Reported on Fox News Sunday, 1 March 2009; a Pennsylvania company has uncovered a security breach involving the President's Marine One helicopters, a P2P file-sharing program, and an IP address in Tehran, the capital of Iran.

Although President Obama and other high-ranking American government officials have access to a fleet of high-tech and security-enhanced helicopters, the term "Marine One" is used to refer specifically to the helicopter in which the President currently is flying. The technical specifications for all of the helicopters in the fleet are highly classified, and any security breach, particularly to a hostile foreign power, is naturally of great concern

The fact that it is happening through simple file-sharing programs, which most people seem to think are just for the "harmless" sharing of music and video files, is even more alarming.

Bob Boback, CEO of Tiversa, the company who discovered the breach, explains, "We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One, which is the president's helicopter[, at an IP address in Tehran]. What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD [Maryland] had a file sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One."

But Iran is not alone in using file-sharing programs as a backdoor into otherwise secure government and business networks. Boback continues, "We've noticed it out of Pakistan, Yemen, Qatar, and China. They are actively searching for information that is disclosed in this fashion because it is a great source of intelligence."

What are some of the P2P Sharing programs?

• Limewire
• eMule
• BitComet
• BearShare
• uTorrent
• Vuze (Azureus)
• Shareaza
• iMesh
• FrostWire
• Cabos
• eDonkey2000
• Ares
• FileVOoM
• There are many others and more everyday.

Why was this able to happen? There are only a few possible reasons:

1. Their IT department or personnel are sub-standard. Their IT personnel should know how much of a problem these sharing programs are to a network.
2. Their company Management refuses to understand that software needs to be purchased to keep a network clean.  Many Companies refuse to see the benefit of Software that could cost as much as $100 to $200 per user to keep the users from doing something stupid, and putting the entire company in jeopardy. The cost varies per user depending on number of users and what combination of software is purchased.
3. The two best in my opinion (27 years in IT) are NetSupport's DNA v6 and Harris' STAT Scanner Suite.
   
   The Harris STAT Scanner is now renamed to Lumension Scan and Lumension Patch & Remediation. (http://www.lumension.com/industry.jsp?id=121092)
   
   The NetSupport Software can be seen at (http://www.netsupportdna.com/distribution.asp)