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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

#301

Post by davesque »

alacombe wrote: post #286
jorblumesea wrote: post #281

What an absolute mess. Whatever political spectrum you might be on, having people roaming around the halls of a sensitive government institution is not in the interest of any US citizen. Security of our institutions, elections and democracy should be a non-partisan issue.

Why would it be of the interest of any US citizen for elected officials to have any "secret" ? Full transparency should be paramount.

I suppose then that you'd be happy to make any and all conversations you've had in private during recent years public for all to see.

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

#302

Post by mumblemumble »

rayiner wrote: post #239
35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American history[1] shows this probably isn't a requirement - beyond a foreign military attacking, which is clearly out of scope of policing, the other attacks were acts carried out by isolated people. "Storming the gates" hasn't happened before now. I suspect the main reason that this hasn't happened before is that very large protests/gatherings are often met with a large show of police force to ensure the protestor…

They’re often not met with a show of police force. Here’s a picture of the Million Man March in the 1990s: https://images.app.goo.gl/WSvMYDK4asyav5HX7 There are hundreds of thousands of people behind the camera, going all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. You can see some security milling around, but no large show of police force.

The Million Man March's attendance didn't include people with an established history of bringing weapons and wearing body armor at ostensibly peaceful demonstrations.

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

#303

Post by nodesocket »

aborsy wrote: post #81

Hence the importance of the full disk encryption!

I don't understand why Windows 10 doesn't take an encryption first approach. When you install Windows 10, it should default to having disk encryption checked.

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

#304

Post by tt433 »

ljf wrote: post #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?

Didn't fit the perp profile police expect (race)

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

#305

Post by jorblumesea »

alacombe wrote: post #286
jorblumesea wrote: post #281

What an absolute mess. Whatever political spectrum you might be on, having people roaming around the halls of a sensitive government institution is not in the interest of any US citizen. Security of our institutions, elections and democracy should be a non-partisan issue.

Why would it be of the interest of any US citizen for elected officials to have any "secret" ? Full transparency should be paramount.

Secrets need to be kept in the intelligence world. It's naive to think we can be fully transparent on issues of methods and means. Congress needs to know things about our security apparatus but shouldn't be made public for obvious reasons.

The entire idea of a representative democracy is we elect people to act for us. That includes knowing information that shouldn't be public and making the correct decision for the country.

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

#306

Post by jandrese »

ISL wrote: post #107
bovermyer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And remote self-destruct!

Better than that might be an internet-free LoJack. Finding a laptop thief might be at least as valuable as retaining the encrypted information that's on disk. Edit: Also, stealing a laptop that belongs to the office of the US Speaker of the House will essentially never end well. There are endless examples to suggest that yesterday's fracas wasn't thought-through by the participants. This is one of them.

There's also plenty of evidence that it was planned, like people openly planning doing exactly this on forums. They had merch printed up. It was Trump who either wasn't in on the planning or got cold feet when the time for the actual coup came.

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

#307

Post by spear »

mimikatz wrote: post #44
staplers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted, but it's been proven police helped the rioters and even took selfies with them.

It has not been proven. This is false. Please stop spreading it. Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police. They did not help the rioters. This is the type of misinformation that caused all these problems.

> Multiple people were killed in clashes with the police.

"Multiple"? Do you have proof of this? There was one woman who was shot by police.

As far as I know, it is not yet clear how the others (excluding the Capitol officer) died. I've seen reports that one man got a heart attack after tasing himself and another fell off some scaffolding.

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

#309

Post by jerzyt »

jerkstate wrote: post #277
debt wrote: 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.

Really? When I worked at one of the Big Four a stolen/lost laptop was DefCon 4, despite all of the security precautions. We were actually required to notify a partner in the firm before contacting law enforcement.

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

#310

Post by qmarchi »

yabones wrote: post #235
maerF0x0 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Another commenter mentioned DMA, so I'll expand on that. If the device has only USB, network, and display outputs, not a lot. Modern systems are pretty hardened with this config. However, if it has Thunderbolt, ExpressCard, PCMCIA, or even FireWire, it's hosed. This kind of attack has been highly researched by intelligence, for example the 'Sonic Screwdriver' attack revealed in 2017 [1] targeted Macs by tampering wit…

There's some lienience to be given with the newer versions of Thunderbolt. On many Windows machines, and given that it's configured correctly, a TB device has to be explicitly allowed to access anything other than USB and Display modes.
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