Japanese military leak due to porn: report

[Gil Hamilton]

Those Japanese love mixing their porn with military secrets

TOKYO: Top-secret data on an advanced US military system was leaked because Japanese officers were swapping porn files at work, a newspaper said on Thursday.

Japan is questioning a naval officer on charges he obtained confidential data on the US-developed Aegis combat system, the defence ministry said on Wednesday.

But the Yomiuri Shimbun said the data was leaked when the petty officer second class had copied pornographic images, accompanied by the sensitive files, from a colleague's computer and circulated them to a third officer.

Police suspect senior officials might have been involved in the porn swapping as the 33-year-old officer being questioned would not have had access to the classified data, the newspaper said.

The petty officer said he did not know that the pornographic images were accompanied by sensitive information, the Japanese daily said, quoting Kanagawa prefectural police.

A police spokesman declined comment, saying the investigation was ongoing.

The Aegis system has a cutting-edge radar and can launch missiles at more than 10 targets at one time. The Japanese naval force has five Aegis-equipped vessels.

The data found on the officer's computer included formulas for the Aegis interceptor system and data on its radar's capacity to track several targets at once, the Yomiuri said.

Other news reports said the issue came to light after the officer's Chinese wife was arrested in late January for a visa violation, alarming the US military.

The petty officer, whose name has not been disclosed, is a crew member of a destroyer based in Yokosuka at the mouth of Tokyo Bay.

Dun dun dun...

[Davis 51]

Oh great. Now FOX has a reason to run their "Porn jepordizes national security" headline.

[Sidewinder]

Either that petty officer was being smart and trying to use the porn to distract would-be investigators from noticing the sensitive files in the computer-- the guy's wife is Chinese, she may be working for the Ministry of State Security-- or Japan has the second most incompetent military in the world.

[Wicked Pilot]

The problem with Information Assurance is that it only takes one. One out of however many thousands you have in your military to fuck it up.

[Elaro]

I lol'ed.

Either that petty officer was being smart and trying to use the porn to distract would-be investigators from noticing the sensitive files in the computer-- the guy's wife is Chinese, she may be working for the Ministry of State Security-- or Japan has the second most incompetent military in the world.

What's the first one?

[Nova Andromeda]

"The Aegis system has a cutting-edge radar and can launch missiles at more than 10 targets at one time"

-Unless that is all the missiles available I'm entirely unimpressed. This is the fucking information age for Ubleck's sake! Controlling 10 missiles is an entirely trivial problem. However, such pathetic capabilities would certainly explain why they want to keep it secret.

[Howedar]

Wow, you sure told them! I bet you're right, I bet that the every anti-aircraft ship in the world has limitations on number of targets engaged continuously because the designers are idiots who can only solve such "trivial problems" by introducing systems with "pathetic capabilities".

[Darth Wong]

The problem with Information Assurance is that it only takes one. One out of however many thousands you have in your military to fuck it up.

That's not strictly true. Robust procedures and multiple layers of security can reduce your vulnerability to a single person's mistake.

[Wicked Pilot]

That's not strictly true. Robust procedures and multiple layers of security can reduce your vulnerability to a single person's mistake.

Procedures are only as good as the people following them, and again it only takes one. I would bet good money that some idiot was using an unclassified thumb drive to swap shit between a NIPR and SIPR computer, (completely against the regs), and just lost track of what he had. He had probably been told a thousand times not to do that, and everything was labeled and marked in a way he couldn't to it by accident, but he just said 'fuck it, this is convient' and did it anyway.

[Julhelm]

AEGIS is still late 1970's tech. I'm quite sure the Kremlin already has a copy of the instruction manual; they always do.

[phongn]

AEGIS is still late 1970's tech. I'm quite sure the Kremlin already has a copy of the instruction manual; they always do.

Aegis' software, however, has been continuously updated and is just as important as the hardware.

[Darth Wong]

That's not strictly true. Robust procedures and multiple layers of security can reduce your vulnerability to a single person's mistake.

Procedures are only as good as the people following them, and again it only takes one. I would bet good money that some idiot was using an unclassified thumb drive to swap shit between a NIPR and SIPR computer, (completely against the regs), and just lost track of what he had. He had probably been told a thousand times not to do that, and everything was labeled and marked in a way he couldn't to it by accident, but he just said 'fuck it, this is convient' and did it anyway.

Then the procedures were not robust enough. Quite frankly, I have always thought that the entire Windows PC security model is a joke. A truly secure installation would have closely monitored servers running clusters of X-terminals. The data never leaves the server room, and the terminals are nothing more than dumb display units, with no drives or USB ports or any other niceties whatsoever. The actual software and data remain on the server (this kind of setup used to be very common, back in the days when UNIX workstation vendors ruled the corporate workgroup and Windows PCs were not taken seriously). The very idea of giving fully functional PCs to every staffer is a gaping security hole. Once the data is on the end-point PC, the user can, as you say, do whatever he wants with it.

If you really take security seriously, you would never even consider such a thing unless it were virtually impossible to do otherwise for some reason.

[wilfulton]

That's very cold of you, Mike. The contractors selling computers have kids to feed you know.

Secret information is usually processed inside a secure facility, and no electronic media (this includes cell phones, pagers, flash sticks, computers, etc) are allowed inside or to leave. Although I've never been actually searched on the occasions where I went into the aformentioned secure building, the guards just asked me if I had any electronic devices on me, and I answer no as I picked up my access badge and handed them my ID card (The only thing I had on me was a cheap wrist watch and all it does is tell me what time it is, and no it doesn't link to the cesium clock in Colorado via ultrasound*, it's just an AAFES issue quartz watch *ref TREMORS 3 ).

[Ariphaos]

Secret information is usually processed inside a secure facility, and no electronic media (this includes cell phones, pagers, flash sticks, computers, etc) are allowed inside or to leave. Although I've never been actually searched on the occasions where I went into the aformentioned secure building, the guards just asked me if I had any electronic devices on me, and I answer no as I picked up my access badge and handed them my ID card (The only thing I had on me was a cheap wrist watch and all it does is tell me what time it is, and no it doesn't link to the cesium clock in Colorado via ultrasound*, it's just an AAFES issue quartz watch *ref TREMORS 3 ).

Restrictions like that are in place in any US facility handling confidential material, to my knowledge. I've been told that the secured network such programs run on goes a step further - over separate wires, even, and people only get to read Slashdot because someone prints out a paper copy of the front page, scans it in inside the facility and posts that.

But then, the US is not Japan and rules are probably different.

[Gil Hamilton]

AEGIS is still late 1970's tech. I'm quite sure the Kremlin already has a copy of the instruction manual; they always do.

James Bond: "It's OK. I read the instruction manual... in Russian."

[Sidewinder]

I lol'ed. :lol:

Either that petty officer was being smart and trying to use the porn to distract would-be investigators from noticing the sensitive files in the computer-- the guy's wife is Chinese, she may be working for the Ministry of State Security-- or Japan has the second most incompetent military in the world.

What's the first one?

The one that betrays the soldiers who serve it.

[Wicked Pilot]

If you really take security seriously, you would never even consider such a thing unless it were virtually impossible to do otherwise for some reason.

In many cases our reliance on notebooks and need to hastily deploy equipment dictates the user being granted flexibility.

[Sea Skimmer]

Aegis' software, however, has been continuously updated and is just as important as the hardware.

The computer hardware was totally upgraded a couple times as well, the radars have also had some pretty extensive modifications. The technology in SPY-3 and associated fire control gear it all new, but it couldn’t have been that version that Japan leaked data on.