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$2,000 Bribe Bought Password To DC P.O. System
theodp writes "While the Administration is counting on new Federal CIO Vivek Kundra to simplify and speed the federal IT procurement process, it's doubtful he'll be able to reduce red tape to the extent that a former minion of his did at the scandal-rocked D.C. Office of the CTO. Exhibiting some truly out-of-the-box thinking, project manager Tawanna Sellmon not only processed phony invoices for the contractor at the center of the D.C. bribery and kickback scandal, she also gave him the password to the city's computerized database used to track purchase orders. Sellmon pleaded guilty last week for her role in the scam, which netted her an envelope containing $2,000 in cash, as well as an undisclosed number of $25-$100 gift cards."
what should I set the reserve for the database password of the state police toxicology test results?
I bet she kept the secret for 47 hours.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Do you have remote access capabilities onto your Network? VPN, Citrix, not blocking GotomyPC? Has anyone at your company done the same thing, offering the competition direct access to your systems?
...is just how laughably cheap people can be bought for. Two grand and some gift cards? SERIOUSLY? You'd go to jail for that? When you're a project manager at a government job with great benefits, probably making more than that every WEEK?
It's like the Abramoff scandal. People will sell out their country for Capitals tickets. It's not even the Bulls or something!!
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Um no? She was a underling that was CAUGHT, she had nothing to do with the guy who is now the CIO. Get your facts straight before you decide to be a right wing moron.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
"...what kind of "EEO" bullshit got "Tawanna" cushy job as a "project manager" at the DC CTO office."
FYI, DC is a majority black city - having a black government employee there is like having a Native American employed by tribal governments. EEO would only serve to get white and hispanic applicants hired in DC.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
If TFA isn't a Troll I'll eat my shorts.
What's the best way to SEO slander someone.... without getting hit by a lawsuit? Just put them in the same article with a dubious individual - make a virtual connection even if no real connection exist... then people will start discussing them together and voila - they must be close friends!
Shameless and disgusting.
What's worse is that the reference to Kundra was obviously added after the story was initially posted on the linked site... that text with Kundra's name isn't even in a p tag, it appears styled differently in the rendered version as well, almost like an editor went in and added it after the author had published - "Hmm we need more hits on this story, let's put Kundra's name in it... that will get hits".
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
as if it were what it is: treason. This, cheaply bought bureaucrat, has sold her nation down the tubes for a pittance. Sushil Bansal, the owner of Advanced Integrated Technologies, made millions. Execute all three. Especially Advanced Integrated Technologies; it's high time for corporate death penalties that leave shareholders with worthless paper. Then we may see some responsibility at the top - not just profits.
I'm for stoning them at the base of the Washington Monument.
Is there a common theme for the rationalizations of mostly-law-abiding people who accept bribes?
The government is so big that it won't matter to them? They tax me so much, they owe this to me? Everyone else does it, so I'm a chump if I'm honest?
But then you have to pay taxes on your $1,000,000,000. Raffle winnings are treated the same as lottery winnings, which are all treated as gambling winnings and probably taxable in the 30-40% range. In this case the irony would be that 1/3 to 1/2 of the bribery money would go back to the govt, and eventually be used to hire even more corrupt and inept people...
Reading TFA, it looks as if she didn't sell the password, she gave it away to be helpful, and the contractor only later gave her the $2000 (and gift cards) as a present. I.e. she didn't realise what she was doing, that the password she gave him permitted him, basically, to authorise any bill he chose to submit. So she is primarily guilty of total stupidity rather than criminal intent. Maybe, for the good of the species, such stupidity should be treated as even more criminal - but it isn't.
What this makes clear, yet again, is that the human is the weakest point in any system, and any human who has not received positive training in security is a very weak point indeed. Which says that, whatever the physical security, any government database with thousands of users, let alone hundreds of thousands as planned form some, will be subverted, for certain, within months.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Still beats the hell out of a $25 gift-card, if you ask me ... but then again neither the bribers or the bribees in these two-bit, amateur-hour shows were known for competence or ambition.
