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Euro Exchange RateExperts say availability of such data increases threat of identity theft, retaliation against troops on sensitive missions
LAHORE: The personal data of tens of thousands of US soldiers continue to be downloaded by unauthorised computer users, the Washington Post has reported, despite the US army’s assurances that it would try to fix the problem.
Tiversa, a private firm that scours the Internet for sensitive data, says it discovered the fact while conducting research for private clients. It found, as recently as this week, documents containing Social Security numbers, blood types, cell-phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and the names of soldiers’ spouses and children.
Experts say the availability of such data exacerbates the threat of identity theft and retaliation against troops on sensitive missions. In addition to using the information to drain financial accounts, hackers could pose as soldiers in an effort to ferret out sensitive data, including passwords to government systems.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep Edolphus Towns said such disclosures represented a “major security risk” to the service members and the military
The company found the sensitive documents by using “peer to peer” file-sharing software, which can be easily downloaded on the Internet and which allows computer users to share music or other files. Many computer users do not realise that it can make the contents of their computers available to others.
Towns, who is drafting legislation to address the problems raised by the peer-to-peer technology, said what was striking about these file-sharing leaks “is that these aren’t one-time events. Once this software is installed and files are leaked, the leaking is continuous”.
In 2003, the army instituted policies barring the unauthorised use of peer-to-peer software. The Pentagon did it in 2004, and defence contractors have followed suit. But critics say policies often are not enforced.
Of particular concern to security experts is the discovery of personal information about soldiers whose mission area is Africa.
A spokeswoman for the Army Special Operations Command confirmed the data breach but described it as an isolated incident.
Tiversa saw Special Forces data on servers in Pakistan in May and immediately notified military investigators.
In April 2008, it spotted spreadsheets from Army master sergeants’ promotion lists containing the personal data of 60,000 soldiers, downloaded in foreign countries.
Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman, said it was “troubling” that personal information continued to appear on file-sharing networks. Steven Shirley, head of the Defence Department’s Cyber Crime Centre, said “even very tech-savvy organisations... have issues with peer-to-peer applications”.
Towns’s committee found that contractor documents on major weapons programmes such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter had found their way onto these networks and have been accessed by computer users in China and other countries.
Some of these documents, while not marked “classified,” were restricted under the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, or the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which prohibit release of the information to unauthorised foreigners. Violation of ITAR can result in a fine of up to $1 million or 10 years in prison or both, and a civil penalty of up to $500,000 for each violation.
Industry has long complained that ITAR is too broad.
Jeffery Adams, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, which is building the Air Force’s Joint Strike Fighter, said the company is “aware of the vulnerabilities peer-to-peer networks present to the corporation”, and so prohibits employees from using such networks on company systems. He declined to comment on the F-35 documents. Link...
LONDON: A new world atlas which concentrates on population rather than land mass has been published.
 Scientists have suggested that water ice millions of years old might be found in the shadowed craters of the moon's north and south poles, where the sun never shines. (AP) |
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's seven scientific instruments have indeed confirmed the presence of large amounts of hydrogen -- a marker for water -- in permanently shadowed south pole craters, where scientists had known there were deposits of hydrogen. But the instruments have also found the element in regions where the sun shines.
NASA scientists said Thursday that this could mean water is buried underground. Water could not exist on the surface, where it is exposed to daytime temperatures as high as 220 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Richard Vondrak, project scientist for the mission, known as LRO.
"We don't know the abundance or how deeply it is buried," Vondrak said at a briefing at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Nor do they know whether the hydrogen is water in the form of ice. If it is, the discovery would greatly improve the chances for a successful return to the moon by astronauts.
Water on the moon would reduce the need for hauling it from Earth to supply future colonists. Water could also be used to produce oxygen for respiration and to make rocket fuel for a trip to Mars.
The orbiter was launched three months ago on a mission to produce the most detailed map of the moon ever, in large part to find evidence of water and potential building sites for future human colonists.
A second spacecraft, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, separated from the reconnaissance orbiter just after launch and is now positioning itself to send its Centaur rocket crashing into a crater called Cabeus A.
Scientists hope that the collision, scheduled for the morning of Oct. 9, will send up a cloud of dust and ice particles that can be measured by the sensing satellite and the orbiter, which will observe the crash.
The reconnaissance spacecraft has spent most of the last three months checking its instruments, which include a radiation detector, radar, a laser altimeter, a Russian-built neutron detector that picks up the presence of hydrogen, and an ultraviolet spectrometer that can also sniff out evidence of water. All the instruments are functioning well, scientists said.
Researchers said that in just the last few days, the orbiter has provided fresh information about Earth's nearest neighbor. An instrument called Diviner has measured temperatures in south pole craters that never get sunshine at minus-300 degrees Fahrenheit. That ranks among the coldest temperatures in the solar system, Vondrak said.
The scientists attached to the two companion missions speculate that stores of ice possibly millions of years old could be hidden in these permanently darkened areas. Link...
