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225 items tagged "government"

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Ongoing Attacks Target Defense, Aerospace Industries

  Posted: January 31st, 2012, 9:10pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Gunkerty Jeb writes "Researchers have identified a strain of malware that's being used in a string of targeted attacks against defense contractors, government agencies and other organizations by leveraging exploits against zero-day vulnerabilities. The attacks may have been going on since 2009 in some form and the emails containing the malicious attachments are specifically targeted at executives and officials in various industries using fake conference invitations. The attack campaign, as many do, appears to be changing frequently, as the attackers use different binaries and change up their patterns for connecting to remote command-and-control servers. The research, done by Seculert and Zscaler, shows that the attackers are patient, taking the time to dig up some information about their potential targets, and are carefully choosing organizations that have high-value intellectual property and assets (PDF)."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  10-Year Gary McKinnon Case To End This Year

  Posted: January 30th, 2012, 11:47pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  judgecorp writes "The ten-year legal quagmire surrounding Gary McKinnon, who hacked into U.S. military and NASA computers in 2001 and 2002, must end this year, a British High Court Judge has ordered. McKinnon has been appealing against extradition to the U.S., and two medical experts must report in 28 days on his mental state, ruling whether he would be a suicide risk if deported. This ruling could short-circuit an extradition appeal hearing in July."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Maine Senator Wants Independent Study of TSA's Body Scanners

  Posted: January 30th, 2012, 4:55pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  OverTheGeicoE writes "U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide. If the bill becomes law, TSA would be required to choose an 'independent laboratory' to measure the radiation emitted by a scanner currently in use at an airport checkpoint and use the data to produce a peer-reviewed study, to be submitted to Congress, based on its findings. The study would also evaluate the safety mechanisms on the machine and determine 'whether there are any biological signs of cellular damage caused by the scans.' Many Slashdotters are or have been involved in science. Is this a credible experimental protocol? Is it reasonable to expect an organization accused of jeopardizing the health and safety of hundreds of millions of air travelers to pick a truly unbiased lab? Would any lab chosen deliver a critical report and risk future funding? Should the public trust a study of radiology and human health designed by a US Senator whose highest degree is a bachelor's degree in government?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Railroad Association Says TSA's Hacking Memo Was Wrong

  Posted: January 26th, 2012, 11:09pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  McGruber writes "Wired reports that the American Association of Railroads is refuting the U.S. Transportation Security Administration memorandum that said hackers had disrupted railroad signals. In fact, 'There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,' said AAR spokesman Holly Arthur. 'The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.' The TSA memo was subject of an earlier Slashdot story in which Slashdot user currently_awake accurately commented on the true nature of the incident."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Post-9/11 DOJ Tech Project Dying After 10 Years?

  Posted: January 20th, 2012, 1:52am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  gManZboy writes "A secure, interoperable radio network that the Department of Justice has been working on for more than a decade and that has cost the agency $356 million may be headed for failure, according to a new report by the agency's inspector general. Called for in the wake of 9/11, the Integrated Wireless Network (IWS) project has already been repeatedly scaled back. Today, the Department of Justice continues to rely on several separate land mobile radio systems, some of which are unreliable, obsolete, and fail to interoperate with one another. Agents often have to swap radios, share channels, or refer to a book of radio frequencies and manually switch between those frequencies to stay online. Radios remain insecure, as much of the current equipment fails to meet encryption requirements. Much of the agency's equipment is more than 15 years old and is no longer even supported by the manufacturer."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  TSA Got Everything It Wanted For Christmas

  Posted: December 29th, 2011, 10:43pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  OverTheGeicoE writes "It looks like Congress' recent jabs at TSA were just posturing after all. Last Friday, President Obama signed a spending act passed by both houses of Congress. The act gives TSA a $7.85 billion budget increase for 2012 and includes funding for 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams and 140 new behavior detection officers. It even includes funding for 250 shiny new body scanners, which was originally cut from the funding bill last May."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Munich's Move To Linux Exceeds Target

  Posted: December 18th, 2011, 9:48am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  jrepin writes "In May 2003, Munich's city council resolved to migrate municipal workstations from Windows to Linux and open source. Munich's LiMux project has announced that it has exceeded its annual target for migrating the city's PCs to its LiMux client. To date in 2011, the project has migrated 9,000 systems; it had originally planned to migrate 8,500 of the 12,000-15,000 PC workstations used by city officials in Munich."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  How Does the CIA Keep Its IT Staff Honest?

  Posted: December 17th, 2011, 8:34pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Tootech points out this story for anyone who's been curious about getting that top-secret clearance and the promise of a cushy pension from the CIA, as a reward for decades of blood-curdling, heart-pounding, knuckle-whitening IT service: "Be prepared to go through a lot of scrutiny if you want to work in the Central Intelligence Agency's IT department, says chief information officer Al Tarasiuk. And it doesn't stop after you get your top secret clearance. 'Once you're in, there are frequent reinvestigations, but it's just part of process here,' says Tarasiuk, who also gets polygraphed regularly, though he won't be more specific. For those senior IT managers who are the 'privileged users,' meaning system administrators, 'there is certainly more scrutiny on you,' Tarasiuk says. 'It's interesting: there's so much scrutiny that a normal person might not want to put up with that. But it's part of the mission.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Lawmaker Proposes Cyberthreat Sharing Group

  Posted: December 7th, 2011, 1:36am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  alphadogg writes "A proposal in the House of Representatives would set up a new semi-independent organization allowing the U.S. government and private companies to share information about cyberthreats, but some critics questioned whether the group would be too removed from congressional scrutiny. The draft proposal (PDF), from Representative Dan Lungren, a California Republican, would create a nonprofit National Information Sharing Organization (NISO) that would serve as the collection and distribution point for cyberthreat information shared among the federal government, state and local governments, private companies and education institutions. NISO would also fund cybersecurity research and development."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Interpreting the Constitution In the Digital Era

  Posted: December 3rd, 2011, 4:27pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  oik writes "NPR's Fresh Air this week had an interesting interview with Jeffrey Rosen, one of the authors of Constitution 3.0 , which addresses a number of issues to do with interpreting the US Constitution in the face of new technologies (both present and future). Many of the topics which he touches on come up on Slashdot a lot (including the GPS tracking cases). It's well worth listening to the program (link in the main page), of which the linked article is just a summary."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  How Tech Vendors Help Governments Spy On Their Citizens

  Posted: December 2nd, 2011, 11:18pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "Most Slashdotters — even those living in democratic countries — would probably be unsurprised to know that their governments are spying on them. But most people are not aware of how complicit security vendors, who publicly work to protect the public from such electronic eavesdropping, are complicit in such monitoring. All this and more is revealed in the latest Wikieaks document dump, the Spy Files."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  iTunes Flaw Allowed Spying On Dissidents

  Posted: November 25th, 2011, 2:53pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Hugh Pickens writes writes "Democracy and free speech activists worldwide have something new to worry about — cyberwarfare via iTunes. The Telegraph reports that Gamma International sells computer hacking services to governments, offering 'zero day' security flaws that allow access to target computers 'with the ability to take control of the target systems functions to the point of capturing encrypted data and communications.' FinFisher spyware, known to be used by British agencies and offered to Egypt's feared secret police, takes advantage of an unencrypted HTTP request that is filed by iTunes when Apple Software Updater is inactive. It redirects users' web browsers to a customized web page that pretends Flash is not installed on the user's computer, then installs a sophisticated piece of spyware that sends info on a user's activities directly to foreign intelligence services. The latest iTunes software update, 10.5.1, released on November 14, appears to have fixed the exploit FinFisher used. A prominent security researcher warned Apple about this dangerous vulnerability in mid-2008, yet Apple 'waited more than 1,200 days to fix the flaw,' writes security researcher Brian Krebs."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Dutch Government Officially Trusts OpenVPN-NL

  Posted: November 24th, 2011, 10:02pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  First time accepted submitter joost.bijl writes "Yesterday the Dutch government took a step to further improve the adoption of Open Source in its ranks. It has officialy approved a modified version of the open source VPN software OpenVPN for use on the governmental level 'Departementaal Vertrouwelijk' (Restricted). The release is called OpenVPN-NL and is fully open-source and available for use. The software has undergone a security evaluation by the Dutch government's national communications security agency (NLNCSA). The major change is the removal of OpenSSL as the cryptographic core of OpenVPN-NL. Instead, the Dutch government opted to include the smaller, better readable and documented open source library PolarSSL to provide the cryptographic and SSL/TLS functionality. The Dutch IT Security company Fox-IT worked together with both OpenVPN and PolarSSL communities and modified the stock software to support the government evaluation process. In total 8000 lines of code and 4000 lines of documentation were checked in to the OpenVPN trunk."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Feds Investigating Water Utility Pump Failure As Possible Cyberattack

  Posted: November 18th, 2011, 8:25pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  SpuriousLogic writes with this quote from CNN: "Federal officials confirmed they are investigating whether a cyber attack may have been responsible for the failure of a water pump at a public water district in Illinois last week. But they cautioned that no conclusions had been reached, and they disputed one cyber security expert's statements that other utilities are vulnerable to a similar attack. Joe Weiss, a noted cyber security expert, disclosed the possible cyber attack on his blog Thursday. Weiss said he had obtained a state government report, dated Nov. 10 and titled 'Public Water District Cyber Intrusion,' which gave details of the alleged cyber attack culminating in the 'burn out of a water pump.' According to Weiss, the report says water district workers noted 'glitches' in the systems for about two months. On Nov. 8, a water district employee noticed problems with the industrial control systems, and a computer repair company checked logs and determined that the computer had been hacked. Weiss said the report says the cyber attacker hacked into the water utility using passwords stolen from a control system vendor and that he had stolen other user names and passwords."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  GAO Criticizes IRS Over Serious IT Deficiencies

  Posted: November 15th, 2011, 2:05pm CET by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  government  

  wiredmikey writes with an analysis of a GAO report on the dismal failure of the IRS to implement secure IT practices. From the article: "The Government Accountability Office has blasted the Internal Revenue Service for failing to implement stronger security measures after a succession of dismal reports on the subject. In a report issued to the Secretary of the Treasury last week, the GAO said that the IRS had met just 15 percent of the 105 previously reported recommendations where information security is concerned. Taking a blunt approach, the GAO said that the IRS 'lacks reasonable assurance as to the accuracy of financial information or the adequate protection of sensitive taxpayer information.' ... It also said it would issue a limited distribution report to the IRS that addresses details omitted from this most recent report due to the sensitivity of the information."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  French Power Company Fined For Hacking Greenpeace

  Posted: November 14th, 2011, 4:22pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  judgecorp writes "Electricite de France (EDF) which uses nuclear reactors to generate the majority of France's electricity, has been found guilty of hacking into Greenpeace computers in 2006. EDF has been fined fined €1.5 million and ordered to pay Greenpeace a further half a million euros, for what the judge described as an act of 'industrial scale espionage.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DARPA Seeks Input On Securing Networks Against Attackers

  Posted: November 8th, 2011, 2:04pm CET by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  government  

  hessian writes with an article in Wired about the problems facing the U.S. Government's networks in an increasingly hostile world. From the article: "The Pentagon's far-out research agency and its brand new military command for cyberspace have a confession to make. They don't really know how to keep U.S. military networks secure. And they want to know: Could you help them out? DARPA convened a 'cyber colloquium' at a swank northern Virginia hotel on Monday for what it called a 'frank discussion' about the persistent vulnerabilities within the Defense Department's data networks. The Pentagon can't defend those networks on its own, the agency admitted."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Federal Contractors Are $600 Screwdrivers

  Posted: October 31st, 2011, 4:31pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  ideonexus writes "Last month an article appeared on Slashdot about how the government pays IT contractors twice what it pays its own workers. Missing from the article was how much the IT contractor pays its own workers. After working for a federal contractor for 10 years, a document accidentally leaked to employees by the contractor illustrated the incredible disparity between what the contractor was paying us and what they were charging the government. Like most contracts according to the GAO, the government provided our offices, utilities, computers, and training, leaving our salaries as the only overhead to the IT contractor, giving them an incredible incentive to keep them as low as possible to maximize profits. When the top 100 defense contractors cost taxpayers $306 billion, eliminating the federal contractor middle-man seems like an obvious place to start the austerity measures."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Ohio Emergency Responders Stage Mock Zombie Invasion

  Posted: October 30th, 2011, 4:10pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  destinyland writes "An Ohio Emergency Management Agency staged a mock zombie attack using more than 225 volunteers dressed as zombies at an Ohio college. 'Organizers hoped the theme would attract more volunteers than previous simulations of industrial accidents or train crashes,' the AP reports, quoting a spokesman for the agency as saying that 'People got zombie fever here in Delaware.' The exercise included decontamination procedures for hazardous materials, and was inspired by an 'emergency preparedness' post on the CDC web site citing the popular fascination with zombies. Now, 'Dozens of agencies have embraced the idea,' the AP reports, 'spreading the message that if you're prepared for a zombie attack, you're prepared for just about anything.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Ohio Emergency Responders Stage Mock Zombie Invasion

  Posted: October 30th, 2011, 4:10pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  destinyland writes "An Ohio Emergency Management Agency staged a mock zombie attack using more than 225 volunteers dressed as zombies at an Ohio college. 'Organizers hoped the theme would attract more volunteers than previous simulations of industrial accidents or train crashes,' the AP reports, quoting a spokesman for the agency as saying that 'People got zombie fever here in Delaware.' The exercise included decontamination procedures for hazardous materials, and was inspired by an 'emergency preparedness' post on the CDC web site citing the popular fascination with zombies. Now, 'Dozens of agencies have embraced the idea,' the AP reports, 'spreading the message that if you're prepared for a zombie attack, you're prepared for just about anything.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Americas New CIO Wants To Disrupt Government and Make It a Startup

  Posted: October 26th, 2011, 8:33pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "America's new CIO Steven VanRoekel wants to revamp the federal government and make it as agile as a startup. But first he has to get rid of bugs like the Department of Agriculture's 21 different e-mail systems. From the article: '“Too often, we have built closed, monolithic projects that are outdated or no longer needed by the time they launch,” he said. As an example, he mentioned the Defense Department’s human resources management system. Dubbed the “Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System,” the project was meant to take seven years to develop. Instead, it took 10, cost $850 million and had to be scrapped after 10 years of development in 2010 because it ended up being useless.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  German Surveillance Trojan Spies On Fifteen Apps

  Posted: October 19th, 2011, 7:05pm CEST by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  government  

  itwbennett writes "Researchers from Kaspersky Lab have discovered that the R2D2 surveillance Trojan, which is used by German law enforcement to intercept Internet phone calls, is capable of monitoring traffic from popular browsers and instant messaging applications. 'Amongst the new things we found in there are two rather interesting ones: Firstly, this version is not only capable of running on 32 bit systems; it also includes support for 64 bit versions of Windows,' said Tillmann Werner, a security researcher with Kaspersky in Germany. 'Secondly, the list of target processes to monitor is longer than the one mentioned in the CCC report. The number of applications infected by the various components is 15 in total.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  More Details On the German Government's Use of Malware

  Posted: October 13th, 2011, 11:59pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Reader HnT writes with an update on the German government's malware, recently dissected by the CCC: "The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports details on cases where the government malware was used so far — all of them actually unlawful and in violation of its initial intention to only be used against serious crime and threats of terrorism."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Blue Coat Denies Its Devices Helping Syrian Gov't

  Posted: October 11th, 2011, 7:18pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  First time accepted submitter drmemnoch writes with a follow-up to a report last week that Internet proxy / filtering / logging devices made by Sunnyvale, CA based Blue Coat Systems have been used by the Syrian government to monitor and censor Syrian's Internet usage. drmemnoch notes that "Sales to restricted countries can often occur through 3rd party resellers. Blue Coat has yet to provide any information other than denial." Specifically, the company denies direct sales, but in the linked ZDnet report kept mum on how third-party resellers might be involved. I requested comment from the company about how their products might have ended up in Syria; Steve Schick of Blue Coat has responded to that request with a more detailed denial (included below) of the company's involvement, and says that there is "no firm evidence" in the logs leaked by Telecomix that Syria has any Blue Coat equipment at all; dissection of that response is invited.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  German Government's Malware Analyzed

