Friday, November 16, 2001

Many Federal computers fail hacker test The latest quarterly computer-security report card put together by Congressman Steve Horn's House Reform Committee government efficiency subcommittee and the GAO and OMB gives the government an F grade (down from a D- a year ago), based on lax protection of federal computer networks against hackers, terrorists, and others. Two-thirds of the federal agencies flunked this time, including the departments of Defense, Commerce, Energy, Justice, Treasury, Agriculture, AID, Education, Health and Human Services, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Small Business, and Veterans Affairs. The B+ given to the National Science Foundation was tops, with Social Security getting a C+ and NASA C-. As expected, the GAO found systems with no passwords, with ``password'' as password, and with unencrypted accessible password files. [Source: AP Online via COMTEX, 9 Nov 2001, PGN-ed] ["Peter G. Neumann" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 76] 0:00 # G!