Pornography is highly-accessible, thanks to the exponential evolution of technology. Although watching this type of adult content would most likely be frowned upon in most industries, catching an employee in the act might only be slightly surprising. However, an incident concerning a civil servant's porn watching has caused an unexpected situation within the U.S. government.
A national government network was infected with malware due to an employee's "extensive history" of watching porn on his work computer. According to investigators, the man's Android cell phone "was also infected with malware."
An audit performed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s inspector general found that a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) network at the EROS Center was jeopardized after an employee clicked through thousands of lewd web pages containing malware, which downloaded into his laptop unbeknownst to him. According to the investigation, porn from these compromised pages was "subsequently saved to an unauthorized USB device and personal Android cell phone" which were then connected to the employee’s government-issued computer.
A report detailing the issue was released earlier this month but was dissimilated on the U.S. government’s oversight website, causing the issue to remain mostly under wraps. This may stem from the assessment of the digital incident. A spokesperson for Interior’s inspector has ruled out any national security issues in this case; "the malware helps enable data exfiltration and is also associated with ransomware attacks."
