The issue is that we all know LANL is the problem lab with the out of of control culture but this makes it seem like some other organizations have problems? How can that be, is the cowboy culture spreading, or was there never cowboy culture. Strange strange times
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/the-cases-for-and-against-claims-kaspersky-helped-steal-secret-nsa-secrets/
The report may well be true, but, for now, there's no way to independently confirm it. The report is based on unnamed people the publication says had knowledge of the matter, and it provides no evidence to support its claim. What's more, the lack of detail leaves open the possibility that, even if Kaspersky's AV did help Russia home in on the highly sensitive code and documents, the disclosure was the inadvertent result of a software bug and that no one from Kaspersky Lab cooperated with the attackers in any way. Also lost in the focus on Kaspersky Lab is the startling revelation that yet another NSA insider managed to sneak classified material outside of the NSA's network and put it on an unsecured computer. More of this analysis will follow.
What shouldn't go overlooked in Thursday's report is that this is the third known instance in the past four years of an NSA breach resulting from insider access to classified materials. The best known case is whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was able to trawl through NSA networks collecting documents for an extended period of time before turning them over to reporters. In 2016, a separate NSA contractor, Harold T. Martin III, was arrested after he sneaked 50 terabytes of confidential material out of the NSA and stored it at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The trove comprises as much as 75 percent of the exploits belonging to the Tailored Access Operations, the elite hacking NSA unit that develops and deploys some of the world's most sophisticated software exploits.
First, here's a summary of what the WSJ reported.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/the-cases-for-and-against-claims-kaspersky-helped-steal-secret-nsa-secrets/
The report may well be true, but, for now, there's no way to independently confirm it. The report is based on unnamed people the publication says had knowledge of the matter, and it provides no evidence to support its claim. What's more, the lack of detail leaves open the possibility that, even if Kaspersky's AV did help Russia home in on the highly sensitive code and documents, the disclosure was the inadvertent result of a software bug and that no one from Kaspersky Lab cooperated with the attackers in any way. Also lost in the focus on Kaspersky Lab is the startling revelation that yet another NSA insider managed to sneak classified material outside of the NSA's network and put it on an unsecured computer. More of this analysis will follow.
What shouldn't go overlooked in Thursday's report is that this is the third known instance in the past four years of an NSA breach resulting from insider access to classified materials. The best known case is whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was able to trawl through NSA networks collecting documents for an extended period of time before turning them over to reporters. In 2016, a separate NSA contractor, Harold T. Martin III, was arrested after he sneaked 50 terabytes of confidential material out of the NSA and stored it at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The trove comprises as much as 75 percent of the exploits belonging to the Tailored Access Operations, the elite hacking NSA unit that develops and deploys some of the world's most sophisticated software exploits.
First, here's a summary of what the WSJ reported.
Comments
Baloney. False generalization. We know it has some detractors who contribute to this blog.