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NASA Has Been Hacked

forbes.com

21–30 of 114 posts

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#21

I highly recommend reading the actual audit[1]. There's a lot of good details in there, similar to the Senate report on the Equifax breach a few days ago. There were several problems: the inventory tracking issue was particularly enlightening: >system administrators did not consistently update the inventory system when they added devices to the network. Specifically, we found that 8 of 11 system administrators respon…

Thank you Samuel Adams

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#22
IT security people need to stop thinking in terms of disallowing “unauthorized” devices on physical (wired and WiFi) and recognize start designing for human nature.

Assume that the physical networks are compromised, and have all privileged resources only accept connections over VPN. Is it perfect? No, but it makes further compromise harder. The assumption of no trust also means acknowledging that you need gate incoming connections.

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#23
Unfortunately this will just make it more difficult to get real work done, as security is tightened further. Maybe they just ought to physically isolate their networks.

Working at a large engineering organization, I have given up and now do all engineering work on a stand alone computer, with dongle licensed software. I feel bad about the piles of CDR I burn through to transfer files, but it’s the only solution to getting work done.

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#24
post #4

Wow. Try to opt out of their data tracking, an option they're required to add. "This may take up to a few minutes to process" They make you wait at this long ass loading screen while they "process" your request not to have cookies. Here's the outline for people who don't want to wait minutes to read an article. https://outline.com/TZSBv4

Whenever I get a spinner after clicking "Decline", I just reload the page. Often, it works. Presumable, it sets the cookie on the page ("user accepted/rejected the cookies") before setting the cookies on partner pages...

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#26
post #4

Wow. Try to opt out of their data tracking, an option they're required to add. "This may take up to a few minutes to process" They make you wait at this long ass loading screen while they "process" your request not to have cookies. Here's the outline for people who don't want to wait minutes to read an article. https://outline.com/TZSBv4

That's grounds for a GDPR complaint against TRUSTe and Forbes.

Opting in or out must not be a condition for accessing content, so a popup that covers the page is problematic. Opting out should also be as simple as opting in, not a maze of options with progress spinners.

File a complaint folks.

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#27
Waiting for the inevitable "it was contractors" cop out. I'm surprised it wasn't in this Forbes story as these events happened over a year ago; they've had plenty of time to work up the usual narrative about negligent contractors.

And so the the cycle continues. Now we'll have hearings; "it was Republican budget cuts; we need a more funding."

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#28

I highly recommend reading the actual audit[1]. There's a lot of good details in there, similar to the Senate report on the Equifax breach a few days ago. There were several problems: the inventory tracking issue was particularly enlightening: >system administrators did not consistently update the inventory system when they added devices to the network. Specifically, we found that 8 of 11 system administrators respon…

This is expected. Any manual work will have errors and lots of them. If you want a system to be robust, you have to engineer it in a way it stops working if one of the prerequisites aren't satisfied. It's costly but there's no way around it afaict.

In this case, you wouldn't allow a device to access any information on the network without a proper certificate. The public systems need to learn from private companies in this regard.

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#29
post #20
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discussed this recently here on HN [0], the fake spinner is a dark-UI to 'punish' you for opting out. If you just accept the popup disappears immediately. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20131381

I don't think that's actually true. Rather, it's an architectural thing — because all these ad systems were designed without consent in mind, accepting is a no-op, whereas refusing consent requires an outbound request to set some sort of "do not track" flag somewhere (presumably as a cookie).

Why do you think it's not true?

Re: NASA Has Been Hacked

#30

I highly recommend reading the actual audit[1]. There's a lot of good details in there, similar to the Senate report on the Equifax breach a few days ago. There were several problems: the inventory tracking issue was particularly enlightening: >system administrators did not consistently update the inventory system when they added devices to the network. Specifically, we found that 8 of 11 system administrators respon…

Back in the early 90s I had a summer internship for a contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center. My job for the entire summer was to track down and inventory a list of 1000s of devices across the entire campus. At the time they were building a tracking database for all the devices on the campus.

The printout I was handed on my first day had not been updated in several years. It basically contained a tracking ID, what building/room the device was supposedly located, and who it was assigned to.

I spent every day walking building to building, room to room, interviewing employees, trying to track down devices. I never finished updating the list simply because I was never able to track down over half the devices. Outside of a few secure areas I did not have access to, I pretty much turned the campus upside down looking for devices. I can only imagine where all those devices ended up.

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