[ISN] FBI Report: Lax Technology Security Aided Hanssen

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Wed Apr 03 2002 - 23:17:57 PST

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    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,49430,00.html
    
    Wednesday, April 03, 2002
    By Carl Cameron
    
    WASHINGTON - The FBI is expected this week to issue a scathing report 
    on security problems discovered during an internal review of the 
    Robert Hanssen spy case. 
    
    The report, to be delivered to Attorney General John Ashcroft by
    Friday, concludes after extensive debriefings with Hanssen that the
    FBI suffers from lax attention to technology and document security and
    has numerous management problems, sources familiar with the report
    told Fox News.
    
    Former CIA Director William Webster, who is also a former head of the
    FBI, conducted the far-reaching review, and is expected to testify
    before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Tuesday.
    
    Robert Hanssen was an FBI agent for 25 years, at times highly involved
    in counterintelligence operations, before being arrested as a spy for
    the Soviet Union and Russia. Last July, he pleaded guilty to nearly
    two dozen charges of selling U.S. secrets to the Moscow over 20 years.
    
    Hanssen has nonetheless been sparring with his debriefers for months,
    and transcripts of the interviews reveal that his knowledge of
    top-secret FBI and CIA operations went well beyond his own "need to
    know" status, sources said.
    
    Sources said Hanssen appeared to "play with his debriefers" and often
    sought to impress them with the vast amount of intelligence he claims
    to have compromised. Hanssen met with Webster's team four times over
    the last year.
    
    Sources familiar with the Webster report say it will state that:
    
    * the FBI has failed to resolve long standing internal security
      concerns;
    
    * FBI computers, networks and encryption standards are outdated and 
      vulnerable to compromise; 
    
    * FBI records storage and security is inadequate and vulnerable to 
      compromise; 
    
    * FBI management and command and control operations are outdated and 
      malfunctioning; and 
    
    * FBI morale in the field and management communications are faltering. 
    
    In October, Fox News was first to report that Hanssen had stolen
    top-secret U.S. law-enforcement software applications, as well as
    handbooks for the Community Online Intelligence Network, used by
    investigators to access various law-enforcement databases.
    
    Hanssen sold the COIN applications to the Russians, and U.S.  
    intelligence believes that the software was in turn provided to Al
    Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden by Russian organized-crime figures.
    
    Government officials say the software may enable bin Laden to track
    the international investigation of terror assets and keep his money
    from being seized.
    
    The United States is not the only nation to use the COIN software.
    
    
    
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