Snowden case: How low-level insider could steal from NSA

[struggle4progress]

Jun. 12, 2013 - 10:46AM |
By BYRON ACOHIDO and PETER EISLER

... While details of how he did it aren’t yet clear, Snowden’s escapades highlight a complex challenge all large organizations face in securing sprawling networks increasingly reliant on Internet cloud connections and use of mobile devices.

“Digital assets are all plugged into an amazingly complex infrastructure,” says Mike Lloyd, chief technology officer at network security firm Red Seal Networks. “Even diligent defenders struggle to keep up with all the latest weaknesses, and the dizzying interactions between interdependent systems and layers. We cannot defend what we cannot understand” ...

By identifying and accessing privileged accounts, an unscrupulous insider can easily roam far and wide inside an organization’s network. Such accounts function, in effect, as master keys to the deepest, most sensitive parts of an organization’s digital assets.

A recent survey by Cyber-Ark Software found that 86 percent of large enterprise organizations either do not know or underestimate the number of privileged accounts incorporated into their networks. Most have three or four times as many privileges accounts as actual employees ...

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20130612/DEPARTMENTS/306120005/Snowden-case-How-low-level-insider-could-steal-from-NSA

[struggle4progress]

1. Snowden triggers scrutiny on secret access

Published: June 12, 2013
By LOLITA C. BALDOR — Associated Press

... Complicating the matter, however, is that Snowden identified himself as a computer systems administrator working as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton on NSA systems. If that is the case, systems administrators often have broader computer access, which allows them to find or correct problems with computer programs, networks and even access to other workers' computers.

While he may have legitimately had access to the classified information, his ability to copy and carry out the data underscores the continued gaps in the federal government's computer security ...

... Snowden appears to have had access to things he should not have, according to former NSA inspector general Joel Brenner, judging by Snowden's leaking of documents so secret, they are supposed to be shared with only a few key employees on any given program.

"The man's access seems to have been extraordinary," Brenner said Tuesday. "Somebody's going to have to look at what access he had - and should have had - in all the jobs he ever held in the intelligence business. That's the investigation that's going on now. Somebody is going back and looking at every footprint or fingerprint he left in his career."

http://www.kentucky.com/2013/06/12/2675835/snowden-triggers-scrutiny-on-secret.html