Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Data Breach at U.S. Depts. of Justice and Homeland Security Downplayed

posted by martyb on Wednesday February 10 2016, @06:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the Department-of-Homeland-Security's-Security-Deportment dept.

takyon writes:

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small portions of the breach, but also noted that some of the details listed appeared to be incorrect or possibly outdated.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.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Data Breach at U.S. Depts. of Justice and Homeland Security Downplayed | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 28 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 10 2016, @08:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 10 2016, @08:25PM (#302351)

    what is worrying about the lack of security for the govt, is that ultimately we all pay for it...certainly financially, but also with the induced panic that erodes our civil liberties.

    Oh, come on. I *like* AppArmor and SELinux. Hopefully we get more taxpayer-funded spyware injected into our systems, courtesy of RedHat and their ilk.