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NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

ddosecrets.substack.com

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Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#81

Post by eru »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #37
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…

It is also nice to have an entity to throw under the bus if necessary.

And that's actually a benefit for the tax payer!

It's notoriously hard to fire public servants, or shut down underperforming departments.

It's comparatively easier to shut down an outsourced project, or switch suppliers.

(Alas, not easy enough; and the organizational skills required to win government bids are different from those required to actually deliver quality.)

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#82

Post by hereforphone »

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…

I contracted for US government agencies for a long time. At every single job the contractors were doing the "work" (they had the knowledge) and the government employees were acting as managers. I have not met a government employee with an unusually high level of technical skill (though obviously many do exist). As far as I can tell (and I worked over a decade in this environment, in many countries) government employees exist to attend meetings and task contractors.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#83

Post by hereforphone »

flatline wrote: post #20
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…

Nearly everyone who does real work like this for the government is a contractor anymore. The government employees manage the contracts.

Exactly. They also get the credit and retirement checks.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#84

Post by leto_ii »

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.

> The bad news is they're evil

Agreed, but this is really bad news, given the amount of power three letter agencies (and the deep state in general) have.

> the good news is they're incompetent

Here I disagree. I think the NSA are about as competent as such an agency is ever likely to get. We shouldn't be happy that they still have weaknesses, rather we should be horrified at how few of them there are.

Most of the spying programs had been in place years before Snowden blew the whistle. Countless other contractors and deep state employees could have done what Snowden did had they had either the courage or the moral clarity. Quite possibly many tried and were stopped before leaking to the public.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#86

Post by muxator »

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.

You can well have a government organization which embraces the cloud, yet keeps exactly the same level of paperwork for acquiring or activating resources. It is a cultural matter well before a technological one.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#87

Post by karlmdavis »

hereforphone wrote: post #82
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…

I contracted for US government agencies for a long time. At every single job the contractors were doing the "work" (they had the knowledge) and the government employees were acting as managers. I have not met a government employee with an unusually high level of technical skill (though obviously many do exist). As far as I can tell (and I worked over a decade in this environment, in many countries) government employe…

Technical government employee here. :waves:

Your observation is, in general, quite correct! Back in the 80s or thereabouts, the conservative administrations started a MASSIVE shift towards outsourcing of federal government work. This was for all of the usual, largely shortsighted and inaccurate “cost saving” and “efficiency” reasons.

The worst part of it is that they outsourced ALL of the technical expertise in many agencies, leaving them without the expertise needed to effectively manage the work being outsourced.

This is starting to shift, thanks to recent efforts like the USDS, 18F, and such but it’s the work of decades to really change. Come join us!

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#88

Post by DocTomoe »

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.

Yeah, you can no longer be bound by paperwork. But - having worked in digitalization projects for several megacorps - Bureaucracy is a beast, and it refuses to die - before long, you have now underemployed bureaucrats taking four weeks for registering an (internal) domain or a 14-page-project-outline with no less than 5 alignment meetings (involving ITSec, Compliance, the GDPR lawyer (even though you don't handle user-data), someone who wants to be promoted and 10 guys from Accenture for slidedeck-preparation) for a VM.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#89

Post by anthk »

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.

Add Indra to the list.

Re: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised

#90

Post by sandworm101 »

hereforphone wrote: post #82
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…

I contracted for US government agencies for a long time. At every single job the contractors were doing the "work" (they had the knowledge) and the government employees were acting as managers. I have not met a government employee with an unusually high level of technical skill (though obviously many do exist). As far as I can tell (and I worked over a decade in this environment, in many countries) government employe…

That would be the plan. If it is a government contract then the government is the customer. The customer manages the project and the hired contractors do the heavy lifting.

Look to the people who actually use these systems. Once it is up and running they will all be government employees. The real work, the thing the system is designed to do, starts after the IT infrastructure is up and running. The vast majority of people reading and handling classified informatiom are government employees ... most of them in uniform.

FYI, this system is apparently mean to protect "NATO Secret" material. That isnt a very high classification. I'd call it entry level, the sort of thing that nearly everyone in uniform is cleared to see.

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