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“Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

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Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#141

Post by jerf »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #100
jrochkind1 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. I know this is sacrilegious to say, but I wonder if the efficiency bonus from computerization really is so great, or would be, if it wasn't built on a pile of crap.

It's not ridiculous to say at all. But I think that even slow computerization is orders of magnitude better than without. And by slow, I mean like kiloflops. In all seriousness, people used to use punchcard machines and were damn glad for it, as the computers before that were even slower and more expensive. And a few generations of machines before that computers were people who computed. We'd definitely still be usin…

Yeah, that's pretty much what I mean. We could live on a great deal less than we actually have now, and I mean, we could live quite effectively. The transition would hurt (or perhaps rather, will hurt), but in the end I think we'll all end up surprised by the fact it wasn't harder. Think Y2K here. Probably bigger than that, but in the end, more blip than crash.

Big blip, though. But at the current rate we're headed for that anyhow, regardless.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#142

Post by draugadrotten »

grrowl wrote: post #134
draugadrotten wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "under no influence" part is missing.

IF we take the strict differences of the phrasing, we could say he's reasonably withholding information by request. Incorporated with the timeframe, this could be anyone — but given his response and the extra 250+ twitter followers today, he's probably been reminded the cost of drawing conjecture in public.

I am thinking this guy is very exact and precise in his phrasing, especially with regards to a canary. He's a crypto-geek, anarchist and running an exit node and this crowd knows Alice is not Bob.

He knows what he says will be scrutinized by thousands. Why wouldn't he be very careful in what he says?

Based on his first canary vs the last, he could, as you say, "reasonably" be withholding information on request. Perhaps terrorists, kitty pr0n or the threat of jail is reason to him. Good resons, who knows.

He could also be under the control of someone that asks him to add new, lie or modify information. Worse reasons, perhaps.

Either way his first canary reminded us that whatever he says now needs to be treated as possible disinformation.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#143

Post by jnbiche »

harkyns_castle wrote: post #130
jnbiche wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. First, it has little to nothing to do with the comment posted, which concerns not a "cyberwar" but the possible police seizure of a Tor server. The assumption is it's either a false alarm or a police raid. No one thinks this was done by ISIS. Second, a post using the word "cyberwar" in a non-ironic manner at the top of HN?! O tempora o mores! So while your ob…

I don't know, sometimes something in an article triggers another stream of thought or tangent, and its a comments section, and other people might want to discuss that. I don't necessarily agree with the comment (as I have next to no visibility of this) but certainly don't mind reading comments on it. Maybe I'm wrongly using the site!

I like tangents on HN, too, and I like discussions. That wasn't my point. It was that the comment apparently misunderstood or didn't read the linked message.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#144

Post by drcomputer »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #101
drcomputer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, the repetitive analysis usually stems from using the same model of which to analyze the data by. It's insufficient. That helps me turn it off, listen to other people, go about my life, learn new ways of thinking, connecting, interacting, helping, participating, and then I continue to re-evaluate myself, existence, and my place in it. I still can't shake the depression, though. Unless the entire world existed in…

If it helps, I find that analysis helps stave off depression. Having a focus for something to intellectually chew on helps me a lot. So while I've been accused of over-analysis, sometimes it's simply me printing what I had been mulling over while idling; if I ever stopped doing that, I'd drown in my own mind.

I sometimes find it hard to differentiate between analysis and drowning in my own mind. I seem to purposefully pick problems that have no answers, and if I feel myself getting close to an answer, I make a mess of it. It's either fear of learning that I have lost the ability to succeed, or fear of actually succeeding. I never thought anything in the world could break me that much. I thought I would die before that happened. But it's all useless to think about, on the other hand. I feel like I'm searching for an 'it', without knowing what 'it' is - without using the world's point of views, perspectives, or ideas to define the value of 'it'. I do not know what will happen when I find it, or whether I will ever find it. Maybe I already have it, and I just don't know it.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#145

Post by drcomputer »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #110
SCHiM wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that the scenario you're sketching here is far fetched at all. Code re-use and recycling inside technical companies is very common. If any code you wrote there turned out to be great/good at something you'd never know where it might end up. Perhaps in the processor of some killer robot in the future. I wonder where the code that is running inside the drones today comes from. Some one who never meant to…

> I wonder where the code that is running inside the drones today comes from. I interviewed a candidate for a job once who wrote code for military drones. He didn't think it was bad that they were used to kill innocent people. In fact, he thought it was awesome. There are a lot of coders who have a low moral bar and will code anything for money. These are the people who write this kind of software.

