Will the Obama administration be known as “The Keystone Kops” as a legacy?
David Kennedy, head of computer security consulting firm TrustedSec LLC, a respected security expert warned Congress on Tuesday that the HealthCare.gov website has security flaws that put user data at a “critical risk,” despite recent government assurances the data is safe.
This is bad news for the Obama administration facing an increasingly uneasy and sometimes outright angry American public.
Is anyone who is associated with government contracting processes starting to think that the government just likes to pour taxpayer money down an open drain? They certainly seem to have done it this time, hiring a set of incompetent companies to do a poorly managed, poorly executed job. They didn’t even do a good job on the coverup.
As Kennedy told Reuters, “There are actually live vulnerabilities on the site now.”
Kennedy is a former U.S. Marine Corps cyber-intelligence analyst. He told Congress during the hearings Tuesday that his firm had prepared a 17-page report describing some of the problems.
Ironically, he could not discuss what was in the content since it might be a “blueprint for criminals launching attacks.”
As Kennedy put it, “There is a lot of stuff that we are not publicly disclosing because of the criticality of the findings. We don’t want to hurt people.”
The security expert noted that the White House had been warned of the website’s security flaws since the October launch of the doomed rollout. In fact at the end of last month, a Sept. 27 government memo was revealed that stated two U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials had also concluded the site was highly insecure and should be tested before the launch.
It wasn’t.
An excuse was provided by government spokesperson Oct. 30 in a memo where she claimed security and consumer data was secure.
She said, “When consumers fill out their online Marketplace applications, they can trust that the information they’re providing is protected by stringent security standards and that the technology underlying the application process has been tested and is secure.”
How many Americans with any knowledge of computers are going to risk their personal information on a website that still has over 40 percent of its construction left to be done?
Anyone who believes President Obama when he says “the website will be fixed by November 30,” believes in the tooth fairy.
