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

71–80 of 122 posts

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#71

Post by ALittleLight »

leto_ii wrote: post #53
joe_the_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the Snowden leaks happened due to contracted-out sys admins, after all But that's a good thing, right? It's good that everybody found out that the government unlawfully collected their data etc. Snowden was not an attacker asking for money, he was an honest guy with a conscience and a whole lot of courage.

It's good and bad. The bad news is they're evil, but the good news is they're incompetent. That's better than competent evil, but I'd prefer competent good.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#72

Post by T-A »

ithkuil wrote: post #51
squeral wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, until you need to send those docs somewhere.

never underestimate the avian carrier EDIT: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2549

Beware:

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manches...

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#73

Post by chha »

noobermin wrote: post #47
eru wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

Not sure what you're trying to say with this.

The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period.

NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billion USD in 1961, but it ended up costing more than 25 billion USD in 1973 dollars.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#74

Post by southerntofu »

ALittleLight wrote: post #71
leto_ii wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Snowden leaks happened due to contracted-out sys admins, after all But that's a good thing, right? It's good that everybody found out that the government unlawfully collected their data etc. Snowden was not an attacker asking for money, he was an honest guy with a conscience and a whole lot of courage.

It's good and bad. The bad news is they're evil, but the good news is they're incompetent. That's better than competent evil, but I'd prefer competent good.

Who can be good in a position of power? Arguably, "power corrupts" as the saying goes. I believe you could take the 500 best person on Earth to try and form the perfect parliament, and you'd still have an unjust system.

Abolishing the structures of domination/exploitation is the only way to have a good outcome, because it's the only way to ensure citizens will behave as decent neighbors, and not try to control and manipulate their peers. At least, that's what we anarchists believe and practice on a daily basis.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#75

Post by southerntofu »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
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.

And your Docker/k8s image provider is not bound by security policies to actually enable the firewall and/or have a default password at all for your database.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#76

Post by jon-wood »

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?

When allowed to do the job well, yes. The UK’s Government Digital Service led the way in this, and have massively improved the online experience of everything from finding information about the current Parliament to booking vaccinations. Their entire approach is focused on “what does the user need” as opposed to “what does the thousand page spec doc say”. The USDS was founded on the same basis and from what I’ve heard are similarly impressive.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#77

Post by eru »

raesene9 wrote: post #67
eru wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Profit is a small part of costs. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

I'm not so sure about incentives. The incentives aren't necessarily great in either situation. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#78

Post by eru »

chha wrote: post #73
noobermin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

Not sure what you're trying to say with this. The Apollo program was run by NASA, who had lots of government employees, but at the same time all the hardware and much of the software was built by contractors. The Apollo program was behind schedule and over budget for most of the project period. NASA originally estimated the cost to somewhere between 7 and 12 billion USD; NASA Administrator increased this to 20 billio…

Believe it or not, the Space Shuttle was an even worse disaster in terms of bang for buck.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#79

Post by eru »

jon-wood wrote: post #76
eru wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When allowed to do the job well, yes. The UK’s Government Digital Service led the way in this, and have massively improved the online experience of everything from finding information about the current Parliament to booking vaccinations. Their entire approach is focused on “what does the user need” as opposed to “what does the thousand page spec doc say”. The USDS was founded on the same basis and from what I’ve hear…

That's heart-warming to hear, but alas cherry-picking examples won't sway anyone much?

Have a look at eg the outsourced Danish firefighters. Seems to work just fine, but would be unthinkable in most countries, including the US. (Btw, Americans have more firefighters per capita than about anywhere else.)

Post reply on HN