LightSaber writes: "Here we go again.
This time it is computers and hard disks with nuclear weapons data that are missing from the lab vaults. This is really becoming pretty much a regular feature by now." Similarly, bapya writes:
"CNN reports a
secret nuclear information leak
from Los Alamos lab. Apparently, the disappearance of the records was reported on June 1. One official said part of the problem in tracking down the missing data is that the record keeping is so unorganized it is difficult to tell who had access to the lab and who could have legitimately signed out the material. How can we manage our critical information???"Oscarfish points out coverage of same on Excite News.
First they infiltrate our popular culture with Neil Young, Anne Murray, and Peter Jennings. And now they're after our top-secret hard drives!
It's scary, very scary. They look like Americans, talk like Americans (except for "eh", "zed", and better grammar), and are pretty much allowed to cross the border willy-nilly.
Meanwhile, they're driving energy prices up (they're the U.S.'s biggest petroleum supplier, if you include natural gas), and for god sakes, they have nationalized health care!
My comment was intended as humor. While I'm sure that he has the resources to build or buy a nuclear weapon, I don't think he has the desire, especially when weighed against the risks.
Bill Gates is not an evil genius, but, pretending he is makes for Quality Humor, IMO.
This is getting pretty old. I remember not too long ago when I happend across a Department of Defense garage sale (so to speak). Once I got my new hardware home and checked out the hard drive, I found plans for my very own personal nuclear reactor. Apparently *someone* had forgotten to format the hard drive. Sufficed to say I made a nice amount of money off of eBay (I think the high bidder was in Pakistan).
But let's not worry about this new missing information, it was probably just Tom Cruise looking for the NOC-List.
So you're wondering why we've been bombing the Chinese embassy, handing them designs for multiple-warhead ICBMs, kick-starting a new cold war over a ridiculous ballistic missile defense system and fumbling every nuclear secret extant? Look at it through the lens of a bunch of tired military contractors that have less and less clout in the new economy and you'll be less confused.
I have been involved in similar areas for different countries. In my experience there is no way anything that is particularly sensitive could go missing without it being noticed in a very short time frame. Surely this data whatever it may be could not be particularly sensitive. Most likely it would be low classification data or perhaps something that has been over classified. Over classification is not uncommon. It takes only one super paranoid person and everybodies lunch orders are TS and you are working in a shielded vault. When stuff is overclassified people become lazy because so much stuff that shouldn't be treated like TS has to be. People eventually become lazy and then bad things happen.
The Reuters [excite.com] story at excite is pretty thorough; basically it's unclear whether the two hard drives were destroyed, lost, or stolen. Funny thing is, they were discovered lost May 7 - but the Energy Department wasn't notified until June 1. Employees are to take lie detector tests, and it seems they whole search setup is becoming a big mess.
The Washington Post story [washingtonpost.com] also has a good wrap-up. According to most sources, the drives were last seen in a suitcase in a vault in a Los Alamos lab. I think the confusion of the evacuation due to the recent fires might have something to do with this...
By morning I guess most major newspapers will have it in print and on their websites, but in the case of something like this I've always thought earlier is better. Let's just hope the drives are recovered...
Burn thousands of acres of foliage around the top secret facility to force it evacuated, then move in and steal the data. Yeah, the fire was just a controlled burn that somehow got out of the control of the "experts" who set it. Musta slipped up, eh? Oops. Then the fire and smoke forces Los Alamos to evacuate. Now data and files turn up missing. Wow, that's quite a coincidence. It'll all look legit and no one will suspect... until it's too late.
I was once astonished by the ineptitude of our various national organizations; now I realize that they're simply composed of people, most of whom are just trying to get their jobs done in a timely way.
Scientists (even top secret burn-your-publications-before-submitting-them nuclear fizzicists) are smart enough to outwit almost any security scheme -- especially one thought up by the kind of "experts" who end up in government jobs rather than academia. Witness Wen Ho Lee, who, while under investigation for possibly sharing secrets with the Chinese government, was able (for whatever reason) to smuggle hundreds of megabytes of ultrasecret bomb simulation data through the security barrier onto insecure tapes.
