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America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

theregister.com

181–190 of 218 posts

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#181
post #2

> It's the global catalog that helps everyone – security teams, software vendors, researchers, governments – organize and talk about vulnerabilities using the same reference system so why was only the US federal government funding it, especially if it wasn't expensive to maintain? this is the follow up question to every headline and won't be seen as controversial later, so why bother treating it as controversial to s…

> so why was only the US federal government funding it, especially if it wasn't expensive to maintain?

I want to flip this question around as if it was asked by somebody from a country other than the U.S. If I was looking at America since 9/11 from the outside, I would see a country that was trying to destabilize itself. It started out slowly enough, but as the years have progressed the wobble has become more and more pronounced until today, where the U.S.'s trustworthiness is lower than I personally ever thought it could go. And it's going to get worse.

So if I lived outside the U.S. I would be asking the very same question: Why would a government that is so unstable and so dangerously powerful be in charge of something that the world kind-of would like to depend on? And I'd start my own version of it asap. I understand from the Reg article that the U.S. extended its contract in the 11th hour, but that just speaks to the point more than anything else.

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this hard to believe. Every country has various conditions and scenarios where the leader is granted god-like powers. ex: In Canada Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever during covid. My understanding is that it was intended for 9/11-type actions, not protesters who should have been arrested weeks earlier. What country are you in?

This is not quite correct. The Emergencies Act was preceded by the War Measures Act which was used during WWI and WWII as well as during the "October Crisis"[1]. But yes, the intent is for events that threaten the nation, not protests. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis

The nature of extraordinary powers' existence is that they will be used. You'd have thought the Roman Rep^H^H^HEmpire would have taught everyone that.

The only defense is to inalienably assign certain rights/protections to individuals. (Which itself creates issues with their abusing them)

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#183
post #2

> It's the global catalog that helps everyone – security teams, software vendors, researchers, governments – organize and talk about vulnerabilities using the same reference system so why was only the US federal government funding it, especially if it wasn't expensive to maintain? this is the follow up question to every headline and won't be seen as controversial later, so why bother treating it as controversial to s…

> so why was only the US federal government funding it, especially if it wasn't expensive to maintain? I want to flip this question around as if it was asked by somebody from a country other than the U.S. If I was looking at America since 9/11 from the outside, I would see a country that was trying to destabilize itself. It started out slowly enough, but as the years have progressed the wobble has become more and mor…

It suggests that an apathetic world and private sector globally is mildly amused that the US uses its resources this way on things they rely on

or it suggests that an entire world and private sector is so uncoordinated and budget strapped globally that all this - at least these things - is held together by the US

I'm pleased to find out. I'm dismayed at how disruptive doing so has to be, but its either accepting the concept of American exceptionalism, or stepping up and proving the apathy was giving America a bad deal and calling into question how much of an ally anyone was

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#184
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's keep things simple. You endorsed it. Here's a famous example of that endorsement style: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56968/speech-friends-...

> Let's keep things simple It doesn't seem all that simple to dictate to someone what you think their actual opinion is and then point to Shakespeare as some kind of evidence. Maybe let's keep things simple by taking people at their word.

I didn't say anything about the commenter's opinion. "Endorsed" was the word I used.

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#185

Crazy idea: Decentralize the CVE across many nations so that no single organization has the power to eliminate it. Even if the US doesn't play ball, it's a public database right? Is there anything stopping the UN, EU, UK, Australia, etc from copying it and establishing their own joint CVE?

The EU has https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/

That's good to hear.

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were Putin I'd attack some very minor NATO state to check if NATO will really send soldiers to defend it. Example: is really somebody willing to die for Estonia? (Sorry HNers from Estonia, but you are just in the worst possible place of all of NATO.) If not, NATO will crumble into pieces. If yes, let's see who's sending soldiers and who won't, and how they will react to the first week of casualties. Keep going o…

But you are not Putin and he is not you. Attacking Ukraine wasn’t a gamble for him, it was a presumably easy win, like Georgia in 2008. Attack on NATO on Baltic shore isn’t an easy win, it’s a gamble. And what is this test for? America has already learned the lesson and is withdrawing from Russian periphery. Europe has no interest in power games, UK is in irreversible decline. NATO is not going to expand anymore in f…

You are trying to hypothesise a rational actor except you model the actor on ordinary people.

