What an ironic title (no, I won't read the PDF) - since we're here, sitting in a boiling hot tub, getting warm and cosy with GCHQ sitting next to us in the next tub, aka GitHub repo.
GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#22Wait, the GCHQ has a GitHub profile where they share a Graph Database engine. Interesting.
"Gaffer's Accumulo Store is optimised for: Ingesting large amounts of data efficiently." For some reason that made me feel slightly nervous.
Well it's not a secret anymore why GCHQ/NSA need large graph databases.
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#23> we offer this internal research paper publicly, not to present policy or guidelines, but to stimulate debate.
Is there anything these guys cannot do?
"The name is Hacker, James Hacker, id 007BA54781, and I have a licence to stimulate."
Personally, I suspect that organizational studies are like the famous 'killing joke': anyone who engages in it is at risk ...
(edit: penny drops)
... uh, oh.
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#24Cool, ITIL for spooks. Can't wait till I see the multi-edition version that emphasises continuous simmering. Then I can get certified!
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#25Hah a PDF! Nice try, folks...
Assuming they have a zero day vulnerability in acrobat (or other PDF readers), they wouldn't risk losing it by uploading a file with an exploit, using their own name, and in a wide distribution. When the GCHQ wants to hack you, it won't be on GitHub. It will be a file served specifically to your computer, with content relevant specifically for you, from someone you trust and don't suspect.
Sure, that's what they want you to think.
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#26This is very well written.
Actually I wasn't that impressed. I found it hard to focus on the text - there's a lot of government speak (like "ways of working") in there. Also, the author has a fixation on Conway's Law ("Conway" appears 40 times in the document), and everything else is really a spin on Wardley's evolution curve. Both are useful, to be sure, but there's nothing inherently profound or new here.
This is (should, maybe?) be targeted at CxOs of big corps, and I think has some value there - if only it were more pithy (which is not the English way).
There is also some irony in that they're saying "do away with big planning upfront" in the same document as "be big-data-driven". Big data needs big planning up front if it's going to be meaningful.
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be dangerous to click on it, is there a tl;dr or text extract of it?
It's OK - Github converts it to HTML. However, GCHQ could politely ask the NSA to force Github to give them the usernames and IP addresses that viewed the repo. Maybe use Tor?
I don't understand why everybody assumes GCHQ and NSA are completely inept amateurs. Getting a list of usernames and IP addresses from GitHub would have an insane signal to noise ratio - after all, there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons to want to read this document.
It's much easier to go to HN and grab the usernames and IPs of people you can see taking a rebellious position in discussions about these organisations.
Also, why would you assume that showing any interest whatsoever in Tor isn't going to land you on many more watchlists than reading a public PDF in GitHub?
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#28http://imgur.com/a/pbazB
Contents of this PDF, page by page, in JPGs.
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#29when I just opened the pdf my xorg died (OOM) - I kid you not, first time that ever happend. funny coincidence..or is it? I figure now I got a reason to setup that new distro I was playing with burn all them compromised stuff
If they're any good then they've modified your BIOS or Intel SMM.
Re: GCHQ's Boiling Frogs paper on software development
#30I tried cloning the repo and it hangs at 67%, so I kinda got suspicious and killed git. Hmm, maybe it's just a large repo, but being from GCHQ one cannot help but feel suspicious.