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."

I'll only say...

[damn_registrars]

That ending line is far too kind.

"a mechanic's car is always the last to get fixed"

Assumes that the DHS is somehow competent to fix anything at all.

Big assumption

[Tony]

I guess it's true what they say ... a mechanic's car is always the last to get fixed.

That's very true.

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

Homeland Security != Information Security

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I guess it's true what they say ... a mechanic's car is always the last to get fixed.

Since this analogy isn't applicable in this case, maybe you're confused (?)... DHS was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, and responds to potential terrorist threats and attacks on US soil. They're not a group of IT guys or white hats.

One thing is for sure.

[AltGrendel]

The people that are smart enough to really do this IT stuff properly for the DHS are smart enough to earn more money elsewhere.

800 is a lot compared to who?

[jofny]

Point 1: Considering the complete inability of standard technical solutions to security problems to prevent a significant number of attacks/infections from being successful, this is not like the mechanics car getting fixed last. It's called "the security industry and standard methodologies continue their long history of consistent failure at organizations, both public and private"

Point 2: Those numbers are a completely meaningless abstraction without tying them back to type of attack, actual damage, importance of the data on those systems or their roles in launching further attacks, what kind of infections occurred and their damage potential, and finally what those numbers look like compared to other orgs of the same size.

Point 3: Homeland Security is comprised of multiple mostly-independant sub orgs (like Coast Guard, TSA, etc)....so..saying DHS had so many attacks is misleading without clarification

Point 4: Not saying theyre not making mistakes, just that those "facts" dont tell you either way what the actual state of things is.

If you want to.....

[budword]

keep the USA safe from soccer Moms with sippy cups full of water, homeland security and TSA are competent. Anything more complex, and they are all butterfingers. Even the name "Homeland Security" freaks me out, not because they have extraordinary powers that threaten me, but because the name reminds me of something out of 1984 type double speak, sort of a Stalin-esk soviet type of pun. I suspect Homeland Security is much more likely to be applied against citizens of the homeland than it is likely to be applied against any enemy of America.

Out of Context

[WarpSnotTheDark]

Look at any government agency or corporate IT infrastructure - 800 break-ins is not a big number. I have been conducting information security analyses for many years for corporate networks and government entities and 800 is not a high figure. What you have to find out before considering this a valid story is; was integrity, confidentiality or availability of their infrastructure effected by these break-ins or was it just dorks poking their nose through the DMZ to see what they could find.

Re:When you are a primary target

[Critical Facilities]

Most other businesses might not even survive the onslaught faced by the DHS and other government sites.

I agree with you that DHS is a "juicier" target than some businesses, I'm willing to bet that the attacks (and the frequency of them) against Bank of America, [bankofamerica.com] Citibank, [citibank.com] Equifax, [equifax.com] etc, are just as bad if not worse.

Re:Out of Context

[scatters]

The problem is that 800 is the number they know about. What's the real number?

Re:One thing is for sure.

[Guppy06]

"The people that are smart enough to really do this IT stuff properly for the DHS are smart enough to earn more money elsewhere."

And even if the pay was the same, there's still the many months and ungodly amount of paperwork involved in trying to get a government job. Are you going to go for the offering that's available next month or next year?

My brief experience in DHS

[erroneus]

This is no exaggeration. As with virtually any other government employment, the DHS is filled with people who just want titles and a paycheck. Most morons know how to install windows and office and a few of those can even install a server and exchange email. Whether they know anything useful or not, they don't really care about doing more than the bare minimum to keep their paychecks flowing. I blame the way government pays and oversees people for this. There is not much in the way of pay or advancement by merit in government employ. Everyone's too afraid of descrimination suits and the like. So the only measured basis one can use safely is time in service really. Other than that, the culture is to keep your head down and do the bare minimum.

And if you think the creation of DHS was a carefully planned and well-thought-out move, I think the historical evidence speaks to the contrary.

The only solution is for detailed requirements for security and data handling. It would be more effective than not having any... they really don't have much in place now. How secure can they be with Microsoft everything running their offices?

Re:This was predicted

[Timesprout]

Never mind predicted, this is desirable for the DHS, it's further 'proof' there are bazillions of terrorists out there hell bent on destroying the US.

Re:Out of Context

[jofny]

Considering the fact that there IS monitoring going on, Id say the 800 figure is probably much closer to the "truth" than a lot of other organizations' numbers who DONT monitor. Exchange often attributed to an anonymous officer at DoD: "My systems have never been broken into!" "How do you know, have you looked?" -Silence-

800 is that really high?

