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Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#11

Post by pvnick »

anthonyb wrote: post #6
sasvari wrote: post #2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6416660

Which apparently has been flagged off of the front page.

I'm getting tired of the knee-jerk tendency for a small group of people to flag these extremely critical revelations. Yesterday the post about the mass rally on Washington was flagged to the bottom and eventually kicked off the front page. A recent poll revealed overwhelming support for more, not less reports on these spying stories, and yet a vocal minority is able to disregard the community's wishes and ruin things for everyone.

I don't know how this can be solved other than perhaps intense moderation to unflag everything regarding these revelations and let their popularity be determined solely by votes.

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#12

Post by eliot_sykes »

rwmj wrote: post #8

Interestingly, this has not been reported in the UK.

D-Notices limit what the news organisations can report on here in the UK.

Here's some correspondence with the BBC that shows what's going on. The BBC acknowledge they have been asked to talk to the government before reporting on anything to do with the recent security revelations: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/reporting_on_gchqs_te...

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#13

Post by tombrossman »

da_n wrote: post #10
rwmj wrote: post #8

Interestingly, this has not been reported in the UK.

There is a gag order on the media against any reporting of GCHQ. Ministry of Truth is in full effect in the UK right now.

Not disputing that there is some 'voluntary' suppression of facts by the media but a quick search of BBC news shows 5 stories in the last 10 days. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=GCHQ

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#14

Post by eliot_sykes »

tombrossman wrote: post #13
da_n wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a gag order on the media against any reporting of GCHQ. Ministry of Truth is in full effect in the UK right now.

Not disputing that there is some 'voluntary' suppression of facts by the media but a quick search of BBC news shows 5 stories in the last 10 days. http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=GCHQ

In the UK, we aren't having any real public debate about the security services, largely because the homegrown news organisations aren't giving the issues the attention they deserve. I don't know what would happen to them if they took a stand against a D-Notice.

(BTW, the 2nd result on that BBC news search is more like a job ad for GCHQ)

(Edited to remove my erroneous claim that D-notices aren't voluntary, turns out they are, though hardly any media orgs. go against them)

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#16

Post by freehunter »

unionpivo wrote: post #5
bsullivan01 wrote: post #4

Safe to say that they hacked every {country}com they could. That's not personal, just business.

To GCHQ it may be business as usual, but if I were telco owner/admin/user I would be pissed. After all virus writers/crackers/spammers are just business too. Just because its government that hacks you doesn't make it any better, I believe it makes it worse.

I've been trying to get my bosses on board with offensive security at work, where if I see someone trying to attack us I want the right to attack them back. Kind of turning the blue team into the red team. Imagine if you did that and then found out the attackers that you just counter-hacked were actually the government and now you're being arrested?

--I know it's illegal (except if a big company like Microsoft or a government agency like the FBI does it). It's the dream of every information security professional though.

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#17

Post by tomjen3 »

pvnick wrote: post #11
anthonyb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which apparently has been flagged off of the front page.

I'm getting tired of the knee-jerk tendency for a small group of people to flag these extremely critical revelations. Yesterday the post about the mass rally on Washington was flagged to the bottom and eventually kicked off the front page. A recent poll revealed overwhelming support for more , not less reports on these spying stories, and yet a vocal minority is able to disregard the community's wishes and ruin thing…

This place is only incidentally run as a semi-democracy. The goal is not to get the stuff on the front page that the most people want but the stuff that satisfy peoples intellectual curiosity.

If you want a completely democratically run internet forum, create your own subreddit or on www.reddit.com.

Incidentally Hacker News was made partially as a response to the decline of the general reddit communities and with the hope of addressing at least some of their failures - such as relying too much on democracy.

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#18

Post by tomjen3 »

bsullivan01 wrote: post #4

Safe to say that they hacked every {country}com they could. That's not personal, just business.

What I don't get is how the hell this is not an act of war? If I put a bomb next to some critical telecommunications network, even if I made absolutely sure nobody was harmed, and blew it up it would be considered an act of terrorism.

So why the hell is GCHQ doing this to an allied country?

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#19

Post by unionpivo »

freehunter wrote: post #16
unionpivo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To GCHQ it may be business as usual, but if I were telco owner/admin/user I would be pissed. After all virus writers/crackers/spammers are just business too. Just because its government that hacks you doesn't make it any better, I believe it makes it worse.

I've been trying to get my bosses on board with offensive security at work, where if I see someone trying to attack us I want the right to attack them back. Kind of turning the blue team into the red team. Imagine if you did that and then found out the attackers that you just counter-hacked were actually the government and now you're being arrested? --I know it's illegal (except if a big company like Microsoft or a g…

Yes. You should be arrested.

Counter hacking is just hacking, the only difference is how you pick your target. And you never know, maybe the owner of the originating system was just another victim. (Hacker breaks in computer A, then precedes to hack computer B leaving trace back to computer A, not the hacker)

It is also against the law in most of developed world.

Re: Britain's GCHQ hacked Belgium's telco Belgacom

#20

Post by filipmaertens »

freehunter wrote: post #16
unionpivo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To GCHQ it may be business as usual, but if I were telco owner/admin/user I would be pissed. After all virus writers/crackers/spammers are just business too. Just because its government that hacks you doesn't make it any better, I believe it makes it worse.

I've been trying to get my bosses on board with offensive security at work, where if I see someone trying to attack us I want the right to attack them back. Kind of turning the blue team into the red team. Imagine if you did that and then found out the attackers that you just counter-hacked were actually the government and now you're being arrested? --I know it's illegal (except if a big company like Microsoft or a g…

Counterattacking is a big no-no in most countries, so I would stay from that offensive security stuff. Unless of course, you're working for a government, in which case you need to look at the conventions of warfare and see if you can declare war on another country where the attack allegedly originated from ;-))) Tough sell :-)
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