> who. >> about last year the editor sent me and my editor how can the internet and the so essentials but yet so insecure? with the sony tax and others this friday to is the attempt to answer that question. >> host: is the openness of the internet a security risk that? >> yes. it is interesting. of nine of them have to do with creating and i found or i gave you could play of the internet. they didn't have the contemporary notion.

they were thinking about getting academics, and sharing files zero little worried about the cold war how to penetrate the network but they would attack other internet users. is the essence of the security and we would have no internet without the way it is but the ability to log on and have that on mind community with no fiction made it what it is today. >> host: at what point did security become a priority? >> he can make the case and never has. where you have gotten is a successive wave pool is in moments of dawning awareness

we deal with this in the first piece of the project from 1988 when the worm gets loose with hundreds of thousands of computers and all of these guys working 20 years earlier also wants said what have we done? that terrified and and and they were appropriately concerned there was a danger lurking there. the data in charge any more now is half a century old and there is a successive wave of new generations of people in charge. they all plow forward to make the same mistakes all over again that.

>> host: who was robert morris? >> the son of an nsa official in wanted to see key to but something loose to crawl around by itself. his account later became he had done a programming error so it took over machines and replicated itself that he did not want to anticipate. 1980 was early so wasn't like a lot of things went down like the electrical grid but it did cause a high degree of havoc of computers he was later convicted for computer abuse but he went down with a successful career as a professor at m.i.t.. with the world begin to

realize once you connect everything up things can happen. someone in moscow or manila can reach out and touch me on the computer in my home. >> host: was a professor looking to cause harm with? >> it doesn't seem so. to solve that computer science riddle to find its way across the internet he overshot the mark that was his account later. >> host: you mentioned the graybeards stick the most famous like the executive at google who wrote in that early code which his

colleagues. at a whole cadre that is called the blue sky research agency. their job was to look around the corner for those that didn't have immediate payoff so they tried to figure out we have these computers what if i could be sitting in palo alto and immediately send a file to a scientist in washington d.c.? immediately it was as if i was there. when they were thinking about a fairly scarce number

how can we share these resources? that they did not anticipate to keep somebody off of that network. >> host: you use the term in your series? >> it is a derogatory term the first emerged in the mid-90s you with sas software developer would release these with as software from a security point of view. there would put something on your printer for create inventory has people can get

into. in the historical movement -- moment there is an amazing rise of connectivity all over the world. and companies serve that emerging market will with amazing profits but it said outsiders 2.0 their stuff was not locked down. what then the software companies to fix the problem. then they would come in with more problems and again

prayed there is no more problems. that has lots of problems and hope that it turns out okay. >> host: is security still a secondary issue? >> in all the of pieces any to those pieces as wrestling with conflicted demands. one and later were about making money to buy in large

numbers and amazingly good operating system and isn't enough to make it perfectly safe so the dilemma is one of them wanted to have features that will appeal to all of us. with these individual exchanges but do we make it more fast? professed and of some pretty much always win for decades and decades. would you pay three times as much for a smart phone that is radically more secure?

maybe you want to go to a website because the security fainter in -- features think there could be packed. as consumers we are for ever choosing things other than security. >> we be between five and 10 on the list. security experts will tell you it doesn't pay there isn't a serious market and it is not the compelling. >> dimension and operating systems what is that? >> with it is the most

essential piece of software when i type ak on my keyboard with his needs to respond in a way that is useful myth of hardware with the way we try to do things so when i use the word processor i maybe typing craig timberg but then it communicates with hardware to put craig timberg on my screen. it is everything we use. >> how many are widely used today? >> it depends what you mean.

so only in a certain type of machinery for there are some big ones in a lot of other ones that our smaller. >> host: your fourth piece in the series was honda linnux system to do is the creator? >> a college student in finland not quite from scratch named linus but when he did that was a revolutionary one it was a

model called open source he did the first 100 things you need to do then said to the world send me your improvements and your updates to the points where developers were involved with to create this operating system hear we are 24 years later another is 19 million lines of code. the overall of these years it is an amazing story and what they produced that is

very fast and very flexible. but it is also free there is lots of companies or small version set in the end it is a community project and one of the most amazing stories in the history of the internet but after all these years there has been a persistent conversation to think of smart people when it first came out it was probably a lot more secure than microsoft or apple but there is the sense the community that built linnux

