infoTECH Feature

November 17, 2014

State Department's Unclassified Network Goes Dark after Potential Hacking

There's been no shortage of news about hacking efforts over the last several months, with companies like The Home Depot and a variety of others weighing in that networks have been compromised, information potentially taken, and so on. That hacking has even reached the United States government, and now the State Department joins in the chorus of those impacted. But the agency has let no grass grow beneath its feet, and has taken steps to secure its electronic borders.

The reports suggest that the State Department's unclassified computer network was shut down over the weekend after some evidence emerged that the network may actually have been hacked instead. Originally, an email emerged late on Friday that the state department was shutting down its unclassified systems as part of a normally-scheduled maintenance round. This would in turn have impact on both email traffic in and out of the system as well as access to public websites. But that changed early Monday when word from a senior official noted that “activity of concern” had been found in the system, particularly devoted to non-classified material like email. Thus, the routine maintenance undertaken that weekend included an array of security augmentations to help protect against future breaches. The same official noted that all the impact had been taken in the non-classified sections, and that the classified sections remained uncompromised.

The United States government has proven a target-rich environment for hackers as of late, as recently the United States Postal Services (USPS (News - Alert)) found itself on the front lines. Hackers reportedly landed some personal information about employees and managed to even get into customer data as well via payment systems at both post offices and online. Even the White House itself was impacted, in its own unclassified network.

Word from the Washington Post has suggested that the Russians are believed to be behind the breaches, which would make sense given the current geopolitics involved in Russia, particularly following the events in the Ukraine. Some have gone on to speculate that perhaps the Chinese had some involvement in this, but these are still largely points of speculation. One thing, however, has become quite clear: hacking in general is clearly on the rise, and it seldom means any good for the average user. It does, however, remind us all of the importance of keeping our anti-virus measures up to date and keeping an eye on our various online accounts to help ensure that, should hacking be done, it can be caught at least somewhat early in the cycle. That's likely cold comfort to anyone on the receiving end of such work, but it's about the extent of what can be done.

Online security, whether at the State Department or in our own homes, has long been something of an issue, and while there are steps that can be taken to protect ourselves from such things, there are also major points that we can do little about. Still, we must be vigilant where we are able to be so, because even if we are hacked, we can take some comfort in knowing there was nothing more we could do.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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