Security-through-obscurity, again. The last quote of this article neatly sums up what's wrong with this classify-it-all mentality that's so prevalent these days.....
-rick http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2442711,00.html DMV keeping details on virus a secret By Robert Barba Denver Post Staff Writer A week after the Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles resumed issuing driver's licenses and identification cards, officials are still not disclosing any information about a virus that crippled the system, inconveniencing nearly 25,000 Coloradans. And mum will continue to be the word, said Nolan Jones, chief information officer for the Colorado Department of Revenue, which oversees the motor vehicle division. In fact, if he had to go through it again, Jones said he wouldn't even have identified the problem as a virus. "Even that is too much information," Jones said last week. Law enforcement has advised Jones that any information just encourages other "bad people" to try to access personal data stored by the division. The division's licensing system was shut down at 2:30 p.m. Sept. 17 when technicians suspected something was wrong with the system. Jones wouldn't disclose what those red flags were. Computer specialists from both the Revenue Department and Tualatin, Ore.- based Digimarc Corp., the company that the DMV uses to process and produce its driver's licenses and identification cards, began working to restore the system. It was decided that the best plan was to start from scratch, Jones said. After reinstalling the operating system and applications, the team of a dozen people then had the daunting task of reloading 18 million records back into the system. "It was an enormous amount of work," Jones said. "We wanted to be absolutely certain each record was exactly right." The system was restored a week ago today. There's no indication that personal data were lost, but Jones would not say whether any personal information was compromised. Jones said there was no information that a hacker specifically targeted the division. He added that the department was continuing to assess the problem. He would not disclose any information about the state's operating system, applications, the virus, the type of network used by the division, or any steps the state would take to prevent such an outage in the future. "Any information is useful to those who have mal-intent," Jones said. "We won't discuss it." -- You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