  Posted: October 8th, 2011, 10:31pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  First time accepted submitter lennier1 writes "The German hacker group CCC (Chaos Computer Club) has analyzed a piece of malware the German government uses in criminal investigations to spy on a suspect's computer. I'm sure we're all surprised that it's opening security holes for third parties, and violates a related court verdict (and several laws in general)."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Inside ICS-CERT's War Room

  Posted: October 4th, 2011, 2:52pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  itwbennett writes "When Stuxnet first appeared in July 2010, the U.S. response was gathered at the ICS-CERT facilities at Idaho National Labs (INL). 'This is the classified building where phones will start ringing should the next Stuxnet show up, and home to staffers who specialize in IT and industrial systems,' said Robert McMillan, who was invited to attend a training exercise run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and INL. 'It's small — there were just four analysts there on Thursday — but it looks like the security operations centers you see big companies such as Cisco and Symantec: people sitting in front of computers, with a big screen showing a real time feed of any situations that need to be handled.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  US Gov't Pays IT Contractors Twice As Much As Its Own IT Workers

  Posted: September 23rd, 2011, 8:25pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  bdcny7927 writes "The U.S. federal government pays outside IT contractors nearly twice as much for computer engineering services as it pays its own computer engineers, and 1.5 times more for IT management work, according to a non-profit watchdog group. 'The study points out that IT specifically "is widely outsourced throughout the federal government because of the assumption that IT companies provide vastly superior skills and cost savings." The Project on Government Oversight says its salary comparisons prove that those cost savings are not being realized. However, the comparisons do not address any cost savings that might be achieved through the skills, processes or systems that private IT services companies might deliver. The POGO researchers say that the federal government itself does not know how much money overall it saves or wastes with its sourcing decisions and has no system for doing so.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UK Government Breaks Open Source Promises

  Posted: September 6th, 2011, 2:58pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  judgecorp writes "The UK government has promised to favour open source systems in its procurement (and made those promises repeatedly). However, freedom of information requests have shown it is doing nothing of the sort. It is giving contracts to the same large suppliers as before."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  EPIC Uncovers: Mobile Scanners Not 'Certified People Scanners'

  Posted: September 1st, 2011, 10:02pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  OverTheGeicoE writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center received more FOIA documents from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security regarding mobile x-ray scanners (a.k.a. Z Backscatter Vans). We've discussed these devices before. Perhaps the most interesting part is slide #11 ('Disclaimer About Scanning People') on page 6 of this PDF explaining that the radiation output of these devices is too high to comply with ANSI N43.17. In other words, they output too much radiation even by TSA's questionable standards for airport body scanners. Regardless, the slide ends with the author stating that the ANSI standard 'is not applicable to covert operations.' What might that assertion have meant to the presentation's intended audience?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Obama Administration Closing Recently Opened Datacenters

  Posted: August 11th, 2011, 9:32pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "After quadrupling the number of government datacenters over his first three years, Obama's Administration is reversing course and closing the most recently opened datacenters. With one datacenter reportedly the size of three football fields, my question is what happens to all those recently purchased servers? Will the government hold a server fire sale? Count me in!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  NSA Hiring At Black Hat

  Posted: August 2nd, 2011, 11:20pm CEST by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "It may seem strange that the US government would be recruiting tech talent at Black Hat, a security conference whose participants have a notorious ambivalence about keeping within the letter of the law. But the NSA — a shadowy organization with its own reputation for dodgy behavior — is there recruiting, and pitching itself as a haven for geeks."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  GAO Report: DoD Incompetent At Cybersecurity

  Posted: July 29th, 2011, 6:55pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  itwbennett writes "According to a scathing report from the GAO (PDF) released July 25, the Department of Defense only started to take cyberwar seriously during the past two or three years, after ignoring warnings for about 2 decades. And when we say, 'take it seriously' we mean 'throw gobs of money at it' — to little effect. 'According to DoD, a large number of intelligence agencies and foreign militaries are actively trying to penetrate our military networks. These networks are scanned millions of times a day and probed thousands of times a day. Over the past several years, DoD has experienced damaging penetration to these networks...[including] blueprints of weapons systems that have already been compromised,' the report said. Even for an organization with the budget and security awareness of DoD, the prospect of having to keep pace with the steady increase in threats from smaller countries and stateless terror organizations is 'daunting,' GAO concluded."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UK Taxpayers' Money Getting Wasted On IT Spending

  Posted: July 29th, 2011, 12:43pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  hypnosec writes "A report combined by MPs has claimed the UK government is spending 'obscene' amounts of taxpayers' money on IT. The Public Administration Select Committee revealed in its report that some government departments have spent £3,500 on a single desktop PC, which can be purchased for as little as £200. Some other examples of the government pouring public money down the drain include buying copier paper for £73 when it can be purchased for £8."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Malware Is a Disease; Let's Treat It Like One

  Posted: July 22nd, 2011, 8:17pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "The most common metaphor we have for computer malware — 'virus' — emphasizes that in many ways malicious computer code mimics biological pathogens. And yet, while the U.S. government has rapid response plans in place for an outbreak of a new disease, we're content to let the private sector react to hugely damaging computer infections. Tom Henderson thinks we need the cybersecurity equivalent of the CDC."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Outgoing Federal CIO Warns of 'IT Cartel' In DC

  Posted: July 18th, 2011, 7:38pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  CWmike writes "In a wide-ranging discussion Friday with President Barack Obama's top science advisors, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra warned of the dangers of open data access and was sharply critical of government IT contracting, telling the committee: '...We almost have an IT cartel within federal IT' made up of very few companies that benefit from government spending 'because they understand the procurement process better than anyone else.' He added: 'It's not because they provide better technology.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DoD Lost 24k Files In Attack On Contractor

  Posted: July 15th, 2011, 12:30am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes with this news from ThreatPost: "A targeted attack on a defense contractor in March of this year resulted in the theft of 24,000 files by an unknown attacker, according to Defense Department officials. The attack, which officials say was the work of a foreign government, would represent one of the more serious known attacks on the department and its contractors. In a speech Thursday in which he unveiled the Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, William J. Lynn, deputy defense secretary, said that the attack was just one of thousands such intrusions that the government and its contractors suffer every year."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  McCain Asks For Committee On Wikileaks, Anonymous

  Posted: July 14th, 2011, 5:54pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "In the face of continued attacks on federal agencies and contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and IRC Federal that do highly sensitive security work for the U.S. government, Sen. John McCain has asked Senate leaders to appoint a select committee to look into the attacks and data leaks that have plagued Washington throughout 2011. In a letter to Republican leader Harry Reid and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, McCain (R-Ariz.) said that a temporary Senate committee is necessary in order to get a handle on all of the disparate cybersecurity legislation proposals and to address the threat posed by groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec and Wikileaks."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  McCain Asks For Committee On Wikileaks, Anonymous

  Posted: July 14th, 2011, 5:54pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "In the face of continued attacks on federal agencies and contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and IRC Federal that do highly sensitive security work for the U.S. government, Sen. John McCain has asked Senate leaders to appoint a select committee to look into the attacks and data leaks that have plagued Washington throughout 2011. In a letter to Democrat leader Harry Reid and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, McCain (R-Ariz.) said that a temporary Senate committee is necessary in order to get a handle on all of the disparate cybersecurity legislation proposals and to address the threat posed by groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec and Wikileaks."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UCLA Hospital Hit With HIPAA Fine On Celeb Records

  Posted: July 9th, 2011, 3:27pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "The University of California at Los Angeles Health Services has agreed to pay a $865,000 fine and pledged to tweak their infrastructure after potentially violating the HIPAA regulation when several employees apparently accessed the health records of various celebrity patients at the hospital without valid justification. This is the third major HIPAA fine issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2011, following a fine of $4.3 million for Cignet and a penalty of $1 million for Massachusetts General Hospital."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Online Social Security Statement In Limbo

  Posted: July 9th, 2011, 1:46am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  coondoggie writes "While the debate over Social Security benefits is heating up in Congress, one of the most basic ways everyone interacts with the agency — the yearly Social Security Statement — is in limbo as the agency struggles to move it online. The Social Security Statement had been issued every year since 2000 to more than 150 million workers serving as the government's key way of communicating with workers about benefits, earnings records and how much retirement money they have. The statement is also a key tool for communicating with the public about the long-term financial challenges the Social Security system faces. However, whether you realize it or not, the SSA suspended mailings of the statement in March citing budgetary concerns."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Hacker Exposes Florida's Voting Database — Again

  Posted: July 8th, 2011, 11:38am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Dangerous_Minds writes "A hacker that goes by the name of Abhaxas exposed parts of the Florida voting database. That apparently didn't sit well with election officials. Reportedly, officials said that authorities were contacted and that their databases are now more secure than ever. In turn, Abhaxas decided to hack the database again and reveal a file directory. Said Abhaxas in the posting, 'Glad you cleaned things up, pretty secure now guys.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Military and Government E-mails Compromised

  Posted: July 6th, 2011, 12:33am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  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.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Hacker Exposes Parts of Florida's Voting Database

  Posted: July 3rd, 2011, 11:25pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Dangerous_Minds writes "Some people feel that elections can be rigged and votes tampered with. One hacker, who goes by the name of Abhaxas, decided to prove that votes aren't secure by exposing parts of the Florida voting database. Said Abhaxas while posting the data, 'Who believes voting isn't tampered with?'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  US Congress To Use Skype For Video Teleconference

  Posted: June 28th, 2011, 4:06pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  dkd903 writes "The US House of Representatives Committee on Administration has announced that Skype will be made available to the Members of Congress and their staff to improve efficiency and cut down on time spent traveling."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  LulzSec Posts First Secret Document Dump

  Posted: June 24th, 2011, 1:56am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Dangerous_Minds writes "LulzSec has been vowing to expose government secrets for the last few days. Now they have delivered. According to ZeroPaid, LulzSec has posted secret documents about Arizona Law Enforcement. The release has been posted to file-sharing website ThePirateBay. LulzSec says the release is because they are 'against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Vivek Kundra Quits As Federal CIO

  Posted: June 17th, 2011, 12:24am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  CWmike writes "The first person ever appointed as the CIO of the federal government, Vivek Kundra, is resigning after two and a half years on the job, the White House said Thursday. There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT. Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard. Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately outlined an agenda that emphasized cloud adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of big IT contracts that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Vivek Kundra Quits As Federal CIO

  Posted: June 17th, 2011, 12:24am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  CWmike writes "The first person ever appointed as the CIO of the federal government, Vivek Kundra, is resigning after two and a half years on the job, the White House said Thursday. There was no hint in the announcement made by Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that Kundra's exit was prompted by a shift in the White House's view on IT. Lew, who praised the CIO's work, said Kundra was leaving to take a fellowship at Harvard. Kundra was appointed CIO a few months after President Barack Obama took office. He immediately outlined an agenda that emphasized cloud adoption, use of consumer technologies, and making data available to the public on new sites, such as data.gov. He was critical of big IT contracts that moved too slowly and were at risk of failing."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Sunlight Foundation Announces 'Sarah's Inbox'

  Posted: June 16th, 2011, 9:28pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Eponymous Hero writes "In a sequel to elenasinbox.com, the publicly released emails of Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan, Sunlight Foundation has unveiled sarahsinbox.com to offer you easy access and search to Sarah Palin's recently released emails. If that doesn't flip your bits, have a gander at some of the tools Sunlight Foundation offers relating to government watchdogging, like Poligraft, or Inbox Influencer."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  11 Pathogens Pose Big Security Risk For Research

  Posted: June 16th, 2011, 8:07pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  sciencehabit writes "A United States federal panel of scientists and security experts has identified 11 microorganisms that it wants designated as Tier 1 select agents, a new category of biological agents that would be subject to higher security standards than other pathogens and toxins used in biomedical research. The category would include anthrax, Ebola, Variola major and Variola minor (the two viruses that cause small pox), the Marburg virus, the virus that causes foot and mouth disease, and bacterial strains that produce the botulinum neurotoxin. At the same time, the panel has recommended dropping 19 pathogens and six toxins from the broader list of 82 agents that are currently governed by the select agent program."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  LulzSec Hacks the US Senate

  Posted: June 14th, 2011, 12:33am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "LulzSec might not be as famous as Anonymous — they're really best known for hacking sites they like, to prove a point about security — but they may have just raised their profile significantly, posting what appears to be data taken from an internally facing server at the US Senate. However, the fun-loving group might find that the Senate reacts a lot more harshly to intrusions than, say, PBS did." The group also recently grabbed data from Bethesda Softworks.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Turkish Police Nab 32 Suspects Tied To Anonymous

  Posted: June 13th, 2011, 8:18am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  wiredmikey writes "Following the arrest of three alleged 'Anonymous' members by Spanish authorities on Friday, Turkey's state-run news agency has reported that police have detained 32 individuals allegedly linked to the hacktivist group. The Anatolia news agency said today that the suspects were taken into custody after conducting raids in a dozen cities for suspected ties to Anonymous. The group recently targeted Web sites of the country's telecommunications watchdog, the prime minister's office and parliament as a protest to Turkey's plans to introduce Internet filters."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  International Monetary Fund Hit By Cyber Attack

  Posted: June 12th, 2011, 9:50am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  DotNM writes "CityNews and other media outlets are reporting that the International Monetary Fund has been hit by a 'cyber attack.' They are withholding most of the details; however, it is known that the World Bank has shut down a 'link' between them and the IMF." Adds reader Hugh Pickens, "A cyber security expert told Reuters the infiltration had been a targeted attack, which installed software designed to give a nation state a 'digital insider presence' at the IMF. 'The code was developed and released for this purpose,' said Tom Kellerman, who has worked for the Fund. Bloomberg quoted an unnamed security expert as saying the hackers were connected to a foreign government — however, such attacks are very difficult to trace."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Cybersecurity and the Internet Economy

  Posted: June 8th, 2011, 10:10pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Orome1 writes "Global online transactions are currently estimated by industry analysts at $10 trillion annually. As Internet business grows, so has the threat of cybersecurity attacks. The U.S. Department of Commerce today released a report that proposes voluntary codes of conduct to strengthen the cybersecurity of companies that increasingly rely on the Internet to do business, but are not part of the critical infrastructure sector. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said: 'By increasing the adoption of standards and best practices, we are working with the private sector to promote innovation and business growth, while at the same time better protecting companies and consumers from hackers and cyber theft.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Hacker Group LulzSec Challenges FBI

  Posted: June 4th, 2011, 3:14pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Tiek00n writes "Hacker Group 'LulzSec' has gained some attention recently for their hacks of PBS and Sony. Their most recent target: FBI affiliate Infragard. The group claims, 'It has come to our unfortunate attention that NATO and our good friend Barrack Osama-Llama 24th-century Obama have recently upped the stakes with regard to hacking. They now treat hacking as an act of war. So, we just hacked an FBI affiliated website (Infragard, specifically the Atlanta chapter) and leaked its user base. We also took complete control over the site and defaced it...'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Is Identity Theft Overwhelming the IRS?

