DOD's IT shop find no Y2K glitches, hackers

One hour after midnight Zulu—Greenwich Mean Time, which the majority ofmilitary communications systems use—the Defense Information SystemsAgency-Pacific could determine that the 120,000 circuits it relies on toprovide connectivity for U.S. forces survived the key New Year time changewithout a bump.

Army Col. Mike Harvey, DISA-Pacific commander, said shortly after midnightZulu, or 7 p.m. EST, his staff started checking the screens on the 50integrated network management workstations in his operations center, whichcontrols the vital nervous system for U.S. forces based in or operating inthe Pacific and Indian oceans, as well as the Persian Gulf. The staff usesthe workstations to provide near real-time polling for the rollover.

Harvey, who was interviewed by telephone at his headquarters at WheelerArmy Airfield, Oahu, Hawaii, said the entire network operated routinely,with no apparent Year 2000 date code anomalies.

The system monitors more than circuits, Harvey said, allowing his analystsand technicians to drill-down through the network to a customer premisesrouter sitting on a remote base, such as Kadena Air Base in Japan.

Harvey said neither he nor DISA headquarters rely solely on automatedsystems for such a critical assessment as determining the status of largenetworks following the Year 2000 rollover.

"I tell my staff that what they see on their screens is merely rumors,''with the true facts provided by the DISA Joint Interoperability Test Centerin Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., which is conducting live tests of systems andcircuits worldwide throughout the new year.

DISA-Pacific also had not detected any increase in hacker attacks orprobes, Harvey said, "which really surprised us because this is a period ofheightened vulnerability. I have three analysts engaged in threat detectionand analysis, and though they're busy [monitoring the networks], they'renot seeing anything."