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from the Department-of-Homeland-Security's-Security-Deportment dept.
Portions of the U.S. government appear to have been hacked once again:
US authorities have acknowledged a data breach affecting the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security - but downplayed its severity. A hacker, or hacking group, published via Twitter what they said were records of 9,000 DHS employees.
According to technology news site Motherboard, the hacker has said he will soon share the personal information of 20,000 DoJ employees, including staff at the FBI. The news site said it had verified small portions of the breach, but also noted that some of the details listed appeared to be incorrect or possibly outdated.
In a statement, the DHS told journalists: "We take these reports very seriously, however there is no indication at this time that there is any breach of sensitive or personally identifiable information." The Department of Justice also downplayed the breach's significance.
The hacker is understood to have used simple human engineering to bypass one stage of the authorities' security systems.
Motherboard quoted the hacker, who explained: "So I called up, told them I was new and I didn't understand how to get past [the portal]. They asked if I had a token code, I said no, they said that's fine - just use our one."
The hackers claims to have downloaded 200 gigabytes of data, which have not been released yet.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday February 10 2016, @07:22PM
I was told that the military's req system is the same for everything.
Blatantly false. You can never cross supply classes so you can't order toilet paper and get a ships anchor delivered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classes_of_supply [wikipedia.org]
I was a sysadmin at a class V site. "Controlled" or "Sensitive" stuff like we worked with was double checked by officers, so by definition mistakes were never made (LOL). However on a fairly regular basis the mechanics would order the wrong NSN and instead of getting a humvee radiator hose instead they'd get a big box of M1A1 oil filters or some other ridiculous thing. Ah a digit here or there whats the difference as long as its in stock and the same class of product. Especially funny was mislabeled crates and "the manual says it should fit, but ...".
Inside classes, there the serial numbered controlled stuff, the controlled stuff, the serial numbered capital goods, capital goods, and expendables. Nobody cared about expendables as long as you didn't run out of them, that's for sure.
My best guess about legendary stories of getting ship anchors delivered is a major higher level screw up like simply sending the wrong loaded flatbed to the wrong address and the reception clerk privates at both sides pencil whipping the delivery instead of actually inspecting, because, "privates".
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday February 10 2016, @08:28PM
OK so in theory I could order a minuteman III missile instead of a grenade? Yeah yeah I know, it's useless without the launcher which is in a different supply class...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 10 2016, @09:23PM
MLRS pods sure, plenty of them. Don't forget your crane to go with the launcher.
I had a long reply I lost, but in summary orders were mostly hand human routed, so you'd have to convince a zillion humans along the way to somehow show up at the wrong door for that product.
Also from memory we could only issue some serial number items by serial number, so someone at HQ had to rat out the serial number we have in stock before we could issue that specific item to someone who asked for it by number. If it cost more than a new car, it was probably serial number accounted. Could issue NSN-whatever and lot number-whatever model-whatever M16A2 ball ammo in bulk all day long, but the "fun" stuff is all serial number accounted. Given the paperwork agony it was to issue a single AT4 rocket, I can only laugh at ideas to track each civilian ammo individually, that would be unimaginable.
Commo with HQ to verify and authenticate was a big deal and all I remember of my cross training in commo was ham radio didn't help with this bizarre NSA one time pad authentication code book. HQ sent us a huge and complicated whitelist (see why they liked computers?) and if you wanted something outside it, it was totally possible but took awhile. This made our "clients" very grouchy and unhappy after an hour or two, heard some legendary stories about arguments. "If you won't issue tank ammo to me, I'm sending in my tanks to take it from you" never heard the full story but since it never made the news it must have turned out OK.
Ammo supply points don't accept returns gracefully. There's no other way to put it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 10 2016, @09:35PM
I can only laugh at ideas to track each civilian ammo individually, that would be unimaginable.
Not to mention that if I'm a criminal I will probably steal the ammo, not buy it. Or I'll buy it from a guy who stole it and doesn't exactly keep records. So how does a serial number help here, exactly? It's as if people refuse to think. There simply is no point building a complicated multi-step tracking and surveillance bureaucracy that is immediately subverted at step 1.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday February 10 2016, @09:18PM
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