[ISN] Interior Dept. back online as judge mulls site security

[InfoSec News]

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5179563.html

March 25, 2004
By Reuters 
 
The U.S. Interior Department was back online Thursday after an appeals
court said it could connect to the Internet while the court considers
whether payments owed to American Indians are vulnerable to hackers.

Interior Department employees had been unable to use e-mail, and most
of the department's Web sites had been offline after a federal judge
concluded on March 15 that the agency had not fixed security holes
that threaten Indian trust-fund payments.

A U.S. appeals court in Washington said Wednesday that the department
could restore Internet operations until it heard the case. The court
could hear the case as early as next week.

"The department will continue to work aggressively with the U.S.  
Department of Justice in our appeal," Interior Secretary Gale Norton
said in a statement on the agency's Web site.

The Interior Department oversees one-fifth of the nation's land,
including national parks, and handles relations with American Indians.

Internet operations have been shut down three times since 2001, when
an investigator found that hackers could easily steal money from a
system that allocates royalties to 300,000 Indians for the use of
their land.

The blackouts stem from a class-action lawsuit between the agency and
Indians who allege that it has mismanaged trust accounts set up in the
late 19th century to handle proceeds from oil, gas and minerals
extracted from their lands.

Lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell, a member of Montana's Blackfeet tribe,
charges that the government has lost track of billions of dollars. She
wants the judge to transfer control of the accounts to a court-ordered
receiver.

The Interior Department regularly ranks at the bottom of computer
security assessments conducted by congressional and government
investigators.

An Interior spokesman said the agency had spent tens of millions of
dollars to beef up the computer systems that handle the trust
accounts, at the expense of other operations.

"If you had a teenager, a high school student who focused all their
efforts on getting an 'A' in biology and let other subjects go by the
wayside, you'd have a low GPA too," spokesman Dan DuBray said.

A lawyer for Cobell said the department could resolve the issue by
simply getting independent certification that its trust-fund systems
are secure, as the lower court has required.

"If it was once problematic, it is their obligation to show that it's
no longer problematic," said attorney Keith Harper. "You have to allow
for some type of process, some type of protocol to ensure that what
you say is happening publicly has in fact happened."