
FBI warns hacking spree on government agencies is a “widespread problem” - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/fbi-warns-hacking-spree-on-government-agencies-is-a-widespread-problem/
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fiatmoney
Well, at least they didn't do something silly like enable backdoors in widely
used communications infrastructure or intentionally weaken their encryption
standards.

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saraid216
I thought that was the NSA.

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D9u
Welcome to the real world...

Even my VPS with no public facing content sees a great many attempts at
unauthorized access.

So the problem then, is not any "hacking spree" on government agencies, the
_real_ problem is government agencies failure to implement acceptable security
measures.

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theboss
You say it like you're blaming them. Do you realize the sheer number of assets
they have to protect?

The government knows it will always have a soft exterior due to it's size.
This is why they have air-gaps and such strict policies.

A lot of people give the government a ton of flack for how poorly they work
but for an entity of their size they do a pretty good job. I'm not saying
there isn't obvious room for improvement but they do a fairly good job. Other
countries of similar size have much larger infosec issues than the US....you
just don't hear about them.

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Amadou
_You say it like you 're blaming them. Do you realize the sheer number of
assets they have to protect?_

The thing is that they have very little control over the hacking attempts.
They do have control over what they build themselves.

It's tempting to say the hackers are the bad guys, but morality isn't a
helpful tool in situations like these. They may as well be an act of god for
all the difference it makes.

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theboss
They don't build it themselves they have contractors. The contractors make
mistakes and there isn't enough resources to find/fix them all.

Much of the technical mistakes made by the contractors aren't due to poor
engineering it's a lack of funding. Lots of the contracts put out are Lowest
Cost Technically Acceptable due to budget problems beyond the control of the
people making the decisions.

I'm not making any comments on right or wrong.

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pmorici
"mistakes made by the contractors aren't due to poor engineering it's a lack
of funding."

So to take healthcare.gov as an example those over worked under paid
contractors got something on the order of 300 million. You think the problem
was that the project was _under_ funded? Government Contractors more often
than not get paid obscene amounts of money for the work they do.

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ihsw
If only we had a major Federal agency with world-leading expertise in network
security...

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fleitz
Maybe they should ask the NSA to stop hacking their networks...

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frank_boyd
> FBI warns hacking spree on government agencies is a “widespread problem”

Another “widespread problem” is government agencies conducting mass
surveillance.

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6cxs2hd6
"Do as we say, not as we do."

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mabhatter
what a coincidence, government agencies hacking private citizens is also a
"widespread problem".

If so many "forget the name" agencies weren't really covers for tingly super
secret spy stuffs, then maybe more people would give up and go away from the
truly boring ones???

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Qantourisc
<sarcasme>I for the love of the world cannot understand why anyone would do
that.</sarcasme> Seriously, between corruption and global spying, you can be
happy none-one has tried to blow them up !

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igl
governments are a widespread problem

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pekk
This is where we all applaud attacks on our own infrastructure

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Zigurd
"Who's 'We,' paleface?" \--Tonto

