U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
1–10 of 119 posts
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#2Don't put extremely sensitive information on the internet.
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#3AP style should really push journalists to use the term "cybercriminals" over "hackers".
I'm not the first to say it but the issue is growing, and it's only going to make the public more leery of any tech-minded but innocent kid or professional pentesting adult who uses the term "hacker".
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#4I've been wondering lately, would it be at all feasible for a "ransom bounty" program to exist? A platform similar to HackerOne except to act as a middleman between companies (with specific rules of engagement) and attackers who can plant "friendly" non-damaging ransomware (or the real thing on a designated target box) in exchange for a bounty and report of vulnerabilities.
The major caveat would be the general limitation of most bounty programs against social engineering and phishing...
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#5any non paywalled links?
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#6Replace "cities" with "any organization that is not tech first" and you'll still find hundreds of win 7/vista/xp machines that have never been patched, and ad-hoc network closet/cloud hybrid rigged solutions for everything.
There is literally no way to fix all this dumb fragile infrastructure without a massive government program that accepts responsibility for doing so. You need thousands of smart people going through every machine, all the software, all the systems. These people are never going to work for Baltimore or for Maersk, not in a million years.
Instead let's create a new government agency or pivot the NSA from it's dumb paranoid reactionary posture to more of a proactive NIST-style advisory role on best practices, have them hack everything domestically and start fixing things as their core mission. Make sure nobody at state or DHS or justice can subvert this new agency, they need to stand on equal footing with any company or agency.
Then hopefully pillage all the miserable smart people who are currently working at mega corps and agencies who actually want to do positive, meaningful work for a change.
Problem solved someone hire me to advise on their political campaign.
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#7Don't put extremely sensitive information on the internet.
On the other hand, we want digital public services, to be able to pay taxes electronically, to be able to vote electronically etc.
I don't think the "don't put sensitive information on the Internet" idea really holds any water unless we expect our public services to be done with pen and paper for evermore, while everything else goes digital. (Yes, machines could be disconnected from the network and so on... but that's arguably just saying "an airgap is all you need")
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#8Don't put extremely sensitive information on the internet.
On the other hand, we want digital public services, to be able to pay taxes electronically, to be able to vote electronically etc. I don't think the "don't put sensitive information on the Internet" idea really holds any water unless we expect our public services to be done with pen and paper for evermore, while everything else goes digital. (Yes, machines could be disconnected from the network and so on... but that'…
But those things can be done without putting sensitive information on the internet. Crypto currency transactions can keep everything sensitive off the network. A one way airgap is indeed all you need (your device should be able to push data to the network but never receive any data from the network). The same scheme works for voting.
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#9Don't put extremely sensitive information on the internet.
Unfortunately this information was expected to be divulged and collected before the internet was widely used. Policies and infrastructures were not put in place (or ignored, as I've personally witnessed) to protect this information once it was digitized.
At the same time, there should be a real discussion over why so much information is being demanded, why SSN's are being overused as they are, etc.
Re: U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers
#10Replace "cities" with "any organization that is not tech first" and you'll still find hundreds of win 7/vista/xp machines that have never been patched, and ad-hoc network closet/cloud hybrid rigged solutions for everything. There is literally no way to fix all this dumb fragile infrastructure without a massive government program that accepts responsibility for doing so. You need thousands of smart people going throug…
"any organization that is not tech first" - thats pretty optimistic looking at a number of the tech first companies that have being breached.