Obama Faces First National Security Failure as Sotomayor and Health Care Hang in the Balance

Live by the press release, die by the press release. This is one of the many rubrics of public relations that I share with my clients. If you put it out there, it will likely come back to bite you in the nether regions, unless of course you have the actual solution in hand before you issue the release, and it's all a matter of clever implementation.

After his latest good will tour during which he once again donned the red cape of wisdom, liberty, and brotherhood, President Obama returned home to face his first serious national security failure. And this one is all on him. No equivocating. No looking back to say, "Nah uh, he broke it first." It's such a shame, too, because he should be returning with ticker tape headlines proclaiming him as a champion of the hearts and minds of our frenemies (now an official word from Merriam-Webster).

Last week's sustained cyber-attacks on some of our country's most sensitive government networks exposed how a country that lives by the technology can also perish by the technology. Someone (they suspect loony North Korea but remain unsure), used malware to flood more than a dozen websites including the FAA, the State Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Treasury. According to an analysis reported in PC World magazine, the White House and Homeland Security were able to thwart the same attack when others couldn't because, "Too many federal agency security people did not know which network service provider connected their Web sites to the Internet."

This is precisely the kind of boneheaded cross-team communication and coordination failure that a cyber-security czar woulda-coulda-shoulda prevented. But we don't have one. President Obama personally addressed the White House press corps on May 29 to issue a statement on "Securing Our Nation's Cyber Infrastructure," saying emphatically that this is "key to America's economic competitiveness...a matter of public safety and national security...a key to America's military dominance." If indeed it is (and few would disagree), then it would seem logical that on the heel of that briefing the President would have announced action on this.

During his briefing, the President even acknowledged that being techno-savvy is part of his administration's unique brand and cited incidences in which privacy hacking had occurred against himself, people close to him and his campaign. When my parents' personal data was stolen, it was no less frightening to them than if someone had entered their home and held them up at gunpoint. Others with whom I've spoken who have experienced this felt the same way. I have no doubt that the President felt thusly, which makes it all the more perplexing that there has been no follow-through. Just this morning, he announced the selection of a U.S. Surgeon General, and yet still no cyber-security czar.

It is cold-comfort to learn that the manner of the attack was low level and unsophisticated using, "software packages you can buy off the shelf that will do this type of work," according to cyber-security expert Aaron Phillip of Navigant Consulting on NPR. Sitting in the city with the world's busiest airport, knowledge that the FAA was among those attacked sends chills down the spine. By the way, NASDAQ.com was also rendered with service interruptions. Nine years ago, I reported on the notorious Emulex hoax in which something as simple as a phony press release caused the company to lose more than 60% of its value in less than 16 minutes with ripple effects across the market. Considering how skittish today's markets are, the mind reels how a hacker can cause chaos. Fortunately, no mission-critical systems were affected.

This abject failure is noteworthy on its own, but it has far more consequences. It is a self-inflicted wound just as the President has two of his own mission-critical issues before Congress: the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Healthcare Reform. Missteps like this serve only to entrench the hyper-partisans in both chambers. His political enemies, smelling blood in the water, will become even more strident. We have evidence of this with the tenor of the opening remarks offered by Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in the Sotomayor hearing this morning. In response, the Democrat Congressional leadership will become even more heavy handed in their use of a new "supermajority." The sensible centrists who already feel ill at ease about the President's ability to match rhetoric with action will read the cyber security failure as a bad omen.

Judge Sotomayor will have to endure a harsher and more inflammatory hearing on the order of Justice Thomas and other GOP nominees (paybacks are hell). The vote to confirm her will be closer than it rightly should be. The vote for Health Care Reform -- which Republican centrists truly support -- will now surely not happen before the August break. When or if such legislation does reach the President's desk it will be likely resemble more of the status quo than it does reform by any definition.

As his immediate predecessor learned, positive earned media is ephemeral and should not be wasted on a big case of the dumbs.

Follow Kimberly Krautter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kimbrlykrautter

Comments

[Snowball]

"Sensible centrists"

Haha, corporate tools more like it.

"The vote for Health Care Reform -- which Republican centrists truly support"

Haha, yeah right, and go against the interests of their sponsors in the insurance, big Pharma and health care industries?

"Democrat Congressional leadership will become even more heavy handed in their use of a new 'supermajo­rity.'"

Please indicate when and where the new Democratic (that's the name of the party, not the "Democrat" party. Nice job of trying to slip that one by. A dead giveaway of your own hyper-part­isanship.) majority has steamrolled Republicans.

"perplexing that there has been no follow-through"

How do you know there hasn't been? You don't. It would be very wise of Obama to make public pronouncements on how they're beefing up cyber-security. It's possible that there has been follow-up and that's the reason the cyber attack wasn't worse?

"Fortunately, no mission-critical systems were affected."

Perhaps the administration and government effectively did their jobs. Give credit where credit is due. If no "mission-critical systems" were affected, maybe it wasn't much of a national security crisis.

It's been only a matter of days since the cyber attack, yet you have pronounced it an "abject failure" and "self-inficted wound" simply because Obama hasn't publicly turned on a dime and appointed a cyber-czar. It just doesn't work that way, be realistic.

