Air Force Emails Sensitive Information to Tourism Site

Khuffie writes "The US Air Force has been sending sensitive information, including flight plans for Air Force One, to a website promoting the town of Mildenhall in Suffolk. When told of the error by the site's owner, the Air Force did not attempt to fix it at first. When reminded at a later time, instead of fixing the issue, they advised the owner to 'block unrecognizable addresses from his domain and have an auto-reply sent reminding people of the official Mildenhall domain and blocked his website from access on base.'"

Quick fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Why didn't somebody just buy his domain off him, let him keep the website, and route the email to a bit shredder for all but the admin addresses, like "webmaster"?

USAF 1, british civilians 0

[Chief Camel Breeder]

I see from TFA that the owner finally took his site off-line because of the problem. So the USAF probably considers the problem solved. Another triumph for American diplomacy.

Stable doors

[Silver Sloth]

It was only after sensitive information had leaked that anything was done about it.

OPSEC and COMSEC

[Ethanol-fueled]

This from the mighty mighty Air Force which banned blogs, which accidentally flew nukes cross-country, which wants to start a "Cyber-Command." Not trying to flame, but why do they insult their own intelligence by banning the viewing of blogs [wired.com] while allowing this sort of crap to happen?

E-mail is a postcard

[mdmkolbe]

If the Air Force is sending that info over unencrypted e-mail, they have bigger problems than just the e-mail going to the wrong domain.

This kind of makes me suspicious that he article might just be hyperbole.

Re:The Airforce...

[Mushdot]

If you read the article you would know that sensitive information, including flight plans for the president and military tactics were received. So with that information it may not be such a challenge.

Hmm

[rolfc]

I wonder if taking down the website will stop the emails from coming?

Nope, I dont think so.

preemptive move

[Atreide]

'block unrecognizable addresses from his domain'

isn't it more effective if air force domain names are removed from world wide dns ?

Re:Wait a minute.

[Kiuas]

Military Intelligence at its highest magnitude.

"The military intelligence
Two words combined that can't make sense" -Megadeth, Hangar 18

Re:E-mail is a postcard

[Twisted Willie]

Mod parent up.

If flight plans of Air Force One are being sent over a public network in plaintext, it doesn't matter in whose mailbox they end up really.

Re:Conspiracy!

[frodo from middle ea]

I don't. Killing people turns them in to martyrs.

Re:Conspiracy!

[schon]

I most certainly don't. Unless they can take out Cheney at the same time.

You know why the democrats haven't had Bush impeached? Because they'd rather have him than President Evil.

Re:The Airforce...

[Anonymous Coward]

You seriously think that we "walked over Iraq"? Perhaps it escaped your attention but we are still fighting there, and we have not won yet. I suggest you read more newspapers.

Re:The Airforce and no IS Security

[callistra.moonshadow]

I think that this may have to do with bravado, but more likely it has to do with plain old ignorance. I seriously doubt the Airforce has good IT personnel. Maybe I'm being an IT snob, but from what I've heard from family members that work in government and other civil service (one is pretty highly ranked) is that (as we all know) woefully behind the times. I suspect that an email about data being sent to a public URL may have been seen as cryptic to whatever administrator ended up with the information. On a different thread I was talking about identify theft and how the government is one of the largest areas where proprietary data is stolen from. I think that it's just another symptom of a much more systemic problem within government agencies in the US.

--cally

Re:The Cheney Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect it was birdshot rather than buckshot.

If the latter, the poor dude wouldn't have had any face left, and Cheney might well have been sent down for manslaughter.....

I'll leave drawing any conclusions as to if this would have been a *very* good thing as an excercise for the reader :-)

Re:The Airforce...

[morgan_greywolf]

You seriously think that we "walked over Iraq"? Perhaps it escaped your attention but we are still fighting there, and we have not won yet. I suggest you read more newspapers.

While I agree with your sentiment, I feel I have to point that we did "win" in Iraq. The regime in Iraq changed. We defeated the Iraqi military. What we're still fighting over there, though, isn't so much as the "enemy" as it is just basically mass chaos, which either U.S. military intelligence either knew or should have known would happen in a country splintered and segregated along ethnic, religious and cultural divisions. After all, isn't that why there's never been any significant time of peace in the nation of Israel since its founding in the first half of the last century? (Not to mention that other people from outside of Iraq are capitalizing on this chaos and taking pot shots at the U.S. military whenever possible.)

Y'all have to look past the rhetoric coming from both sides of the political aisle and see the situation for what it is: fubar'd.

Re:The Airforce...

[Serious Callers Only]

The real question is what is sensitive information like that doing being sent over email without encryption. If they're sending things like flight plans and military tactics via plain email, it should be considered a security breach no matter who the recipient is. Anyone could easily read it on the way between the two servers, it might get forwarded to someone who shouldn't see it, it can be changed by servers en-route or bogus data inserted etc etc. I imagine most security services would find it easy to infiltrate an ISP here and there and watch traffic as it goes through, and no one would be any the wiser.

Re:The Airforce...

