Posted on Jul 17, 2015
"Senator: SEAL Team 6 At Risk After OPM Hack"
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From: Free Beacon
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Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.) said personal information on the Navy’s most elite special operations team could be in the hands of America’s adversaries following the cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Boozman told a gathering of reporters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that the attacks, suspected to have originated from China, targeted the “most sensitive information we have.”
“The breach there was really staggering, this magnitude some of the most sensitive information,” Boozman said. “A lot of people when you fill out a form to get a top security clearance, you’re talking about a 120 plus page form.”
The security breaches have left the personal information of roughly 22 million federal employees in the hands of hackers, including Social Security numbers, fingerprints, and passwords.
Individuals applying for security clearances include members of SEAL Team 6.
“The second breach, you’ve got military personnel,” Boozman said. “We might have a situation, you never know, SEAL Team 6, their records are in there because they went through the same security clearance.”
“So it’s just really very, very serious,” he said.
The Arkansas senator criticized the lack of cybersecurity within OPM, saying the agency “didn’t even know how many servers they had.”
“We spend $82 billion a year on IT, $82 billion a year and we have very little to show for it,” Boozman said. “But I think it’s the tip of the iceberg, certainly as a committee we’re going to look—if we need to give them more money, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep these things safe.”
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/senator-seal-team-6-at-risk-after-opm-hack/se
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Sen. John Boozman (R., Ark.) said personal information on the Navy’s most elite special operations team could be in the hands of America’s adversaries following the cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Boozman told a gathering of reporters in Washington, D.C., on Thursday that the attacks, suspected to have originated from China, targeted the “most sensitive information we have.”
“The breach there was really staggering, this magnitude some of the most sensitive information,” Boozman said. “A lot of people when you fill out a form to get a top security clearance, you’re talking about a 120 plus page form.”
The security breaches have left the personal information of roughly 22 million federal employees in the hands of hackers, including Social Security numbers, fingerprints, and passwords.
Individuals applying for security clearances include members of SEAL Team 6.
“The second breach, you’ve got military personnel,” Boozman said. “We might have a situation, you never know, SEAL Team 6, their records are in there because they went through the same security clearance.”
“So it’s just really very, very serious,” he said.
The Arkansas senator criticized the lack of cybersecurity within OPM, saying the agency “didn’t even know how many servers they had.”
“We spend $82 billion a year on IT, $82 billion a year and we have very little to show for it,” Boozman said. “But I think it’s the tip of the iceberg, certainly as a committee we’re going to look—if we need to give them more money, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep these things safe.”
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/senator-seal-team-6-at-risk-after-opm-hack/se
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Everybody's information is at risk, not just past and present members of "SEAL Team 6." You would think Senator Boozman would know that there is no such thing as SEAL Team 6.
Everybody's information is at risk, not just past and present members of "SEAL Team 6." You would think Senator Boozman would know that there is no such thing as SEAL Team 6.
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Suspended Profile
Even members of Devgru tend to refer to it as Team 6, because that is the parlance, if not the official name...
PO1 Sojourner "Chancy" Phillips
It is a good thing ST6 is not a real duty station. Because people like this Senator saying things like this put those personnel that might be in a special unit at even more risk. I wonder if he has thought about how many of his fellow senators had information in OPM for their clearances.
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Why do these knuckleheads just concentrate on the units they think are "cool"? Every person that has ever submitted for a clearance is at risk.
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Suspended Profile
Our Seals have been at great risk since the trend lately of their former ranks writing tell all books. I have read most of them. The stories are all amazing, but I've been shocked by how many operational details have been made public. Ditto for movies such as Lone Survivor and American Sniper.
If these media are releasing so much about operations, what's left? Do the SpecOps folks have any secrets left?
CMSgt (Join to see)
If these media are releasing so much about operations, what's left? Do the SpecOps folks have any secrets left?
CMSgt (Join to see)
SN Greg Wright
That, and the president glomming onto their coattails within hours after what seems like every operation.
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They showed the OBL op almost live from the helmet cams... That was atrocious, but I'm not sure if it was the first instance of it...