Further, the motivations for leaking data are so numerous -- from carelessness through the simple convenience/laziness factor, right up to giant moral dilemmas (such as was explored in Durenmatt's The Physicists [amazon.com]) that it's impossible to address them all. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
On some level, it doesn't really matter if someone leaked classified data. There's probably nothing there that can't be computed with Metropolis, Runge-Kutta, and a gazillion-node Beowulf cluster of next year's K6's. The basic principles are an open book, and compute technology is growing too quickly for the radiation transfer and nuclear reaction simulations to be more than a few-year barrier. In the long run, everyone interested knows everything.
"When people treat items of a highly classified nature just like it's ordinary stuff, something's wrong," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee,told NBC News (in the MSNBC writeup). Arguably, the real problem comes when people treat items of a highly classified nature just like they're going to stay secret forever. These kind of debacles are just a wake-up call for those who would pretend otherwise.
Somewhere I read that somplace was so paranoid about info leaks that hard disks were actually dissolved in acid. I think it was the old removable disk paks.
I can't help noticing that there's a lot of news regarding nukes. (this article, the news on pakistan having loads of nukes). In my oppinion it is not a coincident that this happens at a time where the US tries to push Russia and other countries to accept their so called rocket shield.
This controversial, billion dollar project will require their support but also the support of the tax paying citizens in the USA. I'm cynical enough that the US is trying to convince their own people that such a shield is needed by 'leaking' this sort of news.
I found this [pbs.org] "top secret" web page at pbs. Cheesus, here's [nada.kth.se] the nuclear HOWTO (plutonium not included). Ok, here's [zvis.com] the picture gallery - you guys pick one, someone's knocking at the door.
This Washi ngton Post article [washingtonpost.com] reports that Los Alamos employees are concerned about their image, because most everybody thinks they're running a really sloppy ship. I think they should be less concerned with their image and more concerned with the massively confidential and top-secret U.S. and Russian nuclear data they're missing.
Seriously? I can go on the 'Net and find instructions on how to build a high-yield thermonuclear device. The news reports every day about stockpiles of weapons-grade material. Most nuclear countries have their missiles targeted on our silos already. It's not as if nuclear weapons are this big secret that can't be let out of the bag. The real barrier to nuclear weaponry is getting the material. I'd feel more threatened if nuclear material was actually stolen, but it's information.
What's that I hear on Slashdot? Information wants to be free? I'd be willing to bet that someone's head is going to roll because information escaped that's already out there anyway.
I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption. I work for a government contractor (one that actually deals specifically with nuclear weapons). Someone above mentioned that we contractors tend to be more meticulous than the government. True, but that doesn't mean everything is encrypted. Half the time, stuff is just locked away somewhere safe so nobody ever gets to it. Unfortunately, the classified data world is not the world of Mission Impossible (too bad, it might be more fun that way).
But nuclear weapons don't protect you from nuclear weapons; they can only assure MAD, and that only if you know your attacker. And knowing how to build, deliver and maintain nuclear weapons tells you practically nothing about stopping, say, an SLBM aside from what will or won't hurt a missile.
In the case, say, of an SLBM launch that may not be readily feasible in the time before impact.
In the case of accidental launch (possible, given that systems have been breaking down to the point where incoming ICBMs have been reported (falsely) by alarm systems), you generally don't WANT to retalliate, as if it's a single launch it's a bit petulant to destroy all life on Earth.
And so forth. MAD works only versus known enemies, like nations, that don't launch anonymously.
well, the irony of this is the comments people are making here.
most of the comments go along the lines of "stealing OUR information". Hrm. So like, it's evil for a company to not disclose source code of its competitive assets (ie: MS's kernel), but it is ok for America to keep its competitive assets (ie: nuclear tech) secret?
Isn't there something wrong here? Everyone on/. keeps talking about "free speech" and "free beer", but most of the US based readers fail to recognise Open Source on a larger scale.
And don't tell me its because atom bombs are far more destructive than the source code to a kernel. Go look at how Open Source tackles security - ie: Bugtraq, vunl-dev. That's all "open" - and everyone benefits because we can protect ourselves from attackers much better if we know their tools. So, likewise this should be the case on a larger scale - if we knew what weapons existed, we could better prepare ourselves against them.
>BTW this is the Internet: why should I care >especially about American deaths?
Canadian? There's this little thing called fallout.
English? We don't know WHO got those hard drives. What if it was the Irish and not the chineese?
Israeli? You're SURROUNDED by nice guys whose biggist wish is the chance to finish what the nazis started.
Get my point? Rogue nations with nukes is a BAD THING(tm).