I proclaim your effort to present yourself as a non-partisan "centrist" a major fail.

[Kimberly Krautter - Huffpost Blogger]

Spoken like a true wing nut... and as for my centrist creds, check out my other postings..­..

[Snowball]

Sure, and you're "centrist" like Fox News is "fair and balanced." When will you Conservatives stop trying to play this faux centrist game? It isn't working anymore. Your false equivalance slight of hand between Republicans and Democrats doesn't hold up to the facts. Can you name any of these imaginary moderate Republicans in either house? You can forget about trotting out Arlen Specter, he left the party because it has become too extreme.

Instead of trying to debate reasonably with any of the points I made above, you have to resort to hurling insults. A fine "iconoclast" (I don't think you even know the meaning of the word) you are. You're far from being the anti-Coulter.

[viper234]

If the government needs to upgrade its firewalls and interdepartmental communcations fine, just don't start trying to legislate government control of cyberspace. It won't work. As for maintaining "military dominance," give me a break. Isn't it enough that the US has over 15,000 nuclear warheads and is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon enough to maintain "military dominance?" The US should be more concerned with it's economic standing in the world because that's where US dominance is in serious jeopardy.

[Veni Markovski]

I find this quote quite amuzing:
This is precisely the kind of boneheaded cross-team communication and coordination failure that a cyber-security czar woulda-cou­lda-should­a prevented.
No cyber tzar will deal with prevention of such types of attacks, called distributed denial of service attacks.
There are technical ways to avoid such attacks, but they are not in the power of any cyber tzar. When you make a statement like the one I quoted you are not misrepresenting the role of the person who will become the so called cyber tzar, but you bring expectations to your readers that once the person is appointed, there will be no DDoS attacks. There will be, so, you could easily prepare an article in advance to be published when such an attack happens, AFTER the person is appointed. Actually there are such attacks every day somewhere on this planet :)

Best,

P.S. I would be happy to discuss these issues in length with the author, should that be necessary, being an adviser to the Bulgarian cyber tzar.

[EminemsRevenge]

As my comment on http://eminemsrevenge.xanga.com/707101272/twits-and-the-obama-drama/ shows, Obama & Co. CAN create an alternative health care system and fund it by having the Post Office get into the banking industry..­.a move that would put the banking vultures in check.

North Korea the culprit??? More than likely, it was another Kevin Mitnick: http://www.forbes.com/1999/04/05/feat.html and i pray to god that there's isn't a Republican hacker out there with HIS abilities!!!!

[euripedes923]

"Southern Iconoclast­."
So that's the new code for dyed-in-the-wool racist. Clever. Just when I'd finally caught on to "states' rights," "traditional values" and similar terms. I do like the irony of "Atlanta native," though. In the end, the joke's always on them.

[Kimberly Krautter - Huffpost Blogger]

Well that's a first. LOL! You must be one of those people who assumes all Southerners are racists...­you know what they say about assuming..­.

[sixyfivepercentwater]

It makes an ass out of you and ming?

[Horatiu]

An inquisitorial hearing of Sotomayor would represent a political burial for the GOP.

[Jaywalkker]

1.) Criticizing the government for a string of concerted DDoS attacks that took down websites is plainly unfair, especially when the personal attack is against a lack of cross communication. Numerous private companies suffer at the hands of a DDoS attack and cannot manage it. Often have to mirror their web pages to another server thrown up on another IP as a work around to filter out the problem computers. And that's private companies.­..the all important, not bureaucratic, for profit so "their best interests will keep them agile and nimble" suffer from the same issues as this recent government attack.

2.) Unless the affected server was compromised with mal-ware that needed a reboot or stack overflow to install, that restart usually being forced by a DDoS, then its nothing more than a prank, usually pulled by somebody who rented a botnet from a script kiddy spammer.

3.) if a concerted effort by some group took down multiple radio towers on hills, will you criticize the government for not being able to keep the President's radio fireside chats from making it to all markets?

There are legitimate cyber threats to the nation out there. Muddying the waters a bit by attacking these DDoS'es does not help. Having someone do a DNS hack redirect gov sites to a phishing scheme, that's worthy of complaining about. Hacking into government servers and stealing information, that's worth complaining about. Actually having a web site defaced is worth complaining about.

[Kimberly Krautter - Huffpost Blogger]

Interesting reply. Thank you. As a gov't cyber security expert said to me when he read the draft of my post, there are plenty of protocols in place to address attacks of this nature. His assessment of the problem is a "readiness failure." When the attack occurred a clown car fire drill of sorts was the response rather than exercising a measured disaster recovery exercise on the order of the one you describe. Thank God, this attack was benign and nothing serious resulted.

Three point of concern for me:

1) This is like the guys who were learning to fly without learning how to land -- on it's face benign, but a test run. Even if we have the protocols in place, we clearly do not have the compliance, accountability and readiness measures. This constitutes a failure.

2) Self-inflicted wounds like this serve to chum already hyper-political waters and weaken the political will of those who would be pre-disposed to compromise and vote in his direction.

