Some Commerce Department Employees Blocked From Internet for 10 Days Due to Virus
- Posted on February 3, 2012 at 7:00pm by
Liz Klimas
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According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration is battling a computer virus that has had employees offline for the last 10 days.
As of right now the EDA’s website is not functional. The Post reports that outside experts are currently working to restore functionality, but it is still unclear if any private information was stolen.
The Post continues:
“At this point, what is likely happening is they’re trying to find out who is attacking us, how can we get back online and how do we make sure we get all of the bad guys out of the system,” said Alan Paller, research director of the SANS Institute, a cyber-training school in Bethesda.
The Commerce Department also suffered a wave of security breaches that compromised the names and Social Security numbers of some employees in late 2009 and early 2010. The department was faulted for not informing some employees until almost seven weeks after one breach.
[...]
“Something has to be really bad in order for the response to be, ‘Let’s disconnect from the Internet,’ ” said Jacob Olcott, a former counsel for the Senate Commerce committee who now works for Good Harbor Consulting, a cyber risk management company.
Message on EDA website.
The Post makes note of a report in Nov. 2011 that accused China of cyber attacks on U.S. chemical and military companies. It reports security experts as saying business secrets could have been the onus for the attack on the EDA.
[H/T IEEE Spectrum]
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Farmer John
Posted on February 5, 2012 at 9:09amHow do they expect the commerce employees to get to porn if they block Internet access? I bet the AFSCME union sues!
Report Post »slvrserfr
Posted on February 4, 2012 at 6:07pmThat’s easy, you just disable the services needed in Windows needed to access the Internet, such as the DHCP service. The virus probably established a time stamp to re-enable the service after a certain date. Another way would be to cut certain dll files from the Windows system folder needed to access the Internet and paste them to another folder through a simple batch command that is automatically initiated through the virus. This isn‘t rocket science and the government is being extorted by embarrassing security loopholes that shouldn’t even be an issue because they could easily be alleviated through a stronger firewall or virus and spyware protection. It’s funny because the government seems to have this unstoppable mentality among their consensus except when it comes to cyber security, where the average hacker is making them look like fools and compromising a highly sensitive infrastructure of confidential government information.
Report Post »Mateytwo Barreett
Posted on February 3, 2012 at 11:48pmCommerce Dept? Uhhh! Aren’t those the people that like do econmic reporting and, uh, nemployment stats. Offline for ten days and the unemployment “unexpectedly” drops .2%
Report Post »Happy coincidence. The white house just happened to have acquired the numbers. . .
BloodSweatandTears
Posted on February 3, 2012 at 11:09pmAnonymous—–Is that you?
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