Not to mention that if anyone starts throwing nukes at the US, or any of the other legitimate nuclear powers, such as the UK, France, or Russia, they're gonna get a handful right back in their faces... MORE fallout, MORE environmental damage.
And that's not EVEN considering economic consequences. Imagine the effects of a 25 Megaton airburst over, say, Sunnyvale.
(Or better yet, go see for yourself: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/mapabla st.html)
Why don't the feds do this with their "secret nuclear data":
1) Crypt it with a nice proven encryption algorithm 2) Split it onto 3 drives, two containing data and then the third containing an xor. 3) Store all three drives in separate "secure" locations 4) Use video cameras with offsite video archiving to tape vault entries. 5) Store encryption keys in the 4th and 5th extremely 'secure' locations with multiple security teams and monitoring at each
This way, 2 drives must be stolen for data to be valid and decodable. 1 drive may be lost (We know the feds do that a lot). Encryption keys can become lost (at one location).
Data is safe from nuclear attack (unless 3 nukes are targetted at all three locations of data store or both locations of key storage).
Is this excessive or am I just paranoid? I know there are many more ideas to do in order to secure data, lets hear comments from the rest of/. !
(I know this will get moderated as a "Good Thing" (tm))
I mean, why is my own PC more secure than those on which the Government keeps classified information? Not that anyone would want to steal my HD and its 15 Gigs of porn or anything, but the point is if anyone stole my computer all they'd get is a standard Windows installation and a couple of encrypted drives. But from the way the reports have been depicting it, the classified data on these stolen computers wasn't encrypted.
Why oh why is my fetish for doggie porn and Britney Spears fakes more well-guarded than classified data? If I can get into the habit of entering a passphrase to access my data drives, why can't the DoD, State Department, et al. make disk encryption an across-the-board standard for all employees dealing with sensitive data? We can be sure that this isn't the case, because otherwise the government would be downplaying its irresponsibility by mentioning that the stolen data encrypted and secure. So the question becomes, why isn't this policy, and when will they wake up and make it policy?
[For the curious, I use a free Windows program called Scramdisk which can make encrytpted "virtual drives" or encrypt whole partitions. Its source code is freely available, but is not GPL. It's very secure with a choice of 256-bit Twofish or eight other ciphers. It ensures that family and friends will not uncover my secret she-male fixation. Oops, did I type that out loud?]
Includes United States NEST Intergratioin Nuclear Launch Plugin for Internet Explorer 5.7 Internated with the Kernel, Launch Pad 2.0 Real Time Denation 3.0 Real time Denation Montior 2.0 Supports up to 2000 differant types of Nuclear Weapons Devices Drivers for NaPalm Techonlgy Included 500 Pre-programmed Country GPS locations OutLook Express 6.0 with Advanced Scripting and Automatic Attachment opening
Geez, can you say scapegoat? And how the hell can we take the moral high-ground on espionage, when our own FBI threatens people with the electric chair? If that's the way we do things, then who cares who has the secrets, because it's tyranny on either side.
It's funny, our government wants to bend over for the PRC because there's money to be made in trade and nobody seems to give a damn, but it needs to crucify it's citizens when embarrassing security lapses are exposed.
The ironic part is that this man probably hates the PRC more than any US politician, being of Taiwanese birth and (I assume) ethnically Chinese. But of the course the dumb yokels in Washington and the media aren't going to explain that, it being so convient to have a Chinese man to take the fall.
But you have to agree on some level, encrypting all the data on a hard disk could provide "extra" security in case the drive came up missing. Sure there is only a 1 in 1000^80000 chance that someone is going to be able to breach security and take the drive, but couldn't the encryption on this drives used as a "safety neat" or "back up plan"??
One thing I was always told by the Senior admin here (or was here, he left about a year ago) was that when dealing with security, there should be more than one thing to "stop" someone looking to breach your security.
For example, we setup a firewall that block 2 computers from the Internet, then put tcpwrappers on both computers. I asked, "what is the point of tcpwrappers, everything will be stopped by the firewall", he told me to just install them and make sure they where secure.
One day when we had a hard drive crash on the firewall, we quickly rebuild the machine (our backups wheren't up to date (this was a mistake on our part)), and in our inpatiences it got seriously misconfigured. (this was also our screwup)
That night, we had a ton of log files from tcpwrappers from one IP that was trying to telnet, ftp and everything else into those 2 computers, guess what, the tcpwrappers stop them from even getting a log in prompt (even if they did get a login prompt, %90 of the accounts had/bin/false as a shell...)
