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Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

reuters.com

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Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#141

Post by 13415 »

neolog wrote: post #128
13415 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disk encryption and a strict policy of always closing the laptop / lock the screen when leaving. In some scenarios USB ports also need to be physically disabled.

Locking the screen doesn't enable FDE though, does it?

What attacks are you thinking of? A cold boot attack while you're on the toilet? Or that the laptop is stolen?

First and foremost you need to ensure physical security anyway. Otherwise a dedicated attacker can also just install a bug.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#142

Post by maerF0x0 »

neolog wrote: post #114

What is a good strategy for most convenience while securing private data on a laptop that could be stolen? Full disk encryption is good for when the machine is powered off. What about for the scenario when it gets swiped during the work day when I'm in the bathroom?

> What about for the scenario when it gets swiped during the work day when I'm in the bathroom?

Can you help me understand what attacks you think can be done with a locked screen, powered on laptop ? (given Full disk encryption is on)

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#143

Post by djsumdog »

callmeal wrote: post #88
cperciva wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people.

>They were understaffed, and it was clear that they could not protect both the building and the people. They correctly prioritized evacuating the people. I think it's pretty clear at this point that they would have been overstaffed if the protestors had a different skin color.

> different skin color.

In the 1970s, armed Black Panther members took the California State Capitol and no one died.

At least one officer is dead (this changes daily so who knows) and one protestor (she was unarmed, that's a protestor, trespasser at best) was shot by sorry excuse of a Capitol Officer who shot wildly into a crowd (almost hitting the other Federal Officer behind her!)

Please stop making this about race.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#144

Post by tshaddox »

ashtonkem wrote: post #106
35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've traveled to countries before whose offices of government are behind very large fences, protected by unfriendly looking men standing behind heavy machine guns in armored vehicles – and the guide books are very clear that you are not to take photos of them. I much prefer the approach taken in the USA, where our offices of government are accessible to the people that the government serves. It's very good that I can…

Most days that’s fair. This week however, they should’ve had the unfriendly man with the M2. This was a predictable problem to literally everyone but the people in charge of protecting the capital.

According to some reports, the problem was in fact predicted, and that's why the National Guard chose not to prepare for forceful confrontation. Not wanting photos of armed uniformed soldiers in state buildings or some such.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#145

Post by c22 »

smcl wrote: post #61
sangnoir wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They turned down an offer from the Pentagon to supplement manpower, days before the protest. Why? A police department with an intelligence unit couldn't guess that things might get a little out of hand when 3 weeks before, the President publicly used Twitter to ask his followers[1] to attend a "wild" protest on January 6th? Not that an intelligence unit was required as the plans were in the open. I have great difficu…

For this specific decision I think we can put it down to incompetence over malice - it'd presumably be easy for whoever was co-ordinating it dismiss all the riot talks as bluster and figure it'd just be yet another protest with a lot of shouting. I imagine we'll hear more about it, but I would be surprised if it was a co-ordinated effort in concert with the rioters (I don't know what to call them). The footage of pol…

I agree with this take. It's possible that after a year of particularly intense criticism of police department's actions vs protesters across the country they didn't want to appear to be over-reacting (which could fan all kinds of flames) and didn't expect the crowds to be quite so wild.

I don't know what kinds of contingency planning may have taken place, but ultimately this event seems to have been ended and cleaned up pretty quickly compared to some other demonstrations we've seen recently.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#146

Post by ed25519FUUU »

Storming? Let’s not get ahead ourselves here. The capitol police literally opened the door and let them inside:

https://twitter.com/gatewaypundit/status/1347615270504955904...

Which explains this hilarious picture of a 70-year old grandma “coup plotter” posing with coffee mug.

https://twitter.com/TheRealEWILLZ/status/1346999976899932161...

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#147

Post by jmt_ »

nikolaj wrote: post #34
stuff4ben wrote: post #3

It was apparently stolen from a conference room and used only for presentations. Still a bad look for Capitol Police and physical security operations.

I can't even count the number of times I have seen privileged information dropped onto a "presentation" laptop during a meeting. I hope they are better at controlling that than most.

Yep, plus the configuration of the laptop could possibly be of value. Depending on how it's setup, you could see the AD domain name, naming pattern of usernames and domain computers, setup and names of network drives, group policy settings, etc. Nothing too crazy on its own but could help facilitate a larger breach. Having a portable computer that's already configured to connect to the network you want to breach is possibly pretty useful.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#148

Post by TheCapn »

DevX101 wrote: post #138

What's the protocol to secure all devices/network after incident like this week? Should all hardware left behind considered possibly compromised?

I was thinking even just merely about physical security while this was going on. One bad actor going from room to room planting listening devices would take a short bit to weed out no?

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#150

Post by dghlsakjg »

bbg24 wrote: post #96
jordache wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they didn't send in their best IT experts in the first wave. Billy Bob likely won't know to keep the machine from going to sleep, esp in the chaotic scene.

Can you explain the Billy Bob reference for me?

Billy Bob is a name stereotypically used to refer to someone to imply that they are rural, ignorant and/or unsophisticated. Billy Bob (short for William Robert) at one time was a common set of first names for Americans that lived in country areas.
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