Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 747 posts

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

#321

Post by mcchew »

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.

Congress constantly gets briefed on things that are behind closed doors. Not to mention our president is also leader of the armed forces.

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

#322

Post by calmbeluga54 »

tt433 wrote: post #304
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)

Are you suggesting that the profile for hackers isn't "white male"? Or are you just trying to ham-fist "cops are racist" into the convo?

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

#323

Post by hwillis »

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?

Presumably the same reason police moved barricades, waved them in, and took selfies with them.

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

#324

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

jandrese wrote: post #296
jerkstate wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Depending how sophisticated your adversary is

The videos I saw don't inspire much dread, there, but they may give the laptop to someone that can do digital forensics. Lots of LEOs in that lot. They would be smart enough to stay out of the building, but might have been waiting for someone to come out with something like that.

But, as someone pointed out, a lot of the folks wouldn't bother trying to read anything. They'd probably try to plant their own fantasies onto it, and send it to Rudy The Hair Dye Man.

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

#325

Post by djsumdog »

giantrobot wrote: post #249
djsumdog wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The lady that was shot was attempting to enter a hallway through a window while people in the hallway were pointing guns at her. Just because she didn't have a visible weapon doesn't mean she wasn't a threat. Climbing through a broken window into a hallway protected by a makeshift barricade is itself a threatening action. No one at the head of a mob climbing over a barricade ever did so for innocent and non-threateni…

Let's step back to before this happened. Why did the Capitol Police let people in:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234

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

#326

Post by djsumdog »

deathgrips wrote: post #219
djsumdog wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You're not a protester if you are breaking into congress, breaking past a barricade, being told to stop, and walking towards an officer pointing his gun at you. You're suicidal.

But, they let these people in:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1347615998610911234

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

#327

Post by polka_haunts_us »

jerzyt wrote: post #309
jerkstate wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not to detract from the point you're trying to make with meaningless pedantry, but minimum DEFCON is 5, current is 4, we spend most of our time swapping between the two. I assume what you mean is 2.

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

#328

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

shakezula wrote: post #49
tsomctl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter evidence: the protesters were saying that they saw computers unlocked with email still open.

Uhh yeah, probably because the congresspeople were evacuated in a hurry because there was an angry mob storming their building?

It takes less than one second to press Windows+L. Certainly they could have accomplished that as they got up from their seats.

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

#329

Post by jjkaczor »

Yajirobe wrote: post #311
jjkaczor wrote: post #149

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?

Probably not, they planned all of this on open sites/forums/social-media platforms, so they are not the smartest people...

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

#330

Post by muricula »

nodesocket wrote: post #303
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.

Not certain this is the reason why, but there is a real perf hit for full disk encryption which not everyone needs to take, especially for devices without hardware accelerated crypto. Lower end devices can slow to a crawl.
Post reply on HN