Posted on 07/23/2015 9:33:20 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The prolonged hacking into the White House Office of Personnel Management, which put the personal information of at least some 21.5 million past and current federal employees in jeopardy, is only the beginning of the security threat to the Obama Administration and its successors, a number of top-level experts in cybersecurity have told Fox News. The attack has been frequently sourced as coming from China.
The experts warned that the entire U.S. national security clearance system could be compromised, that future senior government leaders and advisors could be targeted even before taking office, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of government officials might successfully be blackmailed, bribed or otherwise manipulated in the future into handing over still more sensitive information.
The identity disaster could also weaken the U.S. in any time of military confrontation: “If we choose to engage in conflict, we are in a much weaker position,” one expert concluded.
The threat could include intruders already in the government whose security credentials were stealthily enhanced during the OPM intrusion, which may have lasted a year before it was detected last April.
“There may be people walking around with higher levels of clearance than they should have,” said one of the experts. “I believe the entire national security apparatus is now at risk. It’s mind-boggling.”
“It’s the digital equivalent of Pearl Harbor,” another expert told Fox News. “Because people don’t see the carnage, they don’t recognize that this is the equivalent of an act of war. This is about espionage—Cold War tactics in the modern digital age.”
The experts consulted by Fox News were former government officials with deep knowledge of federal information systems and experience with national security issues, who had worked in top positions in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The OPM system that was hacked does not include files of intel agents or higher level operatives.
So the Chinese need only compare the list of Americans in their country to the OPM list, and those who are missing get targeted as likely spies.
Lovely. Just lovely.
I speculated before, and I’ll repeat myself:
The ‘hacking’ of OPM is the only thing the public is allowed to know, as it is too big even for msm to hide.
We can’t really be said to HAVE national security as long as the US border is an unsupervised, express lane into the heart of the country
large, centralized systems always fail eventually. They will always face a “black swan” event eventually.
Cyber attacks will continue and will be constant and they will find a way in.
Gee, it’s almost as if a door to the government system was left wide open.
On purpose I’m sure.
Don’t worry, be happy!
Place Mark
So then, it’s not really a security service...just a service that ensures the widows/widowers receive their deceased spouse’s GS checks.
Why do we even use the same physical network for national defense that we use for everything else? Even the hacks on cars or the electrical power grid suggest the need for parallel networks with physically controlled access points. What the hell are these people thinking?
What was the pledge, TRANSPARENT?
Well, Obama DID promise us the most transparent administration in US history, didn’t he?
Buy ammo.
LOL - I was 24 seconds behind you! (-:
Classified government computer systems should be isolated from the Internet.
Trump told us were being led by incompetent idiots. Many already knew this. Our entire southern border is a national security nightmare. Nothing this government does benefits Americans and they’ve put our entire country in great danger.
Time for the entire US government to resign for the good of the nation.
I was talking to a guy hereabouts yesterday who was a ATT alumni...who suggested this very option...and its easily doable according to him
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