It has been returned safely and in good condition to Los Alamos - not a single compromise was detected..
Tom Dashle is very pleased and much credit is given to Al Gore for locating the device (and of course for inventing the world wide web).
Posted on 07/15/2004 8:43:17 PM PDT by take
Frantic search for lost data at Los Alamos Director of UC-run lab called to S.F. for meeting with regents The loss of two storage devices containing classified data at a University of California-run nuclear weapons laboratory is another blow to a university system trying to hang onto its half-century management of the lab.
The devices have been missing for at least a week at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and investigators say they are almost literally turning the lab upside-down in an effort to find them.
They're even receiving help from a special team of investigators from Washington that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham sent to New Mexico shortly after learning of the loss.
Los Alamos officials declined to say Wednesday whether the loss of the devices could threaten U.S. national security.
Many such devices at the lab contain information on weapons ranging from chemical explosives to thermonuclear bombs capable of vaporizing cities.
"I can't be specific what the data consists of, I'm sorry. All I can say is this is a very serious issue," Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark told The Chronicle. He added: "The search does continue. It is possible that they may never be found." Among the immediate repercussions: -- The UC Regents and UC officials have summoned Los Alamos lab Director George "Pete" Nanos to San Francisco to explain what's gone wrong at the lab. Nanos is to testify in a public session after 10 a.m. today at a UC facility at 3333 California St. -- UC's contract for managing the lab should "immediately" be terminated by the Energy Department "before they further put our national security at greater risk,"
Executive Director Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based nonprofit group that exposes what it calls abuses and mismanagement by federal agencies, said in a statement Wednesday. The current Los Alamos contract runs out in September 2005, and UC officials have not announced formally whether they'll compete for the next contract. -- UC's dwindling political support within the U.S.
Energy Department apparently has eroded further. Abraham is "extremely displeased" by the loss of the devices, his spokesman Joe Davis said Wednesday. Over the past two years, Abraham has grown increasingly angered by security problems at the lab, including revelations of missing documents at Los Alamos and issues around the safety of storing plutonium at Livermore.
Last year, the scandals helped inspire Abraham's decision to call for opening future contracts to run Los Alamos to bidders other than UC. Yet he recently pleased UC by extending its contract to run the Bay Area's Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons lab for another two years. A team from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, ordered to the New Mexico lab by Abraham, already is helping with the investigation, Davis said.
The missing devices are identified as Classified Removable Electronic Media or CREMs, lab officials said.
Officials refuse to describe their exact nature or contents. The story began brewing late Friday afternoon when the lab issued a press release acknowledging that "two items of Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM) were discovered missing from the Weapons Physics (WP) Directorate.
An immediate search did not locate the items. A subsequent and extensive search is currently continuing." The umbrella term "CREMs" refers to a wide range of electronic devices that can store computer data -- ranging from floppy disks to large, hard disk drives -- and that can be removed from one computer and installed in another. Roark also acknowledged that, in a related recent incident, lab officials failed to find two computer hard-disk drives in their accustomed places.
After a search that lasted "a couple of hours," investigators found the disk drives in a safe place. Roark said an investigation of the latter incident is under way. If anyone is found to be responsible, he or she might be fired, he added.
However, there is no reason to believe the hard drives were misplaced for suspicious or nefarious reasons, he added. Officials with the Project on Government Oversight accused Los Alamos Wednesday of covering up the brief loss of the hard disk drives. Roark denied this, stating that Energy Department regulations don't require such missing materials to be reported as missing for 24 hours. Since they were found sooner than that, "those items were, in fact, not considered 'missing,' " Roark said. The group's statement blasted Los Alamos management and UC:
"Los Alamos and the University of California had assured the government that this type of security failure could never happen because of a fail-safe system which was put in place after the Wen Ho Lee debacle in 1999 and the missing hard drives incident (which were later discovered mysteriously behind a copy machine) in 2000." The Lee case involved a Los Alamos scientist who came under suspicion as a possible spy. He was eventually freed.
