[All_jlau] Do Not Access WikiLeaks Using Government Resources

[Andy Kowalski]

Nearly everyone has heard about the release of sensitive U.S. documents made public on the WikiLeaks website. These include classified documents.  As such, the Department of Energy has determined that anyone using a DOE resource to access wikileaks.org poses a serious security risk.  

JLab is an unclassified facility and prohibited from accessing or possessing classified information.  Therefore, no JLab resource (i.e., computer, PDA, network, VPN) may be used to access or assist in accessing wikileaks.org by any JLab staff member, User or visitor.  

JLab began blocking access to the WikiLeaks website on Tuesday in an effort to help prevent someone from inadvertently downloading a classified document to a machine on our network.  Since then, WikiLeaks has made some attempts to move the documents to other web sites.  We ask that you do not attempt to access these documents from any source.  While it might seem intuitive that once a classified document has been publicly exposed it would no longer be considered classified, that is not true.  So using JLab resources to access or posses such information introduces the risk to JLab and to you as an individual of being involved in an investigation.

An extract from an official DOE communication is included here:
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Any users navigating to wikileaks.org will pose a serious risk of introducing classified information to an unclassified machine. Clem Boylston, CISO for the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence sent out a note to the community stating, “Any document that is on an Internet web site that is purported to be classified cannot be downloaded to an unclassified computer system without contaminating the unclassified computer system (i.e., a spill).” In this case, “downloaded” would not only mean the actual process of saving it to the hard drive, but also the simple case of viewing it as the information is cached on the local machine when doing so.

Anyone using their DOE computer to view the purported classified information posted on the website would merit involvement to the appropriate DOE authorities for a full review and analysis of severity.
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