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On Monday, The Washington Post reported one of the most stunning breaches of security ever. A former NSA contractor, the paper said, stole more than 50 terabytes of highly sensitive data. According to one source, that includes more than 75 percent of the hacking tools belonging to the Tailored Access Operations. TAO is an elite hacking unit that develops and deploys some of the world's most sophisticated software exploits.
Attorneys representing Harold T. Martin III have previously portrayed the former NSA contractor as a patriot who took NSA materials home so that he could become better at his job. Meanwhile, investigators who have combed through his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland, remain concerned that he passed the weaponized hacking tools to enemies. The theft came to light during the investigation of a series of NSA-developed exploits that were mysteriously published online by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.
[...] An unnamed US official told the paper that Martin allegedly hoarded more than 75 percent of the TAO's library of hacking tools. It's hard to envision a scenario under which a theft of that much classified material by a single individual would be possible.
Source:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Tuesday February 07 2017, @07:44PM
"NSA contractor".
And there you have it. If the data and software is so super sensitive, why are you using contractors?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 07 2017, @08:47PM
Because the federal government hiring and employment system is so broken. If they only allowed federal employees to do the work, they wouldn't be allowed to pay them anywhere near what the private sector pays, so either the jobs would go unfilled, or they'd have to hire incompetents. So they contract it out, and contractors do it for normal (for the industry/job) salaries while some contracting company gets a big cut on top for doing almost nothing.
There appears to be no way to fix this problem.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:59AM
Suggestion: close down NSA, all its problem solved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:25PM
WTF? This is the stupidest post I've seen all day. The problem I'm talking about is Federal hiring, not the NSA. The Federal hiring problem spans the entire government. Closing the NSA, or any agency, isn't going to magically make the Federal government adopt sensible hiring and personnel-management practices. It's a problem endemic to the government, and government in general as it's not just the US federal government, it's state and local governments too and foreign ones as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @11:55PM
Oh, wow. The US govt is the model for the entire world, eh? I wonder how other countries are dealing with it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:52AM
And there you have it. If the data and software is so super sensitive, why are you using contractors?
Because, when it comes to trustworthiness, there is functionally no difference.
They all get the same background checks through the same agency.
You are indulging in a correspondence bias. [wikipedia.org]
There are a lot of contractors in government work, so it is unsurprising that the handful that have been caught doing something naughty were contractors.
Let's say there are 1,000 contractors working for the NSA (a very conservative guess) and 2 or 3 (Snowden, this guy and one more for good measure) have walked out with secrets. That leaves 997 who have not, or 99.7% who have obeyed the rules as much as any NSA employee. Furthermore there have been employees like Robert Stephan Lipka [cnn.com] who have done worse.