Pete Stockton, an official with the nonprofit organization and former special assistant to Clinton administration Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, said: "We would fire the contractor (UC). This has gone on too long, they should be terminated immediately -- like Thursday, Friday! -- and have somebody else run it." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reaction From the Energy Department: A spokesman said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is "extremely displeased." From a watchdog group: UC's contract at Los Alamos should be terminated immediately "before they further put our national security at greater risk." From Los Alamos: A spokesman said, "I can't be specific what the data consists of, I'm sorry. All I can say is this is a very serious issue. ... The search does continue.''
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
HEARING OF THE ENERGY AND AIR QUALITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: PROPOSALS TO CONSOLIDATE THE OFFICES OF COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AT THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY http://www.fednews.com/transcript.htm?id=20040713t6953
Well, at least he does have some governmental connection rather than just being conntected to the non-profit "Project on Government Oversight."
United Nations and you get in
Hackers crack Defence Department
By JIM BRONSKILL
Canadian Press
E
Ottawa — Determined computer hackers broke through federal firewalls several times last year, gaining access to Defence Department networks.
A newly obtained report on security breaches at the department in 2003 also reveals dozens of internal lapses.
Computer security has become a high-profile concern in federal circles in light of cyber-terrorism, operations mounted by foreign intelligence services and, more often, the sloppy practices of employees.
The Defence Department's Computer Incident Response Team tracked a total of 160 events — from digital break-ins to dodgy e-mail procedures — last year.
Located in Ottawa at the Canadian Forces network operations centre, the team defends department computers by monitoring intrusion detection systems, zeroing in on threats and issuing alerts.
A declassified version of the team's report was released to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
It provides an indication of the difficulties faced by federal agencies such as the Defence Department in keeping their sprawling information holdings secure from interlopers.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has warned that it is almost impossible to eliminate network vulnerabilities entirely because computer systems and attack tools are in a constant state of evolution.
Other documents released by Defence underscore the high degree of confidentiality attached to such issues. Many of the records are classified top secret, with much of the information withheld from release due to its perceived sensitivity.
The response team's report notes five instances of “unauthorized privileged access” to Defence networks, considered the most serious of seven categories of breaches.
They also logged five cases of “unauthorized limited access” and 35 instances of “malicious logic” — the attempted introduction of viruses, worms or other unwanted programs into a computer system.
There were 110 cases of “poor security practice” on the part of employees, by far the most common problem last year. Of these, the majority involved concerns about the security of e-mail transmissions.
Others stemmed from use of Internet Relay Chat messaging and the popular KaZaa file-sharing service, inappropriate storage of materials, and unauthorized Web postings. Another case involved improper access to a network.
No one from the Defence Department was available Tuesday to discuss the security cases.
Several of the documents released by Defence were prepared by the Communications Security Establishment, the highly secretive federal agency with the dual role of electronic spy service and protector of federal computer systems.
The records indicate CSE focused on issues including the potential exploitation of wireless communication networks, suspicious probes of systems and the general methods employed by hackers.
It appears CSE also undertook an analysis of the so-called Blaster worm that infected computers last August.
Look behind the copy machine ... has Bill Richardson been visiting there again???
FMCDH(BITS)
BTTT
Can you say.....University of California?
What's the worry? Clinton sold all the good info.
When they said "send in the clowns," they sent to them to Los Alamos.
It has been returned safely and in good condition to Los Alamos - not a single compromise was detected..
Tom Dashle is very pleased and much credit is given to Al Gore for locating the device (and of course for inventing the world wide web).
Is that Eakers Hard Drive ?
Stay safe !
Sandia Labs reports classified computer disk is missing(Albuquerque-AP) -- Sandia National Laboratories is missing a computer floppy disk marked classified.
Sandia officials say they don’t believe it contains anything that could harm national security.
Lab spokesman Chris Miller says it’s difficult to say how long the disk was missing before the lab’s security program was notified after an inventory June 30.
Miller says he's not sure whether the disk was part of an inventory in December.
Sandia, the Department of Energy, and the National Nuclear Security Administration are investigating.
The revelation comes on the heels of Los Alamos National Laboratory stopping classified work while it inventories sensitive data. Los Alamos is missing that two items identified only as removable data storage devices.
(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Floppies, Hard Drives, CD-ROMs, DVDs, Laser Discs/platters, Tapes? What?
Okay now - thats 3 times too many. Shut Los Alamos down.
This is such a relief.
My gosh ! Los Alamos again ??
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