

Hackers Lay Claim to Saudi Aramco Cyberattack  - antimora
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/hackers-lay-claim-to-saudi-aramco-cyberattack/

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fruchtose
I really wonder how the cybersecurity prowesses of US, Israel, China, UK,
Saudia Arabia, etc. compare to each other. China, of course, has a reputation
for possessing extremely skilled hackers able to penetrate US government
networks. The US and Israel are responsible are giants, too, having created
Stuxnet--not to mention that the US invented the whole Internet thingy and has
the best universities in the world doing research into security.

So what about countries like Saudia Arabia? How do they find engineers and
computer scientists to do research in cybersecurity? They do have their own
universities, but I imagine they send an awful lot of young men overseas to
study at Western schools. Will this become a political issue in the future?
For sensitive US government research facilities (national labs, NSA, etc.)
citizenship is a basic requirement. I suspect that in the future, Congress
will act to prevent _universities_ from training foreign nationals in
cybersecurity. The jingoistic rationale will be indisputable--they'll say, "We
are training our opponents to defeat us." I cannot conceive of the sea change
such an event would bring to higher level education and global politics.

~~~
egor83
Actually something like this has been happening for a while - Iranian students
have been restricted from taking some courses in the Netherlands, and for a
while outright banned from certain Dutch universities, so as to prevent them
from receiving information that could be used in Iranian nuclear program:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranians_in_the_Netherlands#Edu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranians_in_the_Netherlands#Education)
[http://www.opendemocracy.net/pooyan-tamimi-arab/stop-
sanctio...](http://www.opendemocracy.net/pooyan-tamimi-arab/stop-sanctions-
against-iranian-students-in-netherlands)

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squonk
There is some truth to this. I've been receiving 'delayed' notices on mail to
aramco.com e-mail addresses for several days.

