Posted on 07/12/2015 12:37:06 AM PDT by Libloather
Contractors in Argentina and China were given "direct access to every row of data in every database" when they were hired by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to manage the personnel records of more than 14 million federal employees, a federal consultant told ArsTechnica.
The massive breach of OPM's database — made public by the Obama administration this month — prompted speculation over why the agency hadn't encrypted its systems, which contain the sensitive security clearance and background information for intelligence and military personnel.
Encryption, however, according to Ars, would not have helped in this case because administrators responsible for managing these records had root access to the system, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity Dr. Andy Ozment testified yesterday at a two-hour hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I’m a retiree who held a clearance for twenty-odd years, and my data was among that ‘taken’. I just don’t see how a class-action lawsuit doesn’t occur and each person paid some kind of damages (say $10,000).
The bizarre behavior by OPM and lack of competence....leads you to start wondering about other problems that might exist.
The password was “12345”
I was cleared for Secret about 50 years ago for job with a defense contractor, and for Diplomatic Security a few years later when I worked for an international NGO with AID subcontracts. Would my information be likely to be among the data stolen? I last worked under this kind of clearance about 40 years ago.
What they ‘say’....is that all the people from the paper-era (which started around 2000)....weren’t in this database system. How true this is, is just a humble guess. Course, if they wanted to digitize your data....they would have had to hire people and there’s not much reason to do it unless you were going for a new five-year investigation.
I had a Secret and then a Top Secret with all the bells & whistles about 35 years ago and I wonder the same thing.
Are those upper or lower case numbers?
This almost looks like it was done on purpose by our govt. and with this cretin Marxist in the white house it doesn’t even seem that far fetched.
At least they changed it from password.
[This almost looks like it was done on purpose by our govt. and with this cretin Marxist in the white house it doesn’t even seem that far fetched.]
WASHINGTON POST May 10:
OBAMA’S QUIET NUCLEAR DEAL WITH CHINA RAISES PROLIFERATION CONCERNS
. . .The deal would allow Beijing to buy more U.S.-designed reactors and pursue a facility or the technology to reprocess plutonium from spent fuel. China would also be able to buy reactor coolant technology that experts say could be adapted to make its submarines quieter and harder to detect.
The formal notice initially didn’t draw any headlines. Its unheralded release on April 21 reflected the administration’s anxiety that it might alarm members of Congress and nonproliferation experts who fear China’s growing naval power — and the possibility of nuclear technology falling into the hands of third parties with nefarious intentions. . .
And why did they need outside, foreign contractors in the first place?
Because their employees are affirmative action incompetents who are unable to do the job, so they have to have the actual work done by contractors who are not governed by the government’s hiring rules.
So all an enemy needs to do is have a company controlled by them be low bidder. I wonder where ELSE this is happening?
Millions of man-hours of IT and computer science research in the field of information security amounts to this.
Government does dumb sh!t all the time.
In the early 70s I worked inside NCMC, NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Complex). Big gate house outside the tunnel for your wallet badge swap for area badge, get on the bus take the ride inside where it stopped at the outer blast door and you waited until it opened, entered than then waited for it to shut. Inner door opened, same thing. Both doors never to be opened at once.
One day I went up to work and viola! BOTH doors were open. Stayed open for I don’t know how long - few weeks?
Why? Contractor doing work inside had it in the contract to keep them open for easy access in and out while they built something in one of the caverns.
Led by an affirmative action political hack whom has thankfully resigned, albeit way too late. Katherine Archuleta.
I held a Top Secret clearance while serving in the Navy some years back, working in communications for approximately 10 months. One day, I was removed from the crypto area as my TS clearance was being checked. After about a month, the “gubmint” reactivated my clearance after finding that my mother, who was Canadian born, did not pose a threat. How did I get that Top Secret clearance in the first place, you would think someone had previously checked? Amazing how the government works.
That...was not accidental.
I got my first clearance under Carter. Although it was a TS on a very sensitive project it seemed perfunctory. The agent was a hippie in a suit. (I mean, like, cool, dude.) When Reagan came in it was totally different. Suddenly they were asking probing questions about things that were a decade old. The difference was midnight versus noon. The man at the top sets the tone for the entire organization, all the way down to the janitors.
I read in an organizational theory book that if the CEO is insane then the entire organization will seem insane. I’ve witnessed this at every company where I’ve worked. If the guy at the top is hard working and competent then it reflects all the way down. If he is bat shit then expect that to reflect in everything the company does.
I likewise worked with high security clearances for thirty years and got a letter from OPM that my 86 data has been lost. Here is what the letter said that they sent me offering only 18 months of some type of “contracted” identity theft protection. After admitting thy lost my most personal private information, they said, “These services [identity theft monitoring] are offered as a convenience to you. However, nothing in this letter should be construed as OPM or the U. S. Government accepting liability for any of the matters covered by this letter or for any other purpose.” Dirty, incompetent, weasel bastards. There is no amount of money that can compensate me for losing my most personal private date. It is an absolute outrageous situation and to read that they turned the keys over to foreign contractors blows my mind.
Oxymoron.
This is completely illegal and should result in jail time.
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