  Posted: June 3rd, 2011, 6:51pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  coondoggie writes "The number of tax-related identity theft incidents is exploding, and nowhere is that more obvious than at the Internal Revenue Service, which has seen reports rise from 51,702 in 2008 to 248,357 in 2010. While it has programs in place to fight the identity theft issue, it is also hamstrung in many other areas, according to a report out this week (PDF) from the Government Accountability Office. For example, the GAO says the IRS's ability to address identity theft issues is constrained by privacy laws that limit IRS' ability to share identity theft information with other agencies."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  North Korea Training "Cyberwarriors" Abroad

  Posted: June 2nd, 2011, 4:23am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "A North Korean defector claims that the secretive totalitarian state is nurturing a team of "cyberwarriors," identifying young people with computer skills and sending them abroad to learn the latest hacking techniques, while lavishing privileges on their families at home to keep them loyal. This could lead to an escalation in tensions, especially given that the US military believes that cyberattacks from foreign countries constitute acts of war."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Pentagon Says Cyberattacks Can Count As Act of War

  Posted: May 31st, 2011, 4:52pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  suraj.sun tips news that the Pentagon has decided computer sabotage originating from another country can be classified as an act of war. "The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to US nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military." This news comes only days after the Chinese military admitted the existence of a team of cyberwarriors. "The report will also spark a debate over a range of sensitive issues the Pentagon left unaddressed, including whether the US can ever be certain about an attack's origin, and how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. These questions have already been a topic of dispute within the military."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  US Congress Tries To Cut Body Scanner Funding

  Posted: May 16th, 2011, 9:41pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  OverTheGeicoE writes "The Electronic Privacy Information Center reports that the US House of Representatives is trying to cut funding for new airport body scanners from next year's budget. This would prevent the TSA from installing 275 new scanners in airports in FY 2012, at a cost of $76 million."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  'Motherlode' of Data Seized At Bin Laden Compound

  Posted: May 3rd, 2011, 8:33pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  itwbennett writes "The raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan Sunday also turned up an 'intelligence harvest' of computer-based data that was described by an anonymous government source as 'the motherlode of intelligence.' The data is being sifted through at a secret site in Afghanistan. An unnamed official was quoted by Politico as saying: 'Hundreds of people are going through it now. It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable. They cleaned it out. Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Department of Justice: FBI Too Focused On Child Porn

  Posted: April 29th, 2011, 9:56pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  itwbennett writes "The Department of Justice has issued a scathing report (PDF) on the ineffectiveness of the FBI in investigating and countering cyber attacks. The shortcomings are partly attributed to lack of training and lack of communication, but the biggest issue is the allocation of effort. From the report: 'Overall, we determined that in FY 2009 the FBI used 19 percent of its cyber agents on national security intrusion investigations, 31 percent to address criminal-based intrusions, and 41 percent to investigate online child pornography matters."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  US Gov't To Close 137 Data Centers In 2011, More By 2015

  Posted: April 28th, 2011, 8:41pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  1sockchuck writes "The US government has closed 39 data centers this year, and expects to shut down 98 more by the end of 2011, federal CIO Vivek Kundra said Wednesday. The 137 closures are a step towards the long-term goal of consolidating 800 of the government's 2,094 data centers by 2015. Government agencies have identified 100 email systems and 950,000 mailboxes to migrate to a cloud computing model as part of Kundra's 'Cloud First' initiative."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Does China's Cyber Offense Obscure Woeful Defense?

  Posted: April 27th, 2011, 10:17pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Gunkerty Jeb writes "The official line in Washington D.C. is that there's a new Cold War brewing, with an ascendant China in the place of the old Soviet Union, and cyberspace as the new theater of war. But work done by an independent security researcher suggests that the Chinese government is woefully unprepared to fend off cyber attacks on its own infrastructure."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  TSA Investigates... People Who Complain About TSA

  Posted: April 15th, 2011, 11:53pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Hugh Pickens writes "CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 'behavioral indicators' that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially 'high risk' passengers at the nation's airports, and report that arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator TSA officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists. When combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny. 'Expressing your contempt about airport procedures — that's a First Amendment-protected right,' says Michael German, a former FBI agent who now works as legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. 'It's circular reasoning where, you know, I'm going to ask someone to surrender their rights; if they refuse, that's evidence that I need to take their rights away from them. And it's simply inappropriate.' Interestingly enough, some experts say terrorists are much more likely to avoid confrontations with authorities, saying an al-Qaeda training manual instructs members to blend in."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  DOJ Gets Court Permission To Attack Botnet

  Posted: April 14th, 2011, 2:42am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  itwbennett writes "In an unprecedented move, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI have been issued a temporary restraining order that will allow the FBI and the US Marshal for the District of Connecticut to set up servers at the Internet Systems Consortium or other ISPs that would stop infected computers from continuing to spread the Coreflood virus, according to court records. This week, the DOJ and FBI seized five servers that controlled Coreflood-infected computers, the DOJ said in a press release. The agencies also seized 29 domain names used by the Coreflood botnet to communicate with the servers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Census Tech Makeover Includes Innovation "Oasis"

  Posted: April 13th, 2011, 11:41pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  CWmike writes "The US Census Bureau is in the midst of a tech makeover following criticism of its technology deployments leading up to the 2010 Census, ranging from problems with its payroll processing system to its handhelds. The problems resulted in soaring costs and caustic criticism from lawmakers. The makeover aims to consolidate operations as well as enable the bureau's IT staff to be more creative and inventive. One effort includes establishing a place for its IT staff to generate ideas and test technologies. The Center for Applied Technology, as it's been named, will serve 'as a focal point for bringing entrepreneurial-minded staff, emerging technologies, and pressing business problems facing the Census together,' said the agency, in response to written questions from Computerworld about the plans, following Grove's testimony. 'Once the physical space is redesigned, it will serve as an oasis that will inspire Census staff to think creatively at an enterprise level to solve some of the more pertinent issues facing the Bureau,' the agency said. The center 'employs a 'think tank' concept where Census staff can work directly with corporate leaders in technology, key members of other government agencies, and academia.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Interpol Wants a Global Identity Card System

  Posted: April 6th, 2011, 6:54pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  Orome1 writes "The head of INTERPOL has emphasized the need for a globally verifiable electronic identity card (e-ID) system for migrant workers at an international forum on citizen ID projects, e-passports, and border control management. INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said: "At a time when global migration is reaching record levels, there is a need for governments to put in place systems at the national level that would permit the identity of migrants and their documents to be verified internationally via INTERPOL." Issuing migrant workers e-ID cards in a globally verifiable format will also reduce corruption and enable cardholders to be eligible for electronic remittance schemes that will foster greater economic development and prosperity in INTERPOL member countries."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  US Military Blocks Websites To Free Up Bandwidth

  Posted: March 16th, 2011, 11:13am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  DJRumpy writes "The US military has blocked access to a range of popular commercial websites in order to free up bandwidth for use in Japan recovery efforts, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN and confirmed by a spokesman for US Strategic Command. The sites — including YouTube, ESPN, Amazon, eBay and MTV — were chosen not because of the content but because their popularity among users of military computers account for significant bandwidth, according to Strategic Command spokesman Rodney Ellison. The block, instituted Monday, is intended 'to make sure bandwidth was available in Japan for military operations' as the United States helps in the aftermath of last week's deadly earthquake and tsunami, Ellison explained."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DHS Chief Wants Better Algorithms For Analyzing Intelligence Data

  Posted: March 15th, 2011, 3:29am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  coondoggie writes "Better algorithms to spot patterns and trends within the mass of information the Department of Homeland Security sees everyday are key to national security. That was but one of the talking points DHS chief Janet Napolitano focused on in a lecture on the role of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today. 'DHS is part of the nation's Intelligence Community, which receives more terabytes of data each day than the entire text holdings of the Library of Congress. The National Counterterrorism Center's 24-hour Operations Center receives 8,000 to 10,000 pieces of counterterrorist information every day. We receive data about all of this, and it is clearly too much to suggest that the simplistic "connect the dots" analogy accurately represents what an analyst must do. Very quickly, you can see that "Big Data" – more so than the lack of data – becomes the most pressing problem. At the same time, the threats implicated by the data are not static.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Hackers Target French Government Computers For G20

  Posted: March 7th, 2011, 5:48pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader wrote in to say that "IT staff spent the weekend in a massive cleaning effort to remove traces of a 'spectacular' attack on computers at Bercy, the head office of the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry, a government minister said Monday."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  HBGary Hack In Depth

  Posted: March 7th, 2011, 12:04am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Udo Schmitz writes "Heise's UK site has the English translation of an article from the latest issue of their magazine c't about Anonymous's HBGary hack. It shows that there was much more involved than just social engineering to get passwords, and how anonymous evolved following OpTunisia and OpEgypt."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Germany Builds Encrypted, Identity-Confirmed Email

  Posted: March 5th, 2011, 1:55pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "Looking to solve the problems of spam, phishing, and unconfirmed email identities, Germany is betting very, very big. The country will pass a law this month creating 'De-mail,' a service in which all messages will be encrypted and digitally signed so they cannot be intercepted or modified in transit. Businesses and individuals wanting to send or receive De-mail messages will have to prove their real-world identity and associate that with a new De-mail address from a government-approved service provider. The service will be enabled by a new law that the government expects will be in force by the end of this month. It will allow service providers to charge for sending messages if they wish. The service is voluntary, but will it give the government too much control?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Should Cyber Vigilantes Be Cheered Or Feared

  Posted: March 3rd, 2011, 12:51am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Ted Samson raises several challenging questions in the wake of HBGary, first and foremost being, should the cyber vigilante acts of 'hacktivists' such as Anonymous be embraced? No doubt the alleged HBGary plot is troubling, Samson writes, 'but also troubling is how quickly some members of Congress seek to use illegally acquired information to further their own political agenda.' The underlying message seems to be that cyber vigilantes may have more leeway than those who engage in equally illegal, though decidedly nontechnical methods to expose their targets."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UK Gov't Says Open Standards Must Be Royalty Free

  Posted: February 27th, 2011, 11:12am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The H reports on an interesting development in the United Kingdom's procurement policy. From the article: 'New procurement guidance from the UK government has defined open standards as having "intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis." The document, which has been published by the Cabinet Office, applies to all government departments and says that, when purchasing software, technology infrastructure, security or other goods and services, departments should "wherever possible deploy open standards."'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UK Government Wants to Spring Ahead Two Hours

  Posted: February 21st, 2011, 11:11am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Anonymous Coward writes "In England it has been proposed that the clocks move forward by 2 hours this summer to give us more daylight time in the day, and hopefully in turn stimulate the economy. My question is what impact will this hold for computers that automatically adjust the time to British Summer Time? Could this cause another 'millennium Bug' fiasco?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  The Inner World of Gov-Sponsored White-Hat Hacking

  Posted: February 20th, 2011, 3:59pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  romanval writes "Anonymous leaked emails of white-hat hacker firm HBGary shows how it develops and markets products to government agencies. From the article: 'In 2009, HBGary had partnered with the Advanced Information Systems group of defense contractor General Dynamics to work on a project euphemistically known as "Task B." The team had a simple mission: slip a piece of stealth software onto a target laptop without the owner's knowledge. They focused on ports—a laptop's interfaces to the world around it—including the familiar USB port, the less-common PCMCIA Type II card slot, the smaller ExpressCard slot, WiFi, and Firewire. No laptop would have all of these, but most recent machines would have at least two.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Obama Wants Big Hike In Cybersecurity Research

  Posted: February 16th, 2011, 12:00am CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  dcblogs writes "The White House 2012 budget seeks a 35% increase to $548 million in cybersecurity research and development, including funds to help DARPA mitigate the risk of insider threats. Think WikiLeaks. Improving control system security, post Stuxnet, was also cited as priority. Overall, the budget seeks $66.1 billion for basic and applied research across all areas, an 11.6% increase. Some areas called out for special focus by the White House include robotics. The feds have already started offering grants for developing of 'co-robots,' which are 'systems that can safely co-exist in close proximity to or in physical contact with humans in the pursuit of mundane, dangerous, precise or expensive tasks.' The US also wants to focus research on nanomanufacturing, 'and the merging of self-assembly with lithography to achieve large-scale predictable placement of nanoscale components.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DHS Offers $40M For Top Cybersecurity Research

  Posted: January 31st, 2011, 5:00pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "The US Department of Homeland Security issued a call for proposals this week in a $40m program to encourage research and development in a wide range of topics related to cybersecurity: from designing more resilient software, to alternatives to passwords and CAPTCHA technology to prevent automated attacks. DHS laid out its areas of interest in a Broad Agency Announcement dated January 26. In it, the domestic security agency said it was soliciting papers and proposals centered on 14 different topic areas. At stake is $40m in federal funding for research and development, with individual grants ranging up to $3 million. DHS's areas of interest include software assurance, enterprise security metrics, usable security, as well as the challenges posed by insider threats."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Half of .gov Sites Fail DNSSEC Test

  Posted: January 28th, 2011, 4:13pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  netbuzz writes "US federal government Web sites were mandated to have begun deploying DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) by Dec. 31, 2009, but a recent check shows that 51 percent have still failed to do so. That does represent a marked increase over the 20 percent that had complied as of a year ago. 'But if you think the government should be fully deployed by now, it's a disappointing number,' says Mark Beckett, vice president of marketing and product management for Secure64, who conducted the study."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Iran Launches Cyber-Police Units

  Posted: January 25th, 2011, 8:15am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Khopesh writes "Iran is implementing a cyber police force to combat social networks and similar sources of 'espionage and riots.' This will likely result in more control over internet access than efforts that might hinder attacks like Stuxnet. 'Ahmadi Moghaddam said that Iran's cyber police will take on the "anti-revolutionary" dissident groups that used online social networks to organize protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following disputed elections held in 2009. "Through these very social networks in our country, anti-revolutionary groups and dissidents found each other and contacted foreign countries and triggered riots," said Ahmadi Moghaddam, referring to the protests that took place at the time.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Compromised Government and Military Sites For Sale

  Posted: January 21st, 2011, 10:49pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Khopesh writes "Imperva blogged today about the sale of compromised .gov, .mil, and .edu sites, illustrating that cyber-criminals are getting bolder. Krebs on Security has an unredacted view of the site list. Perhaps the biggest threat is yet to come; if an industrious criminal can break into top government and military sites, so too can government-backed teams, proving that GhostNet and Stuxnet are just the beginning."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  UK To Offer PCs For £98, Subsidized Internet Connections

  Posted: January 19th, 2011, 11:06am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Sam writes "The UK government wants to offer low-cost computers as part of a 12-month trial during Race Online 2012. The scheme, which aims to reach out to the 9.2 million adults that are not yet online, 4 million of whom are considered socially and economically disadvantaged, aims to 'make the UK the first nation in the world where everyone can use the web.' Prices will start at £98 ($156.01) for a refurbished PC, with subsidized Internet connections available for as little as £9 ($14.33) a month or £18 ($28.65) for three months. The cheap computers will run open-source software (think Linux) and will include a flat-screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, dedicated telephone helpline, delivery, and even a warranty. The cheap Internet packages will use a mobile dongle to help people access the web."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Pentagon Credit Union Database Compromised

  Posted: January 12th, 2011, 11:02pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "The credit union used by members of the US armed forces and their families has admitted that a laptop infected with malware.was used to access a database containing the personal and financial information of customers. The Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) issued a statement to the New Hampshire Attorney General that said data, including the names, addresses, Social Security Numbers and PenFed banking and credit card account information of its members were accessed by the infected PC."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Hospital Wireless Networks May Be Regulated Medical Devices

  Posted: January 10th, 2011, 9:09pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Lucas123 writes "As hospitals continue to connect patient monitoring equipment, physician PDAs and laptops to wireless networks, and then collapse those data paths onto traditional IT networks, the closer the US Food and Drug Administration comes to regulating them, according to Computerworld. The focus of the FDA's regulation comes in its recently finalized 80001-1 standard that established risk management practices for those networks, the adherence to which may be voluntary, but would determine Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. 'If you don't comply, then you have two choices. You can have the federal government come in and inspect your hospital, or you can decide not to accept money from Medicare or Medicaid. Voluntary sometimes isn't exactly voluntary,' said Rick Hampton, wireless communications manager for Partners HealthCare System in Boston."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Social Security Information Systems Near Collapse

  Posted: January 9th, 2011, 11:11am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  matty619 writes "An Information Week article warns that the computer systems that run the Social Security Administration may collapse by 2012 due to increased workload, and a half-billion-dollar upgrade won't be ready until 2015. One of the biggest problems is the agency's transition to a new data center, according to a report (PDF) by the SSA's Inspector General. The IG has characterized the replacement of the SSA's National Computer Center — built in 1979 — as the SSA's 'primary IT investment' in the next few years."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Obama Eyeing Internet ID For Americans

  Posted: January 8th, 2011, 3:11pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Pickens writes "CBS News reports that the Obama administration is currently drafting the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which will be released by the president in the next few months. 'We are not talking about a national ID card,' says Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, whose department will be in charge of the program. 'We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.' Although details have not been finalized, the 'trusted identity' may take the form of a smart card or digital certificate that would prove online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt says that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. 'I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to,' says Schmidt. There's no chance that 'a centralized database will emerge,' and 'we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  One Tip Enough To Put Name On Terrorist Watch List

