Nic Rigby of the BBC reports on the cost to the U.S. of investigations involving U.K. hackers:
Lauri Love, 28, of Stradishall, Suffolk, was arrested in October over charges which include allegations he hacked the US Department of Energy (DoE) computers. A report says personal information on 104,000 people could have been taken. It says dealing with the fall out of this cost $3.7m.
And the Gary McKinnon incident cost the U.S. another $2.1m to pay for staffing “to help correct the problems and deal with the aftermath.”
Read more on BBC.
Cost another 2.1M for staffing? Wait….don’t they have a staff? They had to call in other people to correct the issues? Commmon…2.1 Million for something that group policy/ and AD management can fix relatively easy to workstations on a network ?
Correct problems dealing with the aftermath? They mean, an additional 2.1M more to fix obvious holes that should have been corrected/closed in the first place. The DoE track record for low scores is reknown. I am surprised they are not on any sort of yearly inspection.
Anyone that reads tech news knows that some of the major branches of the US government have security issues. This is just an eye opening experience for them. Its better that this happened than alot of other situations. When it involves individulas, it can be taken to heart. When it happens just to equipment people don’t care until its too late.