Well, look at that

Day 1,203, 19:15 • Published in USA USA • by Robert Loggia


On March 1, three days' worth of the President's Daily Briefings (PDBs), normally only for the eyes of the president, cabinet, and other advisors, were copied to Google Docs and then leaked over IRC. Besides giving IRC-goers some entertainment and a chance to see the inner workings of the government, it also meant there was a bad apple who had access to the PDB and willingly leaked it.

There were no traces of any unauthorized accounts hacking into that section of the forums. So who could it have been? A decent number of people have access to the PDB. Normally one would have to do some investigating to come up with what could be a possibly false conclusion. However, thanks to the magic of the Simple Machines forum platform, the culprit was able to be instantly narrowed down. For the ease of copying the forum threads, the culprit clicked the "Print" link, which provides a basic, printable text version without all the miscellaneous formatting of the forum's layout - much simpler and cleaner to copy to Google Docs. But it just so happens that the forum admins can see the IP addresses of who clicked the print links. All three print links were accessed by the same IP, and that IP happened to match up to a certain person.

When that person was questioned by the forum admins, he denied that he did it. When the president notified an associate of that person about the security breach committed, the associate essentially shrugged it off.

A few days later this person inherited the position of his associate, quite an important and powerful position. Ironically, this person was thought to be someone who could improve relations with the executive branch, but apparently that's not the reality of things. Yet again, there's mistrust in the government. Due to espionage, no less.

GG bro.



- 2/7/11 - Day 1,203