Government contractor exposed path to immigration records
Contractor firewall change exposed a classified server holding 50 million immigration records to thousands of VPN users until a researcher's demo forced rollback.
Developers at a government contractor persuaded a Change Acceptance Board to open a firewall rule linking a low-security commercial datacenter to the classified production network. Security officer Joe Brinkley demonstrated he could control a production server holding 50 million immigration records via the shared VPN, where thousands of users had access but only dozens were authorized. The change was reverted immediately after the demonstration; servers still required passwords but lacked MFA and had weak password standards, leaving brute-force risk.
- Firewall change linked a low-security commercial datacenter VPN to classified production systems.
- Compromised production server held 50 million immigration records.
- Thousands shared the commercial VPN; only dozens were authorized for classified access.
- No MFA and weak password standards heightened brute-force risk; rule quickly reverted.
- Organizations
- Joe Brinkley
From the original article
3 min read at theregister.comIT took a shortcut when the boss was away, and it led to danger!
By Avram Piltch · theregister.com
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