[Seventh Magpie]

800 includes virus infections as well. Lets see there are about 150,000 employees of DHS, so assumining there is at least 1 computer per employee, there must somewhere in the range of150,000 computers? Lets be conservative and say 100,000 computers. 800 incidents, that is less then 1%. Now take any other enterprise with that many computers, you IT guys tell me, is under 1% rate for computers without virus infections or intrusions a failure? Hell it isn't perfect, but it should be expected.

The bottom line is I dont care what kind of agency, business, enterprise, securing that many computers is impossible no matter what. You always have the human factor involved. Once you get 150,000 people thinking security (impossible to do) then you can be close to perfect..

Re:Homeland Security != Information Security

[eln]

DHS was created in response to the 9/11 attacks as a purely political move to make it look like we were serious about fighting terrorism. It created a huge bureaucracy, gave it an impossibly broad mandate, and made it more difficult for existing agencies (that were moved under DHS because they were at least tangentially related to protecting the country against various things) to do their jobs. As a result, the government is far less capable of intelligently defending against attack than it was before. It is only capable of wildly overreacting to perceived threats (like someone slipping through airport security with 4 ounces of hand soap rather than the mandated maximum of 3), again so it can appear as if it is on top of things.

DHS was a bad idea that was implemented poorly out of a panicked need to do *something* following the attacks.

you people don't get it

[Lord Ender]

Most companies' security strategies primarily rely on two things: patching and virus scanning.

Maybe break-ins are rare for you, and you think you are doing security really well. In reality, your success is based primarily on the fact that nobody good is targeting you. The people who discover flaws, write the exploits, and create the effective viruses do NOT target your pissant little company. They target governments and financial institutions.

Once the flaws and viruses are discovered by the primary targets, you get the luxury of updating your software and signature files before anyone gets around to target you.

DHS may have security a million times better than yours, but they are a primary target, so they get hit a billion times harder.

Re:Homeland Security != Information Security

[TheRaven64]

Cyber-terrorism has the potential to be a much more effective method of terrorism than violence. Just before Christmas, the airports in London were closed. A lot of people had to sleep in (cold) airports, and many didn't make it home to spend Christmas with their families.

In absolute terms, this didn't have the same impact as killing a load of people; no one actually died to my knowledge. For the people involved, however, it was far more personal that some people they'd never met being blown up, and a lot more people were affected than in most terrorist actions.

A similar effect could be had by infecting the air traffic control computers, for example, or even the airlines booking computers (imagine if they were hacked to allow every seat to be booked twice...).

There's a great bit in Good Omens where a group of demons are recounting their day's work, and none of the old crowd can understand why tying up the London mobile phone networks for a couple of hours over lunch is evil. Just because no one dies, doesn't mean that there isn't real damage. It's also much easier for people who aren't directly affected to sympathise with terrorists who don't kill anyone than with ones that do.

My computer is always the FIRST to get fixed.

[khasim]

Gotta agree with that. If they were competent, they'd have their own house in order.

Just as anyone here who's competent with a computer has their systems up-to-date and tuned.

Re:I'll only say...

[Otter]

Assumes that the DHS is somehow competent to fix anything at all.

Another day, another round of Slashbots turning a complete inability to read into an opportunity to hold forth on how much smarter they are than the people in the story they're unable to read correctly.

Its more than just simplification

[Anonymous Coward]

You get accountability by rewarding incompetence with unemployment.

Other than Rumsfeld and a couple of low-level stooges from Abu Griab, no one seems to have been fired.

We reward incompetence with bigger budgets which breeds more incompetence.

FUD Article

[Evil W1zard]

Ok so here is the deal. DHS' network is a mesh of multiple other networks that were already in existence. This is problematic in itself as it involves a heavy amount of integration and also borders upon borders of perimeter security (each disparate agency is part of the whole but may have its own controlled interfaces for some level of separation...

Now lets go to the article. To the laymen you say 800 compromises and they go into "WOW THAT IS SO BAD" mode, but seriously come on. The compromises are mostly workstations. Now that doesn't mean they get a free pass, but its not like they have had their core servers owned by foreign states... What they should be doing is not only scanning apps, DBs, and servers and patching/hardening them appropriately, but also client-side firewalling, config control of workstations, baseline security mechanisms for remote users, centralized virus/vulnerability patching... This article does not surprise me what-so-ever and it really is not an indication that DHS security is horrible. Its not the best, but 800 is not that bad.

Re:I'll only say...

