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Treasury computers said vulnerable ‘Billions at risk,’ says General Accounting Office By Bob Sullivan MSNBC Feb. 5 — Government computers that keep track of trillions of dollars as they flow in an out of Washington D.C. remain vulnerable to computer hackers, according to a report released by Congress’ General Accounting Office. The report says that Treasury Department computer systems — which handle everything from Social Security checks to $2 trillion in tax and duty fee collections annually — are rife with security problems. Many of the vulnerabilities haven’t been fixed since the GAO first pointed out the flaws in 1999. THE GAO FOUND usernames and passwords were easy to guess in some cases, and that some employees had far-ranging access to systems that reached beyond their job duties. Dial-in access to some networks and mainframe computers were not properly monitored. And some security reports were not being followed up on, the GAO said. “Billions of dollars of payments and collections are at significant risk of loss or fraud, sensitive data are at risk of inappropriate disclosure, and critical computer-based operations are vulnerable to serious disruptions,” the report concluded. The report was sent to the Treasury Department in December; an excerpted version was made available to the public on Monday. In a letter of response the the critical report, Treasury Department commission Richard L. Gregg admitted there were problems, but said his agency had made “significant progress” in its efforts to secure government computers. He also said the General Accounting Office report was based on data that was a year old. “Although there is always room for improvement, I believe that we have not compromised the public trust in carrying out our payments, collections, and government-wide accounting responsibilities,” Gregg wrote. Still, the General Accounting Office report was at times scathing in its assessment of critical Treasury Department systems. ”(The) overall security control environment continues to be ineffective in identifying, deterring, and responding to computer control weaknesses promptly,” the report said. “In addition to new weaknesses, we found the (the Treasury Department) still needed to act on approximately 42 percent of the weaknesses discussed in our 1999 report.” http://www.msnbc.com/news/700186.asp?0na=x2306260- ------------------------------------------------------------ *FREE* Jokes In Your Daily Email Subscribe to Jokes4Me today and start your day off laughing. http://www.topica.com/lists/jokes4me/ --via http://techPolice.com archive: http://theMezz.com/cybercrime/archive subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --via http://theMezz.com ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?b1dhr0.b2EDp2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================