They must have a very warped perspective of people.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#146

Post by cesarb »

draugadrotten wrote: post #142
grrowl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IF we take the strict differences of the phrasing, we could say he's reasonably withholding information by request. Incorporated with the timeframe, this could be anyone — but given his response and the extra 250+ twitter followers today, he's probably been reminded the cost of drawing conjecture in public.

I am thinking this guy is very exact and precise in his phrasing, especially with regards to a canary. He's a crypto-geek, anarchist and running an exit node and this crowd knows Alice is not Bob. He knows what he says will be scrutinized by thousands. Why wouldn't he be very careful in what he says? Based on his first canary vs the last, he could, as you say, "reasonably" be withholding information on request. Perha…

> He knows what he says will be scrutinized by thousands. Why wouldn't he be very careful in what he says?

Because he's under time pressure?

If his paranoia was true (after all, paranoia doesn't mean they aren't after you), he could have had little time to get his message out before he would have lost his network access. At that moment, timeliness would have been more important than precision; what mattered was that the directory authority operators and mirror users knew that his servers were potentially compromised.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#147

Post by yourad_io »

flux_w42 wrote: post #124

A Dutch tech news site [1] published the news on their site and got in contact with the ISP Snel: The ISP told Tweakers that the account of Thomas White was blocked due to a security policy of the company. The customer let a deadline for verification accidentally expire and logged in through KVM. "Some KVM's generate a USB event when you use it to set up a connection to the server, this is what the customer just noti…

I need closure, and that wasn't it. I'm hoping this wasn't the last we hear about this incident.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#148

Post by ChuckMcM »

jnbiche wrote: post #119
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Interesting. It is entirely possible it is survivor bias on my part but I get the suspicion that a global sort of 'cyberwar' that has been rumbling along for years is heating up rapidly. I've seen a 10x increase in various scripted attacks being attempted (patch early and often folks!) and a number of APT level compromises of systems either staging malware or deploying it (see the latest bulletin on the Afghan govern…

I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. First, it has little to nothing to do with the comment posted, which concerns not a "cyberwar" but the possible police seizure of a Tor server. The assumption is it's either a false alarm or a police raid. No one thinks this was done by ISIS. Second, a post using the word "cyberwar" in a non-ironic manner at the top of HN?! O tempora o mores! So while your ob…

Obviously I can't comment on why things get voted or don't get voted on, my observation is that people upvote comments they enjoy or agree with and down vote comments they disagee with and/or would rather not read. But I can respond to your other question.

   > Did you mean to post elsewhere?
No, I meant to post it here.

The author, Thomas White, writes of losing control of his Tor exit node servers, not to this audience but to the folks who read the tor.user newsgroup. Robert, aka chummm, posted it here as being of interest to the community. His was one of a series of articles/notes being posted here that have described potentially state-actor level activity. And there has of course been quite a bit about the Sony hack in the news. I also happen to run a fairly large internet visible infrastructure which acts a weird sort of observation instrument for the network as well.

I presume that Robert submitted it here because he felt it was interesting, and a number of people concurred with him. And after reading the article of yet another person finding themselves on the receiving end of external forces trying to compromise their systems, it crossed some vaguely defined threshold for me between crystallized a thought that has been tugging at my subconscious for probably a month or more. That being that the the number of and frequency of penetration attacks is noticeably higher now than it was before. Yet I don't keep some sort of threat index or anything, I just get to see the number of things my automated defenses have fended off, or the clusters in the datacenter. And I allow that it is entirely possible for the combination of lots of computer intrusion in the news cycle has combined with perhaps a lot of bored teenagers on winter break or something to create something illusory. But as this story brought that observation to the forefront of my consciousness, I thought I would share what I was observing here, in the comments people are making about this story.

Re: “Warning: Do Not use my mirrors/services until I have reviewed the situation”

#149

Post by pnathan »

jnbiche wrote: post #119
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

Interesting. It is entirely possible it is survivor bias on my part but I get the suspicion that a global sort of 'cyberwar' that has been rumbling along for years is heating up rapidly. I've seen a 10x increase in various scripted attacks being attempted (patch early and often folks!) and a number of APT level compromises of systems either staging malware or deploying it (see the latest bulletin on the Afghan govern…

I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top. First, it has little to nothing to do with the comment posted, which concerns not a "cyberwar" but the possible police seizure of a Tor server. The assumption is it's either a false alarm or a police raid. No one thinks this was done by ISIS. Second, a post using the word "cyberwar" in a non-ironic manner at the top of HN?! O tempora o mores! So while your ob…

> I'm surprised that this comment has been voted to the top.

Chuck's been around HN for a while, and has insightful comments frequently - that he posts this sort of "radical" comment implies that a non-nut is seriously considering it and quite possibly it's worth pondering as an idea.

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