FEMA is the United States’ federal disaster management agency. True to form, where there is FEMA, disaster follows:

WASHINGTON - A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia.

The hacker made more than 400 calls on a Federal Emergency Management Agency voicemail system in Emmitsburg, Md., on Saturday and Sunday, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski.

Who could have possibly seen this coming?

FEMA is part of Homeland Security, which in 2003 put out a warning about this very vulnerability.

But this had to take some extraordinary skill to corrupt a system for such a ::ahem:: vital government agency, right?

This type of hacking is very low-tech and “old school,” said John Jackson, a St. Louis-based security consultant. It was popular 10 to 15 years ago. Telecommunications security administrators now know to configure security settings, such as having individual users create unique passwords and not continue to use the password assigned to users in the initial setup.

I have better security on my cell phone.

Ok, so it was the FBI or NSA that found out this was going on, right?

Sprint caught the fraud over the weekend and halted all outgoing long-distance calls from FEMA’s National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg.

I wouldn’t trust DHS to protect the recipe for the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices, let alone keep me safe from terrorists.

And now, a word from the enemy:

Filed under: Profiles in Governance, The Homeland