Last week, Heritage published a listing of cybersecurity breaches affecting federal government systems from 2004 to the present. The listing is already out of date.
On the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, it was disclosed that the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), where federal employees bank their pension money, had been breached. Data from more than 120,000 individuals was stolen in a “sophisticated cyber attack.”
The data lost included Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and in some cases financial information about the account. That combination of data is useful to the thief as a means of falsely claiming a TSP participant’s identity.
Cybersecurity is a growing problem for the federal government. According to an October 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office, the number of attacks on federal systems grew by nearly a factor of 10 from 2006 to 2010. By all accounts, the frequency of breaches does not seem to be getting any lower in the last two years, as the breach of the TSP demonstrates.
If the operating systems of computers were not designed to allow for our government and advertisers to spy on us, then the sites would be more secure. I am sorry to say that this whole problem was designed into the system as part our our governments attempt to protect us.
When Microsoft was allowed to maintain their monopoly they gave the government a back door into all systems using their software. This is now being exploited by the hackers to steal anything they want. This is another clear example of governments regulations that fail to protect anything, and actually make the problems MUCH worse. Microsoft and the NSA are the cause of this problem, and both of them should be broken up since neither are capable of protecting our privacy.