[Intron]

Never mind competent. What exactly do they do? I can understand the purpose of the FBI, CIA, NSA, Treasury, FDA, FAA and SEC in law enforcement. What does DHS do that isn't covered already? The only thing I can find is publishing the threat level (currently Yellow = Run and Hide, except the airline industry is at Orange = Don't Bring Juice). Does anyone pay attention to that?

Do we really need a whole beurocracy to make the various departments share information and cooperate with each other? Aren't they run by grownups?

Re:I'll only say...

[statusbar]

Homeland Security = Homeland Insecurity

What they DO is they bring insecurity to every sector of government and society that they touch, in the name of "Security"

It is all about optics... It doesn't matter that their computers are insecure... obviously the problem is that the fact that their computers are insecure should be a top-secret fact. It is not something that they feel needs to be fixed. They are only there for the illusion.

--jeffk++

Re:I'll only say...

[hachete]

At times of great political crisis for the Republican Party, the threat level goes up.

Troll or humour, I don't know meself.

Re:Big assumption

[misanthrope101]

Not only that, but the car would be made of incompatible parts that the auto makers coughed up when they were directed to hand over parts to a competing agency--i.e. the parts that the company found least useful and valuable. There aren't many bosses who, when told to give up people, wouldn't use it as an excuse to jettison all the incompetents, whiners, bullies, and troublemakers they couldn't manage to fire earlier. So the DHS is comprised of rejects, and has no discernable mission, and has to deal with bureaucratic infighting.

Re:One thing is for sure.

[jofny]

And lo! Slashdot accidentally discovers the reason for the lucrative concept of "government contracting". Of course the government cant compete with pay - they also cant hire or fire in any reasonable manner, so most of the staff consists of long term contractors...which partially negates the "blame X on government employee salaries" habit in a lot of these conversations.

Re:Homeland Security != Information Security

[eln]

It was attacked twice 8 years apart. By that metric, we aren't due for another attack until 2009. In the meantime, there have been several attacks on US interests abroad. Terrorist attacks on US soil were extremely rare before DHS, and are extremely rare now.

Re:Out of Context

[WarpSnotTheDark]

You're right; 800 is the number they know about and a large part of that number comes from reports generated by Signature-Based Intrusion Detection Systems. Do a little research on Intrusion Detection Systems and you will find that they inherently have an extremely high false-positive rate: A poorly written program or improperly configured access permissions will trigger a high number of false positives - this is by design because it is generally safer to assume an action was malicious so that you have to track it down and find out what really happened, then update your signatures (who ever does that?) rather than assume it was a new printer with UPNP making a nuisance of itself. 800 is the number they know about and I can guarantee you that this number is pretty darn close to being dead-on. Additionally, unauthorized hits on their boundary defenses are counted - also counted are inexperienced hackers who get sucked into the honeypot. I know you want to believe that DHS is a bunch of incompetent fools running around with no idea what they should be doing, but I know, first hand, that they are a seriously organized (though overly bureaucratized) group of organizations (you do realize the scope of DHS don't you? It's absolutely ENORMOUS!).

Re:Homeland Security != Information Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do only foreign attacks matter? How come the Anthrax mailings and the DC sniper don't count as terrorism?
Besides, all the big terror busts have been because of traditional detective work. The idiots that were going to shoot up the NJ base got caught by a guy at the film processing center, and the JFK plot was blown by a drug dealer turned informant. Neither of them had anything to do with DHS, so really, what good is it as an agency?

Re:I'll only say...

[bdjacobson]

It is all about optics... It doesn't matter that their computers are insecure... obviously the problem is that the fact that their computers are insecure should be a top-secret fact. It is not something that they feel needs to be fixed. They are only there for the illusion.

--jeffk++

Further, they have a vested interest in allowing these sorts of things to happen. That way they can go "See? We told you to give up those rights..."

Re:I'll only say...

[rtb61]

No all of that is about establishing fear in the public for political purposes. Also as a measure of training, so that the poor with our influence get used to the idea of being randomly searched and the property being subject to random inspection ie. any possible threat to the rich with influence should be curbed, controlled and constrained.

They are establishing as system of three distinct classes, one that is subject to physical degradation, dehumanisation and control, and another that escapes it and enforces it upon others, and the over seers that look down upon the animals in their pens.

Are the wealthy in their private planes and charter flights subject to those inspections, are politicians subject to those inspections, are the authorities agents of control subject to those inspections. Freedom is always hard to gain and a struggle to achieve, where as, simple indifference will see it disappear, to be taken away piece by piece.