Junior Staffer Leaks House Documents On P2P

Would you prefer a diligent government employee or a security-minded one?  I would prefer one that’s both, but if I had to choose, I’d think I’d go with the security-oriented one.  According to the Washington Post, a junior staffer was behind a government document leak:

The 22-page “Committee on Standards Weekly Summary Report” gives brief summaries of ethics panel investigations of the conduct of 19 lawmakers and a few staff members. It also outlines the work of the new Office of Congressional Ethics, a quasi-independent body that initiates investigations and provides recommendations to the ethics committee. The document indicated that the office was reviewing the activities of 14 other lawmakers. Some were under review by both ethics bodies.

So, did the junior staffer do this on purpose?  No.  At least, it doesn’t sound like it.

P2P software to be blamed

Apparently, the staffer took the documents home to work on them.  But, he also had P2P software installed on his home computer.  Once he had saved the documents to his computer, if was available to anyone on the file-sharing network.

Those familiar with P2P networking software will ask “why did the guy put these documents in a folder shared with the entire network?”

There are plenty of P2P software out there that will, by default, share any documents found on the computer (it’s a matter of configuring the software…but many people forget to do that when searching for free movies). Apparently, this is not true anymore, with most P2P applications not sharing all contents by default.  This is a far cry from when I dabbled with file sharing software…almost 5 years ago.  I decided at the time it wasn’t worth it because of all the trojans floating around…

Of course, this still doesn’t excuse the junior staffer.  Taking sensitive files home to work on them?  What was he thinking?

Update: apparently, it was a she:

…she told committee leaders she had saved a copy of the investigation summary to her personal computer without realizing it, a congressional source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The file was stored in a part of her computer files where peer-to-peer file-sharing software could operate, but she told the leaders that she did not realize that it was actively running.

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