Slashdot Mirror
Identity Theft of Many SAIC Employees
Rick Zeman writes "In the wake of the Geoge Mason University identity theft comes another: SAIC, an employee-owned company, has had a break-in which '...netted computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information about tens of thousands of past and present company employees.' These employees include anyone who's owned SAIC stock, and since it's an employee-owned company, that's most of them, including 'some of the nation's most influential former military and intelligence officials.'"
It seems that some of you are living under the delusion that it would be hard to run away with this kind of info. As a Financial Aid Advisor at a university i can tell you that with my database access, a database access that you can recieve with an 6 doller an hour work study position, you could run away with more than 50,000 ssn, phone numbers, all the information posted on the FAFSA (which is pretty much a rehash of your tax return) I think screaming, WHY DIDN'T THEY HAVE THE SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE, is being pedantic. noone is doing anything to keep your info safe. I'm sorry.
The people who talked to the press didn't know if the data had been encrypted. At a quick guess, I'd say that if someone could say that it was encrypted that info would have been passed on to the PR geeks, so I'm betting 75/25 that the data was cleartext.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
It should be noted that SAIC is the same company who just cratered on the FBI's new Virtual Case File software contract. The one that cost us $170 million dollars and is probably going to be thrown out and replaced with COTS software(which will probably cost millions more). SAIC is one of the elite cadre of companies that specialize in using political influence to land huge government contracts worth billions that they often never deliver anything worth a plugged nickel for. Some other big names CSC, EDS, Lockheed, Boeing, Hallibiburton/KBR, Bechtel....
Virtual Case File was actually only 1/3 of a larger contract called Trilogy to modernize the FBI's computer systems. In total its a $600 million dollar project and it kind of sounds like the 2/3rds of it CSC is doing isn't going a lot better.
I'm wagering this is just one of many case studies in the U.S. government squandering money in knee jerk reactions after 9/11 that were awarded before any actual thought had been put in to them. The contractors all make out like bandits though. Remember that when you see the $300-$400 billion budget deficits and the slash and burning of domestic spending to pay for "homeland security". Its open to debate if any of the billions that hve been spent on "homeland security" have actually made the homeland more secure.
@de_machina
i've been with SAIC for 4 years now, started off good but now it pretty much sucks. This is the icing on the cake.. i'll wager NO ONE gets fired over this (the CFO and/or CTO should resign). There's not much accountability at SAIC, dumb people just get promoted. I'll be leaving soon, F'em.. and if i get ID theft becuase of this i'll be lining up to sue those stupid f%$k's.