According to WPXI, a Pennsylvania company has uncovered a security breach involving the President's Marine One helicopters, a P2P file-sharing program, and an IP address in Tehran, the capital of Iran.Although President Obama and other high-ranking American government officials have access to a fleet of high-tech and security-enhanced helicopters, the term "Marine One" is used to refer specifically to the helicopter in which the President currently is flying. The technical specifications for all of the helicopters in the fleet are highly classified, and any security breach, particularly to a hostile foreign power, is naturally of great concern.
The fact that it is happening through simple file-sharing programs, which most people seem to think are just for the "harmless" sharing of music and video files, is even more alarming.
Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, the company who discovered the breach, explains, "We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president's helicopter[, at an IP address in Tehran]. What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD [Maryland] had a file sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One."
But Iran is not alone in using file-sharing programs as a backdoor into otherwise secure government and business networks. Boback continues, "We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar, and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence."
















They should only be available to the gov'ts own 'intranet'.
Someone f'd up and installed P2P crap on a gov't computer, now the info is out there.
No it was a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD. That's not the same as a government computer. I have worked in the governments IT system, you can trust that it is secure. One thing I can say about the federal government: They do IT right! Unfortunately, it might be the only thing they do right.
Though who knows if they're even up-to-date specs? They could be old maybe? It's not like they don't send out fake info/intel as well.
They are hiding something.
They are hiding something.
Knowing how incompetent government employees can be, i t wouldn't surprise me at all.
I'm not sure if this story is an attempt to capitalize on a sensationalist title like "threat to Obama" or whether it was something planted by the RIAA.
It's a piece of crap SH-3 not exactly a classified aircraft from area 51 <_<
uh no ? it's a helicopter it has chaff and flares for counter measures ... they fly multiple identical aircraft in formation and yeah what else would there be ? a teleport gun ?
If you don't known anything about national security or state-of-the-art technology, you might want to refrain from challenging those of us who do.
tell us when us consumers, will be getting hover boots !!!!
What were his parents thinking?
What were his parents thinking?
It's an Iranian name
Pronounced "Bah-back"
http://www.computerworld.com/action/articl...ticleId=9025420
[< snipped > - CalumJR] - [The title has now been changed]
Last edited by CalumJR on 02 Mar 2009 - 12:22
all those countries would be in development of such technology already and demonstrating their capacity.
Welcome
The title has been changed after much debate from our members. Comments about the title of the article have been deleted in order to prevent confusion to other members who read this article.
Please, in future, use the 'Report a Problem' feature to discuss problems/issues with our articles and not the comments section.
Thank you,
CalumJR
Neowin News Comment Moderator
Companies who work for the US government also receive clearance to access certain classified data. Most of the time, these companies and their employees work well within the system. Here, clearly, someone has been a bit more than lax, allowing the Iranians to breach the security net cast by the American government by installing a file-sharing program and setting the "share" component too broadly.
Last edited by leesmithg on 02 Mar 2009 - 11:44
read CalumJR's comment reason above
Last edited by The Grasshopper on 02 Mar 2009 - 22:43
Hmm that makes sense. I admit I missed that post. But my initial post (#3.0) didn't get deleted so I thought my 2nd got specifically censored.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.