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Military and Government E-mails Compromised
Dangerous_Minds writes "ZeroPaid is reporting that 16,959 e-mail accounts were recently exposed by Connexion Hack Team. Included in the data dump are usernames and passwords for military and government accounts. The other compromised accounts included addresses from GMail, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL."
Reader Stoobalou adds a report that NATO's servers have been hit for the second time in as many months.
Shortly after the release of War Games in 1983, there were a rash of hacking incidents "inspired" by the movie. Events of late seem to be a repeat of that, aggravated by the (still) piss poor security policies. How some things changed but other persists over the decades.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Has nobody in government security ever heard of an air gap? WHY would you ever attach military gear to the public Internet?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The fact that you somehow got modded up horrifies me. There is a world of difference between the two scenarios, perhaps somebody will patiently explain them to you...maybe with bright colors and friendly animals!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Well, government data is (nominally) public property and should be owned by and available to the public at large, with only certain exceptions, usually in a time of war. Fucking around the the voice mail account of a missing, underage girl who may or may not have been murdered, is a little bit different than that, don't you think? But hey, context, what's that?
according to some of his defenders, alot of the stuff he got was 'commonly downloaded' by people on the base, especially the Collateral Murder video.
if you search youtube for video of afghan/iraq air strikes, i'd say that seems about right.
now if there is a bradley manning, who was doing it to blow whistles, there are probably some people who are doing it for profit, selling info to others.
why they aren't up on charges like him? sometimes the military wants to flip them to become triple agents. sometimes it doesnt want the bad publicity. the people who caught aldrich ames almost got nothing, a tiny ass little party , small than what we give people for birthdays at work. who knows.
I can't, in my wildest dreams, see the parallel you see.
seek help, is my advice to you.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The same people that clapped in glee with the release of this and other govt. data should either clap in glee with the release of ALL hacked data, or should object to the release of ALL hacked data.
So you don't see any difference at all between a private individual and a government organization?
I'm not particularly moved to emotion by either of these stories... But I can at least see a difference here.
The US government is supposed to be by the people, for the people... And yet we see plenty of evidence that the US population is being lied to at nearly every turn. Why would I, as a US citizen, object to actually getting to find out what my government is really doing? Yes, of course, folks are going to cry that it's a security breach and our top secret plans are now in the wild... Which may actually be true... But after literally years of being lied to, I guess I'm not all that worried about a top secret plan or two making it into the wrong hands.
As for Milly... Well, I'm not really convinced that anything horrible happened there. It sounds like deleting those voicemails hampered the investigation of her death. And maybe the parents might have wanted to hang on to some of them for sentimental value... But, not to be cruel or anything, the lady was already dead. Still, she's a private citizen. Not some government organization. Her close friends and family might have a legitimate argument that they have a right to hear her voicemail... And the police can certainly get a warrant to listen to it... But that really isn't something that a tabloid needs to be reporting on to drum up more readers. It's certainly something that they want to report on, because it's sensational and will sell a few more copies... But that doesn't make it right.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
That gets tricky. Not all government data, just government work product. There are a lot of situations where direct public access to government data is a real problem. Not the bullshit "national security" reasons, but simple things like access to internal information about an ongoing FBI or SEC investigation. Eventually the information -- excepting things that could easily compromise future investigations -- should be public, but not necessarily immediately. Likewise, government officials should be able to have e-mail accounts without their e-mails being available in real time to the public. That's a bullshit claim that's a (somewhat fair) reaction to the everything-must-be-secret government culture. Data necessary for transparency and oversight needs to be available while maintaining a reasonable degree of privacy that enables individuals and organizations to do their jobs effectively. I think that if better government transparency isn't forthcoming, than this sort of vigilante exposure will only increase.
I wish that everyone would just stop storing passwords as they're typed and instead only store the comparative hash. It wouldn't matter, nearly so much, if they were obtained that way, so long as the algorithm to turn the password into the hash can't also turn the hash into the password.
Yeah, I know, it might break some interoperability, but I'm getting sick and tired of hearing about this crap. Unfortunately the only way this will change is if it becomes in the interest of the requisite parties for it to, like if they can't obtain insurance anymore because no insurer will want to extend liability insurance to a company whose IT structure is so poor that it's likely that a payout might be necessary.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
if you have millions of people with security clearances,
including people who are having serious psychological or emotional problems, which were known to the commanders at the time they sent him on duty.
No, not the people who had their e-mail and passwords hacked, just most of the commenters here on Slashdot. Really, after all this time I should no longer be surprised.
Heads up, folks! The vast bulk of these e-mail addresses are from @yahoo.com, @gmail.com and the like.
These are PERSONAL e-mail addresses of possibly U.S. government personnel. They are prefaced with a couple dozen .gov and .mil addresses, but the rest are anybody's guess.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
These aren't email addresses with passwords to those accounts, they're the email address and password someone used to sign up for some random, unknown website. Without knowing what website, most of these combos are worthless. It might have been a hack of the server, but chances are it's just some DB (and not DataBase) admin who published his user list. If you're using the same email address to register for websites, make sure you don't use your password for that email address when you register.