US feds pull travel site offline after hacker break-in

A travel reservations website used by US government agencies remains offline more than a week after it was infected with malware that tried to install malicious code on the PCs of those who visited the site. Agencies including the Federal Aviation Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of …

[Anonymous Coward]

Supprised? not really...

Guess the government will stick to Secure Fax Machines from now on...

LOL!!!!eleven!!!: https://in-gotravel.doe.gov/govtrip/accessinggovtrip.html

"If a Security Alert pop-up window appears, click the Yes button."

Website: "if you want to install the activex control, click the bar above"....

Gov Employee:"YES YES YES"

I hope all that spending goodness congress has passed will finally get the gov into the late 90's, at least, on the security front. Bonus if they can pass the year 2000 mark!

[Dennis]

Any lessons to learn?

I wonder .... is anyone else trying to build a massive database that will be accessed by thousands of people?

Answers on a postcard carried by a man with a cleft stick.

Perhaps King Ludd had the right idea.

[Walking Turtle]

Oh but rest assured that...

"no personal data was known to be compromised."

How much more fool-truthy and slipshod-shuffle can a blanket passive-voice past-tense false-face sootheover "assurance" ever be than that? By the ringing in me Third Ear as well as the stench in me Third Nostril, this is the selfsame bland passive Gummint voice that every so often tells us, "We have requested and received assurances from the government of Torturestan that the high-value detainee rendered thereunto for Robust Interrogation Tech Treatment will not be known to have been tortured." Like it "Never Happened".

They do it to everyone they can get away with doing it to. This time it is their own employees that the Overmen have punked. It is an abomination; the entire glossing-out practice should be wiped from the arse of the Earth forthwith. Gah.

[Slaytanic]

Go back to bed America...

Nothing to see here... Go back to bed America, your government is in control.

[Chris C]

Infection in T-minus...

"'Employees should not access GovTrip from any DOT/FHWA PC while at work and we strongly suggest employees refrain from any attempts to access GovTrip using a home system or government-issued laptop as this could cause the PC to be infected with a virus that may not be detected by your anti-virus software,' a Department of Transportation email sent to employees read..."

But of course, they'll continue to keep the site up so that it can infect the people who haven't been warned (read: the world at large). We certainly wouldn't want to do the right thing and, you know, REMOVE THE MALWARE. That would be too much work, apparently.

[g e]

tut tut

That Gary McKinnon bloke never knows where to draw the line, It's obviously him, right? I mean, he's a TERRORIST, dude!

Halfwits.