U.S. Fears Data Stolen by Chinese Hacker Could Identify Spies

[Valin]

NY Times:

MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID E. SANGER

JULY 24, 2015

 

WASHINGTON — American officials are concerned that the Chinese government could use the stolen records of millions of federal workers and contractors to piece together the identities of intelligence officers secretly posted in China over the years.

 

The potential exposure of the intelligence officers could prevent a large cadre of American spies from ever being posted abroad again, current and former intelligence officials said. It would be a significant setback for intelligence agencies already concerned that a recent data breach at the Office of Personnel Management is a major windfall for Chinese espionage efforts.

 

In the days after the breach of records of millions of federal workers and contractors became public last month, some officials in the Obama administration said that the theft was not as damaging as it might have been because the Chinese hackers did not gain access to the identities of American undercover spies.

 

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[Valin]

Oh It Gets Better...and by Better I mean SNAFU

 

XP Never Dies It Just Fades Away Slowly

July 24, 2015:

 

Despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Defense is the biggest customer for major software publishers (like Microsoft) some parts of the military refuse to heed advice to upgrade their key software. As a result the U.S. Navy recently revealed that it has to pay as much as $30 million to get security patches for 100,000 older PCs still running Windows XP. This fifteen year old operating system (and nearly as old software like Office 2003, Exchange 2003 and Windows Server 2003) are still used by the navy despite the fact that Microsoft gave years of warnings that because of the age and vulnerability of this software, it was going to stop supply critical security patches unless users paid for it. Even then the security would not be as good as it is for more recent versions of all those programs. The navy has several reasons for not upgrading these older PCs. This involves the difficulty of getting software upgraded and some equipment redesigned to allow for installation of new hardware (needed to handle the more powerful operating systems). There are also problems with political and bureaucratic interference with upgrades. So it should be no surprise that this happens. Note that many commercial firms are still using XP, often for similar reasons.

 

Meanwhile the major software publishers offer special deals to major customers and the Department of Defense often takes advantage of these. For example in 2012 the Department of Defense made a deal with Microsoft to obtain Microsoft products (operating systems and apps) for some two million military users (mostly in the army and air force) for about $100 a year (for three years) per user. This is a typical software licensing deal for large organizations (usually corporations). The Department of Defense can also get special modifications to software they buy in large quantities. In the future the military will be spending more attention, and cash, on smaller computers, but for now the military is using more of both the larger and handheld computers.

 

While users (including military) are shifting to smart phones for many of their computer needs, the desktop and laptop PCs are still doing most of the work in the military. At the beginning of the 21st century the operating system of choice was Microsoft Windows (over 90 percent market share). But now, when you include smart phones and tablets, Windows is on only 14 percent of small computers (desktop, laptop, tablet, smart phone) compared to 48 percent for Android, 11 percent for Apple IOS devices and 26 percent for other. This is a trend that really got going in the last decade as the tablet and smart phone became available. Hackers and Internet based crime is also shifting from Windows to Android and IOS devices. The military is working hard on providing better security for these handheld computers but still faces its greatest vulnerability on Windows systems.

 

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