How Safe are Government Computers?

KingOfBLASH asks: "Recently, when I was in the local City Court to protest a parking ticket, I noticed that all of the computers were running Windows (some as old as Windows 95!), and there were definitely network cables snaked around them. The City Hall suffers from the same affliction. Given that some of these computers have passed the End of Life for support, and there are a number of known exploits, how safe our government computers? What damage could be done if they were attacked?" It would be interesting to note if it's just local governments that may be running lower-than-expected tech or regional governments, as well. It would also be worthwhile to hear how governments outside the US compare to their American counterparts.

Comments

Well what are they really running?

[SmallFurryCreature]

It may be like the police here that they run Windows as the base OS but really run the app on a Unix somewhere through a terminal session. Maybe even a mainframe.

On the other hand it would be easy to fit goverment with the latest in secure systems. Just pay more taxes.

Re:Well what are they really running?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand it would be easy to fit goverment with the latest in secure systems. Just pay more taxes.

...or install OpenBSD.

Re:Well what are they really running?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Providing more money for government via increased taxes does not necessarily mean you can have more secure systems. I'm not saying that it won't help, but I know of a case where a government operation was caught with missing licenses for Windows, and as part of the settlement, they are now locked into Windows. They are still trying to upgrade everyone to W2k. So, just because they are upgrading does not mean that they are more secure.

Basically, it sucks just about everywhere

[Mr. Piddle]

When aquisitions are written into a contract or pre-set by an annual budget, this means they probably left out long-term maintenance, upgrades, and funds to pay anyone do to maintenance and upgrades. Welcome to basically every bureaucracy large and small on the whole planet.

For example, wasn't it the good ol' Department of Homeland Security that scored an 'F' for network security this last year? Wasn't the Department of the Interior that was ordered off-line for gross negligence? Large and small, they all fall.

Have a nice day.

Definately network cables ...

[sparkie]

snaked around them.

So what? Just because they have a network card and some cabling does not necessarily mean they are hooked to anything but another computer in the building.

I don't believe the question here is 'how prone to hacking are these computers' I believe the question is, 'how strong is the firewall protecting them.'

That is of course assuming they are 1 connected to the internet, and 2 firewalled.

The county government here has one computer on the internet, and it's isolated from the other computers, i.e. not networked in with them.

Where I work

[blankmange]

the weakest link is the employees -- minimal computer knowledge -- anything official-looking and these users will download and install anything.... Worse yet, when they do make a mess of their workstations, they never seem to know what they did to get there...

Try asking federal employee a few simple questions and you will find the majority of them know next to nothing about security (other than how to log on to their workstation).

Re:As a county DBA/Network Technician

[John Hasler]

> As a county DBA / Network Technician, I can tell
> you that most government computers are secure...

Including those at the US Dept. of Interior?