HIGH school student David Dworken spent 10 to 15 hours between classes on his laptop, hacking U.S. Defense Department websites.

    Instead of getting into trouble, the 18-year-old who graduated this week was one of two people praised by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter at the Pentagon on Friday for finding vulnerabilities before U.S. adversaries did.

    “We know that state-sponsored actors and black-hat hackers want to challenge and exploit our networks ... what we didn’t fully appreciate before this pilot was how many white hat hackers there are who want to make a difference,” Carter said at a ceremony where he also thanked Craig Arendt, a security consultant at Stratum Security.

    More than 1,400 participants took part in a pilot project launched this year, and found 138 valid reports of vulnerabilities, the Pentagon said. The project invited hackers to test the cybersecurity of some public Defense Department websites.

    The pilot project was limited to public websites and the hackers did not have access to highly sensitive areas.

    The U.S. Government has pointed the finger at Russia and some other countries, saying they have tried to access government systems in the past. The Pentagon said it paid a total of about US$75,000 to the successful hackers, in amounts ranging from US$100 to US$15,000.

    Dworken, who graduated on Monday from Maret high school in Washington, D.C., said he reported six vulnerabilities, but received no reward because they had already been reported.

    (SD-Agencies)