Setting up a second (or even an eigth) security measure can be a pain, but once in a while it can really save your ass in a bad sisuation.
There is a huge difference between understanding the concepts and having the hard numbers, engineering and fabrication skills needed to construct a weapon. The concepts tell you that it is possible, actually designing and building a weapon is the hard part. The first thermonuclear device (Mike) weighed 164,000 pounds and had a cryogenic system to keep the deuterium in a liquid state. The W-47 warhead for the Polaris missile weighed about 600 pounds. It took a lot of money and talent to get from proof-of-concept to a light weight thermonuclear weapon suitable for use on a missile.
Maybe this works for Ziare and such but not highly secure US installiations. What do you think the first thing that happened when the fire started? Well I do. The people who ran Eschelon and the like pointed their best satellites at that location and made sure that each person who was comming or goign was strictly monitored. Also with the town vacated like that a person who just had a little "hunting accident" would not be deemed suspicious. Not everyone is a fool. Also all you have to do is bolt down the area and lock everything good and tight. Also realize that not everyone from the facility was removed. I suspect that a highly dedicated group of people were keeping watch of the vaults. Also consider that the reccords are most likely kept in a secure bunker which would have multiple redundancy like that which is required in many facilities. There is a good chance that there are also "dummy vaults" that contain false data in case of the worst anyway.
This incident notwithstanding, security is pretty damn tight at LANL (I worked there briefly). This vault is "behind the fence," and in a particularly secure area; among other things, you have to go through a gate which uses your handprint as an authentication scheme. You have to have a "Q" clearance (the DOE equivalent of Top Secret/SCI) to get anywhere near this place.
Point is, it would be very, very difficult for someone who was not supposed to have access to get it -- but you can never totally protect against either insider espionage jobs or people being stupid. Los Alamos is particularly prone to both of these problems because a) it does work that a lot of people care quite a bit about, and b) it's friggin' huge.
When I was in graduate school I had a friend who came to the US from India on a student visa. He is working on his Ph.D. and is doing most of the work at Los Alamos. If our nuclear secrets are so important, why is the US government letting foreign nationals into our research lab. If you let citizens from developing nuclear nations (i.e. China, India) into these labs you had better expect to have theft and espionage.
Which brings me to my next rant. If you need people to do this research, find American Ph.D. students. Encourage them to finish their degrees. I left my Ph.D. program because most of the breaks were given to the foreign students. Why should I stick around a degree program when non-US students are given more funding? Why should I stick around when I can take a job somewhere else improve my lifestyle?
I don't understand how anyone can be so sloppy with classified information, not to mention nuclear weapons information. When I was a peon in the military, we were always told of the exciting career opportunities in Alaska that awaited anyone who was negligent in handling classified information.
Or the opportunities in materials processing in Kansas? I expressed the same confusion to a co-worker because of a similar background, and he pointed out that those opportunities are part of the reason for the differences.
In the military, you are dealing with an enlisted workforce that can't leave (except for a window of opportunity every 3-6 years). The military has broad flexibility in the variety and degree of punishment, ranging from scut details to Leavenworth, and there is little difficulty in assigning that punishment, expecially at the lower end of the range.
On the other hand, government labs have to attract and retain researchers who are willing to work for lower salaries than their commercial counterparts. These researchers are more likely to look into work rules beforehand, can leave at any time, are subject to a limited range of punishments ranging from unemployment to prison, and have a high barrier toward applying these punishments. In such an environment, it is probably impossible to establish or to enforce security policies to military levels (which are not themselves perfect).
Well, a report from MSNBC suggest the missing data is more likely related to the wildfire that took place recently than espionage. Perhaps some high level official evacuated the data to prevent it from potentially being consumed by the fire. Here's the report on MSNBC: Report [msnbc.com]
it was probably some really old russian spy who's been hiding out since '44 in the los alamos area...so top secret he was instructed not to contact Mother Russia untill he had extremely valuable information. Below is an encrypted message from "Vladimir" (as he is known) to KGB Headquarters, dated 6/13/00
"DEAR GOD!! THE AMERICANS HAVE THE BOMB!!!!"
