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

NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

ddosecrets.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#61

Post by autosharp »

viraptor wrote: post #59
autosharp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System error: Japan cybersecurity minister admits he has never used a computer[0] And did not know what to do with a USB. This person was 50 in the year 2000, has clearly given up being part of or informed about modern society, and is made minister of cyber security. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-se...

In line with the Persident of Nintendo who was reported to never play games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi I don't have enough context on how well Yoshitaka Sakurada is doing in his job, but at a high enough level it's possible to be a good leader without skills required to do the job few levels below. (not sure it's a good idea to strive for, but still)

> at a high enough level it's possible to be a good leader without skills required to do the job few levels below

Sure. But being 68 and not being able to use a computer in 2018? Not recognizing what a USB stick is?

This is more about the fact that this person is not up-to-speed with society, doesn't really understand what has been happening around him the last 20 years. What dense Japanese cave did they find him in? Basic interest in society seems like a minimum to become a minister. The fact that he is minister for cyber security just adds irony to injury.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#62

Post by sshagent »

viraptor wrote: post #59
autosharp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System error: Japan cybersecurity minister admits he has never used a computer[0] And did not know what to do with a USB. This person was 50 in the year 2000, has clearly given up being part of or informed about modern society, and is made minister of cyber security. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-se...

In line with the Persident of Nintendo who was reported to never play games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi I don't have enough context on how well Yoshitaka Sakurada is doing in his job, but at a high enough level it's possible to be a good leader without skills required to do the job few levels below. (not sure it's a good idea to strive for, but still)

Agreed. One of my favourite manager types didn't have the first clue about the actual details of what we did. But he did listen to expert advice from the team beneath him and act on it. Bring the appropiate expert to meetings where it might be relevant and like you say, it can actually work. Obviously in an ideal world they'd know some basic bits, but if faced with the choice of a micromanager or a clueless person who listens to expert opinion i'll take the latter.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#63

Post by calgoo »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #4

Everis is the typical meat grinder, and it is known for that in Spain. Now, just as I'm writing this I'm sure someome from Everis will chime in to say he gets paid handsomely and works for amazing projects. But everyone I've known working for Everis wants to die. And if such project had to land in Spain for political reasons, there are plenty of companies capable on taking such project with way better prospects.

Pay is shit, there are a few interesting projects but that’s it. Good for people starting out young, but like all of these companies, full of lies and promotions that don’t mean anything except a title.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#64

Post by orbifold »

joe_the_user wrote: post #18
spaniard89277 wrote: post #4

Everis is the typical meat grinder, and it is known for that in Spain. Now, just as I'm writing this I'm sure someome from Everis will chime in to say he gets paid handsomely and works for amazing projects. But everyone I've known working for Everis wants to die. And if such project had to land in Spain for political reasons, there are plenty of companies capable on taking such project with way better prospects.

Article: The platform, known as NATO’s Service-Oriented Architecture and Identity Access Management (SOA & IdM) Project, is one of four core projects of NATO's IT modernization efforts. So this expresses what "modernization" is - fob as much work as possible unto a job-shop/meat-grinder operation and watch things like this happen. I don't even know whether to laugh or be appalled, the Snowden leaks happened due to co…

In Germany this kind of task would land in the lap of T-Systems, SAP (who already do logistics / storage management and probably more for the Army) or one of these consultancies Delloite. You can't expect politicians to be competent.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#65

Post by calgoo »

calgoo wrote: post #63
spaniard89277 wrote: post #4

Everis is the typical meat grinder, and it is known for that in Spain. Now, just as I'm writing this I'm sure someome from Everis will chime in to say he gets paid handsomely and works for amazing projects. But everyone I've known working for Everis wants to die. And if such project had to land in Spain for political reasons, there are plenty of companies capable on taking such project with way better prospects.

Pay is shit, there are a few interesting projects but that’s it. Good for people starting out young, but like all of these companies, full of lies and promotions that don’t mean anything except a title.

Forgot to mention: they don’t have an HR department anymore as they are too cool for that. They do have something they call “people” that manage contract, hiring etc. but according to them it’s not HR.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#66

Post by jll29 »

Favorite quote: "(...) so that the information security community and the general public can judge the quality of your work, which basically tricks organizations into spending a ton of money for installing Docker into a CentOS image without any cryptographic signature to verify the integrity of that image."

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#67

Post by raesene9 »

eru wrote: post #38
noobermin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is one of the dumbest things in government work. Politicians want to "shrink government" so they don't want many actual employees that would probably be well paid, stable, but someone needs to do the work. Thus, enter the I-too-want-to-shrink-the-government politicians who agree but then farm it out to contractors, some whom they might work for one day (or even come from in some cases in the US!). And so th…

Do you think projects run and implemented by people directly employed by the government have a better track record?

For the sake of debate, lets assume an equal level of incompetence between contractor run projects and government run projects.

In that case at least

a) There's no need to pay extra for the profit margins of the contractor companies (and the inevitable sub-contractors they use)

and

b) The incentives of the people doing the work are likely to be closer to the original project, in that the people doing the work are in the same organization as the project.

For me, outsourcing makes sense if the organization doesn't have enough of the specific type of work to have a fully staffed internal team, so specialist services, or if they are obliged to get an external opinion (e.g. auditing/pen testing). Otherwise you're just adding more layers of profit seeking middle-people...

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#68

Post by pas »

viraptor wrote: post #59
autosharp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System error: Japan cybersecurity minister admits he has never used a computer[0] And did not know what to do with a USB. This person was 50 in the year 2000, has clearly given up being part of or informed about modern society, and is made minister of cyber security. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/15/japan-cyber-se...

In line with the Persident of Nintendo who was reported to never play games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi I don't have enough context on how well Yoshitaka Sakurada is doing in his job, but at a high enough level it's possible to be a good leader without skills required to do the job few levels below. (not sure it's a good idea to strive for, but still)

These counter-examples are what "prove the rule". They succeeded despite not playing with their own products. Good for them. But they are noteworthy because they are such outliers.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#69

Post by YetAnotherNick »

noobermin wrote: post #33

Reading the start of this article reminded me of a somewhat unrelated thing I saw: I remember seeing in "tech influencer" youtube video on how "Japan hasn't kept up with the west" when it comes to IT. Not to be super orientalist or whatever and assume Japan is doing better the US in IT, but what should they do instead, go the US route and put every thing on the cloud? Is that better ? I couldn't help it, it's literal…

I am pretty sure they use computers with internet on the government agencies. Unless the entire office uses typewriter or write with pen and the encryption being used by mechanical machines(does any mechanical machine exist provides the safety of AES?) your entire point seems void.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#70

Post by Cthulhu_ »

noobermin wrote: post #33

Reading the start of this article reminded me of a somewhat unrelated thing I saw: I remember seeing in "tech influencer" youtube video on how "Japan hasn't kept up with the west" when it comes to IT. Not to be super orientalist or whatever and assume Japan is doing better the US in IT, but what should they do instead, go the US route and put every thing on the cloud? Is that better ? I couldn't help it, it's literal…

You joke about putting everything on the cloud, but it is one of the things that can massively accelerate innovation because you're no longer bound by paperwork to spin up a new server, or bound by server capacity for that matter.
Post reply on HN