US sees threat in student’s thesis

Sean Gorman’s professor called his dissertation ‘‘tedious and unimportant’’. Gorman didn’t talk about it when ...

Sean Gorman’s professor called his dissertation ‘‘tedious and unimportant’’. Gorman didn’t talk about it when he went on dates because ‘‘it was so boring they’d start staring up at the ceiling’’. But since the September 11, 2001, attacks, Gorman’s work has become so compelling that companies want to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and Al Qaeda operatives— if they could get their hands on it— would find a terrorist treasure map.

Tinkering on a laptop, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the US economy, layering on top the fibre-optic network that connects them. He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper.

Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: ‘‘If I were Osama, where would I want to attack?’’ In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

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For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society. ‘‘I’m this grad student,’’ said Gorman, 29, amazed by his transformation from geek to cyber commando. ‘‘Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I’d be briefing government officials and private-sector CEOs.’’

Invariably, he said, they suggest his work be classified. ‘‘Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does this mean I have to redo my PhD?’’ he said. ‘‘They’re worried about national security. I’m worried about getting my degree.’’ For academics, there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman’s case, there’s a new concern: publish and perish.

‘‘He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade and then they both should burn it,’’ said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyber terrorism chief. ‘‘The fibre-optic network is our country’s nervous system.’’ Every fibre, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things.

And when it was presented at a forum of chief information officers of the country’s largest financial services companies— clicking on a single cable running into a Manhattan office, for example, and revealing the names of 25 telecommunications providers — the executives suggested that Gorman and Schintler not be allowed to leave the building with the laptop. They don’t want to lose consumer confidence, don’t want to be liable for security lapses and don’t want others to know about their weaknesses.

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Allen, chief executive of BITS, the technology group for the financial services, said the attendees were ‘‘amazed’’ and ‘‘concerned’’ to see how interdependent their systems were. (LAT-WP)