Pentagon Confirms 2008 Computer Breach — 'Worst Ever'

jowifi writes "The New York Times reports that the Pentagon has confirmed that, in 2008, a foreign agent instigated 'the most significant breach of US military computers ever' using a USB flash drive. While the breach was previously reported on Wired and the LA Times, this is the first official confirmation of the attack that led to the banning of USB drives on government computers."

Comments

Re:This is likely why MS has GPOs in W7

[rikkards]

The thing that is stupid about it is that sure block exes from being run from a USB, then the user will copy it to the machine and run it there.
BTW, GPOs from day one have had the ability to disable Autoplay and autorun.

Where there's a USB port ... there's a way

[PolygamousRanchKid]

A US Army dental surgeon told me that their computers were "fixed", so they could not copy pictures of their operations to any external media. The surgeons needed anonymous pictures of operations that they had performed, for preparing for their careers after their service. Like, applying for a job somewhere.

One of them figured a way to use the USB port in the Canon printer that they had. They could toss pictures at the printer, and land them on the USB stick. Circumventing any blocks on the PCs from accessing the PCs' USB ports.

So any unprotected port is, well, a potential source of a leak.

Re:This is likely why MS has GPOs in W7

[rickb928]

I have this dim recollection that we could do this with GPOs in Win XP.

And we could use ZenWorks to do it also. Much nicer editor, and volatile accounts are a blessing in school labs.

Disabling removable media isn't new, just overlooked.

Re:This is likely why MS has GPOs in W7

[Lehk228]

there should be a way to restrict execution to only code signed by the owning organization's IT security.

This is why DoD needs to put a bullet in M$

[SgtChaireBourne]

In 2008 any standard issue Army computer would've...

But were they able to track down and deal with the individual(s) that deployed Microsoft products?

The military procurement procedures produce a solid paper trail even if on some occasions they produce nothing else. Had they deployed properly engineered products rather than brands infamous for bad design the problem would not have arisen. The US Navy will focus on open systems only, if it can stay clear of the old M$ contractors and M$ resellers.