"Doesn't ANYBODY take security seriously?" Topic

link

An unencrypted non password protected thumb drive from a Colonel???
Seriously???

And the whole Wikileaks thing doesn't seem to suggest that any heavy lifting was involved in the "hacking".

I guy I once knew was a pretty high-up email systems engineer for some big-name companies. He said it was uniformly the case that as people's importance in the organization rose, security fell off. By the time you get up to the C-Suite, the execs don't want to be bothered with passwords at all; it was beneath their dignity.

I can vouch for what Jeff just said.
Had to deal with it many times during my IT consulting days.

Terrement: please don't just make things up. We all know what you're talking about, regardless of your attempt to talk around it.

8: Number of email chains on Clinton's servers that contained "Top Secret" material "at the time they were sent." This is the highest level of classification.

8: Number of email chains on Clinton's servers that contained "Confidential" information, which is the lowest level of classification.

36: Number of chains that contained "Secret" information at the time.

110: Number of emails said to contain "Classified" information.

2,000: Separate from those aforementioned, about 2,000 additional e-mails were "up-classified" to make them Confidential. The information in these emails were not classified at the time the emails were sent.

Hillary Clinton's e-mail server contained fewer than 70,000 messages (sent and received). Since this included personal e-mails, political e-mail, and boring everyday government administration, you would have to believe that everything else was classified to get to "ties of thousands.

From a purely realistic standpoint, the message numbers are irrelevant because people hit Reply or Reply All. You end up with the same classified content repeated in message after message after message as quoted text. I know what my mailbox looks like …

You can play at counting messages that were "up-classified," but trying to imprison someone because they sent information that wasn't even confidential, but was retroactively upgraded, seems tendentious at best. Charges relating to those messages would certainly be thrown out as an ex post facto prosecution.

link

I think a day in the stockade being taught Russian and having rotten tomatoes is a just punishment… Is it a generation thing I'm thinking they just don't take these things as seriously as we do/did.

There were plenty of cases of file folders being left around before thumb drives so I'm guessing it is being taken just as seriously now as it was in the past.

If the "most damaging" thing was the Security Clearance renewal applications for a couple of generals, I think you can sleep just fine. It's a really boring version of a credit application, more or less. Not something most of us would want published, but not especially dangerous, either. And everyone knows the address of flag rank officers because they have official residences. Not necessarily as nice as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but still pretty obvious.

I thought DoD prohibited thumb drives for official business back in 2008 or so. Because the things are simply security nightmares.

Only applies if you are low level or fall out of favor of the media and higher up politicians. If your boss does not care and the media does not care, you can get away with most anything. But, if you're a flunky, look out because there is a multitude of people ready to throw you under the bus to save their own skin or to move up the ladder.

Well, at a security conference two weeks ago, one of the bits of swag was a beer coozie that said "I drink because your password is password". So, no.

Waaaay back in my distant youth. I had a TS, but I was only a US ARMY 1LT at the time. And maintained it thru out most of the time I was a CPT before ETS. What I knew that was TS could probably fit on a 4x6 card, with room to spare. [No thumbs drives were invented yet !]

But back in those days, we didn't have the advanced Hi-tech we have today. And when computers did come about. They were pretty "primitive" by today's standards. They were still using floppies !

"I thought DoD prohibited thumb drives for official business back in 2008 or so. Because the things are simply security nightmares."

Require them to be chained to a brick. Solves a lot of problems…

Nobody cares about security once they realize they have to pay for it.

That includes the people handling all of your personal info.