Marine's ban Facebook,Twitter and Myspace
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Techno Stuffs
The U.S. Marine Corps has banned service members from using military computers to access social networking sites, and the Department of Defense is reviewing the services to see if they pose too great a security threat to allow.Such sites are popular with young service members who want to keep in touch with friends and family at home, but the Marine Corps' chief information officer, Brig. Gen. George J. Allen, said in a memo issuing the ban Tuesday that such sites create "a larger attack and exploitation window" and increase the risk that service members will share information that should be kept under wraps.
The order, which expires in one year unless renewed or supplanted by other guidance, involves all social networking sites, including Facebook , MySpace and Twitter . It carves out room for exceptions to the policy based on operational needs, but calls for an extensive review process before such authorization would be granted. The policy does not ban Marines from using the services on personal computers.The DoD review will address the security risks of social networking sites, as well as the value they provide in helping the agency communicate, according to statements posted to the agency's Web site. A new policy could be approved by October.
A few choice quotes from the Marine Corps order:
• “These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries…”
• “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel… at an elevated risk of compromise.”
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have been constant targets for malware attacks that exploit the trusted nature of social networks to lure users into clicking on links to malicious sites.
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