An aging authoritarian is not concerned with long term security, well being of his subjects or boring diplomatic minutae. Seeing his days vanishing, he is intent on leaving a mark in history. What matters is not how pretty the mark is going to be but how visible shall it be through centuries. And since the authoritarian's strength is more often brutality than intelligence, the role model would inevitably be Stalin, Genghis Khan or Ivan the Terrible.

Within their framework the dictator is entirely a rational actor but on a very different vector than what think tanks usually muse about.

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#187
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest expansion of NATO was barely a year ago (with Sweden joining). Russian authoritarianism may be secure, but the current regime's power is not (not to mention their leaders' paranoia). Their ambition is the control of continental Europe. It might sound crazy, but if you listen to people like Dugin, it is very clear. And it's not that unrealistic in the longer run, considering everything you listed in your po…

>listen to people like Dugin, it is very clear Don’t be afraid of scarecrows. He is a powerless freak far away from the decision makers, not Rasputin. Says a lot, but doesn’t really matter. It is much more interesting what people in security council say and who gets the contracts. There’s zero indication of expansion but a lot of messages about not messing with “legitimate interests”. They protect what they think is…

> It is much more interesting what people in security council say

People in the security council were cowering with fear on 22-02-22 afraid to say the unthinkable and Putin openly gloating while forcing them to say it.

Dugin is a freak alright, but he has the ear of (and is privy to) the paranoid decision makers there; he was talking about the impending war long before anyone else.

> They need absence of threat and parking lot for the money

It will be much easier to park their money in any one of the small rich countries (e.g. Switzerland) once those are not encumbered by the KYC and AML rules imposed by the globalist word order. Same with their luxury properties and kids in private schools.

They don't need to invade every country to control the continent. Look at Finland prior to the collapse of the USSR - while staying mostly independent they still had to run their leadership choices by the Kremlin and did not even think about joining military alliances to avoid confrontation.

> so they will play the game of influence, but war?

Right, they played the game of influence with Ukraine until they lost all influence and and saw an opportunity for military success. On the other hand, they are not invading Georgia or Belarus because the governments are in their pocket and their security apparatuses are basically departments within FSB. For the same reason they won't be invading Hungary or Slovakia any time soon. But the Baltic countries? I'm not so sure.

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So in what way does this help the American people? Shutting down Mitre and the CVE is against American interests, both public and private. That said, you can make an argument, one that revolves around cost (was the CVE DB worth $50M a year, especially given its backlog?). The other part of that argument rests on assuming there will be a private or semi-private replacement for the service, that there may be many of t…

$50 is about $7 per American. Could MITRE be more efficient? Yeah maybe. Probably, even. But cutting off funding entirely isn't the way to make it happen. This decision isn't about saving the American taxpayer money, it's about weaking the US, and it serves exactly one person.

$50M divided over ~350M people is around 15 cents per citizen per year. Did you use an odd number of Australian signs in your math?

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#189
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's keep things simple It doesn't seem all that simple to dictate to someone what you think their actual opinion is and then point to Shakespeare as some kind of evidence. Maybe let's keep things simple by taking people at their word.

I didn't say anything about the commenter's opinion. "Endorsed" was the word I used.

I didn't endorse anything. In fact, I presented arguments opposing the administration's view. I think it's unreasonable to argue that trying to understand people's actions is tantamount to endorsing them. We should never be reluctant to understand others' perspectives.

Re: America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

#190
post #143

Signal chats are a sideshow compared to opening up the government to data breaches and foreign influence https://www.newsweek.com/doge-whistleblower-stalked-threaten...

I have conservative family who only read/watch Fox news, OAN and some conservative meme site called twitchy, which is like if Fox news tried to be dumber. They don't see this. There is no true reporting. My mom didn't know about the breadth of tariffs. She didn't know about the DJT crypto scam. I've explained signal to her several times (prior to the news, just getting her to use it). She really doesn't understand an…

People always like to think their good fortune is because they have some special sauce that others don't have. But they also resent all the obligations that go with it.

Plenty of people in Britain still think the world owes us something, nearly a century after the end of our empire.

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