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IT wizard or amateur? US government proving to be both
It allegedly hacked major servers, yet faces criticism over health site
WASHINGTON - When it comes to computers, the Obama administration appears simultaneously to be an amateur and a wizard.
The same government that reportedly intercepted the communications of leading US consumer technology firms, Google and Yahoo, without leaving a trace, is criticised because it cannot build a working federal website for health insurance.
In a single day in Washington, the extremes were on full display. Under a classified project called Muscular, the National Security Agency (NSA) secretly broke into the main communication links connecting Google and Yahoo data centres around the world, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing documents obtained from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden.
Across town, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius was apologising to Congress over the troubled HealthCare.gov website. Officials had worried that a lack of website testing posed a potentially high security risk.
The difference? National priorities, including big differences in how much the government spends, plus the talent and expertise of the people the government hires.
The NSA's annual budget was just over US$7 billion in fiscal year 2013, according to documents leaked by Snowden, The budget for the entire HHS was less than US$1 trillion, and it spent US$118 million on the website plus about US$56 million on other IT to support the site, Ms Sebelius said on Wednesday.
The NSA is famous for employing small focused teams of highly talented experts with special skills, said former hacker Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer for Veracode. But the HHS' website designers? "They are sort of your average developers," he said.
Motivation is important too. Patriotic hacking on behalf of the NSA is exciting, especially among the mostly young and mostly male demographic.
"Breaking in, it feels like special ops," Mr Wysopal said. "Building something feels probably like you're in the Corps of Engineers. You're just moving a lot of dirt around."
The government generally spends more money researching how to attack, not defend, computers, said Purdue University computer science professor Gene Spafford.
The apparent contradiction between health care and the NSA, he added, "is what makes computers magical".
ASSOCIATED PRESS
It allegedly hacked major servers, yet faces criticism over health site
WASHINGTON - When it comes to computers, the Obama administration appears simultaneously to be an amateur and a wizard.
The same government that reportedly intercepted the communications of leading US consumer technology firms, Google and Yahoo, without leaving a trace, is criticised because it cannot build a working federal website for health insurance.
In a single day in Washington, the extremes were on full display. Under a classified project called Muscular, the National Security Agency (NSA) secretly broke into the main communication links connecting Google and Yahoo data centres around the world, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing documents obtained from former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden.
Across town, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius was apologising to Congress over the troubled HealthCare.gov website. Officials had worried that a lack of website testing posed a potentially high security risk.
The difference? National priorities, including big differences in how much the government spends, plus the talent and expertise of the people the government hires.
The NSA's annual budget was just over US$7 billion in fiscal year 2013, according to documents leaked by Snowden, The budget for the entire HHS was less than US$1 trillion, and it spent US$118 million on the website plus about US$56 million on other IT to support the site, Ms Sebelius said on Wednesday.
The NSA is famous for employing small focused teams of highly talented experts with special skills, said former hacker Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer for Veracode. But the HHS' website designers? "They are sort of your average developers," he said.
Motivation is important too. Patriotic hacking on behalf of the NSA is exciting, especially among the mostly young and mostly male demographic.
"Breaking in, it feels like special ops," Mr Wysopal said. "Building something feels probably like you're in the Corps of Engineers. You're just moving a lot of dirt around."
The government generally spends more money researching how to attack, not defend, computers, said Purdue University computer science professor Gene Spafford.
The apparent contradiction between health care and the NSA, he added, "is what makes computers magical".
ASSOCIATED PRESS
