191–200 of 265 posts
Not really many relevant comments in this thread. Everyone seems to have read the first sentence (if even), interpreted it as 'why did no one think the NSA was hacking?', and responded. It's a shame, this is a great piece, I think. The question is, with all of these companies performing IR, why didn't they see mass exfiltration and C2? I think the article lays out largely correct claims. I personally would imagine (2…
The basic premise is false. > "Why did we never see it coming?" Many people saw it coming. I was warning about the possibility of dragnet surveillance, the existence of ECHELON, the use of the American security apparatus to steal trade secrets, the surveillance of non-American politicians, et al... For many, many years before Snowden. And I'm just some rando on the internet who follows the mainstream news! We were ca…
Although I will shamefully admit that I was one of the naysayers. I might have even called someone a Conspiracy Nut in a prior conversation, with my perception of the person being obsessed with potential NSA spying / collection.
Oh, how wrong I was.
Side note: I find it interesting that a period of time developed where any type of deep curiosity into government activity was enough to get oneself stamped as a Conspiracy Nut. If I were the person pumping these narratives and troupes out, I'd be very happy with my result, in retrospect.
It's not just corona crisis that's hurting western economies.
edit: why down vote? We can pretend negative SEO networks don't exist on a massive scale, but that wouldn't be truth.
The Snowden stuff was the event that shook me to my core. I was a happy technologist till then, thinking that such was the nature of life and progress simply was unfolding in front of me. However, the way the event was covered by the media - told a different story. The media focussed on the man rather than the info he provided, so the conversation was 'where was he?', 'where was his girlfriend?', etc - that told me e…
If it was an affair beneficial to NSA, please elaborate why non-US state actors didn't have their own Snowdens?
Not really many relevant comments in this thread. Everyone seems to have read the first sentence (if even), interpreted it as 'why did no one think the NSA was hacking?', and responded. It's a shame, this is a great piece, I think. The question is, with all of these companies performing IR, why didn't they see mass exfiltration and C2? I think the article lays out largely correct claims. I personally would imagine (2…
> The question is, with all of these companies performing IR, why didn't they see mass exfiltration and C2? 1. Good tradecraft means that, except for skilled IR folk, they wouldn't see mass exfil/C2. 2. American IR companies know what side of their bread is buttered on. From both employees' personal allegiances to their former employers and the company's active government contracts, there's not a lot of incentive to…
More likely, as the author mentions, the NSA disguises its attacks as less sophisticated than they really are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, I downvoted you. Normally I don't bother explaining why a low content post was downvoted, but whatever, I'm here. 1. Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. There was more than one sentence in the article and more than enough context to forgive an ambiguous or even incorrect sentence. 2.…
> Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. I didn't 'come to the comments to split semantics', nor did I say anything at all about the rest of the article. I simply replied to an already existing discussion about the meaning of a phrase. Describing that one short post as "incredible noise" is…
Yeah, only one person needs to start the semantics-splitting topic and the rest of the lazy uninformative pseudo-discussion just flows from there, with every other guy adding one short harmless post. That’s how we get completely-derailed garbage threads like this. (Did I participate in the thread? Yes. Though in my defense I was trying to impress on people that this kind of thing should not happen.)
“Nor did I say anything at all about the rest of the article” — that should probably have tipped you off in a small way about the value of your addition.
I’m really interested in how low level the hacking is, specifically network card and hard disk firmware. Does anyone have breakdowns of how these work or copies seen in the wild? I particularly liked the bit in the article about hiding data in packets intended for other hosts and harvesting them through passive relays. Is there a way to detect this sort of thing? Is everything really compromised?
> Is everything really compromised? Given the documents and budgets which have leaked so far - it seems more sensible to assume that all hardware & software is compromised until proven otherwise. From the limited information provided so far we can see that if you use any Intel CPU, any Seagate/Hitachi/Fujitsu/Samsung hard drive, any version of windows, most commercially available routers, notepad++, or VLC - the NSA…
Rather, the NSA has the capability to subvert these things. Sometimes before they reach you, sometimes remotely. But you’d be “lucky” to come across one where they’ve actually done it.
2. You thought they were someone else Attribution in the cyberspace is still pretty shaky, even though there have been some high profile accusations flying around lately. Sometimes you see links being drawn to GRU on the basis of things like some executable having a compile time matching to a Russian time zone or a file being last modified by a user called "Dmitry." Seeing as the IC cyber business is already murky as…
> I think only the PLA plays with slightly more open cards, mostly because they just don't give a damn about being caught. This tactic was invented by the KGB. It's not that they don't care, it's that if it looks like you did it, and there was no apparent attempt to conceal that it was you, then it actually seems more like you were framed by someone else and you didn't do it. In other words, the truth acts like its o…
The Snowden stuff was the event that shook me to my core. I was a happy technologist till then, thinking that such was the nature of life and progress simply was unfolding in front of me. However, the way the event was covered by the media - told a different story. The media focussed on the man rather than the info he provided, so the conversation was 'where was he?', 'where was his girlfriend?', etc - that told me e…
> Why would "they" create Snowden? If it was an affair beneficial to NSA, please elaborate why non-US state actors didn't have their own Snowdens?