[h3]DHS incompetence + virus = UH-OH[/h3] Wired News editor Kevin Poulsen has filed an excellent investigative piece on the Department of Homeland Security's meltdown in the face of the Zotob virus, which crashed and compromised the ill-starred "US-VISIT" program. The DHS stonewalled on this, refusing to release documents related to the crash, and Wired News had to sue to get the Department to honor its Freedom of Information Act request. When they cracked loose the "sensitive" documents, it turned out that DHS officials had been protecting the "secret" of their incompetent response to the attack, not any technical details on the program. [blockquote] While the idea of US-VISIT is universally lauded within government, the program's implementation has faced a steady barrage of criticism from congressional auditors concerned over management issues and cybersecurity problems. When Zotob began to spread last year, DHS' inspector general had just finished a six-month audit of US-VISIT's security; the resulting 42-page report, released in December, would conclude that the system suffered "security related issues (that) could compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive US-VISIT data if they are not remediated."... A before-and-after comparison of those documents offers little to support CBP's security claims. Most of the now-revealed redactions document errors officials made handling the vulnerability, and the severity of the consequences, with no technical information about CBP's systems. (Decide for yourself with our interactive un-redaction tool.) [/p][/blockquote] [a href="vny!://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,72051-0.html"]Link[/a]
