DHS e-mail snafu reveals info on thousands of security pros

[swag]

Source: Computerworld

October 04, 2007 (Computerworld) -- A Reply All to a daily news roundup that had been e-mailed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to some 7,500 people, including thousands of security professionals, flooded government and business mail servers with over 2 million messages Wednesday.

The gaffe also revealed all subscribers' e-mail addresses, and in some cases other personal information, to other recipients of the DHS bulletin. Some of that information, including telephone numbers and titles of military personnel and government workers, may have been classified.

According to the New York Times, the unintended spam run began when a recipient of the "DHS Daily Open Source Infrastructure Report" hit the Reply All button to transmit an e-mail address change request.

By the end of the day, more than 2 million messages had been generated as recipients also using Reply or Reply All first complained about the spam surge, then added to the flood by mailing offhand comments, humorous remarks or demands that people stop sending messages.

Read more: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9040878&source=NLT_PM&nlid=8

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'Is this being a joke?' asks researcher with Iran's Ministry of Defense

[zbdent]

1. I think we may have discovered the next appointee

for this administration ...

Heckuva job ...

[truthisfreedom]

2. Appoint him/her to the highest open position in the land, with the greatest social responsibility!

We can re-name the Peter principle the bushco principle. People rise far above their level of incompetence.

[swag]

3. Gawd, DHS wasn't even using a bulk emailer for this dispatch,

just mailing it to a big list to which anyone could "reply all."

Your George W. Bush Department of Homeland Security.

Heckuva job, Chertoff.

[swag]

4. DHS just completely compormised its IT security force in the stupidest way possible.

Does anybody get it?

Didn't think so.

[foo_bar]

5. incompetence is a double-edged sword of Damocles

Instead of 1984 we inherited the Ministry of Information from Gilliam's Brazil; police state bureaucrats are selected for mediocrity by virtue of nepotism, simple mistakes are magnified catastrophically by the lack of controls ("Mistakes? We don't make mistakes"), while life threatening emergencies are politely ignored until both parties fill out the requisite paperwork ("don't forget your 27B stroke 6").

[damntexdem]

6. Way to go, Hoaxland Security!

You're doing a heckuva job!