For some perspective, consider the Iraq invasion: $3 trillion (and that is just the latest estimate) in cash down the drain, all to private concerns, multiple billions of which are not only unaccounted for, but were actually delivered in form of mountains of $100, $50 and $20 bills on shipping pallets....
And then there is the "too big to fail" multi-hundred billion cash bailout for the destitute and starving Wall Street, the specifics of which are so sensitive as to constitute a "national security" concern ...
In short, what is on display here is the difference between professionals and hobbyists.
This article is an ideal example of a social engineering crack. Consider the comparative difficulty of a technical cracking job and compare it to the simplicity and cheapness of what actually took place. The solution was actually quite elegant in a sordid way.
I once worked for a company that was experiencing a surge of highly organized fraud originating from Romania. Before I left, we were preparing to develop a major anti-fraud application, etc., at great expense. At one meeting I suggested that we just hire a few Romanian private detectives to knock on some doors and quietly suggest to the lowlifes that it would be healthier to leave us alone; the other people in the meeting looked at me as though I were green.
LOL.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
I dunno, I'd be fine with one million. Keep it in a secure location (you can afford a nice fireproof safe with that much) and just use it to augment your current lifestyle. Don't make outlandish purchases. One million in hundreds isn't that large either: http://www.cockeyed.com/inside/million/million.html
That's the rub though: being careful with it. You can't blow it on Rodeo Drive day one. Limit yourself to a grand a month and spread it around. Can probably deposit some in your normal account occassionally. Explaining 1M at once? Problem. Explaining 1M over 20, 30 years? Much easier.
No manner of technology can defeat good, social engineering. An intelligent attack is made upon the weakest link in the system. In this case, an unscrupulous user with privileges.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
nice theory, but i grew up in DC. yes black people can and some do discriminate against whites and other groups. heck, as old as it is, School Daze was and still is relevant vis a vis light/dark black discrimination.
however, this is probably mostly a symptom of the society of ineptitude that is DC government. your hiring manager has to have a clue and be able to vet whether an applicant actually knows the stuff their alleged degree says they should know. that hiring manager's manager is likely a political appointee, and well, you get the idea that politics might be involved.
i also used that experience (of having grown up in DC) to express my wish on /. that Obama choose the Cisco person rather than the DC guy with 0 clue about tech and associates and underlings of "questionable" ethics. at best our CIO is clueless about managing people, at worst he's involved in the corruption, but smarter than his underlings. the latter doesn't seem hard from the behavior this lady evidenced.
when i was in high school in DC Public Fools^H^H^H^H^H Schools, DC got a federal grant of like $10-20million to improve school access to computers, which at the time (mid 90s) consisted primarily of private corporate charity of end of life PC ATs. The government wasted the money paying contractors to "measure the state of computer and network access in the classroom". this was something a manager with two eyes and half a brain could have done in less than a month. none of the money got spent on actually putting computers in classrooms.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
You misunderstand; I was replying to an overtly racist comment suggesting that the only reason the person had the job in the first place was because she was black and an EEO program. I was pointing out that was impossible, as blacks cannot sue a majority black organization for "equal opportunity". The only people with grounds for that are minorities, which in DC means whites and hispanics. I was arguing that there was NOT racial bias in her hiring, not that there was.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
George W. Bush.
Next question please?
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Every hear of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld? They got elected, killed many useful projects for our nation, and then awarded LARGE contracts to their friends (sight unseen). In addition, when ppl spoke up about, they were QUICKLY shut down. Bunny Greenhouse comes to mind. So many others who have spoken about the corruption and all were swept under the rug. Of course, we did catch a criminal who got a blow job, but that is a different issue all together.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Start a business.
Filter the money in as regular customer payment.
Proper accounting you will take about 10% loss, maybe less.
Not a bad fee to pay to be laundered.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on