Especially if you're a government employee or contractor, and have sensitive things on your computer. Like lists of patients being treated for mental illness or HIV, photos of alleged Mafia hit men, or the plans for the President's new helicopter. All of the above have been accidentally leaked over file-sharing networks from work computers by government employees or their families.
]]> This is a big enough problem that a Congressional panel on the topic met yesterday, and Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) plans to introduce a bill banning all filesharing software from government employees' and contractors' work computers.Robert Boback, chief executive of Tiversa, a company that scours music- and file-sharing networks on the Internet for sensitive data, said the use of such software is being exploited by foreign governments for espionage and other purposes. "Other countries know how to access this information and they are accessing this information," he said.
Boback told the committee that Tiversa found FBI surveillance photos of an alleged hit man on the Internet while he was still on trial. The company also found the government's confidential witness list for that trial, which included the names of some people in the government's witness protection program. He said the company found the documents while scouring the networks for other data for a client.
Boback, who was asked by the committee not to publicly identify the hit man, said the defendant was recently convicted and sent to prison for life.
"This is not information you want to have out there," he said.
The Department of Homeland Security also recommends that nobody use filesharing software, and in an interview with Consumerist, Gartner Research privacy analyst Avivah Litan warned us civilians to be careful with such networks, too. So there's that.
File Sharing Leaks Sensitive Federal Data, Lawmakers Are Told [Washington Post]
(Photo: CJ Sorg)
]]>@Applyin'Sunscreen_GitEmSteveDave: Camden County here. That's what I meant about the wind blowing from the west. You know, from Philly and Camden. You would think Camden would smell like tomato soup, but it realy doesn't.
]]>Nevermind that a heavy percentage of P2P use is for copyright infringement (Not that I'm one to talk about that!) but these are their work computers. For working on. And doing work. Not for snagging the new Jonas Brothers album.
]]>@Trai_Dep: Absolutely. I have a lot of respect for the contractors I work with, but at some agencies they outnumber the federal employees and it's hard to keep track of all their work situations.
]]>All of the above have been accidentally leaked over file-sharing networks from work computers by government employees or their families.
This is a small but important point: the problem may not be with work computers. Some employees & contractors may have taken work home and had the filesharing software there.
It's not uncommon for govt employees to take work home. Whether or not they should is another discussion. But locking down work computers 100% won't solve the problem.
]]>Jesus christ, what a bunch of fucking morons.
]]>Apologies for the pedantry. I just don't want GNU's good name sullied by tawdry mafia-hitman-photo-and-Python-sketch-sharing scandal.
]]>I remember back in the days of Kazaa and finding some dope that shared C:\. It was always fun looking at their personal info, maybe some "private" photos or even bank statements. I never did anything with, but sometimes I'd send a message to the person that they're stupid and need to unshare that shit.
]]>@xay: That's what I'm wondering. I can't install anything or watch videos of any kind, not even on CNN.
]]>Considering that ALL modern operating systems provide file sharing software automatically, this seems like a pretty stupid and short sighted bill.
]]>I can't even watch a YouTube video or install Firefox on my state government computer, but federal employees have been installing P2P software?
]]>There are several ways around standard NTFS permissions restrictions. This is probably a field agent that had Admin access to his system (legitimate or not).
No Administrator who values their position would install ANY P2P software on a users computer as a "favor". That's a CEM big time. I would have never done it for any friend I have ever had when I was in IT.
]]>@Applyin'Sunscreen_GitEmSteveDave:
You should move south. It doesn't smell quite so bad down here as long as the wind isn't blowing from the west.
You are better off running downloads and any peer to peer things on a dedicated computer, preferably isolated from your other computers.
]]>so yeah, don't share your whole hard drive, but it also might be a good idea to be aware of ways to shut down potential attacks on your network before they happen.
]]>I was able to see 10 laptop contents once while staying at a hotel. They had free wifi. Naturally, so was their filesharing.
]]>Thank you all for making the distinction between P2P clients and Torrents.
@Applyin'Sunscreen_GitEmSteveDave: You will in a Fish Called Wanda.
]]>@tmlfan81:
This is not torrents, this is using Kazaa or some other similar thing, that shares folders with other users to download from.
With BitTorrent you're only downloading and uploading the specific file or files that are in the torrent.
]]>This has to do with crappy P2P like Gnutella clients (Acquisition on Mac, Cabos on PC, etc.) in which you specify shared folders for others to download from. Some people are too lazy to navigate/create a shared folder that is isolated from the rest of their drive, so they select the ENTIRE drive to share. No backdoor here, just retarded P2P habits.
]]>Gov't Employee Fail?
*sigh*
]]>How do people get access to your "entire" drive using P2P? I thought you were only downloading the file and uploading (reseeding) back what you collected so other people could more users could access the files. Is there some backdoor through uTorrent or Transmission that I'm missing?
]]>