White House Repeatedly Hacked

The Financial Times reports that Chinese hackers penetrated the White House computer network on multiple occasions, obtaining emails between government officials. On each hacking incident, the cyber criminals were able to steal information before the White House security systems and professionals could patch the security holes.

The new insight comes on the heels of another report that the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain were hacked over the summer. The FBI and Secret Service revealed to each Obama and McCain that large amounts of files had been stolen as related to policy positions – information that may be useful in future negotiations with the U.S. administration. The hack came from a “foreign entity”, either Russian or Chinese.

Subsequent reports indicated that the attacks on the Obama and McCain systems came from China, and that other cyber attacks have been made on the White House from the same source. E-mail archives were attacked several times in recent months, a constant “cat and mouse” game with defenses going up each time a new attack was detected.

It is difficult to trace the exact source of the attacks. It is reported that, as far as the White House attacks go, only the unclassified network was breached. That doesn’t mean the information was not valuable or sensitive, nor that classified information was not present.

Also in Government related news:

• Google shares health searches with government (CNet)
• Inmate hacked prison network, broke into employee database (Register)
• Hackers buy their way into Obama search results, seed malware (Times Online)
• FTC grants delay in enforcement of ‘red flags’ identity theft program (TFC)
• IRS rolls out system with known security issues [PDF] (.Gov)
• Nevada, Massachusetts roll out new data privacy laws (WSJ)

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Via CNet image: barackobama.com