Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer • Hacker News Board

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#181

Post by mistermumble » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:22 AM UTC

ye wrote: post #159

enraged_camel wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>People like Snowden are rare. In all honesty, Snowden is a 30 year old single dude, and as far as I know, he doesn't have kids. Do you think he would have done what he did if he had a family to look after? In my opinion a person's first responsibility is to their family. So yeah, if you're married (like these executives probably are) and you're facing the choice between option A and option B, you should absolutely…

Snowden had a girlfriend, AFAIK.

A high salary, a hot girlfriend, nice house in Hawaii.

Good relationship with parents.

I'd say that is a lot to give up, in order to take the risk of being a whistleblower.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#182

Post by rdl » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:24 AM UTC

It's going to be interesting what this does to the RSA Conference in SF 24-28 FEB; I wonder if people will pull out, or what?

I'm looking at how to incorporate this as an example in my talk.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#183

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:31 AM UTC

winfred wrote: post #177

sheetjs wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tptacek has the most karma on HN (even moreso than pg): https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (for reference, pg has 149712 karma at the time of writing; tptacek has 165020 and the next person has 88887) His opinion is respected by many (and many accept what he says without question). A retraction by tptacek reminds us all to think critically lawnchair_larry's comment is equivalent to questioning the president or a ma…

What I do is just not read the usernames (beyond roughly scanning the word to figure out who replied to who). No really, I mean that, I don't even know your username. That makes for a wonderful experience really. I interact with this nameless entity and each post is largely valued by its responses (I often leave an article open for a few hours to let the comments ripen a bit, that also adds a lot).

I think HN might be designed to encourage this, judging from the lighter color given to the post metadata line.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#184

Post by tptacek » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

declan wrote: post #87

dpratt wrote: post #20

I wonder if any of the executives involved with this deal will have a moment of clarity and make a public statement - "I was directly told by representatives of the U.S. Government that if we did not take this deal there would be direct and material consequences for both my company and myself. Here is the names of the people I met with, here is a log of the meetings. If I am jailed or in some other fashion publicly d…

Other executives have. Look at what happened to Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio after challenging illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping requests. (Hint: he just got out of federal prison about two months ago.) http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230398390... Mr. Nacchio said he still believes his insider-trading prosecution was government retaliation for rebuffing requests in 2001 from the National Security Age…

Nacchio defrauded shareholders out of millions of dollars. Let's be careful about who we're valorizing.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#185

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:37 AM UTC

obstacle1 wrote: post #113

angersock wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as he can get under one's skin, and as much as he can be abrasive, and any number of other things, I trust his opinions on security and crypto. He's rational to a fault--unfortunately, that means that when facts change he may be left with egg on his face. I don't think there's anything wrong with how he's handled this stuff.

>...I trust his opinions on security and crypto. And here, ladies and gents, is exactly why we'll continue to inhabit an exploitable world forevermore.

Trusting tptacek in the form of completing and learning from the Matasano crypto challenges would lead to a much less exploitable world forevermore.

It's okay to provisionally trust the word of someone who has previously and clearly demonstrated actual competence.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#186

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:40 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #183

winfred wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do is just not read the usernames (beyond roughly scanning the word to figure out who replied to who). No really, I mean that, I don't even know your username. That makes for a wonderful experience really. I interact with this nameless entity and each post is largely valued by its responses (I often leave an article open for a few hours to let the comments ripen a bit, that also adds a lot).

I think HN might be designed to encourage this, judging from the lighter color given to the post metadata line.

[deleted]

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#187

Post by judk » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:44 AM UTC

vikas5678 wrote: post #24

"RSA, now a subsidiary of computer storage giant EMC Corp, urged customers to stop using the NSA formula after the Snowden disclosures revealed its weakness." - Just shake my head at this. As news is revealed that all these companies were complicit, they cry foul and "warn" users? RSA deserves to lose all international customers who refuse to buy their products because of hidden backdoors.

Quote possible that one arm of the company was an aware of the other arms actions. Probable, in fact. If most of the company knew of the backdoor, it would have leaked.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#188

Post by judk » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:46 AM UTC

dergachev wrote: post #114

If it only cost $10m to bribe one of the biggest security companies around, how much does it cost to bribe a single open source developer who volunteers on tools like OpenSSL? What if you add blackmail to the mix? Makes me realize that we need bitcoin-style "hack or bruteforce our encryption schemes and you can legitimately get paid lots of money" bug bounties.

Luckily, open source can't include secret code. That's the point.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#189

Post by judk » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:48 AM UTC

yuhong wrote: post #19

This reminds me of the MS-Novell deal, which was done in a similar way and has similar problems.

But "everyone" agreed it wasn't actually a backdoor. I wonder if that will get walked back finally.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#190

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 21, 2013, 2:54 AM UTC

pasbesoin wrote: post #134

dergachev wrote: post #114

If it only cost $10m to bribe one of the biggest security companies around, how much does it cost to bribe a single open source developer who volunteers on tools like OpenSSL? What if you add blackmail to the mix? Makes me realize that we need bitcoin-style "hack or bruteforce our encryption schemes and you can legitimately get paid lots of money" bug bounties.

This is why you want some people who are not primarily motivated by money. (Neither necessarily ascetics.) In turn, why you want a society where a decent quality of life is not just obtainable but reliable without an all-consuming level of competition with others. (E.g. an independent researcher can actually gain access to and participate in a large and reasonably priced health insurance risk pool. And where money is…

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