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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

#291
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Pelosi's desktop was logged on and unlocked, there's a fair chance the laptop was too which would render full disk encryption useless. As long as whoever stole it didn't close it and send it to sleep anyway.

Not the brightest of bulbs, I bet they closed it to carry it away.

So, I was surprised to hear this, among the people who entered the building was a CEO of a tech company from a town close to me.

There were smart people in that group.

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

#292
post #248
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware an unarmed white woman was shot and killed by police at the capitol that day? Yes, on average black folks are treated more unfairly than white folks by police, but exaggerated claims like “the cops would have iced every one of them” help no one.

She was climbing through a barricaded door through a broken window with a person with a drawn gun on the other side protecting who knows who, armed or not the outcome was kind of a given when she decided that was a good idea. Not the best comparison to put up against the treatment of BLM protestors throughout the year.

There was at least one person near her in the video of that women getting shot who was clearly armed with an assault rifle. She may have been unarmed but was storming the chamber with other armed people. The security on the other side had good reason to believe she was a dangerous threat.

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

#293
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presentation machines at my workplace (in addition to being desktops in a locked cabinet, because why would they leave the room?) just allow you to remote desktop back to your real workstation or to a VM. They have nothing locally. I think that's a good solution to avoiding over-granting privileges.

How can you lock up Windows like that?

If you can separate children from their parents and lock them in cages you are probably ready to go one step further and lock up Windows too.

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

#294
post #248
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware an unarmed white woman was shot and killed by police at the capitol that day? Yes, on average black folks are treated more unfairly than white folks by police, but exaggerated claims like “the cops would have iced every one of them” help no one.

She was climbing through a barricaded door through a broken window with a person with a drawn gun on the other side protecting who knows who, armed or not the outcome was kind of a given when she decided that was a good idea. Not the best comparison to put up against the treatment of BLM protestors throughout the year.

> treatment of BLM protestors

How many BLM protestors were shot and killed by police?

I’m genuinely curious, as I’m not aware of any.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pop in and see me, too. You just need to check in at the front desk, and can't wander around sensitive areas un-escorted.

My office is likely set up the same as yours, or at least close enough to yours. You could absolutely pop in to visit me. But you could also grab enough of your friends to obtain a decisive numerical advantage – let's say, you and twenty of your closest friends, that probably gets close to what we saw yesterday. Be sure one or two of them are visibly armed. Once you have your buddies, you can go break through the gla…

> My office's threat model – and yours – is not based on defending against a mob of people storming the building.

That's sort of exactly the point I'm making. My office's threat model isn't even in the same league, and yet it still seems to have more thought put into physical security than the Capitol building. It would appear that, unlike in the hypothetical you're constructing, in the real event, people didn't even need keycards in order to freely move about the building after getting past the exterior doors.

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

#296
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"no big deal" A stolen laptop is usually not considered "no big deal" basically everywhere I worked.

Really? Every place I have worked with more than about 50 employees has used full drive encryption, so a laptop being stolen is not an infosec risk at all.

FDE only works if the machine is powered off. If a machine is stolen while it is still running there's a risk the user account could be compromised. Depending how sophisticated your adversary is they could potentially completely compromise the machine and extract all of the data. When you have physical access and no time pressure the options are vast.

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

#297

Cool, hopefully it is loaded with damaging emails. She needs to go. I bet if it is there's loads of discussion denigrating the American people and planning to sacrifice their lives and their finances pointlessly during the pandemic. Obviously, the coupists believe even worse things, but what do I care if my political opponents destroy each other?

Wait, aren't we all privacy advocates here? Who here doesn't say certain things in private that they wouldn't say in public? Any time I see anything like a leaked e-mail story, I remind myself of this simple law of human nature. If private communications do end up coming out of this, we need to all remember this.

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

#298

Cool, hopefully it is loaded with damaging emails. She needs to go. I bet if it is there's loads of discussion denigrating the American people and planning to sacrifice their lives and their finances pointlessly during the pandemic. Obviously, the coupists believe even worse things, but what do I care if my political opponents destroy each other?

Wait, aren't we all privacy advocates here? Who here doesn't say certain things in private that they wouldn't say in public? Any time I see anything like a leaked e-mail story, I remind myself of this simple law of human nature. If private communications do end up coming out of this, we need to all remember this.

The government is the one depriving us of privacy at a scale unknown in human history. Turn-about is fair play.

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

#299
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the more open approach, but shouldn't her office have a simple keycard or combo lock on the door? Even Starbucks toilets have better security. From the pictures I saw, she was still logged in and had the evacuation message onscreen. I'm guessing she didn't have 'require login after screensaver' option enabled. If the account is still logged in, this is a massive breach!

it was somebody else's account. Also, see @foone's thread here: https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1346924327996772354 tl;dr: the government has appropriate computer security in place to prevent this sort of thing, and it's not clear what the deal was with that particular computer.

Yeah it’s definitiv a different desk than the ohne in the picture with the guy who broke into pelosis office.

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

#300
How was every person leaving the building not searched by police as a condition of exit?

The kettling and taking of details of (even peaceful) protesters in the UK is pretty standard now (I don't like it, but it is what seems to happen) - so why did they just let these people leave unchecked?

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