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Posted by: Samker
« on: 01. March 2009., 21:18:55 »
According to WPXI, a Pennsylvania company has uncovered a security breach involving the President's Marine One helicopters, a P2P file-sharing program, and an IP address in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Although President Obama and other high-ranking American government officials have access to a fleet of high-tech and security-enhanced helicopters, the term "Marine One" is used to refer specifically to the helicopter in which the President currently is flying. The technical specifications for all of the helicopters in the fleet are highly classified, and any security breach, particularly to a hostile foreign power, is naturally of great concern.
The fact that it is happening through simple file-sharing programs, which most people seem to think are just for the "harmless" sharing of music and video files, is even more alarming.
Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, the company who discovered the breach, explains, "We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president's helicopter[, at an IP address in Tehran]. What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD [Maryland] had a file sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One."
But Iran is not alone in using file-sharing programs as a backdoor into otherwise secure government and business networks. Boback continues, "We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar, and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence."
(NeoWin)