Personal information for more than 12,000 employees at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in rural South Carolina was likely compromised by a data security breach – the latest in a string of problems at the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) facility.
According to reporter Mike Gellatly of The Aiken Standard – the outlet which broke the story – the USDOE claims “no classified information (was) taken from the top secret, nuclear weapons complex site. However, DOE officials said they remain in the dark over who perpetrated the leak and why the information was taken.”
That doesn’t sound very encouraging …
Gellatly adds “site management and operations contractor Savannah River Nuclear Solutions has had problems with software improvements and the management of software projects within the last year, according to reviews released in recent months.”
Evidently so …
Sources familiar with the breach tell FITS that the federal government “believes” no classified information was exposed – but cannot say definitively whether that is the case.
“DOE doesn’t use soft language,” the source said. “They have no idea of the total loss of info.”
Ruh-roh …
The breach comes less than two weeks after the facility announced furloughs affecting more than 2,000 workers.
No word yet on the breach from S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley – whose S.C. Department of Revenue (SCDOR) suffered the largest state-level security breach in American history last summer. That debacle – which remains an unsolved mystery – resulted in the loss of 3.8 million Social Security numbers, 3.3 million bank account numbers, tax info for more than 650,000 businesses and nearly 400,000 credit and debit card numbers.
Haley is also no stranger to controversy involving SRS – once notoriously claiming that half of the employees at the facility were high on drugs while the other half were illiterate.
“Down on River Site, they were hiring a few hundred people, and when we sat down and talked to them – this was back before the campaign – when we sat down and talked to them, they said of everybody they interviewed, half of them failed a drug test, and of the half that was left, of that 50 percent, the other half couldn’t read and write properly,” Haley told a group of Lexington, S.C. Rotarians in 2011.
The governor later rescinded her comment.
SRS was built during the 1950s to provide nuclear weapons for the Cold War. It is in the process of being converted into a mixed oxide fuel facility – which would turn weapons grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors.
***
12 comments
Fractions continue to confound Sic Willie. Must be that non technical university he attended.
Was it a non tech school, or the 4 year community college in Columbia?
I am guessing the latter.
I have a pair of degrees from the University of South Carolina. Undergrad in history/ philosophy (’97) and Masters in Mass Communication. And yes, both are worth about as much as used TP for my bungholio.
Fractions continue to confound Sic Willie. Must be that non technical university he attended.
Was it a non tech school, or the 4 year community college in Columbia?
I am guessing the latter.
I have a pair of degrees from the University of South Carolina. Undergrad in history/ philosophy (’97) and Masters in Mass Communication. And yes, both are worth about as much as used TP for my bungholio.
This is a big time security breach. The Chinese have probably stolen our technology in how to employ a ton of former government & military employees by using a complex network of payoffs, paybacks, and other assorted favors-rewarding them again after “retirement” with a relatively unaccountable “contractor” position within a facility that no longer does a whole lot.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll implement the stolen technology and render themselves trillions of dollars in debt with a large & unproductive gov’t as an albatross around neck of their economy.
This is a big time security breach. The Chinese have probably stolen our technology in how to employ a ton of former government & military employees by using a complex network of payoffs, paybacks, and other assorted favors-rewarding them again after “retirement” with a relatively unaccountable “contractor” position within a facility that no longer does a whole lot.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll implement the stolen technology and render themselves trillions of dollars in debt with a large & unproductive gov’t as an albatross around neck of their economy.
I’m waiting – oh, you bet I am waiting – for the Chinese to hack into Fitsnews, just to find out what their reaction would be—— what would they think of us?
I’m waiting – oh, you bet I am waiting – for the Chinese to hack into Fitsnews, just to find out what their reaction would be—— what would they think of us?