had security as its top priority. there were focused on speed one in performance down on though less so there is a call to rethink linnux to do major revisions because it is so widespread. >> host: he is rather dismissive to security minded people. >> closely. with the hometown of portland he has a knack for writing a courageous things

one of the things he will say is people are crazy the security people think in black-and-white terms. but that doesn't mean but it does mean when it was as forward-looking and putting in systems fell would make would he manages the piece of the operating system this is a trade-off. and the security people forever say it has been so great and fast you are

risking problems down the road to linnux is not in the obvious things like your desktop computer but it is in every android device in the world every supercomputer and most of the servers that make the internet work. one and the security experts say linnux will be everywhere to emerge as the connected world. maybe we to put a little more energy and the security experts would love that. in those big decision makers with think fiver tenures out. what. >> host: how does security

affect internet agility? so there are some security features the experts to make universal to make your computer work more slowly. and there are some programs you use for years and it works then you get an update and it doesn't work. the verizon did over the year updates then they stop working. and that is frustrating with layers of security there is said the injured had isn't the right term but then the

central debate is how much can we except the little less agile were acquitted is harder for foreign government to hack into personal management with the case of ashley madison and their server their real-world examples to in consequences one is pretty soon if there runs linnux then humans in the world. and to pay a higher price.

one that the internet we a safer place for all of us. >> as you research this series with the due you start to get worried? >> i have been covering technology since 2012. every month i get more worried. [laughter] it is perilous. then i come home and terrorize my kids to put stickers on their computer. but i do think on some level security is the price to have the on-line world the same way a fatality systems

if we do come away with an impression we could do better. if it was number eight in the decision making choices that might be a good thing. and have the power to enable that kind of change. with other governments in the world to use their massive procurement power. we will only buy computers with operating systems interlocked on that creates more incentive and some of that is beginning to have been but it is a deeply vexing problem.

when my son is lost the incense me a text of what to get it and know how to find him. to have the same time there almost certainly permanent and entering a new world of connectivity barring be unimaginable catastrophe. to take these issues to pay more from security and then to demand. >> 20 years in an for underwriting a series.

and cybersecurity is big business. , i dug up this number. there is a difference if you're a company making your computer safer or a full system safer. to spend a lot of money on internet security. but what about the rest of this? to keep track of how much money i have. to see those investments

being made on the parts of the system that i wrote about with those operating systems as these computers are talking to each other constantly one of the most amazing revelations nobody is in charge. knowledge is beyond the comprehension of anyone human. that makes it harder to work with those deeper systemic problems. university can do much better job with hard rare or software or train everybody

is seems there are more tax all the time but what i can conclude with those institutions there are some deep problems because they perceive as their problem. we have some means to protect themselves but to pretax the they're all now sharing? one and with that age back contractor who goes into the

target hack. >> they ended to be so much more complex. and with that target computer system and let other people are trying to fix some interested to find holes in all the systems. >> host: you talk about in one part of her series you ask a question like did the potentially scientists when dash sensitive data flow through beijing? >> we don't really know the answer but when i iman

homophone -- i am on my phone i use verizon over the cellular networks but once it gets to the big actors the transmission happens when at a sophisticated level. so think of these giant mighty rivers to transmit using that protocol but it turns out that if you know, what you are doing.

and through these giant computers but it is certainly the case said it is an accident when the giant rivers of data and it was the chinese -- -- government but it just so happens so people that watched these things cannot be why it happened. we don't know why this information including a large amount of military data went to china with a few years ago. we may never know why.

>> host: why are you a stanford? >> about the nicest thing i could never happen to a journalist. then we do research so i am here for the academic year but over the last piece of this series to complete about the linnux operating system. stand for is an amazing place. >> host: i you doing research on technology issues? >> no i it is on the vexing problems with journalism it is not that great. so i am looking at the disruptions of technology whether there is a way to doing in particular i

traveled quite a bit but covering the world was very expensive. i am attempting that journalism is in peril. there is always the danger that news organizations will do less. >> gant craig timberg is with the "washington post" contributing to the pulitzer prize winning coverage and has a pedigree in journalism and his father covered vietnam for many, many years. >> his the vietnam that --

but after he left the marine corps for "the baltimore sun" and wrote the few books that has the most fascinating stuff about john mccain and poindexter with a group of characters part of the reagan did illustration he is not won a pulitzer from salon.com. >> host: craig timberg thank you for being on "the communicators".