SN Alan West
Members of the military who write books about their experiences USUALLY submit them to the Department of Defense for a security and policy review (pre-publication review). Once the DoD has had a chance to read and redact the manuscript the author, in most cases, makes their edits in preparation for publication. Don Mann, a former member of SEAL Team 6, who wrote the book Inside SEAL Team Six left his redactions in his book to show the reader what the DoD wanted him to edit.
An example of someone who did not submit their book for review was Mark Owen, real name Matt Bissonnette, who wrote the book No Easy Day, which he claims is a first hand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Bissonnette was sued by the government, found guilty and ordered to pay $4.5 million in damages for failure to submit his manuscript to the DoD for review. Bissonnette is currently involved in litigation against an attorney he says advised him that he need not submit the manuscript of “No Easy Day” to the Department of Defense for review.
An example of someone who did not submit their book for review was Mark Owen, real name Matt Bissonnette, who wrote the book No Easy Day, which he claims is a first hand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Bissonnette was sued by the government, found guilty and ordered to pay $4.5 million in damages for failure to submit his manuscript to the DoD for review. Bissonnette is currently involved in litigation against an attorney he says advised him that he need not submit the manuscript of “No Easy Day” to the Department of Defense for review.
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Suspended Profile
I've read that one too...
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Something really needs to be done about China's hacking incursions. I believe we should categorize it as an act of war -- because you can bet that info will be USED in an actual conflict if one comes. And this is just practice -- it's nearly certain they can do things that they don't dare to in the absence of conflict: overload power grids, make reactors run awry, mess with dams....all stuff that's computer-driven. So: you want to invade US networks? We invade all those little islands you want so badly. Or something.
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PO1 Sojourner "Chancy" Phillips
The sad part about this breach is that OPM was not following compliance in protecting its systems. That is the reason this ultimately happened. I always chuckle when is China blamed. There are plenty of hackers right here in the US that may have been involved. There is no way this size of data breach could have happened without inside help.
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This money may be spent for IT security but there is not enough training for the IT security people in the DoD, they aren't searching out the right people for protecting our networks, we need patriotic hackers to fight the holes in our infrastructure that is allowing these foreign hackers to get into the systems. Let's also not forget how the military is forcing out all the experienced personnel and people who want to be there in favor of poorly trained boots. Anyone going into it for the military needs to be trained in security, hacking, code, and numerous other disciplines to be qualified to safe guard our networks. IT specialist deserve to be trained just as long and as strict as we train our SO specialists. It's funny how everyone on the hill needs or wants someone to blame when things go wrong but point out the problems everywhere but where they truly originate from and that is our broken government. They misappropriate billions into their own pockets and their friends pockets and wonder why things aren't working when not even pennies get to where they are needed.
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Senator there is much more at risk then seal team 6.our whole nation is at risk.you politicians voted to remove arms from soft targets across this country.we are being cyber attacked from north Korea.china.Isis etc..we need a great leader now to squash and eliminate these issues.
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Senator Boozman is clearly grandstanding for dramatic effect. I would HOPE that any personnel in classified roles would not have any indication of that role in their OPM file.
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SSG (Join to see)
They would... the size of this breach is truly staggering. Senator Boozman has only scratched the surface.
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SSG (Join to see)
SGT Jeremiah B. - My hope is that this hack is indeed the work of a state actor and that the state responsible chooses not to take advantage of everything they now know about us.
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Makes you wonder if there IT's are smarter than ours if ours are just typical big government that dont really care. This is unacceptable.
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SGT Jeremiah B.
It's a giant arms race and upgrading the government systems would be extraordinarily expensive. It's not that no one cares, but how well do you think it would go over if an elected official requested several hundred billion dollars to upgrade IT systems and retrain staff? No one was going to sign off on that one until there was an obvious need the public could accept. It would be political suicide.
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PO2 Mark Saffell
Thats is the sad part. No one in politics wants to stand for anything that may not be popular with there base because they are all too worried about keeping there jobs. another reason for term limits. maybe they would actually do something good for people.
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SSG (Join to see)
On the one hand you have this drive to constantly expand capabilities and features, people expect things to work quickly and seamlessly and our IT folks do their best to deliver... at the same time, manufacturers are pushing out immature products to meet these requirements. Products that haven't been adequately tested and which will require frequent and extensive software upgrades to fix security flaws as their discovered are being integrated into government networks on a regular basis . In such an environment, there will almost always be some opportunity to exploit a weakness.
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