The Federal Judge’s order that the Elon Muska team has temporarily stopped boring into the Ministry of Finance’s payment systems raises much greater question: whether what Elon Musk has described as the effectiveness of the Ministry of the Government creates significant cyber and national security.
The activities of the government’s government efforts by Musk Government, said US district judge Paul A. Engelmayer in Its order on SaturdayThe risk of “publishing sensitive and intimate information” and causing state treasury systems “more vulnerable than before for hacking”.
It is a risk that cyber safety experts in the last 10 days sound alarms like Mr. Muska a group of young encoders He demanded access to the innermost systems of the Ministry of Finance. This approach was eventually granted Scott Bessnt, a newly confirmed Minister of Finance.
But in addition to the vague assurance that new arrivals to the Ministry of Finance doors had a proper permits, there was no description of how their work would be ensured – and many reasons believe that it would facilitate Chinese and Russian intelligence services to the Ministry of Finance systems.
This was a central argument that made 19 general representatives when they were looking for a temporary order to restrict Mr. Musk’s staff from the Treasury Systems. And Judge Engelmayer approved it on Saturday and limited access to existing cash registers to the hearing next week before another federal judge.
The government claimed that the team of Mr. Musk was limited to reviewing the data “only” within the Ministry of Finance, although the administration will now place the denominator in positions where they could do much more.
The fear of the department’s targeting is hardly hypothetical: in December the agency said VA Congress that the Chinese intelligence group broke into its systems and stolen unclassified material. The complete assessment of this damage was not published. However, it was a reminder that the Ministry of Finance – as in the Pentagon and its suppliers, the CIA and the White House – is high on the Beijing destination. And any new approach to agency systems potentially creates a new way for intruders.
In the days before the order, concerns about potential security vulnerabilities created by Mr. Musk’s project were uncontrollable. The Washington Post reported that the Subcontanerian Booz Allen Hamilton, a company that operates most of the centers of the cash register, has issued a written warning; After the leakage of its content was inserted.
Outside the experts, they described in detail what could happen if the outsider gains sudden access to the locked system: personal data could escape, payments could be diverted and information about political opponents could be collected.
Bruce Schneier, a cyber security expert in Harvard and the author of a series of books on security vulnerabilities, including “clicks all” kills all “, called Mr. Musk’s input” the most important violation of security “in American history.
Mr. Schneier noted that the intrusion occurred “not through a sophisticated cyber attack or the act of foreign spy, but through the official orders of a billionaire with a poorly defined government role”.
Of course, Mr. Musk is tuned to cyber security problems. Starlink, a satellite system operated by its SpaceX company, kept Ukraine in communication in the Russian invasion and is considered highly safe. Similarly, SpaceX missile operations that Chinese space engineers are eagerly replicate are repeatedly applicable.
So federal officials say they were shocked by negligence with which Mr. Musk’s staff pierced government systems, including two storage of millions of sensitive records: the Treasury and the US Staff Management Office, both of which were the main objectives that were the main objectives of the Chinese Intelligence services.
“The Department of the Ministry of Finance is an important actor of foreign policy in itself,” James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders Written on Friday on Foreign Affairs. The authors who are guys at the Brookings Institution have noted that the agency plays a central role in sanctioning policy. The main sanctions – goals – China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – are also primary cyber ingredients for the United States.
“If the Muska team has access and can rewrite the code that controls US government payments, the risks of cyber security and privacy would be massive,” they wrote. “The hostile intelligence services are probably already at work and are trying to assess which team members can be careless with their digital devices or are vulnerable to capture or coercion.”
The authors also noted that if Mr. Musk’s team was given security clearances, because the White House insists, it would most likely be with minimal to any screening, a process that usually lasts months.
More than 20 million Americans of the Office for Staff Management pierced during Obama’s administration. American officials assume that Chinese agents have combined these data with stolen records from Starwood hotels and Anth’s health system to draw a picture of where officials traveling and who they worked.
“Foreign opponents usually spend years attempt to penetrate into government systems such as these, through secret to avoid vision,” said Mr. Schneier. “In this case, external operators with limited experience and minimal supervision of their work on supervision and under massive public control,” with an approach to a high level to “most sensitive US networks”.
Mr. Muska says he uses “radical transparency” because it examines expenditure patterns of government agencies. However, it is not known about how they get access to information in their team or whether they make changes in systems that could introduce security vulnerabilities. Trump’s administration did not reveal the names of most young recruitment recruits, nor did it explain what the permission is.
In the letter this week to Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, who raised concerns about the work of the cost of reducing the cost, Jonathan Blum, the official of the Treasury, said there was no reason to worry.
“The Ministry of Finance has no higher obligation than the administration of government finances on behalf of the US people,” he wrote, “and her system of payments is crucial for this process. In accordance with this mission, the Ministry of Finance committed itself to protect the integrity and safety of the system. ”
He said that protection in the system was “robust and effective” and in constant review.