  Posted: December 31st, 2010, 2:55pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Frosty P writes "As a result of the US Government's complete failure to investigate credible warnings about 'Underwear Bomber' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from none other than Abdulmutallab's father, senior American counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip can lead to a name being placed on the watch list. Civil liberties groups warn that it is now even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in America's security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel. 'They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they're on,' said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Putin Orders Russian Move To GNU/Linux

  Posted: December 27th, 2010, 11:05pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Glyn Moody writes "Vladimir Putin has signed an order calling for Russian federal authorities to move to GNU/Linux, and for the creation of 'a single repository of free software used in the federal bodies of executive power.' There have been a number of Russian projects to roll out free software, notably in the educational sector, but none so far has really taken off. With the backing of Putin, could this be the breakthrough free software has been waiting for?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Data Breach Could Test Massachusetts Law

  Posted: December 22nd, 2010, 12:12am CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  Gunkerty Jeb writes "The Massachusetts Attorney General has been notified that financial data on 1,800 residents was exposed in a database breach linked to the CitySights NY sightseeing firm. Could this be the test case for enforcement of the State's nine month-old data privacy law? The leak of financial information on more than 100,000 customers of the CitySights sightseeing tour company could prove to be an early test of the nation's strongest data privacy law."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  BSD Coder Denies Adding FBI Backdoor

  Posted: December 15th, 2010, 5:00pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  jfruhlinger writes "Theo de Raadt has made the shocking claim that OpenBSD includes a backdoor that the FBI paid coders to build. Brian Proffitt has tracked down one of the programmers named as being on the FBI payroll (actually, he tracked down two programmers with the same name). Both deny working with the FBI."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Schneier Recommends Nuclear-Style Cyberwar Hotlines, Treaties

  Posted: December 3rd, 2010, 9:34pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  strawberryshakes writes "Cyberwar is the new nuclear war. Bruce Schneier says governments should establish hotlines and treaties outlining the protocol surrounding cyberwar, just as they would for any other war. He wrote in the Financial Times (paywalled, but available through Google), 'A first step would be a hotline between the world’s cyber commands, modelled after similar hotlines among nuclear commands. This would at least allow governments to talk to each other, rather than guess where an attack came from. More difficult, but more important, are new cyberwar treaties. These could stipulate a no first use policy, outlaw unaimed weapons, or mandate weapons that self-destruct at the end of hostilities. The Geneva Conventions need to be updated too. Cyber weapons beg to be used, so limits on stockpiles, and restrictions on tactics, are a logical end point. International banking, for instance, could be declared off-limits. Whatever the specifics, such agreements are badly needed.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Chinese DNS Tampering a Real Threat To Outsiders

  Posted: November 29th, 2010, 7:10pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "China has long used the Internet's Domain Name Service to censor Web sites and information that the ruling Communist Party deems threatening. But now security experts warn that the government's censorship is in danger of spilling over China's borders, suppressing the ability of those living outside of China to find information online. An estimated 57% of all networks on Earth passed DNS requests through a Chinese DNS rootserver at some point in 2010, according to data from security firm Renesys. Tampering by the Communist Party there poses a danger to Internet security and freedom. In fact, DNS tampering may be a bigger threat than techniques like BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) hijacking, which is believed to be responsible for an unexpected shift in Internet routing in April that has recently been the subject of mainstream media reports in the US. There is already evidence that China's efforts to tamper with DNS have bled outside the country's borders. The same report to Congress from the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission that called attention to the BGP hijacking incident from April, 2010 also mentions a March, 2010 incident in which Internet users in the US and Chile attempted to connect to social networking websites banned by the Chinese government. However, their DNS requests were handled by a Beijing-based Domain Name Server, which responded with incorrect DNS information that directed the surfers to incorrect servers, the report says."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  New Bill Would Put DHS In Charge of 'Critical' Private Networks

  Posted: November 19th, 2010, 2:50pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  GovTechGuy writes "A new bill unveiled Wednesday by House Homeland Security chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to enforce federal cybersecurity standards on private sector companies deemed critical to national security. The Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010 authorizes DHS to establish and enforce risk and performance-based cybersecurity standards on federal agencies and private sector companies considered part of the country's critical infrastructure. Such firms include utilities, communications providers and financial institutions."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  State-Sponsored CyberAttacks Expected To Rise

  Posted: November 15th, 2010, 11:26pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  wiredmikey writes "According to a report released today, IT security professionals will see a rise in State-sponsored attacks, like the Stuxnet worm, that will build on concepts and techniques from the commercial hacker industry to create more powerful 'Advanced Persistent Threats.' The researchers also expect an increase in compromised mobile devices leading to data theft or loss as a result of lagging security measures, and that next year will bring the first major data breaches as a result of compromised devices. The biggest potential impact will be caused by the proliferation of sophisticated mobile devices interacting with corporate networks."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  NSA Adds Kahn Collection To Cryptologic Museum

  Posted: November 14th, 2010, 5:23pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Hugh Pickens writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that as recently as the late 1960s, the very existence of the National Security Agency was a closely held secret until a New York newspaper reporter named David Kahn published The Codebreakers, a 1,200-page blockbuster that would establish Kahn as the world's leading expert on the history of cryptology, the art and science of making and breaking codes. 'According to my editor, the NSA director flew up to New York to say it would be dangerous to national security, and unpatriotic, to publish it,' says Kahn. Fast forward 43 years and now the NSA has announced it has added the David Kahn Collection to the library of its public anteroom, the National Cryptologic Museum — complete with more than 130,000 pages of original interview notes and 2,800 books. 'For those who care about cryptology — what it is, how it works, where it fits into world history and culture — at some point, [they'd] want to look at the Kahn collection,' says curator Patrick Weadon. 'It's an eclectic cornucopia of all things cryptological.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  NSA Says Its Secure Dev Methods Are Publicly Known

  Posted: November 10th, 2010, 10:52pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "Despite its reputation for secrecy and technical expertise, the National Security Agency doesn't have a set of secret coding practices or testing methods that magically make their applications and systems bulletproof. In fact, one of the agency's top technical experts said that virtually all of the methods the NSA uses for development and information assurance are publicly known. 'Most of what we do in terms of app development and assurance is in the open literature now. Those things are known publicly now,' Neil Ziring, technical director of the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate, said in his keynote at the OWASP AppSec conference in Washington Wednesday. 'It used to be that we had some methods and practices that weren't well-known, but over time that's changed as industry has focused more on application security.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  FTC Taps Ed Felten As First Chief Technologist

  Posted: November 4th, 2010, 8:20pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader contributes this snippet from Digital Daily: "Looks like the Federal Trade Commission got its first choice of Chief Technologist, because it's hard to think of anyone better to serve in that capacity than Princeton computer science professor Ed Felten, a guy whose CV makes everyone from Microsoft to Diebold shudder in embarrassment."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Careful What You Post, the FBI Has More of These

  Posted: October 13th, 2010, 7:09pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  jamie writes "A comment posted to a website got its author's *friend's* car an unwanted aftermarket addon. The Orion Guardian ST820, a GPS tracking device, was attached to the underside of the car by the FBI. No warrant required. The bugged friend, a college student studying marketing, was apparently under suspicion because he's half-Egyptian. As Bruce Schneier says, 'If they're doing this to someone so tangentially connected to a vaguely bothersome post on an obscure blog, just how many of us have tracking devices on our cars right now ...' The ACLU is investigating." This follows up on our earlier mention of the same student, who turned the tracking device over to the FBI.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Feds Discover 1,000 More Government Data Centers

  Posted: October 13th, 2010, 4:54pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  1sockchuck writes "The US government has 2,094 data centers, nearly 1,000 more than previous estimates, according to an updated inventory by federal agencies. The finding underscores the scope of the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to streamline the government's IT infrastructure in a massive data center consolidation."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Ubuntu Won't Moan To EU About Microsoft

  Posted: October 7th, 2010, 10:40pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Barence writes "The company behind the Ubuntu Linux distro says it has no plans to follow Opera's lead and file a complaint against Microsoft to the EU. Ubuntu 10.10 is the most 'consumer-friendly' version of the Linux distro to date, but it faces an uphill battle against Microsoft's marketing machine. Even high-profile supporter Dell has dropped Ubuntu machines from its website in recent months, while continuing to remind visitors that 'Dell recommends Windows 7' at the top of every PC page. 'I don't think we've ever considered [an EU complaint],' said Steve George, vice president of business development at Canonical. 'The improvements we're making to Ubunutu ... are a better route for us to reach out to users and get a bigger user base.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  Tech CEOs Tell US Gov't How To Cut Deficit By $1 Trillion

  Posted: October 7th, 2010, 1:10am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  alphadogg writes "The US government can save more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years by consolidating its IT infrastructure, reducing its energy use and moving to more Web-based citizen services, a group of tech CEOs said in a report released Wednesday. The Technology CEO Council's report, delivered to President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also recommends that the US government streamline its supply chains and move agencies to shared services for mission-support activities. 'America's growing national debt is undermining our global competitiveness,' said the council, chaired by IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano. 'How we choose to confront and address this challenge will determine our future environment for growth and innovation.' If the cash-strapped US government enacted all the recommendations in the advocacy group's report, it could save between $920 billion and $1.2 trillion by 2020, the group said. The federal government could also reduce IT energy consumption by 25 percent, and it could save $200 billion over 10 years by using advanced analytics to stop improper payments, the report said."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  D.C. Suspends Tests of Online Voting System

  Posted: October 6th, 2010, 1:18am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Fortran IV writes "Back in June, Washington, D.C. signed up with the The Open Source Digital Foundation to set up an internet voting system for D.C. residents overseas. The plan was to have the system operational by the November general election. Last week the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics opened the system for testing and attracted the attention of students at the University of Michigan, with comical results. The D.C. Board has postponed implementation of the system for 'more robust testing.'" Update: 10/06 02:42 GMT by T : University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman provides an explanation of exactly how the folks at Michigan exploited the D.C. system.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Cyber Command Will Miss Friday's Operational Deadline

  Posted: September 30th, 2010, 1:57pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  techinsider writes "The U.S. Cyber Command won't be fully operational by Friday's October 1st deadline. A major challenge appears to be staffing the command with qualified personnel, of which it will need over 1,000 skilled employees. General Alexander told Congress his leadership staff was in place but acknowledged there were challenges in bringing in people to the rest of the organization."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Largest Simulated Cyber Attack To Date

  Posted: September 28th, 2010, 5:23pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  Orome1 noted that the government will be running simulated cyber attacks as part of the Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Storm III exercise. It says "The exercise will be controlled from the Secret Service headquarters, where organizers from various agencies will be sending out 'exercise injects,' information that a player will receive that indicates that a certain event has taken place as part of the narrative set up by the organizers. This goes a bit beyond a paper narrative, including fake log data, drives that may contain fake malware, and fake event history, and is dynamic, meaning that it can change dependent on the actions the players take." ...which makes me wonder how effective this test would actually be.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UK Pursues Tax Evaders Using Stolen Bank Details

  Posted: September 26th, 2010, 7:57am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Andrew Smith writes "The UK taxman (HM Revenue & Customs) is reportedly using a stolen list of bank details to pursue wealthy individuals with off-shore accounts. The list was stolen by an employee of HSBC, and gave details of the bank's customers with money in Swiss accounts. The bank employee fled to France, and the authorities there passed the details on to the UK tax collection agency."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  NSA Chief Wants Internet Partitioned For Government, 'Critical' Industries

  Posted: September 24th, 2010, 12:11am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  GovTechGuy writes "NSA chief Keith Alexander, also the head of the US Cyber Command, told reporters that he would like to see the creation of a secure zone on the Internet for government and critical private sector industries such as utility companies and the financial sector. Alexander has repeatedly emphasized the dramatic nature of the cyber threat facing American networks and his comments were a further sign that the Pentagon does not think the war against foreign hackers can be won. Alexander denied the military has any role in safeguarding civilian networks currently, but didn't rule out the option in the future."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Swiss Canton Abandons Linux Migration

  Posted: September 18th, 2010, 11:08am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Swiss canton Solothurn has put a stop to their ongoing migration to Linux. [Original, in German.] The project started in 2001, and has been under harsh public criticism ever since. The responsible CIO resigned this summer. Solothurn plans to convert all desktop computers to Windows 7 in 2011."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Swiss Canton Abandons Linux Migration

  Posted: September 18th, 2010, 11:08am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Swiss canton Solothurn has put a stop to their ongoing migration to Linux. [Original, in German.] The project started in 2001, and has been under harsh public criticism ever since. The responsible CIO resigned this summer. Solothurn plans to convert all desktop computers to Windows 7 in 2011."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  US Couple Arrested For Transmitting Nuclear Secrets In Sting Operation

  Posted: September 18th, 2010, 1:31am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  DesScorp writes "Recalling the famous Rosenberg nuclear spy case of the '50s, the US Justice Department has arrested a couple working at a 'leading nuclear research facility' for giving nuclear secrets to Venezuela. Pedro and Marjorie Mascheroni 'have been indicted on charges of communicating classified nuclear weapons data to a person they believed to be a Venezuelan government official and conspiring to participate in the development of an atomic weapon for Venezuela,' the department said in a statement. If convicted, the couple would receive life in prison."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Dept. of Homeland Security To Test Iris Scanners

  Posted: September 13th, 2010, 11:43pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  SonicSpike writes "The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people's eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints. The department will run a two-week test in October of commercially sold iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where they will be used on illegal immigrants, said Arun Vemury, program manager at the department's Science and Technology branch. 'The test will help us determine how viable this is for potential (department) use in the future,' Vemury said."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  NSA Director Says the US Must Secure the Internet

  Posted: September 7th, 2010, 7:27pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "The United States has a responsibility to take a leadership role in securing the Internet against both internal and external attackers, a duty that the federal government takes very seriously, the country's top military cybersecurity official said Tuesday. However, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the US Cyber Command, provided virtually nothing in the way of details of how the government intends to accomplish this rather daunting task. 'We made the Internet and it seems to me that we ought to be the first folks to get out there and protect it,' Alexander said. 'The challenge before us is large and daunting. But we have an obligation to meet it head-on.' It's unlikely that any of Alexander's comments Tuesday will do much to quiet the criticisms of the Obama administration's security efforts thus far. Speaking mostly in generalities, Alexander emphasized the administration's commitment to the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a plan developed by the Bush administration and recently partially de-classified by Obama administration officials."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DoD Takes Criticism From Security Experts On Cyberwar Incident

  Posted: September 5th, 2010, 12:59am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  wiredmikey writes "Undersecretary of Defense William J. Lynn is being challenged by IT security experts who find it hard to believe that the incident which led to the Pentagon's recognizing cyberspace as a new 'domain of warfare' could have really happened as described. In his essay, 'Defending a New Domain,' Lynn recounts a widely-reported 2008 hack that was initiated when, according to Lynn, an infected flash drive was inserted into a military laptop by 'a foreign intelligence agency.' Critics such as IT security firm Sophos' Chief Security Adviser Chester Wisniewski argue that this James Bond-like scenario doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The primary issue is that the malware involved, known as agent.btz, is neither sophisticated nor particularly dangerous. A variant of the SillyFDC worm, agent.btz can be easily defeated by disabling the Windows 'autorun' feature (which automatically starts a program on a drive upon insertion) or by simply banning thumb drives. In 2007, Silly FDC was rated as Risk Level 1: Very Low, by security firm Symantec."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  New German Government ID Hacked By CCC

  Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 7:53pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  wiedzmin writes "Public broadcaster ARD's show 'Plusminus' teamed up with the known hacker organization 'Chaos Computer Club' (CCC) to find out how secure the controversial new radio-frequency (RFID) chips were. The report shows how they used the basic new home scanners that will go along with the cards (for use with home computers to process the personal data for official government business) to demonstrate that scammers would have few problems extracting personal information. This includes two fingerprint scans and a new six-digit PIN meant to be used as a digital signature for official government business and beyond." That was quick. Earlier this year, CCC hackers demonstrated vulnerabilities in German airport IDs, too.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  State of Virginia Technology Centers Down