FluX After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
...from those questionable Chinese sources seems to be paying off for them. Not to mention whoever else we happen to not have caught with their hands in Clinton's policy by virtue of them contributing to his media blitz that helped to entrance and ensnare the votes of the gullible American populace. Everyone knows, and yet noone wants to burn the traitor for his treason. He can lie, he can blackmail and push people to suicide (where's that link with the list of people connected to the Clintons that have met questionable, untimely deaths?)... and noone cares. Where will we draw the line? Is it America not giving a damn? Or is America being deluded and sidetracked by a media that dislodges any real, honest prying eyes into this scheister's life.
We deem far too much classified. As of a couple of years ago, Project Urchin was still classified. Urchin was the baseball sized metallic neutron initiator used in the Hiroshima bomb. Normally, I'd applaud them for keeping nuclear secrets classified. Only prob here is that the Soviets widely published OUR diagrams (courtesy of the Rosenbergs, no doubt) in the early sixties!! Worse yet, any physics grad could spec out a superior replacement!!
The information is public knowledge, and yet still classified.
Makes me wonder just how paranoid they are when they say 'classified'. For all I know, they've deemed the Los Alamos cafeteria schedule classified because it might be used to help poison some foolhardy scientist in ten years. Or perhaps they've classified their work schedule, because they don't want the GAO to know they work twenty hour weeks and bill for forty..
For all I know, they've deemed the Los Alamos cafeteria schedule classified because it might be used to help poison some foolhardy scientist in ten years.
Nope. The Los Alamos cafeteria schedule is in fact available on the web for the entire world to see at [lanl.gov] http://www.lanl.gov/labview/services/CafeteriaMe nu/menu.htm.
acording to nbc nightly news, it has been missing for over TWO months now. Or, over a month before the fires. Also, the hard disks and other things had been stored in a vault. If it wasnt foul play, then it has to be chalked up to some really stupid play.
I hear the security is much tighter at government contracters than it is in the government itself. I work for a lab that does a lot fo governemt work. Sometimes I feel like I can't fart without getting some type of clearence. You want to take home that old 486 to make it part of your beawulf cluster? I don't think so! Governemt contracters are serious about security because they can loose their securty clearence. You can't fire a group that is part fo the governmemt as well.
This is beginning to get a bit frightening. The question is..have all these computers that have come up "missing" gone the way of the thousands of single socks and just been misplaced hopefully, or are these things walking out with someone and ending up in the wrong hands? This incident in particular worries me the most if that is the case.
The other question is why are we not hearing about someone being punished for the serious lack of control of these classified materials?
I don't have a security clearence, but I work for a lab that does a lot of governemt work. A few doors down there is a classified room that had been locked for so long that the lock was rusting. I always wonered what was in it (old alien autopsy footage?) One day they had the room open to inventory the lab's property or something. I sneaked my head in and found racks and racks of old reel to reel 8-track computer tapes. The funny thing is that the lab no longer has any equipment to read those tapes. It seems once something is classified it has to be held even if the information is useless. They could have the tapes destroyed but my guess is that this would involve a lot of red tape and it might be easier just to store the things. It really reminded me of the ending scene to Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arch! I am sure the US has room like the one in the movie. Maybe we do already have the arch.
I don't understand how anyone can be so sloppy with classified information, not to mention nuclear weapons information. When I was a peon in the military, we were always told of the exciting career opportunities in Alaska that awaited anyone who was negligent in handling classified information.
Blame Canada! (Score:2)
It's scary, very scary. They look like Americans, talk like Americans (except for "eh", "zed", and better grammar), and are pretty much allowed to cross the border willy-nilly.
Meanwhile, they're driving energy prices up (they're the U.S.'s biggest petroleum supplier, if you include natural gas), and for god sakes, they have nationalized health care!
God save us!
new /. topic (Score:5)
What's with all this secret nuclear weapons info? (Score:1)
Let the masses have a play with the source - it can only make it better - better yet, GPL the weapons information :)
Re:The (Lack of) security of the United States (Score:1)
I kind of thought the shot that blew Kennedy's head off was right on the money screw up's my ass!!!
Thank you for the most amazing bit of political journalism that I have ever read
PS ever thought of working for a Government Think Tank or the NSA they need genius like yours!!!
Re:Bill Gates is a petty goon not a mastermind (Score:1)
Bill Gates is not an evil genius, but, pretending he is makes for Quality Humor, IMO.
Old (Score:1)
But let's not worry about this new missing information, it was probably just Tom Cruise looking for the NOC-List.
