Via (again, the essential, and thoroughly clad, except when not) Avedon, this from the Financial Times.
The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American officials.
But you have to read all the way to the end to find this:
The National Security Council said the White House had created a team of experts to consider whether the administration needed to restrict the use of BlackBerries because of concerns about cyber espionage.
Oh, pshaw! Sure, some Christianist
General could have left his Blackberry on the nightstand after getting a room in the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton, and the ChiComs could have latched onto it, but a high government official entrusted with national security information using an unsecured Blackberry? How plausible is that? Oh, wait...
1. We know that Rove sent 95% of his email from a Blackberry, which in itself is a huge No-no in the corporate environment, because it's "all too easy to put sensitive information into email."
2. We know that Rove bypassed his secure White House account in favor of the insecure RNC account.
3. We know that Rove kept losing his Blackberry
4. We know what Rove had a security clearance, and that White House officials used insecure RNC accounts for official business.
5. We know that previous White House security breaches had been ignored.
6. And now know we know that there's been a massive security breach, and the IT guys are looking at Blackberry users.
And I know that if I were the security guy in the IT department, and there'd been a massive breach, I'd be looking hard at a guy who had access to sensitive information, used insecure networks, kept losing his machine, and seemed not to be accountable for anything because of politics.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate...
NOTE So, maybe we were on the wrong track with the Rove's top, "Jeff Gannon". thing. Maybe this is why Rove resigned to spend more time with his son who is away in college, the lucky boy.
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i like it, lb. as a theory, it works for me
however, i'll add that everyone in the swampland is using blackberry style tech, and i'm positive any hacking type could easily read a lot of classified stuff just wi-fi-ing into dupont circle. people are always using tech to talk about stuff they do for their political jobs. everywhere. the security breach could've come from multiple places, as i think it is likely it did.
interesting timing
I do find it unusual that a June breach of security is just now coming to headlines shortly after Rove left.
But I'm not sure how Pentagon hacking equals Rove. There must be dozens of other "Bushies" that have also lost their Blackberries. Sure most of them aren't getting all the super secret run the country plans.
You could just set up shop in Chatta-town and sniff packets going into and out of the Pioneer Bank bldg and get access to much of the same data as Rove's Blackberry would provide.
But it is possible there were passwords on Rove's Blackberry and that help the Chinese get into the system. But really, how hard is it to figure out "
b0tt0m"