Myself, I would be more worried about any keyloggers, or wifi/cell interception, "man-in-the-middle" devices being left behind...
did you see the photos of the rioters? Do you really believe they are that tech-savy?
Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
311–320 of 747 posts
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#312> belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations Yikes. My first though was - oh this should be no big deal chances are there are good policies in place for laptops that go home with people. Then I realized it is a shared/central machine which means it probably has the most effed up and relaxed security in the fleet, post-it notes with passwords taped to the palm rests, and god knows what else. IT depar…
Maybe stealing it also removed a bunch of foreign operative bugs and keyloggers :) "How can we remove this compromised system from the building without letting on that we know " "just have a 'theft' remove it!"
Why do you think any of your rogue nation club have any interest hacking US politicians, except for, probably, blackmail?
US is an open society, and most US politicians speak what they think, or at least you can guess, or even ask them yourself! Those people are like open books.
Unlike of your usual cabal totalitarians, who either don't speak at all, or purposefully try to hide their real aims by engaging in double speak, triple, quadruple speak.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military. I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.
I actually really like this analogy. I'm curious if there's there's a term for that kind of playbook for folks who are more familiar with building security.
The only analogue that comes to mind is in financial fraud detection: moving money slowly or in a predictable pattern (monthly rent payments etc.) triggers no alarms, but large or unexpected transfers raise alarms.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#314What 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.
> Full transparency should be paramount.
Full transparency is paramount. It's just not practice.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#315I swear the advent of Trump has precipitated an absolute crisis in critical thinking skills. Whenever I see people salivate at stories like this, waiting for the juicy details to get leaked, my heart dies a little. It's as if no one has any empathy or understanding that privacy is a necessary thing for society to function. It's almost never fair to judge a person based on their private life or private conversations. If this does end up "with Wikileaks", as some people here have mentioned, the outcome can only be bad. The average person cannot be trusted to make a level-headed assessment of anything like this. They'll latch onto damning sounding comments and magnify them to irresistible proportions and ensure that a completely imbalanced picture of those involved becomes the common view.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe this activity now falls under the purview of CISA. I read yesterday that all computers issued for Congressional staffers after 2017 have full disk encryption enabled by default.
So all laptops they were issued before 2017 didn't have full disk encryption. Do you hear that? That's the sound of me face-palming.
> So all laptops they were issued before 2017 didn't have full disk encryption.
That's an illogical assumption to make. Not encrypted at time of issue != not encrypted ever. Who says all previously-issued laptops weren't encrypted at a later time?
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#317What 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.
> having people roaming around the halls of a sensitive government institution
Depends on your views on right to rebel.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#318What's the protocol to secure all devices/network after incident like this week? Should all hardware left behind considered possibly compromised?
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1347244300527013889 : "Resecuring the Capitol's IT infrastructure should probably involve shredding every device, cable and thumb-drive, tearing open every light-socket and power-outlet, and even then, it will be hard to fully trust the building and its systems."
That actually sounds like a good idea anyway. There should be a full cleaning, de-bugging, and wipe every device on a regular basis.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#319Earlier 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…
Seems like it ought to be possible to have both, to some degree. I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this. I mean... the US spends massive amounts of money on the police and military. I think it should be kind of like a non-Newtonian fluid. Walk in slowly and peacefully and it's ok. Try and punch it, it solidifies quickly.
> I don't want the capitol to be a fortress, but they need to prevent stuff like this.
And they would have, had the Trump Administration not denied the D.C Mayor's request the day before for the D.C. National Guard to be deployed.
The Administration also delayed approval of requests by Virginia and Maryland to send Guard units to the Capitol in response to urgent calls for aid from Congressional leaders when it became clear the MPD and Capitol Police were overwhelmed.
Of course, it's a problem when the person inciting the insurrection has authority over important components of the security against it.
Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide
#320What's the protocol to secure all devices/network after incident like this week? Should all hardware left behind considered possibly compromised?
Once untrusted, never trusted. Everthing in that building that plugs into the wall should be discarded and with a known good device. That includes network infrastructure and even cabling. Between this and the recent SUNBURST fiasco, there are going to be some long discussions about security policy.
I think that would be a good start. Then again, I also don't think it should have been so trivial for infiltrators to access content on congressional computing devices in the first place, even with physical access.
I'm not sure about other devices in the building, but there's plenty of stuff going around about Pelosi's laptop in her office. Was it just left unlocked and unattended? Did it even have an OS password? If it did, was that password written down somewhere such that infiltrators could easily access it?
Replacing all of the compromised tech is a good start, but clearly we need to hold our politicians to a higher standard when it comes to securing their devices.