re: "A storm for a storm? Hope not!"

Thanks to Steve at Dead Men Working ("we are the zombies of the State Department, the dead men (and women) working") for the link.

Money quote(s):

"On Thursday afternoon, Washington time, an email storm brought the State Department's unclassified email servers to their collective knees, effectively cutting off email service to most State Department employees. It was caused by replies to a seemingly innocuous email wishing the entire global access list a happy new year. Each reply in turn went to the entire global access list, and soon thousands of copies of a more-than-a-megabyte-and-growing email were queued up in the system. Many employees received a hundred or more such replies, overloading mailboxes and further jamming the system.

This was almost certainly the intended consequence of a deliberate attack on the State Department system. Allegedly, the email contained hidden code which caused it to reply-all even if a reply was intended to be sent only to one person."

"(H)is team protects State against an estimated 5,100 viral attacks and some two million questionable probes each day. It is a huge job, and the fact that two or three attacks per year are successful (seriously affect the whole system) means that only a tiny fraction of one percent of all attacks do what they were intended to do. Not ideal in the best of all possible worlds. But still, it should be seen in perspective."

&

"The fact that service was restored within hours means that the procedures described in Reid's 2007 testimony seem to be working. The Department acted well to contain the damage and restore service.

The incident was embarrassing, and like all such events, was something of a wake-up call, but it showed that the controls in place are working as they should. "