[wordup] nuclear cooperation!

[Adam Shand]

this is probably the most hopefull thing i've read in a long time.  sure
the problem is terrifying but the people involved ... this is actually a
sign of the end of an era.

Submitted By: Craig Wright <craig.wright at paradise.net.nz>
URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/A44053-2001Jul10.html

Nukes: A Lesson From Russia
By Bruce G. Blair
Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Although the United States spends nearly $1 billion every year to help
Russia protect its vast storehouse of nuclear weapons materials from theft
or sale on the black market, few Americans know how this aid helps
strengthen America's own nuclear safeguards.

Russian experts at the Kurchatov Institute, the renowned nuclear research
center in Moscow, recently found what appears to be a critical deficiency
in the internal U.S. system for keeping track of all bomb-grade nuclear
materials held by the Energy Department -- enough material for tens of
thousands of nuclear bombs.

Kurchatov scientists discovered a fatal flaw in the Microsoft software
donated to them by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This same software
has been the backbone of America's nuclear materials control system for
years. The Russians found that over time, as the computer program is used,
some files become invisible and inaccessible to the nuclear accountants
using the system, even though the data still exist in netherworld of the
database. Any insider who understood the software could exploit this flaw
by tracking the "disappeared" files and then physically diverting, for a
profit, the materials themselves.

After investigating the problem for many months, the Russians came to
believe that it posed a grave danger and suspended further use of the
software in Russia's accounting system. By their calculations, an enormous
amount of Russia's nuclear material -- the equivalent of many thousands of
nuclear bombs -- would disappear from their accounting records if Russia
were to use the flawed U.S. software program for 10 years.

Then, in early 2000, they did something they didn't have to do: They
warned the United States, believing that an analogous risk must exist in
the U.S. system. Although neither Los Alamos nor the U.S.  Department of
Energy has publicly acknowledged the possibility that innumerable files on
American nuclear materials might have disappeared, the Russian warning
caused shock waves at the highest levels of the Energy Department.

Unlike the Russians, who did not throw away their manual records of their
nuclear stockpile -- the infamous shoe box and hand-receipt system that
U.S. assistance was intended to supersede -- the United States has long
since discarded its old written records. To reconstruct a reliably
accurate accounting record, the Energy Department may need to inspect all
of America's nuclear materials -- a huge task that could cost more than $1
billion and still might not detect the diversion of some material, should
it have occurred.

The importance of the goodwill and trust that had grown up between
American and Russian nuclear experts over years of working together in
this area is clear. When the Russian scientists first discovered the
computer flaw, the initial reaction in some high-level Moscow circles was
to suspect an American Trojan horse, a bug planted deliberately to
undermine Russian security. After complaints by their Russian
counterparts, scientists at Los Alamos suggested that the Russian
scientists instead use a later version of the same program. Kurchatov then
discovered the upgraded program not only contained the same bug (though
much less virulent) but also had a critical security flaw that would allow
easy access to the sensitive nuclear database by hackers or unauthorized
personnel.

But trust overrode suspicion. The Russians concluded that the glitches
were innocent errors, not devious traps. Thus, they feared the U.S.
database, unbeknown to Americans, was not only prone to lose track of
nuclear materials but was also accessible to unauthorized users. Russia
reported both problems to Los Alamos, which subsequently verified the
defects, as did Microsoft. Though a fix remains elusive, Kurchatov
scientists also have shared a partial repair they developed.

This Russian feedback may be causing American embarrassment -- U.S.
officials apparently have tried to muzzle the Russians and censor their
scientific papers on the fiasco -- but it surely represents a high return
on the American investment in Russian nuclear security. The lesson is that
nuclear cooperation is a two-way street, is paying off and deserves
continuing support.

The writer, a former Minuteman missile launch officer, is president of the
Center for Defense Information.

&copy; 2001 The Washington Post Company