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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

#371

Post by johannes1234321 »

ojbyrne wrote: post #236
rscho wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These folks are also among the most tech-unsavvy people on Earth...

I don’t think it’s too much of a conspiracy theory to think that some foreign intelligence operative might have sensed a opportunity on Wednesday.

This would require them to be in the front line early. I think it's more likely that somebody was randomly there and saw the opportunity. If you look at the videos most seem to be surprised to be in some of low manner. If you have some operative in there you increase chaos by creating some small fire or something ...

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

#372

Post by bakuninsbart »

johnnyballgame wrote: post #180
simonh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s a shared machine for projecting notes, chances are it has nothing stored locally.

Optimistic thinking. Chances are it has many PDF and PowerPoint files scattered on it. And probably a shared user account where the files fill up a Windows desktop.

Pelosi is old enough for typewriters being new technology, I don't trust in her having the hand over it personally.

But after the number of big hacks in the last few years I'd hope the guys in charge of general security laid down some ground rules.

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

#373

Post by YarickR2 »

ptd wrote: post #337
grogenaut wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on a barely do-not-distribute. Someone's spouse took a project member's laptop as hostage for alimony. Within 45 minutes of discovery and a phone call to the army equivalent of the FBI, agents were at the spouse's work and home searching for the laptop. Lucky for the spouse they thought it was the personal laptop (it was not marked) so they weren't prosecuted. This laptop could be much worse, or just fine.

What is a “barely do-not-distribute?”

security policy for documents

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

#374

Post by charonn0 »

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.

Because other countries exist.

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

#375

Post by mistermann »

121789 wrote: post #226
mistermann wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes it sound like the people in charge of protecting the capital did not know that this was a legitimate threat. From the articles I've read, they did in fact help that it was a legitimate threat, which raises the question: why did they do nothing about it?

The only reasonable conclusion I can think of is that the security team had no worry that politicians would be in any danger (e.g. easy, isolated, fast escape routes) and that it would be hard to rationalize to bring out the troops/big security forces with a threat of violence for a group of people that was supported by the current president and a significant fraction of congress and the senate. The whole situation f…

I think there are many plausible (but not necessarily "reasonable") alternative explanations.

As far as I can tell, this event seems to have had an extremely persuasive effect on the psyche and opinions of the average person. Who might benefit from this change in the mental state of the population, and in what ways?

Most people seem to find the very idea of thinking such thoughts to be extremely unpleasant, if not downright inappropriate. But to me, this is simple risk management. The lack of this sort of thinking in society seems downright dangerous to me.

I sometimes wonder what the origin of such norms is - is it organic (a common characteristic derived from evolution), or might it be synthetic?

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

#376

Post by bdcravens »

tt433 wrote: post #268
bdcravens wrote: post #261

I feel sorry for whoever gets caught with it. They won't be charged with theft - they'll probably try to hit them with the worst cybersecurity charges they can dig up.

Why do you feel sorry for them exactly?

I meant it as a figure of speech. If it's amongst the insurrectionists, they deserve all they have coming to them. If it ends up in somebody else's hands who wasn't involved, they may still be an example of.

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

#377

Post by cptskippy »

chasd00 wrote: post #345
johnnyballgame wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimistic thinking. Chances are it has many PDF and PowerPoint files scattered on it. And probably a shared user account where the files fill up a Windows desktop.

yeah, i bet it has every presentation ever done sitting in good ol' ~/Documents or the desktop.

Does anyone use /Documents? That's just a folder where Apps like Acrobat put garbage files.

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

#378

Post by jandrese »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #324
jandrese wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

They'll probably give it to that computer repair guy in Deleware so he can pull off all of the emails from March of 2021 and somehow lose them in the mail when he tries to send them to Fox News.

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

#379

Post by chasd00 »

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.

me too, i have a special "corporate 911" card that i've been informed during onboarding is the "real" 911. No matter the emergency, lost/stolen passports, lost/stolen corp computer, place crash, car crash, anywhere in the world the company does business, i've been told to call it first before doing anythign else.

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

#380

Post by IkmoIkmo »

mumblemumble wrote: post #14

Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like, in a building like the US Capitol, it should not be anywhere near this easy for unauthorized people to waltz into an office or conference room in the first place. Let alone walk away with items from within that…

In the Netherlands there are a few entry ways and they look a bit like this:

https://www.dormakaba.com/resource/blob/128222/7d74af646dce4...

They're configured one-way only, can be fully opened for high through-put or emergencies, but are otherwise single-person only. They can detect multiple people in various ways. The default for sensitive areas would be biometric (e.g. weight, some parlement members coming back from vacation a little overweight have had to get a manual override in the past). Of course bulletproof, and can be controlled at a distance by an operator.

It makes sense that not everything requires something like this, but the office of the speaker of the house of course should be in any situation. If she wishes to meet people in less-secure rooms it's entirely possible to create meeting rooms with fewer or even no significant entry or security controls if you wish, but your personal office, places where you store sensitive data etc... can't just have em behind a few wooden doors.

Of course some countries opted for the benefit of a modern building. The capitol is more than two centuries old, you can only retrofit it so much.

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