Sadly, the only thing that’s a joke here appears to be the federal government:
!! OPM IT outsourced to foreigner contractors, with root access, working from their home country. In this case, China http://t.co/d06zJgyan7
— John Schindler (@20committee) June 17, 2015
Because hey, why not?
@20committee What could possibly go wrong?
— Stu White (@stcwhite) June 17, 2015
wut #OPMHackhttp://t.co/fiDjY8ofkd pic.twitter.com/ZzrOFBc5gz
— PoliMath (@politicalmath) June 17, 2015
More from ArsTechnica:
Some of the contractors that have helped OPM with managing internal data have had security issues of their own—including potentially giving foreign governments direct access to data long before the recent reported breaches. A consultant who did some work with a company contracted by OPM to manage personnel records for a number of agencies told Ars that he found the Unix systems administrator for the project “was in Argentina and his co-worker was physically located in the [People’s Republic of China]. Both had direct access to every row of data in every database: they were root. Another team that worked with these databases had at its head two team members with PRC passports. I know that because I challenged them personally and revoked their privileges. From my perspective, OPM compromised this information more than three years ago and my take on the current breach is ‘so what’s new?'”
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If this is true, heads should roll. But will they? Not likely. Not with this administration in charge.
Eventually, I'll stop being shocked at how bad security was at the OPM. http://t.co/icdA65qPmZ pic.twitter.com/WUWw818Zrf
— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) June 17, 2015
https://twitter.com/JohnRiversToo/status/611281687759163392
@20committee @thepacketrat It's the tech equivalent of laying off the Secret Service and hiring the Chinese Army to guard the White House!
— FyreLyon (@Dan4Liberty) June 17, 2015
https://twitter.com/LDoren/status/611285347280883712
https://twitter.com/FilmLadd/status/611281431952756738
https://twitter.com/FilmLadd/status/611283994123071490
https://twitter.com/FilmLadd/status/611286374596104193
Is this real life? We’re really starting to wonder …
Sweet fancy Moses. https://t.co/Zf303MYfZV
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) June 17, 2015
@20committee Just can't make this shit up.
— P. Fiddy (@Ease_Private) June 17, 2015
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with additional tweets.
***
Note:
In case you're wondering why people are freaking out that a Chinese contractor had root access to OPM's systsems pic.twitter.com/WbgiHyHrdV
— PoliMath (@politicalmath) June 17, 2015
And a parting question:
https://twitter.com/chuck_dizzle/status/611295255351136258
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Related:
‘Dept of Bad Timing’: Hey, Hillary, have you heard about the government’s ‘massive data breach’?
‘Ineptocracy’: Jim Geraghty points out most telling part of OPM director’s testimony
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