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Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

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Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#51

Post by baconner »

detaro wrote: post #46
baconner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point for me is even if we assume that security blunders like this or say keeping a private email server are ignorance rather than malice ignorance is unacceptable at this level of government. Where's the security officer at advising these officials and helping them do it right? That has to be someone's job right?

That someone also is replaced if he gets on the nerves of the guy he is advising to much, at least on this level. Parallel advising/control structures only work if they have someone higher up they can fall back on if necessary.

You've got me there. Ultimately being secure is Brennan's responsibility.

Maybe we need a secret service for tech that's outside the command structure of these agencies.

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#53

Post by blowski »

wavefunction wrote: post #48
blowski wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, this is the same as when the CEO tells me he's disabled anti-virus protection because the popups annoyed him, or that he's using a personal Dropbox account so he doesn't have to go through that pesky login process onto the network drive. My guess is that to many people in power, the benefits of using these web services seem to outweigh the disadvantages because they just don't understand the disadvantages…

The US Federal system was designed to have checks and balances provided by oversight by different branches of government. Unfortunately today we have people in these branches of government who either won't do their duty because they are terrible at their jobs or because there is a silent quid-pro-quo where these sorts of people look the other way for each other.

While you're absolutely right in your diagnosis of the problem in the US, I doubt these problems are specific to the US government. I'm a Brit, and there are enough stories of technical incompetence here to make me assume it's a global problem. I suspect even non-democracies have the same issue. Who's going to tell Kim Jong-un he needs to rotate passwords?

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#54

Post by samstave »

rcurry wrote: post #12

I'm less concerned about the hacker, and more concerned that the Director of the CIA not only has an aol.com email account but also uses that account to transmit sensitive information. I'm not just saying this to be a jerk - this should be grounds for immediate termination of his employment. This is clearly a guy who shows poor judgement with respect to the management of sensitive material. Also, from the article: "[…

Oh dont worry - he was probably only emailing with Hillary and as we know, she would regularly wipe her mail server with a cloth to ensure it was secure.

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#55

Post by tracker1 »

mgkimsal wrote: post #33
discardorama wrote: post #30

So they claim he had classified docs in his AOL account. Why didn't the person(s) emailing these docs to Brennan's AOL account raise a question?

perhaps he just emailed those docs to himself? I do that a fair amount, so I can pick them up later.

I'm working in a relatively locked down environment.. At least once a week I have to email myself something (nothing sensitive) just to be able to get to it at home, which requires a resource that's blocked en-masse at work, but none the less I need access to.

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#57

Post by jessaustin »

The reason those in charge don't care about secrecy is... secrecy is important not for reasons of "national security", but rather for those of politics. Do we need to bash some hackers or protesters or journalists? "OK, then secrecy is literally the most important thing, more important than cute little kids or the Constitution or even the NFL." On the other hand, when it's just us old M-IC lizards futzing around? "Naw, who cares? I'm the expert!"

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#58

Post by tracker1 »

rcurry wrote: post #20
snockerton wrote: post #14

I wonder if the AOL disk is still sitting in his CDROM tray at home.

Why would he keep his AOL disk in the cup holder?

I knew (witnessed) the person who got that famed call... was at the compaq side of the MCI call center handling support calls for compaq, on one side, and iomega on the other (I worked on the iomega side).

Walking by... head pops up... "dude... dude... (trying no to snicker too hard) ... this lady's cup holder is broken..." ... me respondign "cup holder?" ... "yeah, the cd drive.. she thinks it's a cup holder" ...

Such a brief interaction, but really funny none the less... My funniest call was someone calling to back up their master's thesis work, because they were concerned about the power during the storm... was almost 6 minutes into the call when he said the power was out (desktop computer). It's really hard to be professional when faced with certain levels of stupid.

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#59

Post by mcantelon »

rcurry wrote: post #12

I'm less concerned about the hacker, and more concerned that the Director of the CIA not only has an aol.com email account but also uses that account to transmit sensitive information. I'm not just saying this to be a jerk - this should be grounds for immediate termination of his employment. This is clearly a guy who shows poor judgement with respect to the management of sensitive material. Also, from the article: "[…

I'm a bit suspicious of this story. Apparently his top secret security clearance application is in his AOL account, but he's been in the CIA for 25 years so that seems odd (unless his AOL account is very old).

Re: Teen says he hacked CIA director's AOL account

#60

Post by avivo »

pavornyoh wrote: post #18

A bit of a naive question but can someone answer this for me? To be a CIA Director, isn't it a requirement to have some sort of a technical background that way whoever is in the role is able to anticipate and always be a step head when it comes to these sort of problems?

The CIA "is tasked with gathering, processing and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT)"

The director is presumably in charge of executing specific missions and a long term vision for human spying. She/he does this by directing people who manage people who manage people (etc.). I don't think a technical/engineering background is presumed or necessary for such a role.

That said, an understanding of the basic structures and failure modes of information security in the digital world as it pertains to HUMINT does seem highly relevant (and necessary) for crafting and executing a modern vision/mission.

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