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GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

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Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#171

Post by f6v »

waihtis wrote: post #161
f6v wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Silicon Valley wasn’t built overnight. The software industry is just taking off in the EU. Mind you, nobody would have thought that the US would loose their leading role in the Middle East, look at them now. I can see the same happening in tech.

Problem is that EU is not comparable in any manner to the US. For one, where do you suggest the Silicon Valley of EU is? London would've been a decent bet except that they just bailed. As someone else mentioned, capital is way harder to raise (meaning slower to market) - and then an underrated factor which is equally important is how easy or difficult is it to sell as a nascent startup. At least in my industry (cyber…

Well, we shouldn’t just assume that Silicon Valley has to be a place. The lockdown showed that numerous companies can operate 100% remotely. And I got the impression that there’s always more money than startups.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#172

Post by [deleted] »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #105
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #74

Entrusting your business to an american entity is the stupidest idea you could have thought about. Especially us europeans should not rely on American services at all.It's not worth it. American corporations are just as much a liability as their counterparts in China.

I'm in Africa and most companies here host their systems either locally (very expensive and slow) or in America. The other day at work I had a pretty heated argument at work with a colleague when I mentioned it is really not good for us to host any of our stuff in America (all of it is currently in America). He basically freaked out about it. I just wanted to hear his thoughts about it, but he took personal offence (…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#174

Post by jfrunyon »

canofbars wrote: post #40
jeroenhd wrote: post #21

If the Iranian employee logged into the Github account, isn't blocking the account exactly what the law says they should do? If all they did was apply a merge request in one of the repos then would reverting the merge and blocking the account would be enough to comply? Is there some alternative way to comply with US export restrictions? The real question here is why people even consider using US cloud companies when…

Would it not be sufficient to just block requests from Iran rather than shut down the account and the groups they are in? That way when they return home they can still access the site.

Iranian company uses VPN service to get around the block - VPN goes down and their requests to GitHub go directly - GitHub blocks those requests; the Iranian company continues using them once the VPN is back on - US government finds out - Bye bye GitHub

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#175

Post by [deleted] »

cies wrote: post #112
brmgb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US embargo prevents doing business with Iran. Providing service in Iran would be a violation of the embargo. Blocking a whole European company not conducting business with Iran because one of its employee tried to login while there is not respecting the embargo, it's just overreach. GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts.

> GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts. Random? I think the problem with Paypal was that they do not warn or provide reasons for freezing. GH's reasons are clear. > Blocking a whole European company not conducting business with Iran because one of its employee tried to login while there is not respecting the embargo, it's just overreach. Says who? Th…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#176

Post by x3c »

cies wrote: post #75
brmgb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an Iranian employee. That's just someone visiting Iran and login to their GitHub account. GitHub reaction is outrageously disproportionate. They should just prevent login from Iran. They had no basis for blocking a legitimate customer in Europe based on this.

Funny how GH gets shit for what the US has as laws. I'd focus my outrage on the law, the lawmaker, and those who uphold it. GH is merely trying to go by the book/ avoid penalties, as expected.

Not as per the letter of the law.

https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#177

Post by viseztrance »

ceejayoz wrote: post #90
dustinmoris wrote: post #57

Is GitHub going to take itself down when one of their employees goes to Iran for holiday and logs into their GitHub account? If not, then why are they treating others with such contempt?

GitHub is in possession of substantial additional information in that scenario, namely, "we're quite certain we don't have Iranian employees on staff".

Do they keep an up to date database on who's dating whom?

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#178

Post by fsflover »

qayxc wrote: post #132
londons_explore wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2FA should be bypassable after some longish lockout period. For example, someone has lost their password, email access, phone number, and 2FA app. Make them wait a month to regain account access. If any time during that month, the account is used or logged into, cancel the takeover request. During the month, every day send an email to all points of contact on the account letting them know what will happen. It's a tra…

> 2FA should be bypassable after some longish lockout period. Nope. No backups, no sympathy, simple as that. 2FA is worthless if you start to put holes in it like that. So if you value your data, make backups - preferably locally the old-fashioned way, e.g. HDDs stored in at least two different locations or at least using several different cloud providers (which have their own infrastructure and aren't just relying o…

>> 2FA should be bypassable after some longish lockout period.

> Nope. No backups, no sympathy, simple as that.

My two sim-cards were lost at the same time. Impossible, right? Now I cannot access my Github account anymore. Perfect security. Nothing important is lost and backups are there. But what about the account itself?

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#179

Post by kkapelon »

afroboy wrote: post #139
wccrawford wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you're okay with the legal consequences of sabotaging the company. They absolutely can sue you for it, and you might even face criminal prosecution for such a thing.

On what basis they are going to sue him? he visited a specific country and than boom. how in the hell are going to prove that he did it in purpose.?

Exactly. Somebody who wanted to do this could simply book a flight where Iran in an intermediate destination.

And then they would say "I had 30 minutes of waiting time in transit and I just wanted to add a comment on my Pull Request".

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#180

Post by hasa »

icelancer wrote: post #129
Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the companies in the EU produces enterprise software almost no one on this website uses (SAP) What? SAP is a huge software that is used in a lot of companies.

Correct. I'm also willing to bet the people on Hacker News are not typically in the circle of businesses that use SAP.

SAP user here... not that I liked it :)
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