The security update was written by.. a VP of product management[1]. I would have thought they'd have a bigger bench for their security team.
Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
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Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's a self fulfilling prophecy. It's only "critical" because it exists. If we shutdown every Facebook server tomorrow and set fire to their data center, it would no longer exist. And therefore have no influence on much of anything.
I'm not so sure I follow this argument, one could say the Earth itself is only critical infrastructure because it "exists". So therefore if we destroy the Earth, it wasn't actually "critical" infrastructure, even though any associated infrastructure on the Earth went along with it. Maybe the distinction needs a little more fleshing out.
If you destroy the Earth, we're all dead.
If you destroy Facebook, Google+ gets some more users.
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very short-sighted view. Yes it has some immediate benefit in terms of pay, but you have to consider the long-term societal tradeoff of not developing addictive mental candy for people or developing societally useful technologies (or vice-versa, as it now stands). We can focussed on getting paid a lot now, or improving the wealth of everyone and generative the value we can all enjoy later.
I agree with your premise, that many Facebook employeees would give society a better return on its investment if they were employed elsewhere, but that’s hardly Facebook’s fault.
It's tempting to think that without Facebook they would get involved in cancer research or interplanetary travel, but given the Silicon Valley's funding cycles, they would be more likely to end up building yet another food delivery startup or revolutionizing something by putting it on blockchain.
Also, a bunch of recruiting venues exploited by Facebook are not that accessible to smaller startups.
E.g. one of the top previous employers for Facebook employees was Google (or some other outfit within Alphabet group, like YouTube). Most likely those people would've stayed at Google.
Another hiring source was university recruiting, which involves participating at job fairs at various universities, exhaustive days of back-to-back interviews, flying candidates for on-campus interviews, and eventually covering relocation costs (and potentially visas and immigration paperwork) for someone moving from Pittsburgh, Waterloo or Romania.
Would a smaller startup have the financial oomph to run a similar recruiting pipeline?
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#234I find facebook's effects on privacy and democracy as scary as the next person, but so far their secure coding standards have been extremely high. They're one of the few big names NOT on haveibeenpwned.com, they run their passwords through a KDF and then encrypt the result with a hardware security module, and a whole lot of other good things. I guess even the best (at secure coding) sometimes mess up.
Many users are still going to use the same password for their FB account and email account. All the security in the world won't fix people.
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
What other big companies are associated with similar prestige?
In the SV tech community, Dropbox, Uber, Snapchat, Spotify, AirBnB, Lyft, Netflix, Pinterest, Robinhood to name several. Outside the tech community, probably Amazon, Microsoft, and Instagram (most people don't know Facebook owns Instagram).
Why is there a difference between inside and outside the tech community?
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#236The security update was written by.. a VP of product management[1]. I would have thought they'd have a bigger bench for their security team. [1] https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/09/security-update/
Like a dedicated security UI person? Or a security writer? What kind of role are you imagining?
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#237The "View As" feature has caused a massive vulnerability in the past: https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/05/video-major-facebook-secur... I bet they're now really regretting keeping it around.
Yeah, I thought this was old news I heard years ago, but I guess the broke it again.
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#238Ah, so this is why I was force-logged out everywhere for my two accounts in the past day or so.
Re: Facebook Network Breach Impacts Up to 50M Users
#239Looks like they're clearing out compromised sessions. https://twitter.com/facebook/status/1045722820582432768 I was logged out of Facebook about 30 minutes ago.
Why not just clear out 100% of sessions?
I am speculating, but perhaps, "Thundering Herd,"[0] concerns?