  Posted: August 27th, 2010, 6:00pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  bswooden writes "Some rather important departments (DMV, Social Services, Taxation) in the state of Virginia are currently without access to documents and information as a technology meltdown has caused much of their infrastructure to be offline for over 24 hours now. State CIO Sam Nixon said, 'A failure occurred in one memory card in what is known as a "storage area network," or SAN, at Virginia's Information Technologies Agency (VITA) suburban Richmond computing center, one of several data storage systems across Virginia.' How does the IT for some of the largest departments in a state come to a screeching halt over a single memory card? Oh, and also, the state is paying Northrup Grumman $2.4 billion over 10 years to manage the state's IT infrastructure." Reader miller60 adds, "Virginia's IT systems drew scrutiny last fall when state agencies reported rolling outages due to the lack of network redundancy."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested In India

  Posted: August 22nd, 2010, 10:41pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  whatajoke writes "Hari Prasad, a security researcher in India who had demonstrated the vulnerability of electronic voting machines used in all elections in India, was arrested by the police on charges of stealing an electronic voting machine. The election commission of India has maintained that EVM are non-hackable. The election commission had previously provided access to the device to the security researchers for a day and asked for a hack in only that time."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Most Consumers Support Government Cyber-Spying

  Posted: August 5th, 2010, 4:28am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  scurtis writes "Nearly two thirds of computer users globally believe that it is acceptable for their country to spy on other nations by hacking or installing malware, according to Sophos's mid-year 2010 Security Threat Report. And 23 percent claimed to support this action even during peacetime. Perhaps more surprisingly, 32 percent of respondents said that countries should also be allowed to plant malware and hack into private foreign companies in order to spy for economic advantage."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Tor Developer Detained At US Border, Pressed On Wikileaks

  Posted: August 1st, 2010, 8:27pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  suraj.sun writes with this news from CNET: "A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site — Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor — was detained by US agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project. Appelbaum, a US citizen, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland Thursday morning, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched. Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said." Appelbaum told me that he just spoke at length with The New York Times, and quipped that his Defcon talk about Tor was "just fine, until the FBI showed up"; this post will likely be updated with more details. Update: 08/02 03:59 GMT by T : Here's the NYT's coverage.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Talk On Chinese Cyber Army Pulled From Black Hat

  Posted: July 15th, 2010, 5:49pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "A talk on China's state-sponsored offensive security efforts scheduled for the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas later this month has been pulled after concerns were raised by people within the Chinese and Taiwanese government about the talk's content. The presentation was to be delivered by Wayne Huang, CTO of Armorize, an application security company with R&D operations in Taiwan. The talk was billed as an in-depth, historical look at the offensive capabilities and operations of China's so-called cyber-army."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Sen. Bond Disses Internet 'Kill Switch' Bill

  Posted: June 28th, 2010, 12:43am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  GovTechGuy writes "Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) has introduced his own cybersecurity legislation with Sen. Orrin Hatch, and he had some harsh words for a competing bill sponsored by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. Bond said that bill, which has been criticized for allegedly giving the president a 'kill switch' over the Internet, weighs down the private sector with mandates and puts too much on the plate of the already overburdened Department of Homeland Security. Sen. Bond's bill would create a new position in the Pentagon, reporting directly to the president, in charge of coordinating all civilian cybersecurity. Any private-sector involvement would be voluntary and free from legal challenge, rather than mandated."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  White House Unveils Plans For "Trusted Identities In Cyberspace"

  Posted: June 26th, 2010, 3:14pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Presto Vivace writes with news that the Obama administration's cyber-security coordinater, Howard Schmidt, yesterday unveiled a national plan for "trusted" online identities. Schmidt wrote, "The NSTIC, which is in response to one of the near term action items in the President’s Cyberspace Policy Review, calls for the creation of an online environment, or an Identity Ecosystem as we refer to it in the strategy, where individuals and organizations can complete online transactions with confidence, trusting the identities of each other and the identities of the infrastructure that the transaction runs on. For example, no longer should individuals have to remember an ever-expanding and potentially insecure list of usernames and passwords to login into various online services. Through the strategy we seek to enable a future where individuals can voluntarily choose to obtain a secure, interoperable, and privacy-enhancing credential (e.g., a smart identity card, a digital certificate on their cell phone, etc.) from a variety of service providers — both public and private — to authenticate themselves online for different types of transactions (e.g., online banking, accessing electronic health records, sending email, etc.)." You can read the full draft of the plan (PDF), and the White House is seeking public comments on it as well.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Arlington National Cemetery's Many IT Flaws

  Posted: June 25th, 2010, 9:56pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  imac.usr writes "A story in today's Washington Post calls to light the utter failure of the nation's most sacred final resting place to modernize its pen-and-paper record system. According to the story, the cemetery's administrators have spent $5 million without managing to accomplish the seemingly simple task of creating a database record of the site's graves. As Virginia senator Mark Warner points out, 'We are one fire, or one flood, or one spilled Starbucks coffee away from some of those records being lost or spoiled.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Senate Panel Approves Cybersecurity Bill

  Posted: June 25th, 2010, 2:47pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  GovTechGuy writes "A Senate Committee approved a bill that would give the president an emergency 'kill switch' over the Internet, but added some restrictions to the bill. The president may no longer simply assert that the threat remains indefinitely, he must now seek Congressional approval after 120 days. Still, privacy advocates are concerned about the government's ability to shut down private networks. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) 'said she was disappointed to read reports that the bill gives the White House a "kill switch" for the Internet, an authority she says the president already has under a little-known clause in the Communications Act passed one month after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. ... Collins [argued] the new bill actually circumscribes the president's existing authority and puts controls on its use.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Australian Cybercrime Enquiry Report Released

  Posted: June 22nd, 2010, 5:18pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government Standing Committee on Communications has released the results of a year long enquiry into cybercrime in a report titled Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime. This report includes a recommendation that Internet Service Provider customers should be forced to install anti-virus and firewall software on their computers as part of their contractual obligations. The Australian Communications and Media Authority receive further powers and responsibilities under the recommendations with respect to shutting down websites hosting malicious content and ensuring that infected consumer devices are disconnected from the Internet."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Former Soviet Republic of Georgia To Become IT Tax Haven

  Posted: June 21st, 2010, 3:45am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  A few days ago we noted how Ukraine is driving out its software freelancers with the threat of onerous taxation. Now comes news that another former Soviet republic, Georgia, will become a tax-free zone for IT companies. It might be the Google translation, but it seems that officials there are somewhat worried about how to categorize the IT segment: "[T]he main difficulty ... is to determine which organization is the IT company, and what is not: 'While from a formal point of view it is impossible to distinguish between software developers from the oil.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Spamhaus Fine Reduced From $11.7M To $27K

  Posted: June 16th, 2010, 5:36pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  eldavojohn writes "In 2006, anti-spam crusader Spamhaus was sued for 'defamation, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage and interference with existing contracts' after blocking 'promotional e-mails' from e360. What with the case being in Illinois and Spamhaus being a British outfit, Spamhaus didn't bloody care. So, e360 was awarded $11.7 million in damages, which was later thrown out in an appeals court with a request for the lower court to come up with actual damage estimates instead of the ridiculous $11.7 million. (e360 had originally stated $135M, then $122M, and then $30M as sums of damages.) As a result, the actual damages were estimated to be just $27,002. While this is a massive reduction in the fine and a little bit more realistic, I think it is important to note that Spamhaus is a service that people proactively utilize. They don't force you to use their anti-spam identification system — it's totally opt-in. And now they're being fined what a foreign judge found to be 'one month of additional work on behalf of the customers' to a company they allegedly incorrectly identified as spam. Sad and scary precedent."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Are We Ready For a True Data Disaster?

  Posted: May 27th, 2010, 11:32pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions how long we can go before a truly catastrophic data disaster strikes. 'The lure of potential profits in the information economy, combined with the apparent ease with which data can be gathered and a lack of regulation, creates a climate of recklessness in which a "data spill" of the scale of the Deepwater Horizon incident seems not just likely, but inevitable.' Witness Google mistakenly emailing potentially sensitive business data to customers of its Local Business Center service, or the 1.5 million Facebook accounts and passwords recently offered up on an underground hacking forum. 'These incidents seem relatively minor, but as companies gather ever more individually identifiable data and cross-reference these databases in new and more innovative ways, the potential for a major catastrophe grows.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  MS To Share Early Flaw Data With Governments

  Posted: May 18th, 2010, 10:48pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft today announced plans to share pre-patch details on software vulnerabilities with governments around the world under a new program aimed at securing critical infrastructure and government assets from hacker attacks. The program, codenamed Omega, features a 'Defensive Information Sharing Program' that will offer government entities at the national level technical information on vulnerabilities that are being updated in their products." There's a stream the bad guys would dearly love to tap into.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Researchers Demo Hardware Attacks Against India's E-Voting Machines

  Posted: May 10th, 2010, 11:14am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "India, the world's largest democracy, votes entirely on government-made electronic voting machines that authorities claim are 'tamperproof,' 'infallible,' and 'perfect,' but last week security researchers proved that they can be manipulated to steal elections. A team led by Hari Prasad, Professor J. Alex Halderman, and Rop Gonggrijp released an awesome video that shows off hardware hacks they built. These machines are much simpler than e-voting designs used in the US, but as the research paper explains, this makes attacking the hardware even easier. Halderman's students at the University of Michigan took only about a week to build a replacement display board that lies about the vote totals, and the team also built a pocket-sized device that clips onto the memory chips, with the machine powered on, and rewrites the votes. Clippy says, 'It looks like you're trying to rig an election ...'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  US Changes How Air Travelers Are Screened

  Posted: April 2nd, 2010, 5:13pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is abandoning its policy of using nationality alone to determine which US-bound international air travelers should be subject to additional screening and will instead select passengers based on possible matches to intelligence information, including physical descriptions or a particular travel pattern. Under the new system, screeners will stop passengers for additional security if they match certain pieces of known intelligence. The system will be 'much more intel-based,' a senior administration official says, as opposed to brute force. For example if US intelligence authorities learned about a terrorism suspect from Asia who had recently traveled to the Middle East, and they knew the suspect's approximate age but not name or passport number, those fragments would be entered into a database, shared with commercial airline screeners abroad, and screeners would be instructed to look for people with those traits and to pull them aside for extra searches. Administration officials have said that, in hindsight, the central failure in the attempted bombing of an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight on Christmas Day involved inadequate sharing of information." In other TSA-related news, CNN takes a look at the full-body scanners that are beginning to be deployed in the US and elsewhere, concluding that they are good at finding concealed drugs but haven't found much that could bring down an airplane. John Perry Barlow is quoted: "Every time technology makes another leap forward, we have to reclaim the Fourth Amendment, and often we have to reclaim the entire Bill of Rights, because technology gives [the authorities] powers that were not envisioned by the Founding Fathers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  It's Time To Split Up NSA Between Spooks and Geeks

  Posted: March 27th, 2010, 7:31pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Hugh Pickens writes "Noah Shachtman writes in Wired that most of us know the National Security Agency as the supersecret spook shop that allegedly slurped up our email and phone calls after the September 11 attacks, but not so many know that the NSA is actually home to two different agencies under one roof: the signals-intelligence directorate, who can tap into any electronic communication, and the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government's computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. 'The problem is, their goals are often in opposition,' writes Shachtman. 'One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them.' Users want to know that Google is safeguarding their data and privacy. The trouble is that when Google calls the NSA, everyone watching sees it as a package deal. Google wants geeks, but it runs the risk of getting spies, too."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Chinese Researcher Says US Power Grid Is Vulnerable, Strategist Overreacts

  Posted: March 21st, 2010, 2:17pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes with a story about Wang Jianwei, a grad student in China who recently released a paper detailing a vulnerability in the US power grid. Despite the paper being rather typical for security research, its origin set off alarm bells for military strategist Larry M. Wortzel, who testified before Congress that the student was a threat, despite the fact that the published attack wasn't really feasible. Quoting: "'We usually say "attack" so you can see what would happen,' [Wang] said. 'My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.' And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang's work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid. The difference between Mr. Wang's explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction. 'Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the US power grid,' said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  The Woes of Munich's Linux Migration

  Posted: March 19th, 2010, 8:37pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  mikrorechner writes "The H Online has a writeup of the problems encountered by LiMux (Wikipedia entry), one of the most prominent Linux migration projects in the world, trying to introduce free software into the highly heterogenous IT infrastructure of the City of Munich. Quoting: 'Florian Schiessl, deputy head of Munich's LiMux project for migrating the city's public administration to Linux, has, for the first time, explained why migrating the city's computing landscape to open source software has taken longer than originally planned.'" Here is Shiessl's blog, in which he details some of the transition problems.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  The Woes of Munich's Linux Migration

  Posted: March 19th, 2010, 8:37pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  mikrorechner writes "The H Online has a writeup of the problems encountered by LiMux (Wikipedia entry), one of the most prominent Linux migration projects in the world, trying to introduce free software into the highly heterogenous IT infrastructure of the City of Munich. Quoting: 'Florian Schiessl, deputy head of Munich's LiMux project for migrating the city's public administration to Linux, has, for the first time, explained why migrating the city's computing landscape to open source software has taken longer than originally planned.'" Here is Shiessl's blog, in which he details some of the transition problems.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  The Death of the US-Mexico Virtual Fence

  Posted: March 17th, 2010, 5:28pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  eldavojohn writes "A couple of years ago it was announced that the Boeing-built virtual fence at the US-Mexico border didn't work. Started in 2006, SBInet has been labeled a miserable failure and finally halted. A soon-to-be-released GAO report is expected to be overwhelmingly critical of SBInet, causing DHS Chief Janet Napolitano to announce yesterday that funding for the project has been frozen. It's sad that $1.4 billion had to be spent on the project before the discovery that this poorly conceived idea would not work."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  UK Intel Agency's Missing Laptops Might Contain Sensitive Data

  Posted: March 13th, 2010, 12:49pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  superapecommando writes "GCHQ lost 35 laptops in one year, potentially containing highly sensitive data. The UK's electronic spy centre was today lambasted by MPs for having a 'cavalier' attitude to data security. The centre is responsible for tracking the electronic communications of terrorists. In a new report, the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee expressed concern that GCHQ appeared to be entirely unaware whether or not the computers, lost in 2008, contained top secret information on people posing an imminent security threat to the country."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  NY To Replace IT Vendors With State Workers

  Posted: March 12th, 2010, 9:29pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  dcblogs writes "New York state plans to replace as many as 500 IT contract workers with a new type of temporary state worker. The state estimates it can save $25,000 annually for each contracting position that is in-sourced. This is the result of a new law creating 'term appointments,' which strip away some hiring and firing rules that apply to permanent state workers. These term appointment workers are employed 'at will.' Term appointments can be up to five years and workers get state benefits. Proponents of this change said a state IT worker might earn an average of $55 an hour, including benefits, while the state pays its contractors an average of $128 an hour for workers in similar jobs."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Vivek Kundra On US Government Inefficiency

  Posted: March 5th, 2010, 6:24pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  parkland writes "Federal CIO Vivek Kundra described some dismaying government inefficiencies in a speech on Thursday at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs in Seattle. It takes 160 days to process benefits for veterans, he said, 'because the Veteran's Administration is processing paperwork by passing manila folders from one desk to another.' Another example bound to make you grind your teeth is why it takes the Patent and Trademark Office 3 years to process a patent. 'One reason,' says Kundra, 'is because the USPTO receives these applications online, prints them out, and then someone manually rekeys the information into an antiquated system.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  There Is No Cyberwar

  Posted: March 5th, 2010, 4:20pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  crowfeather notes an interview with cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt that Wired's Threat Level conducted this week. "Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing. 'There is no cyberwar,' Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. 'I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,' Schmidt said. 'There are no winners in that environment.' Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage. His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar — and was losing it. ... There's been much ink spilled in recent years over the turf battles in D.C. over whether the NSA (representing the military) or DHS (on the civilian side) takes the lead role in cybersecurity. But... "I haven't seen that tension," Schmidt said. As for which will take the cybersecurity lead, Schmidt simply says it's a shared effort."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Terry Childs's Slow Road To Justice

  Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 5:21am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia provides an update on the City of San Francisco's trial against IT admin Terry Childs, which — at eight weeks and counting — hasn't even seen the defense begin to present its case. The main spotlight thus far has been on the testimony of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. 'Many articles about this case have pounced on the fact that after Childs gave the passwords to the mayor, they couldn't immediately be used. Most of these pieces chalk this up to some kind of secondary infraction on Childs's part,' Venezia writes. 'Just because you give someone a password doesn't mean that person knows how to use it. Childs's security measures would have included access lists that blocked attempted logins from non-specified IP addresses or subnets. In short, it was nothing out of the ordinary if you know anything about network security.' But while the lack of technical expertise in the case is troubling, encouraging is the fact that the San Francisco Chronicle's 'breathless piece reporting on the mayor's testimony' drew comments 10-to-1 in Childs's favor, which may indicate that 'public opinion of this case has tilted in favor of the defense,' Venezia writes. Of course, 'if [the trial] drags into summer, Childs will have the dubious honor of being held in jail for two full years.' This for a man who 'ultimately protected the [City's] network until the bitter end.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft VP Suggests 'Net Tax To Clean Computers

  Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 11:05pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft's Vice President for Trustworthy Computing, Scott Charney, speaking at the RSA conference in San Francisco, has floated an interesting proposal to deal with infected computers: Approach the problem of dealing with malware infections like the healthcare industry, and consider using 'general taxation' to pay for inspection and quarantine. Using taxes to deal with online criminal activity is not a new idea, as demonstrated by last year's Louisiana House vote to levy a monthly surcharge on Internet access to deal with online baddies."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Federal Deadline Hobbling eHealth IT Rollout

  Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 6:07pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Lucas123 writes "A federal deadline that begins next year and requires hospitals to prove they're meaningfully using electronic health records will lead to technical problems and data errors affecting patient care, say politicians and top IT professionals responsible for the deployments. Physicians and hospitals have until the end of 2011 to receive the maximum federal incentive monies to deploy the technology. If not deployed by 2015, they face penalties through cuts in Medicare reimbursements. 'I think we have nontechnology people making decisions about technology,' said Gregg Veltri, CIO at Denver Health. 'I wonder if anybody understands the reality of IT systems and how complex they are, especially when they're integrated together. You're going to sacrifice quality if you increase the speed [of the rollout].'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  US Government Begins Largest IT Consolidation in History

  Posted: March 1st, 2010, 5:54pm CET by ScuttleMonkey

  Tags:  government  

  miller60 writes "Saying 1,100 data centers is too many, the federal government has begun what looms as the largest IT consolidation in history. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has directed federal agencies to inventory their assets by April 30 and prepare a plan to reduce the number of servers and data centers, with a focus on slashing energy costs (full memo). Kundra says some applications may be shifted to cloud computing platforms customized for government use."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Secret Service Runs At "Six Sixes" Availability

  Posted: February 27th, 2010, 1:56am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  PCM2 writes "ABC News is reporting that the US Secret Service is in dire need of server upgrades. 'Currently, 42 mission-oriented applications run on a 1980s IBM mainframe with a 68 percent performance reliability rating,' says one leaked memo. That finding was the result of an NSA study commissioned by the Secret Service to evaluate the severity of their computer problems. Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who says he's had 'concern for a while' about the issue."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  The Billion Dollar Kernel

  Posted: February 24th, 2010, 4:53pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  jesgar writes "The Linux kernel would cost more than one billion EUR (about 1.4 billion USD) to develop in the European Union. This is the estimate made by researchers from the University of Oviedo (PPT), whereby the value annually added to this product was about 100 million EUR between 2005 and 2007 and 225 million EUR in 2008. The estimated 2008 result is comparable to 4% and 12% of Microsoft's and Google's R&D expenses on whole company products. Cost model 'Intermediate COCOMO81' is used according to parametric estimations by David Wheeler. An average annual base salary for a developer of 31,040 EUR was estimated from the EUROSTAT. Previously, similar works had been done by several authors estimating Red Hat, Debian, and Fedora distributions. The cost estimation is not of itself important, but it is an important means to an end: that commons-based innovation must receive a higher level of official recognition that would set it as an alternative to decision-makers. Ideally, legal and regulatory frameworks must allow companies participating on commons-based R&D to generate intangible assets for their contribution to successful projects. Otherwise, expenses must have an equitable tax treatment as a donation to social welfare."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  An Interview With Cyber-Security Czar Howard Schmidt

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 11:29pm CET by ScuttleMonkey

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes to tell us that US Cyber-Security Czar Howard Schmidt recently gave an interview where he discusses his career and what he sees as the priorities of the positions. "Howard Schmidt has been involved in just about every aspect of the security industry during his career. After stints in the Air Force and at Microsoft, he served as a cyber-security adviser to George W. Bush. Now, after heading back to the private sector for several years, he's been appointed to serve as President Obama's security adviser."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  An Interview With Cybersecurity Czar Howard Schmidt

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 11:29pm CET by ScuttleMonkey

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes to tell us that US cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt recently gave an interview where he discusses his career and what he sees as the priorities of the positions. "Howard Schmidt has been involved in just about every aspect of the security industry during his career. After stints in the Air Force and at Microsoft, he served as a cybersecurity advisor to George W. Bush. Now, after heading back to the private sector for several years, he's been appointed to serve as President Obama's security advisor."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Simulated Hack To Test US Government Response

  Posted: February 11th, 2010, 4:52pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  superapecommando writes "Security industry analysts and lawmakers will get an unprecedented chance next week to evaluate how the government might respond to a hack attack on critical infrastructure targets. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based non-profit established in 2007 by several lawmakers, will host a simulated nation-wide cyber-attack next Tuesday for a group of former administration and national security officials, who will be playing the roles of Cabinet members."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Australian Senate Hears Open Source Is Too Expensive

  Posted: February 11th, 2010, 10:58am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  schliz writes "The Australian Government Information Management Office says that a platform change to open source could cost more than it saves. It was pushed to investigate open source software to reduce its AUD$500m budget at a Senate meeting yesterday. From the article: 'Agencies are obliged to consider value for money on each occasion they apply a software,' spokesperson Graham Fry said. 'If the cost of assessing it [open source] was greater than the cost of the software, you would have to think twice.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  House Overwhelmingly Passes Cybersecurity Bill

  Posted: February 4th, 2010, 8:00pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  eldavojohn writes "The Caucus, a NY Times Blog, is reporting on the overwhelming majority vote (422 yeas) the House gave a new cybersecurity bill. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, H.R. 4061 has a number of interesting provisions. Representative Michael Arcuri, a Democrat of New York who sponsored the bill called cybersecurity the 'Manhattan Project of our generation' and estimated the US needs 500 to 1,000 more 'cyber warriors' every year in order to keep up with potential enemies. The new bill 'authorizes one single entity, the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to represent the government in negotiations over international standards and orders the White House office of technology to convene a cybersecurity university-industry task force to guide the direction of future research.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Meet the Military's Cyber-Security Forces

  Posted: January 28th, 2010, 5:41pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  destinyland writes "How exactly would the military fight a cyber war? In August 2009, the U.S. Air Force activated its new cyberspace combat unit, the 24th Air Force, to 'provide combat-ready forces trained and equipped to conduct sustained cyber operations.' It's commanded by former Minuteman missile and satellite-jamming specialist Major General Richard Webber. (And under his command are two wings, the 688th Information Operations Wing and the 67th Network Warfare Wing, plus a combat communications units.) Meanwhile, to counter the threat of cyber warfare, DARPA is still deploying the National Cyber Range, a test bed of networked computers to test countermeasures against 'cyberwar.' (According to one report, it provides 'a virtual network world — to be populated by mirror computers and inhabited by myriad software sim-people "replicants," and used as a firing range in which to develop the art of cyber warfare.') The Obama administration has even added a military cybersecurity coordinator to the National Security team."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Evidence Weakens That China Did the Recent Cyberattacks

  Posted: January 26th, 2010, 7:57pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  click2005 notes an article in The Register calling into question the one piece of hard evidence that has been put forward to pin the Google cyberattacks on China. It was claimed that a CRC algorithm found in the Aurora attack code was particular to Chinese-language developers. Now evidence emerges that this algorithm has been widely known for years and used in English-language books and websites. Wired has a post introducing the Pentagon's recently initiated effort to identify the "digital DNA" of hackers and/or their tools; this program is part of a wide-ranging effort by the US government to find useful means of deterring cyberattacks. This latter NY Times article notes that Google may have found the best deterrence so far — the threat to withdraw its services from the Chinese market.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Who's Controlling Our Vital Information Systems?

  Posted: January 23rd, 2010, 2:56pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  HangingChad writes "Gary Lyndaker talks about Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite; about how our information infrastructure is increasingly being sold off to the low bidder. Contracting in state and federal government is rampant, leaving more and more of our nation's vital information in the hands of contractors, many of whom have their own agenda and set of rules. From the article: 'Over 25 years, as an information systems developer, manager, and administrator in both state and private organizations, I have increasingly come to the conclusion that we are putting our state's operations at risk and compromising the trust of the people of our state by outsourcing core government functions.' I've seen the same thing in my years in government IT, ironically much of it as a contractor. My opinion is this is a dangerous trend that needs to be reversed. We're being fleeced while being put at risk."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  4 Out of 5 of .gov Web Sites Miss DNSSEC Deadline

  Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 5:12pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  netbuzz writes "Eighty percent US federal agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security — have missed a deadline to deploy DNS Security Extensions, a new authentication mechanism designed to prevent hackers from hijacking Web traffic. The deadline that whooshed by was Dec. 31, 2009. Experts disagree as to whether this level of deployment represents a failure or reasonable progress toward meeting a mandate set by the Office of Management and Budget in the summer of 2008. OMB officials declined to say why the agency hasn't enforced the DNSSEC deadline for executive branch departments."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  80% of .gov Web Sites Miss DNSSEC Deadline

  Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 5:12pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  netbuzz writes "Eighty percent of US federal agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security — have missed a deadline to deploy DNS Security Extensions, a new authentication mechanism designed to prevent hackers from hijacking Web traffic. The deadline that whooshed by was Dec. 31, 2009. Experts disagree as to whether this level of deployment represents a failure or reasonable progress toward meeting a mandate set by the Office of Management and Budget in the summer of 2008. OMB officials declined to say why the agency hasn't enforced the DNSSEC deadline for executive branch departments."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Another Attack, On Law Firm Suing China

  Posted: January 17th, 2010, 10:19am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the attack on Google, another company claims to be the victim of a similar attack. Gipson Hoffman & Pancione is a Los Angeles law firm whose client, CYBERsitter, is suing the government of China and several Chinese companies for using their intellectual property in the infamous Green Dam censorship filter. According to the firm, they have been targeted by a spear phishing attack from China." Relatedly, smartaleckkill writes with news that the US state department is to formally protest to China over the alleged cyber-attacks on Google, "likely early next week."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Why Counter-Terrorism Is In Shambles

  Posted: January 16th, 2010, 12:53am CET by ScuttleMonkey

  Tags:  government  

  Early last week several questions were submitted to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern about the sad state of counter-terrorism in the United States, and he has answered frankly and in-depth. In addition, McGovern solicited former FBI attorney/special agent Coleen Rowley to review his answers and provide her own comments. Ray's biggest tip to the intelligence community was to "HOLD ACCOUNTABLE THOSE RESPONSIBLE. More 'reform' is the last thing we need. Sorry, but we DO have to look back. The most effective step would be to release the CIA Inspector General report on intelligence community performance prior to 9/11. That investigation was run by, and its report was prepared by an honest man, it turns out. It was immediately suppressed by then-Acting DCI John McLaughlin — another Tenet clone — and McLaughin's successors as director, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and now Leon Panetta."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Cyber-Security Czar To Be Named

  Posted: December 22nd, 2009, 2:20pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  The Washington Post and everybody else is reporting that on Tuesday President Obama will name Howard A. Schmidt as cyber-security czar. Schmidt was an advisor to President Bush on cyber-security matters. The Post rehearses the reasons why the Obama administration has had difficulty in finding someone for the post, and notes that the turf battles did not start in this administration: "Schmidt was chosen after a long process in which dozens of people were sounded out. Many declined the post, largely out of concern that the job conferred much responsibility with little true authority, some of them said. Meanwhile, the cybersecurity chief at the National Security Council, Christopher Painter, has served as the de facto coordinator, trying to push ahead the 60-day cyberspace policy review plan unveiled by Obama in May. That plan's formulation was led by Melissa Hathaway, who resigned in frustration in August after delays in naming a cyber-coordinator. She had been a contender for the position... Schmidt served as special adviser for cyberspace security from 2001 to 2003 and shepherded the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, a plan that then was largely ignored. He left that job also frustrated, colleagues said."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  The Trial of Terry Childs Begins

  Posted: December 15th, 2009, 2:07pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  snydeq writes "Opening arguments were heard today in the trial against IT admin Terry Childs, who was arrested 18 months ago for refusing to hand over passwords to the San Francisco city network. InfoWorld's Paul Venezia, who has been following the case from the start, speculates that the 18-month wait is due to the fact that 'the DA has done no homework on the technical issues in play here and is instead more than willing to use the Frankenstein offense: It's different, so it must be killed.' On the other hand, the city — which has held Childs on $5 million bail despite having already dropped three of the four charges against him — may have finally figured out 'just how ridiculous the whole scenario is but is too far down the line to pull back the reins and is continuing with the prosecution just to save face,' Venezia writes. The trial is expected to last until mid-March. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, to whom Childs eventually gave the city's network passwords, will be included in the roster of those who will testify in the case — one that could put all admins in danger should Childs be found guilty of tampering."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  US and Russia Open Talks On Limits To Cyberwar

  Posted: December 13th, 2009, 5:26am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  andy1307 passes on this from the NY Times: "The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace. American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia's overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race ... While the Russians have continued to focus on treaties that may restrict weapons development, the United States is hoping to use the talks to increase international cooperation in opposing Internet crime. Strengthening defenses against Internet criminals would also strengthen defenses against any military-directed cyberattacks, the United States maintains."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Brazilian Breaks Secrecy of Brazil's E-Voting Machines With Van Eck Phreaking

  Posted: November 22nd, 2009, 4:11am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  After the report last week that Brazil's e-voting machines had withstood the scrutiny of a team of invited hackers, reader ateu writes with news that a hacker has shown that the Linux-based voting machines aren't perfectly safe; he was able to eavesdrop on them (translated from Portuguese) by means of Van Eck phreaking.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Hackers Fail To Crack Brazilian Voting Machines

  Posted: November 15th, 2009, 7:55am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  blueser writes "From Nov 10th to Nov 13th the Brazilian Government hosted a public hacking contest to test the robustness of its voting machines. 38 participants from private and public IT companies (including the Brazilian Federal Police) were divided into 9 teams, which tried several different approaches to try to tamper with the software installed on the machines, and even to physically interfere in other stages of the process. All attempts (aside from a minor one which would not compromise the overall results) failed, and observations from the participants and neutral observers will be taken into account to improve the process even further. Here is the official announcement for the contest (Google translation; Portuguese original). A summary of the results is available in the Brazilian press (original). Brazilian voting machines use Linux." US voting officials ought to be envious of their Brazilian counterparts, or ashamed, or both. Perhaps this MIT-developed cryptographic voting system offers a way forward.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  National Data Breach Law Advances

  Posted: November 6th, 2009, 7:12pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Trailrunner7 writes "Two separate bills that would require organizations to notify consumers when their personal information has been compromised have made their way out of committee in the Senate, a critical step toward the creation of a national data-breach notification bill. But the Data Breach Notification Act, S.139, exempts federal agencies and other organizations subject to the bill from disclosing a breach if the data involved in the breach was encrypted. This is a clause that has caused some controversy, as some experts say that simply encrypting data does not render it useless. Also, S.139 would grant an exemption for data that 'was rendered indecipherable through the use of best practices or methods, such as redaction, access controls, or other such mechanisms, that are widely accepted as an effective industry practice, or an effective industry standard.' That is a very broad exemption that could become a sticking point as the bill moves along. The terms 'access controls' and 'other such mechanisms' encompass a huge number of technologies."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Nigerian "Scam Police" Shut Down 800 Web Sites

