Unsecured Access to Government Files

Posted May 17th, 2005 by AlphaPatriot and filed in Government
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Imagine sitting on a park bench in Washington and having access to dozens of government computer networks. Never mind — the GAO tells us that you can actually do it:

But nine of the 24 major agencies haven’t issued wireless-security plans, while many others provided little guidance for acceptable use, the GAO found.

Thirteen agencies don’t require their Wi-Fi networks to be set up in a secure manner, and most don’t monitor their wireless activity, the report said.

GAO investigators were able to pick up Wi-Fi signals from outside all of the six agencies they tested, and they were able to find examples of unauthorized activity at all six as well.

At one agency, 90 laptop computers were configured to search for a wireless connection while they were plugged in to a wireless network — an easy way in for snoops and hackers.

Now imagine what kind of information is stored on those networks: Social Security numbers, medical information, security files, not to mention minutes from high-level meetings and itineraries of officials.

Just think, Holiday Inn runs a more secure computer network than most of our government. Now, what is anybody going to do about it?