3) Jeff Sessions and Orrin Hatch were very harsh in their opening statements at the Sotomayor hearing as if the 98% of her legal and judicial record were of no validity. It was quite harsh and a clear indication that the Congressional GOP caucus is digging in, something they could not do without inflicting their own political injury not that long ago because of Obama's apparent teflon strength with the constituency.

[Jaywalkker]

I appreciate the follow-up. You are correct, from a readiness standpoint, this is embarrassing. GAO releases on American cyber-security readiness are truly frightening because they touch on the impact of current status and technology initiatives of all departments and how far behind they all are.

Ultimately taking down a web page, to me is nothing. That site should be on a standalone server that only tangentially touches the network it represents, so compromising that is like taking out a checkpoint but not storming the fort.

[LordMoon]

Let's see while President Obama was making his good will tour, Ram Emanuel suggested that a public option could be off the table, this idea recieved immediate rejection by the public.

In short order, congress announced they would not be meeting President Obama's deadline for a health care reform bill. Probably to find a time when they could sneak it through on the weekend, so that fewer American's would notice that there is no public option.

If President Obama's adminstration fails on health care, and a no public option would be a failure, then it will fail. I don't believe he will be re elected, but then maybe American's would have a chance to vote for a third party candidate who is not a Republicrat.

[AllenGlines]

Sotomayor shouldn't hang in the balance. To not confirm her would be absurd.

Check out the article I wrote on these hearings.
www.examiner.com/examiner/x-16211-Salt-Lake-City-TV-Examiner~y2009m7d13-The-Sonia-Sotomayor-Senate-Confirmation-Hearings-An-Exhibition-of-Bratty-Behavior

[darthmaul]

This article makes no sense to me. Connect the dots for me. A cyber-attack that you state was poorly handled by, some government agencies endangers Sotomeyer's nomination. Sorry, I don't see it. The remarks made by the republicans were no more and no less strident then I would expect from them. It's par for the course.

[martinchill]

it's poorly written.

"Fortunately, no mission-critical systems were affected.

This abject failure is noteworthy on its own, but it has far more consequenc­es."

sheesh.

[Querent]

How about these:

"Last week's sustained cyber-attacks on some of our country's most sensitive government networks exposed how a country that lives by the technology can also perish by the technology­." S'pose she knows what "perish" means?

"I have no doubt that the President felt thusly, which makes it all the more perplexing that there has been no follow-thr­ough." NOT a new word from Merriam-Webster.

"By the way, NASDAQ.com was also rendered with service interrupti­ons." So service interruptions are a new kind of browser?

"During his briefing, the President even acknowledged that being techno-savvy is part of his administration's unique brand and cited incidences in which privacy hacking had occurred against himself, people close to him and his campaign." As opposed to "incidents"?

Oh well. At least it has entertainment value.

[Zuzette]

I, too, have no idea what she's trying to say. She's all over the road!

[jncc1701]

I have to admit that I disagree totally with the main premise of this article.

1. GOP is not playing nice so Obama has failed at health care and Sotomayor?

Obama is not going to get the support from certain parts of the GOP caucus no matter what he does, that is their choice and I hope we remember this when the next election rolls around.

Health care reform will affect everyone of us in a profound way, I can't think of any legislation that has has this potential in my 30ish years - so they are having a hard time sorting out the details - i say wonderful, for one it seems like Congress is actually thinking about the implication of its actions. I am at a loss to see this is a failure.

And on Sotomayor, she highlights the GOPs multiple personalty disorder - they are afraid of a Hispanic woman because she did not grow up white, male and part of the country club set, they can't relate to her and don't care to. All the while fully aware that certain parts of the Hispanic population is going to remember. This says more about the GOP than Obama.

[Sundialsvc4]

Why are you "blaming it on the President," Kimberly? Sure, "the buck stops here" and all of that, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of people who make up "the United States Government" and who operate, design and manage its (information) infrastructures. These people are the Experts (and by gawd, they ARE!) ... the CEO, himself, is not. The CEO is, well, the CEO.

[Choicelady]

What a non-story. Everyone, everywhere faces this every day. It GOT fixed. Yes maybe a cyber czar could have done it faster, but the entire US government not to mention state system of electronic communication is fragmented. Maybe that's a good thing in terms of protection? You know - like crop diversification to prevent real pests from taking out the whole thing? But to call this a 'failure' of this Administration is such overstatement ! NO one will stop attacks. The question is how much control you have when it happens. Looks pretty good to me.

[MrJoyboy]

Our enemies might come through that series of tubes known as the Internets.

[Mister D]

Look, Sotomayor's confirmation is a fait accompli--Al Franken's victory made sure of that.

This problem with the cyber networks has a lot to do with the lack of cohesiveness between organizations that dates back to the Clinton years...so it's not just Obama's problem.

[Dynamohum]

The lack of cohesiveness in the federal government goes back to the very beginning. All the way back to Johnson, Nixon, etc. The federeal government had the first "internet" system in the world that was completely separate from the World Wide Web.