  Posted: October 23rd, 2009, 4:22am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Sooner Boomer writes "Nigerian police, in what is named Operation 'Eagle Claw,' have shut down 800 scam web sites and arrested members of 18 syndicates behind the fraudulent scam sites. Reports on Breitbart.com and Pointblank give details on the busts. The investigation was done in cooperation with Microsoft to help develop smart technology software capable of detecting fraudulent emails. From Breitbart: 'When operating at full capacity, within the next six months, the scheme, dubbed "Eagle Claw," should be able to forewarn around a quarter of million potential victims.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  The Economics of Federal Cloud Computing Analyzed

  Posted: October 19th, 2009, 7:11am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  jg21 writes "With the federal government about to spend $20B on IT infrastructure, this highly analytical article by two Booz Allen Hamilton associates makes it clear that cloud computing has now received full executive backing and offers clear opportunities for agencies to significantly reduce their growing expenditures for data centers and IT hardware. From the article: 'A few agencies are already moving quickly to explore cloud computing solutions and are even redirecting existing funds to begin implementations... Agencies should identify the aspects of their current IT workload that can be transitioned to the cloud in the near term to yield "early wins" to help build momentum and support for the migration to cloud computing.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DHS Wants To Hire 1,000 Cybersecurity Experts

  Posted: October 4th, 2009, 8:31pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Cyrus writes "DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano plans to hire 1,000 security experts over the next three years. 'Department officials could not say precisely how many cyberexperts now work at DHS and its various component agencies such as the Secret Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Napolitano said she doubts it will be necessary to fill all 1,000 of the authorized positions, but she is focused on making DHS a "world-class cyberorganization."'" Cringely points out, "There aren't one thousand civilian cybersecurity experts in the entire friggin' world!!!!," except he uses all caps and bold.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  US Relaxes Control Over ICANN

  Posted: September 30th, 2009, 7:03pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader tips news that the US Dept. of Commerce has signed an agreement with ICANN to end their current oversight responsibilities and allow more input from the global community. "The move comes after European regulators and other critics have said the US government could wield too much influence over a system used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Those critics have complained, among other things, about the slow rollout of Internet addresses entirely in languages other than English." The US will still be involved; every three years, ICANN's work will be evaluated by a committee, one member of which will be from the Dept. of Commerce.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  DHS Ponders "Improving" Terrorism Alert System

  Posted: September 18th, 2009, 5:38pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The DHS's color-coded terrorism risk warning system has often been criticized on a number of grounds. However, it seems that at last DHS has taken note of these criticisms and is finally planning to fix one of its problems. Which one? Well, since the two lowest levels have never been used in the history of the program, the solution is obvious: just get rid of them! In the new system, the lowest level would be yellow, 'guarded,' representing 'A constant state of vigilance to protect against a terrorist attack.' While it's nice that they're at least no longer maintaining a pretense of it being for anything other than fear-mongering, I don't think this was the kind of change most people were hoping for."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Boston City Government Discovers Email Retention

  Posted: September 13th, 2009, 3:27pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Boston Globe, covering a battle to unseat the 16-year incumbent mayor, has found out that the city has no email retention policy. A city official who receives hundreds of emails a day was found to have only 18 emails in his mailbox. The city has enabled journaling on its Exchange server in response. The Globe also notes that they had to curtail requests for emails under the Open Records law because for each mailbox, 'City officials estimated they would charge $5,000 for six months worth of email.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Defense Department Eyes Hacker Con For New Recruits

  Posted: August 2nd, 2009, 4:44pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  alphadogg writes "The US Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: the yearly Defcon hacking conference, which has been running since Thursday in Las Vegas. Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions, decided to come back again. Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When US Department of Defense director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon 'Meet the Fed' panel in 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Could the Cloud Derail a $300 Million Data Center?

  Posted: July 23rd, 2009, 8:23pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  1sockchuck writes "The cloud computing debate has come into focus for taxpayers in Washington state, where a proposed $300 million project to build a data center in Olympia for the state's IT operations is coming under scrutiny. Two legislators are urging the state to shift applications to the cloud instead, noting that two of the largest cloud computing providers (Microsoft and Amazon) are based in the state. The critics say the data center project is driven by an interest in local construction and 'fails to seriously explore the larger strategic question facing government technology today.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Keeping Up With DoD Security Requirements In Linux?

  Posted: July 22nd, 2009, 10:27pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  ers81239 writes "I've recently become a Linux administrator within the Department of Defense. I am surprised to find out that the DoD actually publishes extensive guidance on minimum software versions. I guess that isn't so surprising, but the version numbers are. Kernel 2.6.30, ntp 4.2.4p7-RC2, OpenSSL 9.8k and the openssh to match, etc. The surprising part is that these are very fresh versions which are not included in many distributions. We use SUSE Enterprise quite a bit, but even openSUSE factory (their word for unstable) doesn't have these packages. Tarballing on this many systems is a nightmare and even then some things just don't seem to work. I don't have time to track down every possible lib/etc/opt/local/share path that different packages try to use by default. I think that this really highlights the trade-offs of stability and security. I have called Novell to ask about it. When vulnerabilities are found in software, they backport the patches into whatever version of the software they are currently supporting. The problem here is that doesn't give me a guarantee that the backport fixes the problem for which this upgrade is required (My requirements say to install version x or higher). There is also the question of how quickly they are providing the backports. I'm hoping that there are 100s of DoD Linux administrators reading this who can bombard me with solutions. How do you balance security with stability?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Keeping Up With DoD Security Requirements In Linux?

  Posted: July 22nd, 2009, 10:27pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  ers81239 writes "I've recently become a Linux administrator within the Department of Defense. I am surprised to find out that the DoD actually publishes extensive guidance on minimum software versions. I guess that isn't so surprising, but the version numbers are. Kernel 2.6.30, ntp 4.2.4p7-RC2, OpenSSL 9.8k and the openssh to match, etc. The surprising part is that these are very fresh versions which are not included in many distributions. We use SUSE Enterprise quite a bit, but even openSUSE factory (their word for unstable) doesn't have these packages. Tarballing on this many systems is a nightmare and even then some things just don't seem to work. I don't have time to track down every possible lib/etc/opt/local/share path that different packages try to use by default. I think that this really highlights the trade-offs of stability and security. I have called Novell to ask about it. When vulnerabilities are found in software, they backport the patches into whatever version of the software they are currently supporting. The problem here is that doesn't give me a guarantee that the backport fixes the problem for which this upgrade is required (My requirements say to install version x or higher). There is also the question of how quickly they are providing the backports. I'm hoping that there are 100s of DoD Linux administrators reading this who can bombard me with solutions. How do you balance security with stability?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  NSA To Use Cloud Model For Intelligence Analysis

  Posted: July 22nd, 2009, 5:36pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Hugh Pickens writes "Information Week reports that the National Security Agency is taking a cloud computing approach in developing a new collaborative intelligence gathering system that will link disparate intelligence databases geographically distributed in data centers around the country. The system will house streaming data, unstructured text, large files, and other forms of intelligence data, and analysts will be able to add metadata and tags that, among other things, designate how securely information is to be handled and how widely it gets disseminated. For end users, the system will come with search, discovery, collaboration, correlation, and analysis tools. The intelligence agency is using the Hadoop file system, an implementation of Google's MapReduce parallel processing system, to make it easier to 'rapidly reconfigure data' and for Hadoop's ability to scale. The NSA's decision to use cloud computing technologies isn't about cutting costs or seeking innovation for innovation's sake; rather, cloud computing is seen as a way to enable new scenarios and unprecedented scalability. 'The object is to do things that were essentially impossible before,' says Randy Garrett, director of technology for NSA's integrated intelligence program."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  US Gov. Launches Web Site To Track IT Spending

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 2:03pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  andy1307 writes "Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, announced on Tuesday a new Web site designed to track more than $70 billion in government IT spending, showing all contracts held by major firms within every agency. The (Flash-heavy) site, USAspending.gov, shows detailed information about whether IT contracts are being monitored and budgets being met. The data also show which contracts were won through a competitive process or in a no-bid method (the latter approach is criticized by good-government advocates for excluding firms from business opportunities). Each prime contractor is listed as well as the status of that project; sub-contractors are not yet shown."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Microsoft's Bulk Deal With New Zealand Collapses

  Posted: May 26th, 2009, 2:05pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  vik writes "The latest 3-year, pan-government deal that Microsoft has been establishing with the New Zealand government since 2000 has collapsed, opening the doors to the wider use of open source software in government. The NZ State Services Commission (already a prize-winning user of open source) says in a statement that it '...became apparent during discussions that a formal agreement with Microsoft is no longer appropriate.' Having lost their discount, individual government departments will now have to put their IT requirements out to tender individually."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft's Bulk Deal With New Zealand Collapses

  Posted: May 26th, 2009, 2:05pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  vik writes "The latest 3-year, pan-government deal that Microsoft has been establishing with the New Zealand government since 2000 has collapsed, opening the doors to the wider use of open source software in government. The NZ State Services Commission (already a prize-winning user of open source) says in a statement that it '...became apparent during discussions that a formal agreement with Microsoft is no longer appropriate.' Having lost their discount, individual government departments will now have to put their IT requirements out to tender individually."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft's Bulk Deal With New Zealand Collapses

  Posted: May 26th, 2009, 2:05pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  vik writes "The latest 3-year, pan-government deal that Microsoft has been establishing with the New Zealand government since 2000 has collapsed, opening the doors to the wider use of open source software in government. The NZ State Services Commission (already a prize-winning user of open source) says in a statement that it '...became apparent during discussions that a formal agreement with Microsoft is no longer appropriate.' Having lost their discount, individual government departments will now have to put their IT requirements out to tender individually."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  US Federal Government Launches Data.gov

  Posted: May 21st, 2009, 7:53pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Elastic Vapor writes "I'm happy to announce that the US Federal Government earlier today launched the new Data.Gov website. The primary goal of Data.Gov is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications). Data.gov strives to make government more transparent and is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. The openness derived from Data.gov will strengthen the Nation's democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." I hope the data reported will be impartially selected, honestly gathered, clearly explained, and perfectly accurate. Perhaps they could start with inspiration from the Concord Coalition's National Debt Counter.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Timeglider Software Outlines Rosenberg Spy Case

  Posted: May 21st, 2009, 9:52am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "Related to the previous story on Slashdot on the release of the Vassiliev Notebooks: the Cold War project has created a timeline on the Rosenberg spy ring (using Timeglider — a web-based, Flash-powered software for creating timelines), integrating the documentation from the Venona Intercepts, the FBI files related to industrial and atomic espionage, the Rosenberg trial papers and the Vassiliev notebooks in a easy-to-digest, complete picture of the evidence on the Rosenberg's involvement in atomic espionage. It can be accessed via the project's webpage. The use of Timeglider makes understanding the complex nature of the case and the newly available documentation more manageable."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked

  Posted: May 15th, 2009, 2:45pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Elektroschock writes "For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council's 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council's study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, 'I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.' Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked

  Posted: May 15th, 2009, 2:45pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Elektroschock writes "For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council's 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council's study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, 'I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.' Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  Military Enlists Open Source Community

  Posted: April 28th, 2009, 12:15am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  jmwci1 writes "The US Defense Department is enlisting an open source approach to software development — an about-face for such a historically top-down organization. In recent weeks, the military has launched a collaborative platform called Forge.mil for its developers to share software, systems components and network services. The agency also signed an agreement with the Open Source Software Institute to allow 50 internally developed workforce management applications to be licensed to other government agencies, universities and companies."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Hungary, Tatarstan Latest To Go FOSS

  Posted: April 12th, 2009, 2:13am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  christian.einfeldt writes "It seems as if almost every other week there is news of another government migration toward Free Open Source Software. Two of the most recent such moves come from Hungary and the tiny independent former Russian republic of Tatarstan. On April 2, the Hungarian government announced that it will be modifying its procurement rules to mandate that open source procurement funding match expenditures for proprietary software, according to Ferenc Baja, deputy minister for information technology. In Tatarstan, a Republic of 3.8 million inhabitants, the Deputy Minister of Education announced that by the end of this school year, all 2,400 educational institutions in Tatarstan will have completed a transition to GNU/Linux, following a successful pilot program it rolled out in 2008."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Hungary, Tatarstan Latest To Go FOSS

  Posted: April 12th, 2009, 2:13am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  christian.einfeldt writes "It seems as if almost every other week there is news of another government migration toward Free Open Source Software. Two of the most recent such moves come from Hungary and the tiny independent former Russian republic of Tatarstan. On April 2, the Hungarian government announced that it will be modifying its procurement rules to mandate that open source procurement funding match expenditures for proprietary software, according to Ferenc Baja, deputy minister for information technology. In Tatarstan, a Republic of 3.8 million inhabitants, the Deputy Minister of Education announced that by the end of this school year, all 2,400 educational institutions in Tatarstan will have completed a transition to GNU/Linux, following a successful pilot program it rolled out in 2008."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  US Cybersecurity Chief Beckstrom Resigns

  Posted: March 7th, 2009, 5:57pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  nodialtone writes with a Reuters report that Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), has tendered his resignation, citing clashes between the NCSC and the NSA with regard to who handles the nation's online security efforts. In his resignation letter (PDF), he made the point that "The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture," and said he wasn't willing to "subjugate the NCSC underneath the NSA." He also complained of budget roadblocks which kept the NCSC from receiving more than five weeks of funding in the past year. Wired has a related story from late February which discusses comments from Admiral Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, who thinks cyber security should be the NSA's job to begin with.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  America's New CIO Loves Google

  Posted: March 6th, 2009, 3:17pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  theodp writes "On Thursday, Barack Obama tapped Vivek Kundra for the post of Federal CIO, giving him responsibility for establishing and overseeing enterprise architecture across the federal government. So what might that look like? Well, little more than a month ago Kundra was slated to sing the praises of Google Apps to government officials in a webcast. A Kundra quote from the presentation slides: 'Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed? It's a win-win for me.' You can follow Kundra's love affair with Google on YouTube, from his announcement of the Google-Washington DC partnership he brokered through a co-starring role with a Google attorney on a video pitching Google-enabled technology for the Obama Administration. Not surprisingly, some say Obama's choice of a Google-party-goer who worships Google could cause big headaches for Microsoft."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Obama Admin Fights Missing White House Email Lawsuit

  Posted: February 22nd, 2009, 2:47pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  DesScorp writes "The AP reports that the Obama administration has picked up where the Bush administration left off on the missing White House email issue by trying to have a lawsuit dismissed that would have kept investigating whether or not email was still missing. Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President expressed disappointment with the Obama administration's actions. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government. The Justice Department 'apparently never got the message' from Obama, Blanton said."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Should Obama Give Stimulus To Open Source?

  Posted: February 20th, 2009, 1:57pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder posits a deeper relationship between government and open source than was proposed in last week's open letter to Obama calling for broader open source adoption: economic stimulus. Since software vendors urged the president to go open source last week, security companies 'have raised scary points about vulnerabilities in open source,' suggesting they could step in to help secure an open source switch. Rather than opt for this kind of security through obscurity, Snyder argues in favor of earmarking funds for open source development to instead ensure security through transparency. 'Once the government expands its use and support of open source, venture money — which is drying up in the current recession — would again start flowing to those small companies, allowing them to hire or rehire some of the tens of thousands of unemployed IT workers,' he argues."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  Cuba Launches Own Linux Variation

  Posted: February 12th, 2009, 5:25am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  willclem writes "According to Reuters, it seems that Cuba has launched its own variation of Linux in order to fulfill its government's desire to replace Microsoft operating systems. 'Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue,' said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba's migration to free software."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Cuba Launches Own Linux Variation

  Posted: February 12th, 2009, 5:25am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  willclem writes "According to Reuters, it seems that Cuba has launched its own variation of Linux in order to fulfill its government's desire to replace Microsoft operating systems. 'Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue,' said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba's migration to free software."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

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  Could Fake Phishing Emails Help Fight Spam?

