800 Break-ins at Dept. of Homeland Security

WrongSizeGlass writes "Yahoo is reporting about the computer security nightmare going on at the Department of Homeland Security. Senior DHS officials admitted to Congress that over a two year period there were 800 hacker break-ins, virus outbreaks and in one instance, hacker tools for stealing passwords and other files were found on two internal Homeland Security computer systems. I guess it's true what they say ... a mechanic's car is always the last to get fixed."

Well, it makes sense

[WindBourne]

DHS was started by a number of folks from the marines (I worked for one). They were ALL windows believers ( but the ones that I knew were very so-so in the tech work). They were adamant about not being like NSA in spite of the fact that NSA has 2 missions; 1) obtain any info that they can on others 2) secure our boxes. NSA has a LARGE number of mathematicians as well as computer geeks. And windows is only allowed in none secured arenas or have their network capability severed at a hardware level (i.e. no nic or usb). If DHS had been ran by professionals and not politicians from the military (ALL of the tops one were W.s, Cheney's and esp. Rumsfeld's friend), then they would not have had the break-ins.

Usual illiteracy...

[Otter]

800 Break-ins at Dept. of Homeland Security

No, there were over 800 incidents ranging from a single (if I'm understanding correctly) break-in to other problems from malware and less.

By the way, seven comments already and not one anguished wail from a 14-year-old pretending to be a grizzled veteran upset about the changing meaning of "hacker"? Get a move on, guys!

Re:Homeland Security != Information Security

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Part of their mandate and jurisdiction is Information Security; they are charged with protecting the computing infrastructure of the country.

Re:On the good side...

[Reverend528]

In other cases, computer workstations in the Coast Guard and the Transportation Security Administration were infected with malicious software detected trying to communicate with outsiders; laptops were discovered missing; and agency Web sites suffered break-ins.

I'll admit that "discovered missing" was probably a poor choice of words, but the article pretty clearly states that there were lost laptops.

Re:On the good side...

[gethoht]

They haven't lost a laptop that we know about, but how about a hard drive with thousands of SSN#'s on it?

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=03 3003P6Z4B6 [toptechnews.com]

"The agency said it did not know whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen."

It is to be expected ...

[arthurpaliden]

When the first question out of the DHS pruchasing agent after the demo is 'And the name of your Congressman is?'

Yes, this really happened, it is recorded in my lab book.

Re:Big assumption

[TubeSteak]

Especially when the mechanic is incompetent, more interested in throwing around political weight than actually trying to accomplish anything useful.

You show me a mechanic who has to deal with multiple bureaucracies to get things done & I'll show you a mechanic who has to build up and throw around 'political' influence in order to get results.

If the Dept of Homeland Security was a car, it'd have incompatible parts from every car manufactured over the last hundred years.

What's with the car analogies anyways?
They usually suck.

Salient FACTS

[N8F8]

The DHS has around 200,000 employees.

The article actually says "800 hacker break-ins, virus outbreaks and other computer security problems over two years".

These numbers are remarkably low, if true. I once cleaned over 1000 virii, rootkits and spyware apps off the computer of a busy, filesharing teenager. 800 from 200,000 employees is pretty low. Not to mention that these are on public terminals since the real important data passes across private DoD networks (SIPRNET [wikipedia.org] and JWICS [wikipedia.org]. another clueless article written by another clueless reporter spreading FUD to the clueless liberal masses.

Mechanics are IT for cars

[bussdriver]

Anybody notice how similar mechanics can be to IT support? The jobs are similar even if the skill set is not.

congressional hearings

[pprboy]

Today's hearing is expected to examine specific incidents that took place on the DHS servers, including "rootkits, classified leaks, compromised websites, bot infections, unauthorized use of networks by contractors, and viruses." The subcommittee has also identified a specific DHS network that is "riddled with ... weaknesses" and could result in data leakage.

so it includes servers

Homeland Security means:

[droopycom]

TSA (Not covered by CIA, FBI or other Law Enforcement)
FEMA
Customs and Border Protection
Immigration (Former INS)
Secret Service (Not covered by CIA, FBI or any other Law Enforcement)
Coast Guards (Not covered by CIA, FBI or other Law Enforcement)

I'm no fan of them, but how about you take a look at their website if you want to know what they are supposed to do:

http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/structure/editorial_0644 .shtm [dhs.gov]

Re:Homeland Security != Information Security

[encino]

I am assuming you mean S&T, not DHS overall. Science & Technology is the primary research and development arm of the Department - we're different from other science-related organizations like NIH, NSF, etc., in that our work must have clear line-of-sight to security applications. Not to say we don't have some focus in the basic sciences, but rather to say that it's only about a 20% focus. We also have a portion of our research budget that goes to high-risk things that will probably fail. Thankfully our leadership hear in S&T understands that in science, you need to have at least some fraction of your research portfolio 'on the edge' - that's where you find the home-runs, and not always in the 'safe' stuff. This is hard to defend though, since Congress doesn't hearing that you're spending research dollars on 'risky' projects expected to fail. In addition to research, the 'T' in S&T means that we develop technologies for the first responders and other users (i.e., interoperable radios and communication, Chemical and Biological detectors, other miscellaneous cool widgets, etc.) You may also (correctly) guess that any significant effort to prevent terrorist use of WMD requires top-notch scientific and technical expertise as well, so we do a lot of WMD-related work. Hope that helps.

Already covered....

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Secret Service (Not covered by CIA, FBI or any other Law Enforcement) Treasury Department, which is why they go after counterfiters

Coast Guards (Not covered by CIA, FBI or other Law Enforcement) Commerce Department, except during times of way, when hey become part of the DOD.

And FEMA used to be independent and have an almost cabinet level leader.