Eavesdropper’s Web site conks out

The U.S. government agency responsible for IT security suffered a Web site outage caused by a domain name system glitch, but a spokesperson for the Communications Security Establishment could not confirm whether it’s site has similar vulnerabilities.

The National Security Agency’s Web site was unresponsive at 7:00 am Pacific time Thursday and an IT analyst warns corporations could encounter similar problems.

Often depicted in action and spy movies such as Enemy of the State, the NSA is responsible for electronic surveillance and IT security.

Its Web site was unreachable because of a problem with the NSA's DNS (Domain Name System) servers, said Danny McPherson, chief research officer with Arbor Networks. DNS servers are used to translate things like the Web addresses typed into machine-readable Internet Protocol addresses that computers use to find each other on the Internet.

“This is a good example of what could happen if your organization fails to address some specifics around DNS,” said Jayanth Angl, a research analyst with the Info-Tech Research Group, a consultancy based in London, Ont. “In a business environment that could be very damaging.”

Canada has an agency with a similar purpose, the Communications Security Establishment. It’s not clear whether a similar problem could affect CSE.

“Without knowing what happened there’s no way I could tell you whether something like that could happen to us,” CSE spokesman Adrian Simpson said. “We’re confident our systems are well protected.”

Over at the NSA, its servers could be knocked offline, though the NSA would still be temporarily reachable by some users because some Internet service providers cache DNS information. If NSA’s site goes down, then e-mail sent to the agency will not be delivered, and in some cases, e-mail being sent by the NSA would not get through.

"We are aware of the situation and our techs are working on it," a NSA spokeswoman said at 9:45 a.m. PT. She declined to identify herself.