Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wikileaks.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 63 posts

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

#51

Post by Piskvorrr »

digler999 wrote: post #21
dqv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be organizations in the US itself. I remember somewhere that the military was still requriing 3.5 floppies at least within the last 5 years. (no, I'm not talking about the nuke software that uses the bigger floppies)

Makes perfect sense to me. Why upgrade some critical piece of infrastructure if upgrading can only hurt you, but can never help you ? Assuming they didn't have ongoing problems such as bit-rot with floppies, why upgrade to USB ? There have been at least a few major attacks using either auto-run , auto-mount, or even infections in USB firmware over the years. If you dont need the extra capacity or speed that USB or op…

You assume too much. Bit rot was the driver towards anything-not-floppy, if I recall the 90s correctly. "Can't break" and "floppies" is an oxymoron - oh God, now I have that horrible sound of a floppy read error (yes, you could actually hear most types of read errors) stuck in my head. (Perhaps the 8-inch floppies are still in use as their lower density gives higher resilience?)

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

#52

Post by myrandomcomment »

compsciphd wrote: post #15

I don't understand why crypto doesn't help avoid detection? Imagine I have a usb thumb drive with gigabytes of mp3s on it, and I devise a way to embed and extract a floppy image into the mp3s (i.e. steganography), or perhaps family pictures. unless the images are viewed before and after, it can be difficult to determine what was stored or even if anything was stored. Of course, not impossible as their attacks that ca…

I worked for a vendor that made networking hardware. On the system there was some flash storage. We sold to the TLAs. When we got kit in for a demo it came back out minus the flash. USB drives and the like are never allowed in a secure area. Best case you get fired, worse case you end up in prison for 100 years. In the case of what they are asking for here, it is likely "hey we have spy in one of the secure areas and we want to copy the data from the floppy on the system (still in use as others have pointed out)." If you got caught with the device you would get shot and it would not matter if they could read what was on the device. Crypto would just slow down what is a time sensitive operation.

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

#53

Post by throwanem »

nilved wrote: post #48
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.

Interesting. From what role or position do you derive the authority to set policy for Hacker News?

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

#54

Post by darpa_escapee »

nilved wrote: post #48
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.

Who are you?

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #54
nilved wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Who are you?

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by stagbeetle »

throwanem wrote: post #53
nilved wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting. From what role or position do you derive the authority to set policy for Hacker News?

It looks like a 3rd party observation and not a personal statement.

I.e government surveillance professionals and people with old-school conservative personalities: "I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles" are not welcome to a party hosted by SoCal startup VC money burning bubblers, free-neters, no-surveilancers, opensourcers, and progressive types.

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

#58

Post by digler999 »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #51
digler999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes perfect sense to me. Why upgrade some critical piece of infrastructure if upgrading can only hurt you, but can never help you ? Assuming they didn't have ongoing problems such as bit-rot with floppies, why upgrade to USB ? There have been at least a few major attacks using either auto-run , auto-mount, or even infections in USB firmware over the years. If you dont need the extra capacity or speed that USB or op…

You assume too much. Bit rot was the driver towards anything-not-floppy, if I recall the 90s correctly. "Can't break" and "floppies" is an oxymoron - oh God, now I have that horrible sound of a floppy read error (yes, you could actually hear most types of read errors) stuck in my head. (Perhaps the 8-inch floppies are still in use as their lower density gives higher resilience?)

What I meant was if you expect them to die, and discard them on some regimented schedule instead of expecting them to last forever. Flash-based USB storage (and even platter-based HDDs ) suffer degradation and/or bitrot, just at different rates/probabilities. Even optical media only has a few years of expected lifetime.

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

#59

Post by gmacdon89 »

throwanem wrote: post #53
nilved wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting. From what role or position do you derive the authority to set policy for Hacker News?

lol
Post reply on HN