A “critical compromise” of communications across 17 Air Force facilities

While the FBI and Jack Smith chase Trump, it’s hard to ignore the actual serial breaches of national security that keep happening because our ability to maintain the security of classified information is up there with a Wendy’s franchise.

Let’s review some of the great moments in national security.

Edward Snowden, who was working as a Dell subcontractor for the NSA and then Booz Allen Hamilton, collected login info from dozens of other employees before absconding to Russia.

China pulled off a massive breach of OPM personnel information when a subcontractor logged in from China.

Jack Teixeira, an Airman First Class, managed to leak a ton of classified information on a Minecraft Discord serve to settle various arguments.

Here’s another world-class moment in national security.

The Pentagon is investigating what it has called a “critical compromise” of communications across 17 Air Force facilities by one of its engineers, according to a search warrant obtained by Forbes. The document also details evidence of a possible breach of FBI communications by the same employee, who worked at the Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee.

When law enforcement raided his home, they found he had “unauthorized administrator access” to radio communications tech used by the Air Education and Training Command (AETC), “affecting 17 DoD installations,” according to the warrant. The AETC is one of nine “major commands,” defined by the Pentagon as “interrelated and complementary, providing offensive, defensive, and support elements” to Air Force HQ.

During the raid, investigators also discovered an open computer screen showing the suspect was running a Motorola radio programming software, “which contained the entire Arnold Air Force Base (AAFB) communications system,” according to the warrant.

A colleague had twice reported him because of “insider threat indicators” and unauthorized possession of Air Force equipment, investigators said.

The insider threat part is significant especially as we don’t know the man’s name. But there’s an overall historical pattern of sloppy security. We have a massive mostly useless hierarchy that holds meetings and writes up papers and an underclass of technically competent employees, some from subcontractors, doing the actual work, and some of them are unreliable as hell but nobody pays much attention until something happens.

We have a military packed full of even more useless people than your average Fortune 500 company. Meanwhile, all sorts of people have access to classified information who shouldn’t have it, the flagrantly unreliable remain on the job until something happens. The big achievement here is that there was a bust before everything ended up on the internet.

Our national security on the data end remains absurdly terrible. So bad it’s a laughingstock.

Leading U.S. government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton has been found to have left more than 60,000 sensitive files on a publicly accessible Amazon Web Services server, according to a leading cybersecurity researcher.

The files were discovered by Chris Vickery, an analyst at the cybersecurity firm UpGuard, who told CyberScoop it’s “highly likely” that malicious actors are downloading this publicly exposed data but said it remains unclear if anyone realized and acted on the gravity of the exposed data. A large part of Booz Allen Hamilton’s business is contracting with intelligence agencies.

The revelation came just hours after a company spokesperson said the former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s review of Booz Allen Hamilton security, personnel and management practices is “substantially complete.” The final report will be in the hands of the company’s leadership shortly.

And there were never any breaches again.

Hillary Clinton sending classified information to her Muslim aide to print out perfectly encapsulates the state of our national security.

Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield