Thursday, July 2, 2015

U.S. Intelligence Warned The U.S. Government That Their Computer Data Networks Were Insecure To Hackers



Shane Harris, Daily Beast: Spies Warned Feds About OPM Mega-Hack Danger

U.S. intelligence agencies initially refused to share data with OPM, the now-infamously insecure arm of the government. Then the spies apparently handed over their files anyway.

Five years ago, U.S. officials refused to merge a database containing classified personnel records of intelligence-agency employees with another run by the Office of Personnel Management, fearing that if the two systems were linked, it could expose the personal information of covert operatives to leakers and hackers.

Those concerns look prescient now that the OPM, the government’s human-resources department, has been overrun by hackers who exploited its weak computer security and made off with huge amounts of personal information on millions of government employees and contractors. But that incident has also raised troubling questions about whether U.S. spy agencies actually heeded their own advice and have kept their records physically segregated from the OPM systems that were recently hacked, presumably by spies in China.

WNU Editor: As I said before .... people need to be fired .... but so far no one has resigned and/or been fired. In short .... no one has been held accountable for what has now become the largest data breach in U.S. history.

3 comments:

Bob Huntley said...

But who are they going to hire? The Chinese?

Unknown said...

They could hire many people with STEM degrees, who are unemployed. The insurance companies hired music majors as actuaries, when they faced a deficit and it worked. The music majors did not know the formulas or whatever, but research showed they had the aptitude. So they were hired and told to pass around a dozen tests over a period of years. The pay is good. This is going back a generation (1980s). But they were put in a room told to study (1/2 study & 1/2 work).

Just how bad does the government want to fix the problem?

Philip said...

"Just how bad does the government want to fix the problem?"

Not even half as bad as their desire for 'diversity'.