The american government has some problems while securing confidential data on one of it's servers says Wired...
Really?

The server was the one on which the American government stored information relating to the companies having signed the treaty of Safe Harbor. I.e. the document aiming at protecting the European nationals against the escape of personal data from Europe towards the United States, via the subsidiary of American companies.

kind of problems are not a surprise for Kitetoa's readers. Looks like people at Wired are getting more and more interested in the result misconfigured servers can generate. Good idea.

If he new the type of servers blamed in this story (Lotus-Domino), Declan doesn't seem to have looked at what the government does (in general) with this type of servers. We won't even talk about what the army does whith those servers...

Thus, enter with Kitetoa in the gov's Web, running Domino. Oh, by the way, we spent a small hour on this. If someone spends a few days there in a systematic and rigorous way, I'm quite sure he would discover some good things. As you suspect it, it was an under-site of the Commerce department which released the data Wired talks about. One would then imagine that all the servers were screened and that there is no more risk to see some Lotus bases (lower parts of these servers where information is stored, would it be personal or not...) being spread out again from an American governmental server. Well...

We toured on the Commerce department's web site. It is not totally ok... Same for the the department of the Interior. Another site says that the bases are not accessible. Except that, in fact, they are... Thank you my bro...wser (yes, with a browser, one browses)... You'll then very quickly get to the list of the bases. And to the detail... On one of the many sites hosted by the Commerce department one finds other Lotus bases... Same on the Construction and urban development's site. Do you want the list of the users of idunowhatstuffontheserver? Easy. The access to this list is not protected. Access to individuals' details is not either.

Some will have noticed on the screenshot that the access to the users is provided directly in edition mode. It is thus very simple to modify the data...

Same stuff on another site. What's that server for? looks like it is a database of people having been blacklisted by the Health department. Here again, the data can be modified. It would be easy for a blacklisted guy to change his own data. On the e-paper at least...

Finally (because we won't enumerate all the things we found, it would be boring), there also is this site: usatrade.gov which seems to experience some problems... The administration pages (modification of the headings) are accessible, the bases also, and it is possible to list some personal data which oddly did not know how to escape trough the holes of this Gruyere...

Cyber war my ass!

When you look at the gov's web part with these eyes (we see what your mental representation of the web can't show you) you wonder why the guys in the army and the itelligence community (NSA, FBI ands CIA mostly) screw our brains with their stupid idea of cyber war. They sould start installing their stuff correctly, with more suitable tools. The so called cyber war often starts in front of the door of your small suburbian flat.

Installing a dirty Lotus-Domino correctly should not be much more expensive than installing it the way they do... Why would they ask then for some millions dollars to fight against a very hypothetical conflict.

What's more... They have not even engaged themself in this conflict which they think they forsee and they have already lost it.

No, no, not becauses of our small findings.

Kitetoa