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Obama Helicopter Security Breached By File Sharing
Hugh Pickens writes "A company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks has discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Barack Obama's helicopter. 'We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president's helicopter,' says Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, a security company that specializes in peer-to-peer technology. Tiversa was able to track the file, discovered at an IP address in Tehran, Iran, back to its original source. 'What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One,' says Boback, adding that someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, without realizing the potential problems. 'I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went.' Iran is not the only country that appears to be accessing this type of information through file-sharing programs. 'We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence.'"
That's not even the real issue. They should be asking what a contractor is doing putting classified information on his "walking around" laptop. When I was in military intelligence, we had machines with classified information, but they were either dedicated hardened devices (for in the field) or they were fairly standard windows machines kept inside some sort of secure perimeter. The P2P aspect of this is really irrelevant, other than it gives both the "dastardly towelheads of Eastasia*" and the DoD an easy way to spot the information in the wild. This contractor likely already broke the rules enough to lose his job by having the files there in the first place.
* we've always been at war with Eastasia, right?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You know, I'm usually one to go with Hanlon's Razor (never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity), but with the VH-71 Marine One replacement program getting the stinkeye for it's ridiculous cost overruns, for once the conspiracy thing has me suspicious. It's likely the plans being on P2P part is entirely coincidence, and the publicity of the incident is the conspiracy, but I can see it happening. The question now is, which Marine One plans are they? Are they the plans for the helicopters currently in service, and the conspiracy is trying to save the VH-71 program, or were they the VH-71 plans and the conspiracy is trying to kill the VH-71 program?
Really though, it's probably just unrelated coincidence. Most things like this are completely unplanned. Conspiracies require competence, and you just don't find that in government much.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.