[172pilot]

How I wish that were true, but you miss a fundamental difference between private industry and the government... When a private company has such efficiency problems, it goes out of business, but when a government agency has trouble, the trouble is presented as "evidence" that "the problem is bigger than we thought" and that more money needs to be allocated to correct the problem. Of course, the fundamental problem which is ignored is the leadership of the organization wasting the money, so the problem never gets fixed, but budgets get bigger and bigger.. At least in the Military's case, their function is one which can be justified by the Constitution - Most of the other government waste is in programs that the government has no right to be spending a dime on in the first place...

Re:The Airforce...

[richlv]

he should simply autoforward those mails to wikileaks

Re:The Airforce...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not only ignorant, it is also blatantly incorrect. Regardless of the feelings for the man in the office, the office itself is symbolic of the United States. Just think of how long we've spent after the destruction of symbols of US capitalism, the World Trade Center Towers. Multiply that by 1000, and you'd have the reaction if someone were to take out the President of the United States.

Re:Quick fix

[WK2]

Yes. Or, they could not send sensitive information via email.

You're crazy

[jgoemat]

An attacker who took that turkey down would get a pat on the back and free beers in every bar across the United States.

Who among us would be happy to have Dick Cheney as president?

Re:The Airforce...

[i_ate_god]

UK: "Hi arabs, we need your help!"
Arabs: "Hmm? What for?"
UK: "Well, you don't like those greedy turks running your land do you..."
Arabs: "Hmm.... no. No, no we don't."
UK: "Ok, listen up. We can help each other. You help us overthrow this empire, and you can have your land back, since all we care about are the germans really!!"
Arabs: "Wow, really?"
UK: "PROMISE!"
Arabs: "OK!"

-- Ottoman falls, Britain takes what it wants in the middle east, negotiates with France for the rest --

UK: "SURPRISE! ISRAEL!"
Jews: "pwn3d"
Arabs: "WTF!?!?"

I think the scenario is more of a territorial dispute with religious/cultural differences as the accenting side dish.

Re:The Airforce...

[operagost]

I think it's sad that so many people are driven by hatred.

Re:I have call this one BS

[Rudolf]

All DOD domains end in .mil not .com.

What's this then?
http://www.airforce.com/ [airforce.com]

Looks real to me - is it fake?

Re:You're crazy

[ahodgson]

He's been president for 7 years ...

Re:The Airforce...

[innerweb]

.there is a level of accountability that should be enforced both during, and after your time in office

Yeah - nothing against you, but come on. Bill Clinton got caught with an extra-marital affair, and was put up for impeachment for lying under oath about it. The current president lied, manipulated people in positions of authority and created an environment where his business allies could earn billions off of the war and he is not even being investigated. *accountability* Give me a break. Pres Bush Jr is the one who finally showed me the futile light of our current governmental/business systems.

The current president has done more damage to our future than any other force, person or organization in the US's history. There really is a price to pay for the incredible amount of debt we have and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. It creates instability in the regions, the world, the markets and it weakens our governments ability to deal with a real crisis when it occurs (and they do occur). Saddam was evil, but not a crisis and through GW's actions, we have given fundamentalism another strong foothold in the Middle East. We can not afford (financially) to stick around long enough in Iraq to fix the problems that are there now.

He has made thousands of people incredibly wealthy (not just wealthy) with his politics. If there has been a President in history who needs to be investigated for the well being of our national future, if not only for the strong potential for serious criminal conduct, it is President Bush Jr.

Accountability is only possible with transparency and memory. People have to be able to see and then want to remember what they have seen. As we have neither in sufficient quantity, we do not have accountability. I think Bush will walk away from this a wealthy man with no fear of being prosecuted for what he has done.

InnerWeb

Re:The Airforce and no IS Security

[corbettw]

Why didn't a "Communications Squadron" offer to work with the domain owner to resolve these problems?

Why didn't someone just update the distribution list in Exchange? How freakin' hard is that?

Besides, these emails should have been going over SIPR (secret military VPN), not NIPR (public Internet). The SIPR machines can't route email to NIPR networks, so the problem never would've happened in the first place if proper OPSEC had been followed. Someone needs an Article 15 for this.

(I'm a former IT1 in the Navy, and worked with Air Force guys in Operation Northern Watch, and I can state that all of the Air Force personnel I worked with in the comms section were highly skilled professionals, so this is not a slam on Air Force-types in general.)

Re:The Airforce...

[Lars T.]

Vietnam and North Korea had weapons support from china. iran and North Korea wouldn't last three months on their own. Palenstine can't keep isreal out, let alone anyone else. I think you mean Pakistan. Pakistan would fight bravely and even win a few battles but would be overcome.

China,India, and Russia though would. Any fight with either is just stupid. We walked over Iraq, and afganistan because they didn't have weapon support from russia or China.

Actualyy, I think you couldn't even attack Iran right now, because you wasted all the high-tech weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq. How many Tomahawks does the US have left?

Re:The Airforce...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's sadder that so many are driven by blind obedience, stubbornness, and willful ignorance.

Re:The Airforce...

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies go out of business?

Like in the Savings and Loan crisis? Or the airline bailout? Or the sub prime mortgage relief bill?

Yeah, out of business, what he said.