something in their
own right are they entitled to their
own name.
“Major X” is one of the few stu-
dents who has earned an exception to
my general rule about names. Shortly
after receiving her commission—she
is an officer in the US Army—she
joined an elite cybersecurity team.
In this role, she is supposed to pro-
tect her identity, and so decided that
I could not refer to her by either her
family name or her personal name.
Major X she became, at least to me.
KEEPING IN TOUCH
Over the years, Major X has
helped me to understand the chang-
ing nature of cybersecurity. She has
usually been quite responsive to my
holds a high-level security clearance.
Also, she is a cautious and reserved
person. I have watched her move
through a dinner party and leave no
trail that suggested the nature of her
job or the name of her employer. She
has few reasons to expose her pri-
vate life to the public or to suggest to
outsiders how she thinks, how she
strategizes, or even how she orga-
nizes her free time.
When she nally called, I was curi-
ous to hear the story of her summer.
“So, X,” I asked, “how have you been?”
“Fine,” she said, clearly giggling at
my question. “I have been very ne.”
As X normally appends the word
“sir” to almost anything she says, I
decided to press a little harder. “What
have you been doing this summer?”
At this point, the giggle became an
open laugh. “You’ll never guess,” she
said. “I gave a talk at DEF CON.”
For a moment, I was at a loss for
words. After all, DEF CON is not only
the largest and most notorious of the
computer hacker conventions, it is
also held in the Nevada desert in the
heat of summer. X would have gotten
no stronger response from me if she
had said that she just returned from
a poker tournament hosted by the
North Korean Secret Service.
DEF CON?” I asked.
Without a human organization that can sift information and raise
the gold from the dust, knowledge will die as rumor and innuendo
will overwhelm any truth that may be making the rounds.
David Alan Grier, George Washington University
requests for information. Within a
couple hours of receiving an e-mail
message, she’ll give me a call, chat
a bit about her current assignment,
answer my question, and ask about
friends from her graduating class.
However, last summer, Major X
vanished for a couple of months. As
August changed to September, she
sent me a quick note to say that she
would call in a week. “On a job,” she
wrote. “Can’t talk. Look at my photos
on Facebook.”
Major X is an inveterate photog-
rapher, though her pictures tend to
be group shots of friends rather than
images that tell a story. Over the
past years, she has posted pictures
of a beach volleyball game on some
tropical island, a shopping spree in
Harajuku, a day at one of the Disney
theme parks, and an evening at the
Grand Théâtre de Genève in which
she is wearing a designer gown that
has nothing in common with the
clothes she favored as a student.
As I paged through the most recent
set of photos, I resurrected a worri-
some doubt that had haunted me for
the past year or so. Did these photos
represent real activities, I wondered,
or did she post them to establish
a false identity? After all, she has a
career in computer intelligence and
©2009 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from David Alan Grier, Honor Among Thieves, Dec. 2009. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission
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