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Presidential Motorcade, Safe House Info Revealed in P2P Data Leak

by Warren Riddle on July 30, 2009 at 05:35 PM

Earlier this year, Tiversa, Inc., a firm which monitors peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services, discovered leaked information about the President's helicopter on a computer in Iran. Yesterday, company CEO Robert Boback told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Tiversa has discovered even more extremely sensitive documents, this time on the LimeWire file-sharing network (National cybersecurity coordinator anyone?).

According to Computerworld, the files included information about a Secret Service safe house for the Presidential family, and the Pentagon's network infrastructure. The files also contained specific details about motorcade routes, and every nuclear facility in the United States. As a result, the committee chairman, Rep. Edolphus Towns, plans to introduce a bill which would ban P2P sharing on all government computers and networks.

The committee also lambasted LimeWire chairman Mark Gorton (who was present) for allegedly not implementing tighter security measures which had been requested by the government two years ago. Towns said that the "recent LimeWire leaks range from appalling to shocking."

But, Tiversa also issued the committee a warning two years ago, when board member and retired-Gen. Wesley Clark said that the "American people would be outraged" if they knew the full extent of the sensitive information being leaked through file-sharing networks. Perhaps Towns and the rest of the committee should have heeded that warning and proposed the ban then, rather than remaining idle and placing the blame for the extremely unsettling breaches of national security on Gorton. [From: Computerworld]

Tags: government, leak, p2p, president, safety, security, tiversa, top

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