SoylentNews

bitstream [soylentnews.org] writes:

Computer security experts have found security gaps in the Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) [go.com] a State Department system that handles visa applications that would have allowed hackers to doctor applications or copy sensitive data from the half-billion records on file, according to several sources familiar with the matter. Defenders of the agency says the vulnerabilities would be difficult to exploit. High-level officials that got briefed across government on the discovery that visa-related records were potentially vulnerable to illicit changes sparked concern because foreign nations are relentlessly looking for ways to plant spies inside the United States and terrorist groups have expressed their desire to exploit it too.

Government sources with insight into the matter that spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they were skeptical that the security gaps in the CCD have actually been resolved. A congressional source informed of the matter says “Vulnerabilities have not all been fixed,” and “there is no defined timeline for closing [them] out,”. Another concerned government source warns that “I know the vulnerabilities discovered deserve a pretty darn quick [remedy],” but it took senior State Department officials months to start addressing the key issues. The vulnerabilities identified several months ago stem from aging legacy systems that comprise CCD.

The Consular Consolidated Database (CCD) is one of world’s largest biometric databases where anyone who applied for a U.S. passport or visa in the past two decades have a record. The CCD contains information such as applicants photographs, fingerprints, Social Security or other identification numbers and even which schools their children attend to. “Every visa decision we make is a national security decision,” a top State Department official, Michele Thoren Bond, told a recent House panel. The CCD database contains more than 290 million passport-related records, 184 million visa records and 25 million records on overseas U.S. citizens.

In 2014 the CCD system crashed [fcw.com]. The CCD is one of the largest Oracle-based data warehouses in the world. In 2009 the PIA says the database contained more than 100 million visa cases and 75 million photographs, used billions of rows of data, and had a growth rate of about 35 000 visa cases per day.

Original Submission