(Newswire.net — January 8, 2015) — According to an internal department memo, an unnamed Pentagon employee last year visited porno websites more than 12,000 times during working hours, which should be prohibited by the Pentagons security system. Reportedly, the employee was blocked several thousand times, however, still managed to access some porn content on the web.
The investigation, details of which were obtained by the Washington Times via a Freedom of Information Act request, found that the man was blocked from accessing porn hundreds of times from October 2013 to May 2014.
According to network firewall logs, his attempt to visit certain X-rated web content was blocked about 3,000 times in both June and July, and more than 6,000 times in August,.
The man worked for the Pentagon’s Defense Finance Accounting Service (DFAS), he told investigators that he had tried to view porn at work because he did not have a personal computer, RT reported.
Due to his ‘extensive record of dubious web usage,’ the DFAS employee was also subject to an investigation in 2011 over viewing porn on the job.
As many porn sites come with the risk of cyberattacks via malware, the employee’s “extensive history of attempts to access these websites present an increased level of risk to the DFAS computer network,” investigators wrote.
Reportedly, the DFAS employee said he was not aware he was jeopardizing whole Pentagon network, though he knows that pornographic websites are packed with viruses, Trojans, and various malware software.
Meanwhile, investigators are seeking to understand how it is possible to access those websites that should be blocked by the security system guarding government computers.
The Pentagon representative Tom LaRock, said the case is a “one time anomaly” that does not indicate prohibitive access to sensitive agency hard drives.
“They tried to replicate the anomaly and they were unable to do so,” LaRock told the Times. “It didn’t really hinder the investigation. They were able through those firewall logs to substantiate that this guy was attempting to go on a government computer and access these sites.”
LaRock could not say if the employee retained his job after being the subject of two porn-viewing investigations.
This is not the first time government employees have been caught browsing porn sites at work. A Federal Communications Commission employee spent 1 hour every day relaxing with porn websites, as was discovered, and one Treasury Department employee accessed more than 13,000 porn images in six weeks. General Services Administration employee said that main reason he browsed porn sites while on the job is boredom, Reuters reported.
Despite high level security that banes government computers to access potentially dangerous websites, the system still leaks.