US agency baffled by modern technology, destroys mice to get rid of viruses (no joke))

[DainBramaged]

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) is an agency in the Department of Commerce that promotes economic development in regions of the US suffering low growth, low employment, and other economic problems. In December 2011, the Department of Homeland Security notified both the EDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that there was a potential malware infection within the two agencies' systems.

The NOAA isolated and cleaned up the problem within a few weeks.

The EDA, however, responded by cutting its systems off from the rest of the world—disabling its enterprise e-mail system and leaving its regional offices no way of accessing centrally-held databases.

It then recruited in an outside security contractor to look for malware and provide assurances that not only were EDA's systems clean, but also that they were impregnable against malware. The contractor, after some initial false positives, declared the systems largely clean but was unable to provide this guarantee. Malware was found on six systems, but it was easily repaired by reimaging the affected machines.

EDA's CIO, fearing that the agency was under attack from a nation-state, insisted instead on a policy of physical destruction. The EDA destroyed not only (uninfected) desktop computers but also printers, cameras, keyboards, and even mice. The destruction only stopped—sparing $3 million of equipment—because the agency had run out of money to pay for destroying the hardware.

The total cost to the taxpayer of this incident was $2.7 million: $823,000 went to the security contractor for its investigation and advice, $1,061,000 for the acquisition of temporary infrastructure (requisitioned from the Census Bureau), $4,300 to destroy $170,500 in IT equipment, and $688,000 paid to contractors to assist in development a long-term response. Full recovery took close to a year


http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/us-agency-baffled-by-modern-technology-destroys-mice-to-get-rid-of-viruses/

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/241/3382009/EDAs-overreaction-to-cyber-attack-highlights-every-agencys-challenge

[REP]

1. Face. Palm.

I hope they burnt all the paper in the printers, too ...

[FarCenter]

2. If they are USB mice, they can probably be used like a data spike to infect a computer

You could modify the guts of a corded USB mouse to attack the PC to which it is attached.

[bananas]

5. Yup, and if they thought they were under attack by a nation-state,

they should have given the hardware to the NSA for analysis.

[RC]

8. The NSA is to busy spying on us for stuff like that.

[Igel]

3. Quick. Promote that CIO to head the NSA.

Or perhaps the ACA's information office.

When you centralize authority in the hands of one person, you quite possibly are centralizing it in the hands of a fool.

[DainBramaged]

4. All they needed (even back then) was Malwarebytes

dumbasse.


I wonder what the contractor kickback was? I would have cleaned the systems for $95 an hour.

[ohheckyeah]

7. Truly -

most of us couldn't have taken care of it within a couple of hours.

[LWolf]

6. Okay. I admit it.

I read the title, clicked on the thread, and expected this:

[RC]

10. As did I.

From reading the rest of it, it would make sense they'd do that.

[Rex]

9. That guys sounds qualified to run the MIC.

Our country is run by people that somehow found a job over just wandering around in taffic.