NSA.gov goes down after ‘error during scheduled update’

The USA’s National Security Agency (NSA), lately the source of near-endless controversy for spying on just about the entire internet, has itself hit trouble online after its website went down. The agency has ‘fessed up to some website wobbles last Friday, but has issued a statement to all and sundry that says “an internal …

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

blaming it on sysadmins?

what sysadmins?

[Wzrd1]

Re: blaming it on sysadmins?

They fired the competent and left the incompetent, as they work cheaper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: blaming it on sysadmins?

@Wzrd1 - Ah, they fired the competent because it turned out to be too difficult to protect their secrets from competent sysadmins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: blaming it on sysadmins?

The "Peter Principal" is in force here, no doubt! HA!

[Suburban Inmate]

Re: blaming it on sysadmins?

Turns out the few that were left were using the wrong hammers...

[Mephistro]

A foreigner mole admin probably

Let's see...

The Russian mole was having his yearly round of polygraph tests.

The Chinese mole was on medical leave with a bad case of flu.

The Israeli guy was getting married in Tel Aviv.

It has to be the Norks!!!

[raving angry loony]

Blame game

Blame the sysadmins? Oh, you mean all the ones you fired because obviously some paper-pushing spook with a degree in political science and a masters in butt-kissing can keep those servers running? Yeah, that'll work.

[Wzrd1]

Re: Blame game

Well, in the NSA's defense, the incompetent do work for less pay.

[Winkypop]

Hmmm

Does that mean we all have to re-send and re-post the last few days info and data?

I just don't want to get missed out.

[jake]

"Claims that the outage was caused by a distributed denial of service attack are not true.”

Gut feeling is that this is incorrect. I'll bet the DDoS code was a microsoft OS.

[Gray Ham]

Re: "Claims that the outage was caused by a distributed denial of service attack are not true.”

It's nothing to do with the OS, just that the amount of data collected has finally exceeded a critical limit and formed a black hole, from which no information can escape ...

[JCitizen]

Serves them right!

Bwahahahahahahhahahah! NSA! - gubbamint = competency is an oxymoron; or at least very likely a moron for sure! HA! :D

[Turtle]

Just a hunch.

"We’ve no way of knowing if that outage is related to Friday’s outage. But we’re sure the NSA will read this story and try to figure out just what went wrong."

It's just a hunch but my feeling is that they'll try to figure out what went wrong whether they read the article or not.

[P. Lee]

It wasn't incompetance

It was the new, cheaper sysadmins diverting attention from the keylogger installation.

[T. F. M. Reader]

Blame all the European and South American politicians

who keep calling each other on their mobiles to complain about American spying, thus generating an unusual amount of traffic and overloading the collection system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Blame all the European and South American politicians

I can see how Merkel and Hollande are getting surveilled. They get on the phone with eachother and start a bitch session aimed at the U.S., and the NSA sweeps them up based on hostile keywords!!

[Eguro]

You're missing the big picture here guys!

Much like when Google had big issues for short while - not at all related to NSA installing anything on their systems

This is NSA having issues for a short while - not at all related to the S-NSA (Secret-National Security Agency) installing anything on their systems.

Did you actually believe that the NSA was the top of the hill? That secret court orders and other such time-consuming nonsense was actually - genuinely - necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious, innit ...

... one of the new sysadmins Googled for Google and broke the internet.

[Arachnoid]

Downtime

So the Government gave staff some downtime, now they're back and giving the Government some downtime of his own

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez it must suck to be a sysadmin at the NSA these days...

First, they are working towards eliminating most of the sysadmins, which is why Snowden and others were hired on a contract. Second, post-Snowden pretty much every sysadmin at the NSA probably have to undergo a daily colonoscopy of their work. Third, something goes wrong with the website and immediately the sysadmins are thrown under the bus....

[Robert Helpmann??]

Re: Jeez it must suck to be a sysadmin at the NSA these days...

First, they are working towards eliminating most of the sysadmins, which is why Snowden and others were hired on a contract

They were hired on a contract basis for the same reason that other government agencies do: it supposedly saves money while making the government more flexible.

Second, post-Snowden pretty much every sysadmin at the NSA probably have to undergo a daily colonoscopy of their work.

I got nothing.

Third, something goes wrong with the website and immediately the sysadmins are thrown under the bus....

And how is this different than anywhere else?

[channel extended]

Install Problem.

Sheeeesh!! Install one little dongle.