Do I get bad movie reference Karma?
Maybe a mushroom cloud? (Score:1)
Military Just Trying to Help Out Clueless Wannabee (Score:1)
Night
Surely Not (Score:2)
More about the missing data (Score:4)
The Reuters [excite.com] story at excite is pretty thorough; basically it's unclear whether the two hard drives were destroyed, lost, or stolen. Funny thing is, they were discovered lost May 7 - but the Energy Department wasn't notified until June 1. Employees are to take lie detector tests, and it seems they whole search setup is becoming a big mess.
The Washington Post story [washingtonpost.com] also has a good wrap-up. According to most sources, the drives were last seen in a suitcase in a vault in a Los Alamos lab. I think the confusion of the evacuation due to the recent fires might have something to do with this...
And here's the Los Angeles Times [latimes.com] article.
By morning I guess most major newspapers will have it in print and on their websites, but in the case of something like this I've always thought earlier is better. Let's just hope the drives are recovered...
Question: Was fire an accident or part of plan? (Score:2)
Heh. Nothing new here... (Score:2)
I was once astonished by the ineptitude of our various national organizations; now I realize that they're simply composed of people, most of whom are just trying to get their jobs done in a timely way.
Scientists (even top secret burn-your-publications-before-submitting-them nuclear fizzicists) are smart enough to outwit almost any security scheme -- especially one thought up by the kind of "experts" who end up in government jobs rather than academia. Witness Wen Ho Lee, who, while under investigation for possibly sharing secrets with the Chinese government, was able (for whatever reason) to smuggle hundreds of megabytes of ultrasecret bomb simulation data through the security barrier onto insecure tapes.
Further, the motivations for leaking data are so numerous -- from carelessness through the simple convenience/laziness factor, right up to giant moral dilemmas (such as was explored in Durenmatt's The Physicists [amazon.com]) that it's impossible to address them all. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
On some level, it doesn't really matter if someone leaked classified data. There's probably nothing there that can't be computed with Metropolis, Runge-Kutta, and a gazillion-node Beowulf cluster of next year's K6's. The basic principles are an open book, and compute technology is growing too quickly for the radiation transfer and nuclear reaction simulations to be more than a few-year barrier. In the long run, everyone interested knows everything.
"When people treat items of a highly classified nature just like it's ordinary stuff, something's wrong," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee,told NBC News (in the MSNBC writeup). Arguably, the real problem comes when people treat items of a highly classified nature just like they're going to stay secret forever. These kind of debacles are just a wake-up call for those who would pretend otherwise.
Re:Difference in security. -Seriously (Score:2)
lets get paranoid (Score:2)
This controversial, billion dollar project will require their support but also the support of the tax paying citizens in the USA. I'm cynical enough that the US is trying to convince their own people that such a shield is needed by 'leaking' this sort of news.
Hmmmm (Score:3)
all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental. - Kurt Vonnegut
While searching for an icon - (Score:2)
Busted NY Times link.. (Score:2)
Maybe the URL you meant was http://par tners.nytimes.com/library/national/061300los-alamo s-theft.html [nytimes.com] ..?
Check this one out! (Score:2)
This Washi ngton Post article [washingtonpost.com] reports that Los Alamos employees are concerned about their image, because most everybody thinks they're running a really sloppy ship. I think they should be less concerned with their image and more concerned with the massively confidential and top-secret U.S. and Russian nuclear data they're missing.
What nuclear secrets do we have? (Score:2)
What's that I hear on Slashdot? Information wants to be free? I'd be willing to bet that someone's head is going to roll because information escaped that's already out there anyway.
Cripes... (Score:2)
Re:Encryption? (Score:2)
Re:the irony... (Score:3)
In the case, say, of an SLBM launch that may not be readily feasible in the time before impact.
In the case of accidental launch (possible, given that systems have been breaking down to the point where incoming ICBMs have been reported (falsely) by alarm systems), you generally don't WANT to retalliate, as if it's a single launch it's a bit petulant to destroy all life on Earth.
And so forth. MAD works only versus known enemies, like nations, that don't launch anonymously.
Re:Difference in security. (Score:2)
employees. They work for UC Berkeley, as do Lawrence Livermore
employees.
the irony... (Score:4)
most of the comments go along the lines of "stealing OUR information". Hrm. So like, it's evil for a company to not disclose source code of its competitive assets (ie: MS's kernel), but it is ok for America to keep its competitive assets (ie: nuclear tech) secret?
