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Report: Border Control Computers Open to Attacks Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com The computer system the government relies upon to prevent terrorist from entering the U.S. and to stop illegal immigrants from crossing the border is wide open to attack, a new government report charges.
According to the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO), America's main border control system is vulnerable to computer attacks, theft of sensitive data -- and the manipulation of millions of personal identity records, including passport, visa and Social Security numbers, and the world's largest fingerprint database, the Washington Post reports.
At risk is the so-called US-VISIT system, described by the Post as "a cornerstone of the nation's efforts to stop terrorists at the borders and stanch the flow of illegal immigrants." The Post got a copy of the GAO report, which says that officials of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warn the entire network is vulnerable, and that includes computers used at about 400 airports, seaports and border crossings.
This could also mean further risk to sensitive government databases.
"Weaknesses existed in all control areas and computing device types reviewed," the GAO noted in calling for the DHS to "immediately address" problems such as potentially crippling disruptions, or the misidentification of drug smugglers, terrorists and felons trying to enter the country. "These weaknesses collectively increase the risk that unauthorized individuals could read, copy, delete, add, and modify sensitive information," the GAO investigators said.
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According to the Post, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said, "DHS is spending $1.7 billion of taxpayer money on a program to detect potential terrorists crossing our borders, yet it isn't taking the most basic precautions to keep them from hacking into and changing or deleting sensitive information." The newspaper cited a Transportation Security Administration report in May concerning the loss of a hard drive loaded with personal payroll information on 100,000 workers, including federal air marshals.
Moreover, a computer virus halted processing of international travelers at U.S. airports for several hours in August 2005, while a computer failure in December knocked out the national computer network used at all 400 customs sites for two hours. These incidents have caused government officials to worry not only about attacks for theft of data, but also attacks aimed at random destruction. "I'd like to know why it was that we lost momentum in solving the problem in more than a piecemeal manner," former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke said in an interview with Government Computer News. "There is no leadership. There is no national plan implemented." The problem he refers to, reports GCN, is the nation's growing reliance on an information infrastructure that cannot be defended. Industry, commerce, health care and our national defense increasingly rely on an Internet that remains brittle and open to attack and disruption.
"The day-to-day environment is replete with crime and espionage," Clarke said. "We are accepting a high level of cost we needn't accept. But we've done nothing to solve the problem." US-VISIT Director Robert A. Mocny acknowledged concerns but told the Post that security fixes are underway and that the report raised many hypothetical problems and overstated others -- because few outsiders can gain access to the system's computers. "There have been no attacks on the US-VISIT system," Mocny told the Post, adding, "When you connect more systems, which [DHS] wants to do, you do have the risk of the 'weakest link.'" The Post writes that US-VISIT has compiled digital facial images and fingerprints of 90 million individuals and is used to look into 54 million border crossings each year. © NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.
Editor's note:
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