A Federal Business Opportunity too good to pass up

Although it may be changing to a new replacement, the FedBizOpps gateway to contracting opportunities has served as the official go-to cite for registry of opportunities and opportunists in US government contracting.

There's a short description of its utility here. It is meant to help generate competition for government business by focusing market information both to and from potential suppliers. Such competition is the economic driver of procurement.

Obviously, the cite gathers and disseminates a lot of content and time sensitive information.

So what might happen if the gatekeeper is outsourced? Might the gatekeeper use the keys to the city for personal gain?

FedBizOpps.gov contractor under FBI investigation

The federal contractor running three governmentwide websites, including FedBizOpps.gov, is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly trying to access without permission websites of their competitors in the education sector.

The Eastern District Court of Virginia in Alexandria issued a search warrant March 5 to the FBI. The FBI conducted the search before March 19 of Symplicity Corporation's offices in Arlington, Va.

The FBI stated in its request to the judge for the search warrant that a witness alleges Symplicity tried on several occasions since 2009 to access the networks of its competitors, Maxient LLC of Charlottesville, Va., and Pave Systems of Richardson, Texas. Both Maxient and Pave Systems offer software to colleges and universities, and neither have done any federal business in fiscal 2012, according to USASpending.gov.

"On Nov. 4, 2011, a cooperating witness who formerly had been employed by Symplicity for approximately five years provided information to the FBI concerning the conduct of Ariel Friedler, the Chief Executive Officer of Symplicity. According to the [witness], Ariel Friedler showed the [witness] how to connect to Maxient's website and to look for specific customers by putting in Maxient's main URL, , followed by a question mark and a school abbreviation," the search warrant obtained by Federal News Radio stated. "Friedler told the [witness] that this was how Friedler checked for new customers on Maxient's website. The [witness] stated that every time Friedler found a new customer on Maxient's website, Friedler would send an instant message or email to the [witness] about it. The [witness] also stated that Friedler discussed using anonymizers and The Onion Router to hide Friedler's activity when Friedler was looking at competitor's networks and that Friedler was very interested in using these technologies."

The Onion Router Project is intended to enable online anonymity on the Internet.

Symplicity, which is in the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program, won more than $30 million in contracts so far in 2012 from a variety of agencies, according to USASpending.gov. More than half of their contracts and dollars came from the General Services Administration for providing services and running FedBizOpps.gov, the Electronic Subcontracting Reporting System and the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. It also won $4.4 million in contracts from the Executive Office of the President and $3.2 million from the Veterans Affairs Department.

n the search warrant, the FBI alleges someone using IP addresses assigned to Symplicity tried to access Maxient's client log-in pages in May 2009. In 2010, Maxient's audit logs showed someone using a Symplicity IP address again tried several times to log-in to their client pages, the bureau stated.

The search warrant also alleges several other attempts from IP addresses that either belonged to Symplicity or employees of Symplicity.

The FBI also alleges Symplicity used Structured Query Language (SQL) Injection attacks to get inside Maxient's network.

"Based on my training and experience, I know that attempting to repeatedly submit malformed queries like the ones submitted to Maxient's website from the Symplicity IP address is a method often used by hackers to attempt to gain unauthorized access to websites," wrote Michael French, a FBI special agent who is in charge of the investigation.

The FBI also stated Friedler called the owner of Pave Systems, Ghasson Nino in 2010 with an offer to buy the company's student conduct business. During the call, the search warrant stated, Nino said Friedler mentioned several clients by name even though such a list is confidential and not publicly available.

Friedler vehemently denies the allegations.

"Over the past few months, information has been made public by some of our competitors, which deals with a preliminary investigation related to the higher education sector. We believe the legal process should be allowed to run its course, and in deference to the authorities, we cannot comment on the details of the investigation at this time," Friedler said in a statement. "We understand that a copy of an affidavit related to the investigation has been circulated. It is important to understand that no one at Symplicity has been charged with any crime. The affidavit is nothing more than the government's one-sided justification for conducting an investigation. It is not evidence of any wrongdoing nor is it admissible in court for that purpose. It would be unfair to draw any conclusions based upon the highly selective content of such an affidavit. We are fully cooperating with the authorities to help them find the answers necessary to resolve this issue as quickly as possible."

Read more at the article link above.