State Dept shuts off unclassified email after hack. Classified mail? That's CLASSIFIED The State Department has suspended its unclassified email system in response to a suspected hacking attack. The unprecedented shutdown on Friday was reportedly applied to give technicians an opportunity to repair possible damage, as well as to apply security improvements. A senior department official said possible problems …
I actually worked on a site where internal network was air-gapped from Internet. Every few hours someone would go to an standalone computer connected to ISDN line put in a disk into an Iomega Zip drive, run an application that downloaded emails, then transfer the disk to another computer connected to LAN and upload emails to the email server. Then the process was reversed to send out emails. It worked (well except software was an open relay) but it was last century when several hundred users external emails could fit onto a zip drive easily and Internet to user was fairly rare.
All major government systems are under attack constantly so you can expect more temporary shit-downs while they remove the trash from hackers. The problem will only get worse so get use to it. Thankfully they have plenty of prison cells available for hackers to spend a long time.
Got to catch them first. I very much doubt any state sponsored hacking groups will be spending any time in the US.
It will get worse, I have no doubt, but don't delude yourself into thinking the US doesn't have cells of it's own. The Russians and Chinese also have plenty of prison/gulag places available.
Things continue to get worse. It does not help that everyone is more concerned with finding and attacking weaknesses than they are with securing the system globally.
Reasonable security, well beyond what exists now, is *possible*, but sadly it does not seem probable. My own systems have taken a little collateral damage and frankly it is making me peevish.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
