IDAHO NATIONAL TRANSPORTER Idaho
Transportation
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How pervasive is the national security threat resulting from illegal or in appropriate access to computers? Consider the following from Ron O’Brien, senior security analyst with security software vendor Sophos:
Most victims are drawn to these sites by e-mail. As reported by Dena Duncan earlier this month, the number of spam e-mail stopped on its way to employees of the state of Idaho was increased significantly. For example, spam was up 47 percent from the first week of August to the second week of August. During the first two weeks of August, 12.6 million messages were sent to Idaho government e-mail accounts, 95 percent, or 11.5 million, were spam. Most of these were likely Phishing, e-mails with links to sites full of malware. Some people go to normally legitimate sites that have been corrupted; any site that can be self-edited is also a target for malware writers. Self-editing
sites are often very popular sites, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace,
etc. All state employees need to protect themselves at home and at work. If state employees introduce malware to their work computer, they are potentially risking their own personal information as well as the personal or sensitive information of others and of the government. As we all know, Idaho government should be protecting any sensitive information, not exposing citizens to additional risks. Identity theft should be everyone’s concern. Most computers users are at higher risk at their home computers. Their identity could be stolen and their computer could be taken over and used to generate even more dangerous spam. The
FBI believes that as many as one million computers in the U.S. are being
accessed remotely by hackers, and the computer owners are completely
unaware of the activity.
Published 9-21-07 |