CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013 • Hacker News Board

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#41

Post by criley2 » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

shshhdhs wrote: post #38

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33

I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles to believe but people who work in the defense industry read this site. People who want to maintain a security clearance and abide by the law cannot in good faith browse a site hosting leaked classified into. If you want to discuss these sorts of technologies you should probably post a link to a 3rd party summary or analysis so that the…

I recall the Wikileaks summary said most of the data was unclassified because it was needed to be used (deployed) to remote (victim) machines.

I recall that the code/tools were declassified by necessity because otherwise it could not be used on an insecure network (i.e. the internet)

However, the internal documents relating to the tools/code? I doubt that would have been unnecessarily declassified.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#42

Post by chiph » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

derekp7 wrote: post #36

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33

I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles to believe but people who work in the defense industry read this site. People who want to maintain a security clearance and abide by the law cannot in good faith browse a site hosting leaked classified into. If you want to discuss these sorts of technologies you should probably post a link to a 3rd party summary or analysis so that the…

Question -- would that security clearance allow you to read that third party writeup? I would think it would prohibit all contact, both direct and multiple-times-removed indirect contact with the data.

It does. Just because the info is now in the public domain doesn't change it's classification level. Bizarre, I know. But it's because the classifying authority is the one responsible for changing it, and until they do it's still at the original level and all the classification and need-to-know rules still apply.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#43

Post by Arizhel » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #29

Are there any devices (on the public market) that allow for high-density whole-disk imaging/scanning with one rotation of the floppy? Feels like it could be useful for bringing "dead" floppies back to life for e.g. retro computing enthusiasts. Scan it once at insanely high resolution and later analyze the data...

That sounds like it'd require a custom read head. Normally, a floppy read head is comparatively small, and has to be moved across the disk's radius with a stepper motor. To read it in one pass would require a head that can read all the tracks at once, so this would be something specially-fabricated, which doesn't sound cheap at all. I'm sure it could be done (esp. considering how old floppy tech is), but I don't think it's something you're going to just fabricate in a small lab with spare parts, it'd need something custom manufactured.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#44

Post by SEJeff » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

CIA is doing their job spying on tech that they care about, news at 11!

SCADA systems are often very old and sit unconnected to the internet for decades at a time. There are likely hundreds of nuclear reactors around the world running this old, unpatched, and very vulnerable software. They'll likely not patch it until they refurbish the entire system.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#45

Post by Sgt_Apone » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #31

dmix wrote: post #27

A 3.5" floppy copier concealed as a "day planner" and using systemd? Such spycraft in 2013 is hilarious to think about. Especially thinking about some random corporate/government worker who got recruited as a source by the CIA and has 'unsupervised' access to some floppies.

I'm sure there's plenty of mostly non-networked industrial facilities in the "3rd world" that use 3.5 for enough of their equipment that it's the most convenient form of storage at the facility level.

Hell, there's plenty of industrial equipment in the 1st world that still does. This doesn't surprise me at all.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#46

Post by h4nkoslo » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 7:03 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33

I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles to believe but people who work in the defense industry read this site. People who want to maintain a security clearance and abide by the law cannot in good faith browse a site hosting leaked classified into. If you want to discuss these sorts of technologies you should probably post a link to a 3rd party summary or analysis so that the…

If merely hosting a headline & link like this is problematic, you must also have an issue walking by news stands, visiting bookstores, or watching CNN. It sounds exhausting.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#47

Post by irixusr » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

mgamache wrote: post #5

On the face this seems ridiculous. It's a big stretch, but we do know that some US adversaries use portable media (usually thumb drives) to currior data. Maybe they had a target that was using floppies? Maybe Iran's centrifuges or N. Korea still uses really old tech?

WVU's PRT train system runs on VAX.

Any university has dozens of labs with 386s, or similar vintage, because the software they need to operate incredibly expensive equipment is abandonware.

In fact an IT guy I knew kept the best surviving examples of vintage computers in his closet for parts or to transfer data with.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#48

Post by nilved » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33

I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles to believe but people who work in the defense industry read this site. People who want to maintain a security clearance and abide by the law cannot in good faith browse a site hosting leaked classified into. If you want to discuss these sorts of technologies you should probably post a link to a 3rd party summary or analysis so that the…

> I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles to believe but people who work in the defense industry read this site. People who want to maintain a security clearance and abide by the law cannot in good faith browse a site hosting leaked classified into.

Let us make this very clear then: those people are not welcome here.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#49

Post by JdeBP » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

stuaxo wrote: post #39

If this is much quicker than ordinary floppy drives and has flash it would be great for imaging disks from old systems, Amiga version anyone?

LS-120s were quicker than ordinary floppy disc drives for reading ordinary floppy discs.

Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013

#50

Post by linkregister » Mon, Mar 13, 2017, 7:15 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #33

I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles to believe but people who work in the defense industry read this site. People who want to maintain a security clearance and abide by the law cannot in good faith browse a site hosting leaked classified into. If you want to discuss these sorts of technologies you should probably post a link to a 3rd party summary or analysis so that the…

There is more latitude available than you think. Intelligence Community members weren't required to cancel their NYT and WashPo subscriptions just because classified info was published verbatim during the Snowden leaks.

However, browsing wikileaks from a government-owned computer is sure to get you in trouble. Or, most likely, be blocked by whatever nanny proxy is in place.

I would never have expected someone in the defense/IC community to be whining about people posting on a privately owned website. When I was in the military I believed in personal responsibility.

Expecting people to write up a summary of documents before posting to HN is absurd. Attaching insults to the main audience of HN is not going to win you over any friends.