US security lapses reveal computer age vulnerabilities

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Sunday, May 14 11:20 AM SGT

US security lapses reveal computer age vulnerabilities WASHINGTON, May 14 (AFP) - A former CIA director comes under criminal investigation for keeping highly classified material on his personal computers. A laptop with "above top secret" information vanishes in the State Department. A scientist at a famed weapons lab downloads nuclear secrets onto floppy disks.

Through each of the intelligence scandals rocking Washington these days runs a common thread: the common or garden computer.

While many of the country's best minds have been focused on newfangled cyberthreats, it's been the lowly, everyday stuff of the information age -- laptops, floppy disks and Internet connections -- that have enabled some of the most spectacular security lapses in recent times.

When a laptop disappeared in January from a supposedly secure State Department conference room, officials were shocked: with it had gone what was reported to be a trove of information on missile proliferation and weapons of mass destruction that had a classification higher than top secret.

John Pike, an intelligence expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says it was "an accident waiting to happen."

"It's just inconceivable that someone would have put sensitive compartmented information -- above top secret -- on a laptop," he said. "Laptop computers are made to be stolen or lost. Laptops come equipped with legs so they can walk off when no one's looking."

Experts say the problem lies with an information revolution that has transformed the handling of information and created an instant-access culture that collides with the cumbersome procedures for protecting state secrets.

"The whole system -- the way (secret) documents are marked, the way you have to sign out documents, the way documents have to be stored in certain kind of safe -- has been designed in terms of the care and feeding of pieces of paper," said Pike.

"All of that has been overtaken by events because these pesky little electrons are no respecters of dissemination caveats," he said.

With the ubiquitousness of computers, the keepers of the secrets have to think through security implications more carefully, says Daniel Goure, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"When I started at the Pentagon you had removable hard drives. But the machines do anything and everything, so some of the traditional barriers to making mistakes go out the window," he said.

The FBI is now investigating a staggering range of indiscretions by John Deutch, who headed the CIA from May 1995 to December 1996, to determine whether he should be prosecuted for mishandling classified material.

Deutch's explanation: he habitually used unclassified computers to do classified work because he didn't want the CIA to get into his computer at night and read what he was writing, according to a report by the CIA's inspector general.

Investigators found all kinds of top secret information -- memos to the president, journal entries, files with references to covert operations -- on unsecured Macintosh personal computers and a laptop at his home and offices, according to the report.

At the same time, Deutch used the computers to e-mail colleagues, bank on-line, and access the Internet, making them vulnerable to electronic access. His Internet provider listed his real name and e-mail address on a publicly available membership directory, investigators found.

When he wasn't at home, someone else in his household used the Mac to access "high risk" internet sites.

The Justice Department initially declined to open a criminal investigation against Deutch. That changed after critics compared Deutch's kid glove treatment to that of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist accused of stealing nuclear secrets for China.

Lee, who is being held without bail on charges of mishandling classified material, is alleged to have downloaded voluminous computer files on research, design, construction and testing of nuclear weapons from a classified computer to disks.

Rather than lift secrets a document at a time, as spies once did, they can now transfer huge amounts of data instantaneously, says Goure.

"This business of loading secrets on cassettes has none of the romance of old time tradecraft with microdots and cameras," says Pike. "It's taking a lot of the fun out of spying because anyone can do it, evidently."

http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/000514/world/afp/US_security_lapses_reveal_computer_age_vulnerabilities.html



-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 14, 2000


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