  Posted: February 2nd, 2009, 3:50pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Glyn Moody writes "Apparently, the US Department of Justice has been sending out hoax emails to test the security awareness of its staff. How about applying a similar strategy to tackling spam among ordinary users? If fake spam messages offering all the usual benefits, and employing all the usual tricks, were sent out by national security agencies around the world, it would select precisely the people who tend to respond to spam. The agencies could then contact them from a suitably important-looking government address, warning about what could have happened. Some might become more cautious as a result, others will not. But again, it is precisely the latter who are more likely to respond to further fake spam messages in the future, allowing the process to be repeated as often as necessary. The system would be cheap to run — spam is very efficient — and could use the latest spam as templates."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  Russia To Develop a National Operating System

  Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 5:48pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Russia To Develop a National Operating System

  Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 5:48pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Russia To Develop a National Operating System

  Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 5:48pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Russia To Develop a National Operating System

  Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 5:48pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Obama Looking At Open Source?

  Posted: January 21st, 2009, 2:48pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "'The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through Open Source technologies and products.' The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Obama Looking At Open Source?

  Posted: January 21st, 2009, 2:48pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "'The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through Open Source technologies and products.' The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Obama Looking At Open Source?

  Posted: January 21st, 2009, 2:48pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "'The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through Open Source technologies and products.' The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley's most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He revealed he has been asked to prepare a paper on the subject for the new administration."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Open Source Program Reveals Diebold Bug

  Posted: December 14th, 2008, 1:23pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Mitch Trachtenberg writes "Ballot Browser, an open source Python program developed by Mitch Trachtenberg (yours truly) as part of the all-volunteer Humboldt County Election Transparency Project, was instrumental in revealing that Diebold counting software had dropped 197 ballots from Humboldt County, California's official election results. Despite a top-to-bottom review by the California Secretary of State's office, it appears that Diebold had not informed that office of the four-year-old bug. The Transparency Project has sites at humetp.org and http://www.humtp.com." Trachtenberg also points to his blog for the Transparency Project, and his own essay about the discovery and the process that led to it.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Ask Cybersecurity Commission Chairman Jim Langevin About US Cybersecurity Plans

  Posted: December 12th, 2008, 6:01pm CET by Roblimo

  Tags:  government  

  US Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI) is one of the chairs of the CSIS Cybersecurity Commission that released a comprehensive 96-page report on Dec. 8 under the title, Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency. The aim of the Commission is to help the incoming administration balance "cyberspace" security needs with civil liberties. We'd like to thank Rep. Langevin and his staff (some of whom are ardent Slashdot readers) for taking time to answer your (hopefully) cogent questions. Usual Slashdot interview rules apply, and — also as usual — we'll post Rep. Langevin's answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  Red Flag Linux Forced On Chinese Internet Cafes

  Posted: December 3rd, 2008, 10:12pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  iamhigh writes "Reports are popping up that Chinese Internet Cafes are being required to switch to Red Flag Linux. Red Flag is China's biggest Linux distro and recently received headlines for their Olympic Edition release. The regulations, effective Nov. 5th, are aimed at combating piracy and require only that cafes install either a legal version of Windows or Red Flag. However, Radio Free Asia says that cafes are being forced to install Red Flag even if they have legal versions of Windows. Obviously questions about spying and surveillance have arisen, with no comment from the Chinese Government."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Red Flag Linux Forced On Chinese Internet Cafes

  Posted: December 3rd, 2008, 10:12pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  iamhigh writes "Reports are popping up that Chinese Internet Cafes are being required to switch to Red Flag Linux. Red Flag is China's biggest Linux distro and recently received headlines for their Olympic Edition release. The regulations, effective Nov. 5th, are aimed at combating piracy and require only that cafes install either a legal version of Windows or Red Flag. However, Radio Free Asia says that cafes are being forced to install Red Flag even if they have legal versions of Windows. Obviously questions about spying and surveillance have arisen, with no comment from the Chinese Government."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

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  IT Cutbacks For 2012 London Olympics

  Posted: November 28th, 2008, 8:09am CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  Slatterz writes "The IT backbone for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games is to be cut. According to the Games' chief integrator, Michele Hyron of Atos Origin, each section of the computing infrastructure will be made more efficient in order to minimise redundant equipment and hopefully reduce energy consumption. Unlike the Beijing Games, the results will be relayed via the public wireless network which will be available in the Olympic Park — this means cutting out the 2,500 results terminals. The team of workers will deliver more than 1,000 servers, 10,000 PCs and 4,000 printers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Chinese Hacking of American Military Networks On the Rise

  Posted: November 22nd, 2008, 12:23am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Anti-Globalism writes with this excerpt from the Guardian: "China is stealing sensitive information from American computer networks and stepping up its online espionage, according to a US congressional panel. Beijing's investment in rocket technology is also accelerating the militarization of outer space and lifting it into the 'commanding heights' of modern warfare, the advisory group claims. ... A summary of the study, released in advance, alleges that networks and databases used by the US government and American defense contractors are regularly targeted by Chinese hackers. 'China is stealing vast amounts of sensitive information from US computer networks,' says Larry Wortzel, chairman of the commission set up by Congress in 2000 to investigate US-China issues." The full study addresses these issues and others relating to the US-China relationship (PDF).

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  New Report On NSA Released Today

  Posted: November 14th, 2008, 7:20pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  daveschroeder writes "George Washington University has today released a three-volume history of NSA activities during the Cold War (major highlights). Written by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson, the 1,000-page report, 'Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,' details some of the agency's successes and failures, its conflict with other intelligence agencies, and the questionable legal ground on which early American cryptologists worked. The report remained classified for years, until Johnson mentioned it to Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian, at an intelligence conference. Two years later, an abstract and the three current volumes of the report are now available (PDF) from GWU and the National Security Archive. Aid, author of the forthcoming history 'The Secret Sentry: The Top Secret History of the National Security Agency,' says Johnson's study shows 'refreshing openness and honesty, acknowledging both the NSA's impressive successes and abject failures during the Cold War.' A fourth volume remains classified. Johnson says in an audio interview: 'If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out. It always comes out.'" And reader sampas zooms in on a section in Document 6 about the growth of NSA's IT: their first Cray purchase in 1976, the growth of circuits between facilities, and internal feuds over centralized IT development vs. programmers-in-departments. "A young systems engineer named [redacted] was urging NSA to look at some technology that had been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1969 DARPA had developed a computer internetting system called ARPANET... NSA quickly adopted the DARPA solution. The project was called platform."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Paper Ballots Will Return In MD and VA

  Posted: October 30th, 2008, 9:21pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  cheezitmike writes "According to a story in the Washington Post, 'Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," Brace said. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Early Voting Problems, Open Source Alternative

  Posted: October 25th, 2008, 2:18pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Techdirt makes note of some problems cropping up already for early voters in the presidential election. CNN covers some of the issues, including machines in a West Virginia county which recorded some votes incorrectly because of an alignment error. A lengthy discussion of the problems was also featured on NPR. Reader Rooked_One points out a related story at NPR about a voting program called PVOTE, written in Python and only 500 lines long. "Pvote is not a complete voting system. It is just the software program that interacts with the voter. Other necessary functions, such as voter registration, ballot preparation, and canvassing, are not part of Pvote. It is especially important that the voter interaction be correct because it is the only part of an election that must take place in private, whereas all other parts of an election can and should be subjected to public oversight and verification."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  US's First Internet Votes To Be Cast This Friday

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 9:44pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  longacre writes "If you thought online voting in America was a distant pipe dream (nightmare?), think again: the nation's first Internet-based voting system goes online this Friday, just days after the release of the Damning Report On Sequoia E-Voting Machine Security we discussed yesterday. In the first real world run of the Okaloosa Distance Ballot Piloting (ODBP) test program, election officials from Okaloosa County, Florida have set up kiosks in Germany, the UK and Japan where 600-700 absentee voters — mostly military personnel — are expected to cast ballots. Security experts still have many questions, of course, particularly on the potential for interception of voting data while it travels across oceans (via 'secure VPN'), the security of the kiosks ('hardened laptops' with no hard drives and other sensitive components disabled) and the security of the three data centers (one of which is itself housed overseas, in Barcelona, Spain), not to mention the fact that Florida doesn't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to vote counting. Florida's Dept. of State also has a fairly detailed outline of ODBP's components and processes [PDF]."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  Linux-Based E-Voting In Brazil

  Posted: October 7th, 2008, 11:36am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  John Sokol writes "I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It's very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Linux-Based E-Voting In Brazil

  Posted: October 7th, 2008, 11:36am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  John Sokol writes "I just heard from a good friend and Linux kernel hacker in Brazil that they have just finished their municipal election with 128 million people using Linux to vote. They voted nationwide for something like 5,000 city mayors. Voting is mandatory in Brazil. The embedded computer they are using once ran VirtuOS (a variant of MS-DOS); it now has its own locally developed, Linux-based distro. These are much nicer, smaller, and cheaper than the systems being deployed here in the US. Here is a Java-required site with a simulated Brazilian voting system. It's very cool; they even show you a picture of the candidate you voted for."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

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  California Sec. of State Wants Open Source E-Voting Systems

  Posted: September 27th, 2008, 3:12pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Lucas123 writes "California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, was among a group of e-voting experts at MIT yesterday who said the nation's electronic voting systems are still not secure and many run on faulty software. Among the suggestions offered to fix the problem: use open source software, stop delivering e-voting machines to polling places weeks in advance of an election, and keep a paper trail for auditing purposes. Bowen also believes that a ubiquitous Internet voting system could not work without the use of a national ID card system."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  Quebec Govt Sued For Ignoring Free Software

  Posted: August 28th, 2008, 8:58am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Mathieu Lutfy writes "The CBC is reporting that 'Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. ... Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.' The group also has a press release in English."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Quebec Govt Sued For Ignoring Free Software

  Posted: August 28th, 2008, 8:58am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Mathieu Lutfy writes "The CBC is reporting that 'Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. ... Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.' The group also has a press release in English."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Quebec Govt Sued For Ignoring Free Software

  Posted: August 28th, 2008, 8:58am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  Mathieu Lutfy writes "The CBC is reporting that 'Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. ... Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.' The group also has a press release in English."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

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  Terror Watchlist "Crippled By Technical Flaws"

  Posted: August 26th, 2008, 2:08pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The database used by the government to generate lists like the No-Fly List is 'crippled by technical flaws,' according to the chairman of a House technology oversight subcommittee. And the upgrade may be worse than the original. Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) says that 'if actually deployed, [the upgrade] will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today.' It seems that the current database doesn't have any easy way to do plain-text matching, forcing users to enter SQL queries. That might not sound so bad until you learn that the database contains 463 poorly indexed tables. How long until there's a terrorist named Robert'); DROP DATABASE; —?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  States Throw Out Electronic Voting Machines

  Posted: August 20th, 2008, 2:16pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  Davide Marney passes along an AP story about the thousands of voting machines gathering dust in warehouses across the country after states such as California, Ohio, and Florida have banned their use. Many of these machines cost $3.5K to $5K each. Local election boards are struggling to find ways to recover any of the cost of the machines, or even to recycle them. The picture in Ohio is the most confusing, as multiple court cases limit the state's options and result in a situation in which the discredited machines will nevertheless be used in the presidential election coming up in November. The state's new (Democratic) attorney general has just issued a rule banning the practice of election workers taking the machines home with them the night before elections.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Follow-up On Texas PI Law For PC Techs

  Posted: July 10th, 2008, 1:14am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  boyko.at.netqos writes "Network Performance Daily has put out an in-depth series on the Texas law that requires private investigator licenses for computer repair techs, network analysts, and other IT professionals. It includes an interview with the author of the law, Texas Rep. Joe Driver, the captain of the Texas Private Security Bureau, RenEarl Bowie, and Matt Miller at the Institute for Justice, which is suing the state over the law. Finally, there's a series summary and editorial."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Avi Rubin Has Some Optimistic Words About E-Voting

  Posted: July 7th, 2008, 1:38pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "For more than a decade, Aviel "Avi" Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in the US and an e-voting activist, has been a vocal critic of e-voting systems. In this interview Rubin talks about the recent US presidential primary election cycle and his thoughts on e-voting going into the November US elections."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Bavarian Police Can Legally Place Trojans On PCs

  Posted: July 4th, 2008, 6:34pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Bavarian Parliament passed a law that allows Bavarian police to place 'Remote Forensic Software' (Google translation) on a suspect's computer as well as on the computers of a suspect's contacts. They may break into houses in secret to install the RFS if a remote installation is not possible; and while they are there a (physical) search is permitted too. The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data." The translation says that RFSs may be used in cases of an "urgent threat to the existence or the security of the Federation or a country or physical, life or liberty of a person... Even where there is a reasonable assumptions on concrete preparatory acts for such serious offenses."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  EPA Reaches Goal On Data Center Study

  Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 5:12am CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  government  

  1sockchuck writes "After initially struggling in its effort to find data center operators willing to share data about their energy usage, the EPA extended the program by a month and has managed to recruit 215 facilities to participate in its program to help the government develop an Energy Star program for data centers. An EPA official says there are no plans to regulate the data center industry."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  UK Can Now Hold People Without Charge For 42 Days

  Posted: June 12th, 2008, 8:37am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  the_leander writes "Prime Minister Gordon Brown has narrowly won a House of Commons vote on extending the maximum time police can hold terror suspects to 42 days. There is talk of compensation packages available for the falsely accused. The chances of you getting that money however are slim to none, lets not forget, this is the same country that charges prisoners who have been falsely accused for bed and boarding costs."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  Open Source Cities Followup — Munich Yea, Vienna Nay

  Posted: June 4th, 2008, 2:20pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  government  

  We're catching up on two stories of municipal engagement with open source software: Munich (which decided to go OS in 2003) and Vienna (2005). E5Rebel brings us news that Munich has stayed the course. But bkingaut informs that Vienna has decided to migrate back to Windows (Google translation) — to Vista no less. The migration of 720 computers used in kindergartens will cost the city about €8M. The given reason for all this is a language test application for the kids that only works with MS IE and won't be made compatible (by the producer) with Firefox until 2009.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

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  Expert Dissects Estonian Cyber-War

  Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 12:48am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Stony Stevenson points out an iTnews summary of a security researcher's account of the cyber-attacks on Estonia last year. The full report [PDF] is also available. We've discussed this internet-based conflict in the past. From the report: "In the days leading up to the attack, numerous clues pointed to a large-scale operation that was being planned online. Russian-language Internet discussion forums were abuzz with preparations for an online attack. Three days before the expected onslaught, Estonia planned to release the news of the coming strike in hopes that European media attention would oblige the EU to pressure the Kremlin to intervene, whether or not the attacks emanated from the Russian authorities."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  US Government to Have Only 50 Gateways

  Posted: April 20th, 2008, 3:19pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  government  

  Narrative Fallacy brings us a story about the US government's plan to reduce the roughly 4,000 active internet connections used by its civilian agencies to a mere 50 highly secure gateways. This comes as part of the government's response to a rise in attacks on its networks. "Most security professionals agreed that the TIC security improvements and similar measures are long overdue. 'We should have done this five years ago, but there wasn't the heart or the will then like there is now,' said Howard Schmidt, a former White House cyber security adviser. 'The timetable is aggressive,' he said, but now there is a sense of urgency behind the program. Small agencies that won't qualify for their own connections under TIC must subcontract their Internet services to larger agencies."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Computers May Thwart 2010 Census

  Posted: March 26th, 2008, 9:02pm CET by Zonk

  Tags:  government  

  smooth wombat writes "With the Constitutionally mandated census of 2010 just around the corner, it appears the Commerce Department's attempt to use handheld computers to gather census information may not come to fruition. Originally, the contract was awarded at a cost of $596 million to Harris Corporation. However, the GAO has now estimated the revised contract, now costing $647 million, could grow to $2 billion and the equipment may still not work properly. There is consideration that the paper and pencil method might have to be employed to complete the census."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  D Block Spectrum Auction Fraud Alleged

  Posted: March 20th, 2008, 12:55pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  government  

  eweekhickins writes "A public interest group is saying that a consulting firm hired to help the government hand over the D-block spectrum may have acted improperly and discouraged potential bidders by suggesting that any winning bid would have to pay $50 million in annual fees, in addition to the auction price. Any wonder the D-block didn't meet the reserve price?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.