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According to the Boston Globe, Republican staff members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee exploited a security hole in the committees servers for at least a year to access and share secret Democratic memos.
The security breach has drawn the attention of the office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms, which has launched an investigation into how portions of 15 strategy memos ended up in conservative media outlets, The Globe reported on Thursday. Computer experts from General Dynamics Corp. and the U.S. Secret Service are helping in the investigation, in which about 120 people have been interviewed and a half dozen computers have been seized, according to the article.
GOP staffers were able to access Democratic files because of a glitch dating back to 2001, when a computer technicians mistake left files on a shared committee server accessible without a password, The Globe reported.
Many of the documents accessed outlined Democratic strategies for handling judicial nominations, the newspaper reported. Senate Democrats have staged a series of high-profile filibusters over President Bushs judicial nominations.
Various congressional efforts have been made to improve data security within government offices.
For example, in the fall, a legislative effort was floated to beef up the federal governments computer security by discouraging peer-to-peer networking. Dubbed the “Government Network Security Act,” by Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the bill proposed that federal agencies develop technical policies and workforce training to protect computers from the risks of confidential information being disclosed through file-sharing.
Also in the summer, lawmakers pushed vendors and network operators do everything possible to make the nations cyber-infrastructure secure. Even legislation dictating IT security requirements—regarded as a last resort—was put in the works.