Department of the Interior (DOI) officials apparently didn’t tighten their digital systems after personnel files were illegally more than a year ago, given that a former employee “compromised” an account Tuesday.
A former National Parks Service (NPS) employee accessed the official Badlands National Park Twitter account Tuesday and published a series of tweets about climate change. The park voluntarily deleted the tweets after “they realized that their account had been compromised,” an NPS statement said. (RELATED: Journos, Celebrities Falsely Claim ‘Fascism,’ ‘Censorship’ After National Park Tweets Taken Offline)
The tweetstorm followed President Donald Trump’s alleged gag order that supposedly forced certain agencies to observe silence and generated sensational media headlines about the park defying the president – even though that turned out not to be the case. (RELATED: All These News Outlets Falsely Reported That Badlands National Park Defied Trump)
DOI, which has jurisdiction over NPS, oversaw a similar incident more than a year ago.
Retired information technology specialist Dana Beach illegally accessed “an unknown number of personnel documents” after a DOI administrator gave her passwords, the agency’s inspector general reported in April, 2016. (RELATED: Retired Fed Hacked Into An ‘Unknown’ Number Of Gov’t Accounts)
Beach pleaded guilty to one charge of computer intrusion in August, 2015, and was given two years probation, was prohibited from federal employment, and was banned from obtaining federal contracts until Oct. 13, 2018.
It’s unclear how the Badland’s Twitter account was compromised. One obvious possibility is that the former official had access while he was with the agency and the password wasn’t updated after his departure.
Irrespective of such issues, NPS received numerous warnings in the way of other recent high-profile hacks. Accounts belonging to John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee, and the Office of Personnel Management were all breached within the last two years.
NPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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