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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday June 20 2017, @06:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the do-as-I-say dept.

Second-rate opsec remained pervasive at the United States' National Security Agency, according to an August 2016 review now released under Freedom of Information laws.

It's almost surprising that the agency was able to cuff Reality Winner, let alone prevent a wholesale Snowden-style leak. The Department of Defense Inspector General report, first obtained by the New York Times, finds everything from unsecured servers to a lack of two-factor authentication.

The formerly-classified review (PDF) was instigated after Snowden exfiltrated his million-and-a-half files from August 2012 to May 2013.

"NSA did not have guidance concerning key management and did not consistently secure server racks and other sensitive equipment in the data centers and machine rooms" under its "Secure-the-net" initiative, the report says.

Data centre access is supposed to be governed by two-person access controls, the report notes, and the rollout of 2FA to "all high-risk users" was incomplete at the time of writing.

The agency had too many users with admin privileges, the report continues, they're insufficiently monitored, and the NSA had not cut the number of agents authorised to carry out data transfers.

Giving the NSA more funding could probably fix it.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:42AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:42AM (#528813)

    Right. If I were the ruler of a country at war, and it was losing battles to an aggressor, obviously my generals are going to demand more money to be able to recruit more soldiers, get better weaponry, and do all the other things necessary to wage the war to victory. If I denied that money to the army, I'd soon lose the war, and my country would be conquered. The main difference between a government and a business is that a government is instituted to provide services for its citizens, like you know, providing military defence from aggressors. Removing money from government means less such services, and setting them up to fail. Not that I'd mind for the NSA itself to fail, because I don't believe the service they provide is useful or even necessary to the citizenry.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:23AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:23AM (#528848)
    • You say "a government is instituted to provide services for its citizens" and then note about the NSA "I don't believe the service they provide is useful or even necessary to the citizenry."

    • You imply that it's good and proper to force people to fund the military, yet you note that you want to fund the military—no force is necessary.

    • If this government thing is squandering resources on useless or unnecessary services, or failing to protect you from foreign onslaught, then maybe you should be funding a different organization—why would you die to uphold this one particular organization that is so badly failing you?

    The only difference between a business and a government is that you, personally, have this strange almost religious devotion to the government; you almost define its actions to be correct. Well, guess what? It's not magical; it's just another organization.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:26AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:26AM (#528865)

      Oh good, it sounds like in this ideal world, my ambition to become a charismatic leader who rallies armies to plunder the resources of the "undeserving" would be perfectly fine.

      It should especially work to my advantage that all I have to do is conquer contract enforcers one at a time and enslave their clients before it's too late and the rest of the contract enforcers try to form a confederacy of sorts to fight my armies.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:58AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:58AM (#528875)

        I said nothing about contract enforcers!

        We have to get past your own delusions before we can even start talking about mine...

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:48PM (1 child)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:48PM (#528983) Homepage
      > You say "a government is instituted to provide services for its citizens" and then note about the NSA "I don't believe the service they provide is useful or even necessary to the citizenry."

      That's not a contradiction, that's an observation that it's an imperfect implementation. I say a school exists to provide useful lessons to children but some of the teachers are crap. I say a restaurant exists to provide tasty food, but some of the dishes suck. These are not contradictions.

      > You imply that it's good and proper to force people to fund the military, yet you note that you want to fund the military—no force is necessary.

      That's not a contradiction either. It's good and proper to force rail providers to run their trains on time, yet I note that rail providers want to run their trains on time with no force necessary. Not a contradiction.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:50PM (#529274)
        • The implication is that a government will do well by its citizens, but then that point is contradicted. In actuality, you cannot be sure, which makes suspect the whole idea of granting this one particular organization such a magical role.

        • The implication is that it's necessary to force people to fund a particular organization in order to ensure their defense, but the OP says he'd gladly fund an organization that is defending him—there's no reason that a government must be that organization.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:23AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:23AM (#528881) Journal

    They are providing military defense from their citizens. They have more rewarding projects than defending the country.