| Main Archive Page > Month Archives > infosec-news archives |
[ISN] Human Errors Fuel Hacking as Test Shows Nothing Stops Idiocy
From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_nospam>Date: Thu Jun 30 2011 - 07:24:08 GMT
To: isn@infosecnews.org
By Cliff Edwards, Olga Kharif and Michael Riley
Bloomberg
June 27, 2011
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a test this year to see how
hard it was for hackers to corrupt workers and gain access to computer
systems. Not very, it turned out.
Staff secretly dropped computer discs and USB thumb drives in the
parking lots of government buildings and private contractors. Of those
who picked them up, 60 percent plugged the devices into office
computers, curious to see what they contained. If the drive or CD case
had an official logo, 90 percent were installed.
“There’s no device known to mankind that will prevent people from being
idiots,” said Mark Rasch, director of network security and privacy
consulting for Falls Church, Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corp.
(CSC)
The test showed something computer security experts have long known:
Humans are the weak link in the fight to secure networks against
sophisticated hackers. The intruders’ ability to exploit people’s
vulnerabilities has tilted the odds in their favor and led to a spurt in
cyber crimes.
[...]
___________________________________________________________
Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended
Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management,
Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery
Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter.
Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure.
http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/