The federal government pulled the plug on the domain name used by the State of California on Tuesday, setting into motion a chain of events that threatened to grind government business to a standstill within the state says an IDG News Service article in ComputerWorld.
State IT staffers were able to fix the problem within a few hours, narrowly averting disaster, but the situation shed light on what observers are calling a shocking weakness in the state’s IT infrastructure.
The story behind the shutdown, and how the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) came within hours of shutting down the State of California’s Internet presence, is a complex one but, as with many stories on the Internet, it begins with pornography.
To find out the story behind the shutdown, go to ComputerWorld at http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9040858
There is also an article in Network World if you’re really interested:
Federal ‘fix’ knocks ca.gov for a loop
Even the government shudders when someone says they’re from the government and they’re here to help. Case in point: A hacker’s diversion of traffic from a California county government Web site to a porn purveyor spiraled into IT chaos yesterday after a countermeasure applied from Washington essentially “deleted the ca.gov domain.”
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/20192
Share This by email or social web
