DHS Injects Itself With DDoS

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a story about what can happen to any enterprise IT department that overestimates the intelligence of its users. Only in this case, the enterprise in question is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The spokesman says there's no Jack Bauer mentality. No kidding!"

Comments

Listserv Idiocy

[astrotek]

lol, happened at college all the time

you get 5-6 idiots that reply to all
then you get 50-60 idiots telling them not to reply to all
and 50-60 more idiots trying to have a conversation to the first 5-6 idiots

Re:Listserv Idiocy

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Try thousands.

Microsoft had an email storm that took down companywide email

Re:DDoS?

[omeomi]

Yeah, a mailing list with a lot of people hitting "reply all" really isn't the same as a DDoS attack...it's just a mailing list with a lot of people hitting "reply all"

I'm on that ListServe...

[StickyWidget]

The issue wasn't with a DDoS, the issue was that when you sent an email to the listserve, it was sent with your email in the "To:" header. Which means that all the out of office messages came back directly to the sender. I saw several SIPRNET and NIPRNET addresses in the contact information for these people. Even better were the "I'm out of the office until November 15th, please forward all billing questions to So and So".

Several were group email accounts at Security Operations Centers, NOCs, and I think I saw a few power plants as well(one woman said that is was the "Command Center", speaking about the operations center at a major insurance company. Not to mention I'm still getting unanswerable emails back from email servers giving me the exact email address. I'd estimate I have around 1000 sets of contact information for people in the security industry, how many of those are actual LOGINS as well?

I'll put up a page with a breakdown of the information in the next week, then maybe Slashdot will put up my submission "DHS Email List Exposes Private User Data".

~Sticky
/Grousing about rejected submissions is typically offtopic.
//Which is why I said some other stuff first.

Re:DDoS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a mailing list with a lot of people hitting "reply all" really isn't the same as a DDoS attack...it's just a mailing list with a lot of people hitting "reply all"

Not on Microsoft infrastructure. It's called a cascade failure and if it happens to you all of your Exchange servers will go down. All of them.

1. All Exchange Servers fail --> All Outlook instances lock up, Word freezes, and desktops generally become unstable.
2. Panic ensues.
3. Someone calls a consultant
4. Profit! :D


If everything is set up correctly it shouldn't happen. But I hardly ever find that everything is setup correctly.

Re:Feel Safer?

[phantomlord]

I recently pointed this out to a friend of mine... here's the full list:

President       Highest office served, executive preferred
GWB             Governor
Clinton         Governor
GHWB            Vice President
Reagan          Governor
Carter          Governor
Ford            Vice President
Nixon           Vice President
LB Johnson      Vice President
Kennedy         Senator
Eisenhower      General (Supreme Commander of Allied Forces)
Truman          Vice President
FDR             Governor
Hoover          Secretary of Commerce
Coolidge        Vice President/Governor
Harding         Lt. Governor
Wilson          Governor
Taft            Governor, Chief Justice
TR              Vice President, Governor
McKinley        Governor
Cleveland       President
Harrison        Senator
Cleveland       Governor
McArthur        Vice President
Garfield        General, US Representative
Hayes           Governor
Grant           General
A Johnson       Vice President
Lincoln         US Represenative
Buchanan        Secretary of State, Senator
Pierce          General, Senator
Fillmore        Vice President
Taylor          General
Polk            Governor
Tyler           Vice President, Governor
Harrison        General, military Governor
Van Buren       Vice President, Governor
Jackson         General, military Govneror
JQ Adams        Secretary of State, Senator
Monroe          Governor
Madison         Secretary of State, numerous founding documents
Jefferson       Vice President, Governor, that whole Declaration thing
John Adams      Vice President, lots of pre-Revolution stuff
Washington      Uh, General who won our independence

Vice President or Governor: 29 (including the last 8 Presidents)
General: 6
Non-VP cabinet member: 4
Congressman with no executive experience: 3

That's a 3/42 (7.14%) historical chance of a Senator being elected
President with no executive experience.

Yeah, side note before I get called out on it... there have been 43 presidents, but Cleveland served as two different numbers (22 and 24) so his previous experience only counts once.