Isn't there something wrong here? Everyone on
And don't tell me its because atom bombs are far more destructive than the source code to a kernel. Go look at how Open Source tackles security - ie: Bugtraq, vunl-dev. That's all "open" - and everyone benefits because we can protect ourselves from attackers much better if we know their tools. So, likewise this should be the case on a larger scale - if we knew what weapons existed, we could better prepare ourselves against them.
See my point?
What ARE you then??? (Score:2)
>especially about American deaths?
Canadian? There's this little thing called fallout.
English? We don't know WHO got those hard drives. What if it was the Irish and not the chineese?
Israeli? You're SURROUNDED by nice guys whose biggist wish is the chance to finish what the nazis started.
Get my point? Rogue nations with nukes is a BAD THING(tm).
Not to mention that if anyone starts throwing nukes at the US, or any of the other legitimate nuclear powers, such as the UK, France, or Russia, they're gonna get a handful right back in their faces... MORE fallout, MORE environmental damage.
And that's not EVEN considering economic consequences. Imagine the effects of a 25 Megaton airburst over, say, Sunnyvale.
(Or better yet, go see for yourself: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/mapabl
Looks to me like you'd better START careing.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Crypting / Splitting Data ? Why not? (Score:2)
1) Crypt it with a nice proven encryption algorithm
2) Split it onto 3 drives, two containing data and then the third containing an xor.
3) Store all three drives in separate "secure" locations
4) Use video cameras with offsite video archiving to tape vault entries.
5) Store encryption keys in the 4th and 5th extremely 'secure' locations with multiple security teams and monitoring at each
This way, 2 drives must be stolen for data to be valid and decodable. 1 drive may be lost (We know the feds do that a lot). Encryption keys can become lost (at one location).
Data is safe from nuclear attack (unless 3 nukes are targetted at all three locations of data store or both locations of key storage).
Is this excessive or am I just paranoid? I know there are many more ideas to do in order to secure data, lets hear comments from the rest of
(I know this will get moderated as a "Good Thing" (tm))
Free Porn! [ispep.cx] or Laugh [ispep.cx]
But Seriously, Folks...It *Shouldn't* Matter... (Score:4)
Why oh why is my fetish for doggie porn and Britney Spears fakes more well-guarded than classified data? If I can get into the habit of entering a passphrase to access my data drives, why can't the DoD, State Department, et al. make disk encryption an across-the-board standard for all employees dealing with sensitive data? We can be sure that this isn't the case, because otherwise the government would be downplaying its irresponsibility by mentioning that the stolen data encrypted and secure. So the question becomes, why isn't this policy, and when will they wake up and make it policy?
[For the curious, I use a free Windows program called Scramdisk which can make encrytpted "virtual drives" or encrypt whole partitions. Its source code is freely available, but is not GPL. It's very secure with a choice of 256-bit Twofish or eight other ciphers. It ensures that family and friends will not uncover my secret she-male fixation. Oops, did I type that out loud?]
Re:No foul play this time it seems (Score:2)
Microsoft Windows 2000 Small Country Edition
Includes
United States NEST Intergratioin
Nuclear Launch Plugin for Internet Explorer 5.7
Internated with the Kernel, Launch Pad 2.0
Real Time Denation 3.0
Real time Denation Montior 2.0
Supports up to 2000 differant types of Nuclear Weapons
Devices Drivers for NaPalm Techonlgy Included
500 Pre-programmed Country GPS locations
OutLook Express 6.0 with Advanced Scripting and Automatic Attachment opening
Re:Other Los Alamos Security Links (Score:2)
It's funny, our government wants to bend over for the PRC because there's money to be made in trade and nobody seems to give a damn, but it needs to crucify it's citizens when embarrassing security lapses are exposed.
The ironic part is that this man probably hates the PRC more than any US politician, being of Taiwanese birth and (I assume) ethnically Chinese. But of the course the dumb yokels in Washington and the media aren't going to explain that, it being so convient to have a Chinese man to take the fall.
We've got a Broken Arrow (Score:3)
Oops!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Re:Encryption? (Score:2)
But you have to agree on some level, encrypting all the data on a hard disk could provide "extra" security in case the drive came up missing. Sure there is only a 1 in 1000^80000 chance that someone is going to be able to breach security and take the drive, but couldn't the encryption on this drives used as a "safety neat" or "back up plan"??
