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Ex-NSA Employee Gets 5 Years In Prison For Taking Home Top Secret Files (cnet.com)
Former NSA employee Nghia Hoang Pho, 64, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for taking top secret U.S. defense files to his home. Pho pleaded guilty in December to willful retention of national defense information, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement. The maximum sentence for this crime is 10 years, but prosecutors were recommending a sentence of eight years. CNET reports: Pho, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Vietnam, worked in the NSA's Tailored Access Group, the agency's team that focuses on tools that can directly hack surveillance targets. Between 2010 and March 2015, Pho took home paper and digital copies of U.S. government documents and writings that contained national defense information on them, the Justice Department said. Pho reportedly had antivirus software from Kaspersky Lab on his home computer network and the software scooped up the top secret information as part of its virus scanning process. Kaspersky has acknowledged that its software lifted hacking tools from a home computer in 2014 but said it wasn't part of an intentional effort to steal information from the NSA. Pho said in court he took the materials home so he could put in more work to earn a promotion, according to CBS Baltimore.
In this case it looks like bringing work home did in fact affect his work life balance.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Basically the kaspersky anti-virus tool picked up on hacking software by it's coding signature. Strings of code, designed to hack other computers, it is recognisable when you do scans, especially when you do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ie sound likes, looks like, hacking code.
Now as it turns out when you scan for virusy like code, whether it is the tool to apply the code or the applied code itself, well, it's going to contain the same hacking code, be identified and been contained and a copy sent back for further analysis if you allow it. SO the twisty swervy version of that, ohh ahh, the Russians stole information (no the sent a copy of the code, containing hacking heuristics for further analysis, as the user agreed to when they installed the product).
The main reason the US government wants to ban kaspersky, it is the intention of the US government to back door all security software and obviously they will not be able to do that to a Russian program. Still not as bad as the wobbly told be the fellow claiming he took it home to do extra work on it, that near retirement, it was taken home to fund retirement in various non legal ways.
I will at least take the fellows recommendation for the use of Kaspersky software, why because clearly the NSA hates it, makes life all together too difficult for them. They much prefer software with individually identified security upgrades so they know exactly the user getting the security upgrade, to ensure they get a downgrade instead, instead of a lock and wide open back door but I suppose it's still better to allow those third grade anal retentive tech types to hack your computer to spy on nothing rather than have them kicking your front and back doors down, accidentally repeatedly shooting you and stealing your computers.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
There IMHO some important facts missing in the description:
a) He did not have a Office license, so he downloaded a key generator.
b) The Kaspersky software would not let him run that generator because it considered it harmful
c) He disabled Kaspersky, ran the key generator and got his PC infected
d) He re-enabled Kaspersky, the software detected an infection and began looking for malicious files
e) The software found the NSA written malware and did exactly what it was supposed to do: it was configured to upload new suspicious files to Kaspersky.
f) The upload server was under surveillance by the Israeli secret service.
Yah. Perverse work morale.
I do feel sorry for this guy. OTOH, I hope he learns the lesson: If you kill yourself at work, your boss won't give a shit. If you don't kill yourself at work, (s)he won't, eiter. What to do?
Kill your boss, of course.
NEVER TAKE WORK HOME!
And nobody was interested if his name is pronounced Fa?
The lack of any apparent controls at the NSA regarding removing classified information should cause some serious investigations of the agency and it's processes.
"There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
"To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
The ignorance defense wasn't worth shit, as the documents found had the classification markings still on them. There's no chance you become Secretary of State without being able to recognize a classification marking, and receive training on the proper care and handling of documents with those markings.
This is completely a double standard.
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