Fergie's Tech Blog

Six Hours to Hack The FBI (And Other Pen-Testing Adventures)

Sandra Gittlen writes on ComputerWorld:

It takes a lot to shock Chris Goggans; he's been a pen (penetration) tester since 1991, getting paid to break into a wide variety of networks. But he says nothing was as egregious as security lapses in both infrastructure design and patch management at a civilian government agency -- holes that let him hack his way through to a major FBI crime database within a mere six hours.

Goggans, currently senior security consultant at security firm PatchAdvisor Inc. in Alexandria, Va., says his adventure started when, during a routine network scan, he discovered a series of unpatched vulnerabilities in the civilian government agency's Web server, as well as other parts of the enterprise.

posted by Fergie @ 5/26/2008 09:51:00 PM