One thing I was always told by the Senior admin here (or was here, he left about a year ago) was that when dealing with security, there should be more than one thing to "stop" someone looking to breach your security.
For example, we setup a firewall that block 2 computers from the Internet, then put tcpwrappers on both computers. I asked, "what is the point of tcpwrappers, everything will be stopped by the firewall", he told me to just install them and make sure they where secure.
One day when we had a hard drive crash on the firewall, we quickly rebuild the machine (our backups wheren't up to date (this was a mistake on our part)), and in our inpatiences it got seriously misconfigured. (this was also our screwup)
That night, we had a ton of log files from tcpwrappers from one IP that was trying to telnet, ftp and everything else into those 2 computers, guess what, the tcpwrappers stop them from even getting a log in prompt (even if they did get a login prompt, %90 of the accounts had
Setting up a second (or even an eigth) security measure can be a pain, but once in a while it can really save your ass in a bad sisuation.
Stolen data files, hmmmm... (Score:2)
Re:What nuclear secrets do we have? (Score:3)
Ok a little information on the level of security (Score:2)
Re:I dunno about that (Score:2)
Point is, it would be very, very difficult for someone who was not supposed to have access to get it -- but you can never totally protect against either insider espionage jobs or people being stupid. Los Alamos is particularly prone to both of these problems because a) it does work that a lot of people care quite a bit about, and b) it's friggin' huge.
Stop letting foreign nationals work at US labs (Score:2)
Which brings me to my next rant. If you need people to do this research, find American Ph.D. students. Encourage them to finish their degrees. I left my Ph.D. program because most of the breaks were given to the foreign students. Why should I stick around a degree program when non-US students are given more funding? Why should I stick around when I can take a job somewhere else improve my lifestyle?
Re:Accountability (Score:3)
Or the opportunities in materials processing in Kansas? I expressed the same confusion to a co-worker because of a similar background, and he pointed out that those opportunities are part of the reason for the differences.
In the military, you are dealing with an enlisted workforce that can't leave (except for a window of opportunity every 3-6 years). The military has broad flexibility in the variety and degree of punishment, ranging from scut details to Leavenworth, and there is little difficulty in assigning that punishment, expecially at the lower end of the range.
On the other hand, government labs have to attract and retain researchers who are willing to work for lower salaries than their commercial counterparts. These researchers are more likely to look into work rules beforehand, can leave at any time, are subject to a limited range of punishments ranging from unemployment to prison, and have a high barrier toward applying these punishments. In such an environment, it is probably impossible to establish or to enforce security policies to military levels (which are not themselves perfect).
No foul play this time it seems (Score:2)
---------------
Fixed CNN Link (Score:2)
--
"Give him head?"
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad
los alamos eh... (Score:4)
"DEAR GOD!! THE AMERICANS HAVE THE BOMB!!!!"
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Clinton's campaign contributions..... (Score:2)
Re:Backups? (Score:2)
Yep. What are the chances of a forest fire taking out Los Alamos and Peking?
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Re:los alamos eh... (Score:3)
The information is public knowledge, and yet still classified.
Makes me wonder just how paranoid they are when they say 'classified'. For all I know, they've deemed the Los Alamos cafeteria schedule classified because it might be used to help poison some foolhardy scientist in ten years. Or perhaps they've classified their work schedule, because they don't want the GAO to know they work twenty hour weeks and bill for forty..
Re:los alamos eh... (Score:3)
Nope. The Los Alamos cafeteria schedule is in fact available on the web for the entire world to see at [lanl.gov]
http://www.lanl.gov/labview/services/CafeteriaM
Re:No foul play this time it seems (Score:2)
If it wasnt foul play, then it has to be chalked up to some really stupid play.
Other Los Alamos Security Links (Score:2)
Conflicting opinions on Los Alamos fire heard on Capitol Hill [cnn.com]
FBI told Taiwan-born physicist he failed polygraph exam that he passed [cnn.com]
Nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee charged with 59 counts in Los Alamos case [cnn.com]
China spy suspect fired by Energy Department [cnn.com]
... "Be a beacon?"
--
"Give him head?"
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft Ad
Difference in security. (Score:4)
Missing? (Score:2)
Re:los alamos eh... (Score:3)
Accountability (Score:3)