14 DAY TRIAL // The Associated Press reporters found a very dangerous issue concerning the sensitive military secrets stored on several FTP servers that might affect the security of the entire world. According to the reports, the AP employees managed to enter some FTP servers owned by the Department of Defense because they were not protected with a password. Moreover, some of the systems were encrypted with password but they were often mentioned in a text document also stored on the server.
The response offered by the DOD official was at least laughable: they thought the files are protected because the servers were not indexed by search engines. However, the security companies from all over the world said that this glitch might represent an extremely dangerous problem for the integrity of the entire earth, not only for the United States.
"For some, there's sort of this myth that 'if I put something on the Net and don't tell anybody,' that it's hidden. It's a sloppy user mistake. This is yet another human error that creates a major problem," Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of BT Counterpane, a security company, said for AP. "What they don't realize is that every time you set up any type of server, you have that possibility. Any files that you are putting on the server you want to monitor on a continuous basis," said Danny Allan, director of security research for Watchfire, another security firm, added for the same source.
The Department of Defense representatives demanded the consolidation of the protection system for the computers and required the closure of the FTP servers or at least the implementation of a password system able to encrypt the data.
"That security fence guards our lives. Those drawings should not have been released. I hope to God this is the last document that will be released from us," said Lisa Coghlan, a spokeswoman for the Corps of Engineers in Iraq, who is based at Tallil, also mentioned for AP.
If you want to read more information about this case, you should read the entire AP article published on Yahoo News.