Ultrasaur Blog

Keeping track of exciting new threats to your digital records.

Posts Tagged ‘government’

Wait, what’s a typewriter?

Friday, July 17th, 2009

When we demo, usually one of the first things I say is “You have digital records” because almost every organization is moving towards having more and more of their content in document management systems of some stripe.

But it’s always interesting to read about the tiny fraction that aren’t, like New York Police Department, which still spends a third of a million dollars every year on typewriters.

Most of the city’s arrest forms have been computerized, but property and evidence vouchers printed on carbon-paper forms still require the use of typewriters.

…officials are working on software that would eliminate the need for the typewriters.

US Army hacked by Turkey

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Another reminder that everyone is susceptible to hacking:

The hackers, who collectively go by the name “m0sted” and are based in Turkey, penetrated servers at the Army’s McAlester Ammunition Plant in McAlester, Okla., and at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Transatlantic Center in Winchester, Va.

The hacks are troubling in that they appear to have rendered useless supposedly sophisticated Defense Department tools and procedures designed to prevent such breaches. The department and its branches spend millions of dollars each year on pricey security and antivirus software and employ legions of experts to deploy and manage the tools.

“I have your s**t! In my possession”

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

According to a claim at WikiLeaks, a hacker has taken “8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions” from the Virginia Health Professions Database (website is down).

Any intrusion should call the current records into question (we often talk about what could happen if a hacker changes your financial documents, but a bad prescription can kill).

The hacker claims:

Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original.

However, according to the Washington Post:

Sandra Whitley Ryals, director of the Department of Health Professions, said in a statement Wednesday that the program’s computer system has been shut down since last Thursday’s breach, but all data was backed up and those files have been secured.

Records of marriage

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Here’s one I hadn’t thought of:

Although we have been married for four years now, the American Immigration services can’t find any paper trail for the two of us.

The comments hit on my thinking: “Let’s hope they acknowledge the validity of digital photos.” Despite being a lightweight “internet couple”, they must have hundreds of emails and digital photos.

We’re hoping to have a “Community edition” available this year that would address this problem. And then we’ll be in the position to “write to your national authorities” for you.

SWAT Record Keeping

Friday, February 6th, 2009

According to Radly Balko, apparently SWAT Teams keep poor records:

“In cases where a raid resulted in no charges, the warrants are actually often thrown out. Of course, those are the very cases we want to know about.”

It seems strange that organizations with guns (he’s refering to armed raids) are held to laxer records keeping standards than businesses.