No More Porn in the Pentagon

It may sound funny but it’s not; employees and contractors working for the Pentagon are putting the United States in danger because looking at rockets seems to be stimulating their libidos. The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency sent a warning that using government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites was forbidden.

There is a good reason for the Pentagon’s concern; many pornographic websites are infected and foreign agents can use them to gain access to and glean data from government and corporate computer networks.

The Missile Defense Agency’s Executive Director John James Jr. wrote in a memo:

Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images. These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code. … network systems are subject to monitoring at all times. Inappropriate usage will be detected and reported to supervisors for appropriate disciplinary action … The seriousness of the potential breach to operations cannot be overstated. Contracting officers will coordinate action through contractor management when contractor personnel engage in inappropriate usage.

Chase Cunningham, chief of cyber analytics at Sterling, Virginia-based Decisive Analytics Corporation, said, “There are great dangers in interacting with any site that has high-quality imagery, whether it’s pornographic or not, or a lot of links.”  He continued by explaining that a programmer can embed malicious computer code that will infiltrate computers and steal information photos, videos, or other files that are downloaded.