Posted on 08/15/2004 12:21:04 PM PDT by neverdem
August 15, 2004 -- With little fanfare, the Federal Reserve will begin transferring the nation's money supply over an Internet-based system this month — a move critics say could open the U.S.'s banking system to cyber threats.
The Fed moves about $1.8 trillion a day on a closed, stand-alone computer network. But soon it will switch to a system called FedLine Advantage, a Web-based technology.
Proponents say the system is more efficient and flexible. The current system is outdated, using DOS — Microsoft's predecessor to the Windows operating system.
But security experts say the threat of outside access is too big a risk.
"The Fed is now going to be vulnerable in two distinct ways. A hacker could break in to the Fed's network and have full access to the system, or a hacker might not have complete access but enough to cause a denial or disruptions of service," said George Kurtz, co-author of "Hacking Exposed" and CEO of Foundstone, an Internet security company.
"If a security breach strikes the very heart of the financial world and money stops moving around, then our financial system will literally start to collapse and chaos will ensue."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
DOS is safer, simply because most of us have forgotten how to use it, and the young hackers never saw it.
Damn paypal is into everything these days.
This is frightening. As careful as I am about all my systems, I think that all of my computers have been infected with "back doors" despite all precautions and efforts made to clean them up. I am not ever going to do anything with them that has anything to do with bank accounts or credit cards.
I posted this story as breaking news. You decided that the security of the Federal Reserve Banking System did not merit such a posting category.
So be it. However, anyone familiar with the tabloid New York Post knows this would never be frontpage news in a million years!
ping
Unless the old system is truly, end to end, completely and entirely physically separate from any network with Internet connectivity, it was never that secure in the first place.
The new system is very probably a virtual private network, and the traffic on it is encrypted. This is as safe as being on a separate layer-2 connection.
Working from memory, it was a decent standalone system; used real hardware encryption from standalone PCs, which dialed into the servers; I believe the PCs were supposed to be otherwise standalone, not on a network. There were suggested policies and procedures, none of which looked too bad, standard items such as regular password changes and whatnot.
I am sure that there are plenty of freepers who have real world experience with the current FedLine (or who are feeling industrious enough to go read the manuals) who will be happy to let me know where my memory has failed.
I certainly don't like the idea of running FedLine over the Internet, but SWIFT, for instance, has already been doing this for some time and I don't know of really bad incidents as of yet.
Your memory is correct.
May two years ago we upgraded our 386 FedLine to a 486!
DOS is not "dated" is simply looks different and it is a operating system. An operating system that was the heart of the Windows Graphical User Interface through WIN 286, WIN 386, Windows 3 Windows 95 and Windows 98 . . . which is what Microsloth called Windows before they had D's of G and began to declare Windoze an "operating system."
I do take a bit of pleasure in bumping into some hot "tec" that starts babbling on about WindyHoles Slaver 2000 or the "new features" of XP. First thing, I tell them to "boot to Command Prompt, were gonna check a few things." The tiny beads of sweat just pop right out. When they ask how I got so fast at command line structure, I reply "Novell 3 CNE school, but using just DOS for a few years helps."
tee-hee!
Then there are those of us who still have their copy of "DOS for Dummies"...
The Federal Reserve will shortly be history in America.The NH is passing house bill 1342.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.