Criminal Justice & the Rule of Law Cybersecurity & Tech

The Best US Database to Hack? A Lawfare Contest

Benjamin Wittes, Paul Rosenzweig
Tuesday, July 28, 2015, 9:53 AM

Yesterday, each of us considered the question of which unclassified databases in the U.S. would be worth it for the Chinese to hack next. In writing these pieces, we realized that this is what the military might call a target rich environment, so we open up the conversation to Lawfare readers in the form of a contest.

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Yesterday, each of us considered the question of which unclassified databases in the U.S. would be worth it for the Chinese to hack next. In writing these pieces, we realized that this is what the military might call a target rich environment, so we open up the conversation to Lawfare readers in the form of a contest. You are therefore invited to submit your nomination for "most interesting, vulnerable, hackable, unclassified database in the United States government." Along the way, we hope to alert government officials that they should be thinking about the security of these databases—because someone, somewhere surely is doing so.

The rules are simple: no more than five entries per person; the database must be unclassified; it can be anywhere in the US at any level of government; and entries are due to us by this Friday, July 31. You can submit an entry by sending an email to psrosenzweig@lawfareblog.com.

First prize: we will offer dinner out, on us, here in the greater Washington area, on a date to be mutually agreed upon.


Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Paul Rosenzweig is the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, a homeland security consulting company and a Senior Advisor to The Chertoff Group. Mr. Rosenzweig formerly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Department of Homeland Security. He is a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University, a Senior Fellow in the Tech, Law & Security program at American University, and a Board Member of the Journal of National Security Law and Policy.

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