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America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

theregister.com

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

#191

Post by fuzztester »

fuzztester wrote: post #172
rjsw wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIST used to punch above its weight, everyone that I know who worked there has left over the last few months.

IIRC, expect (Unix automation tool) was developed at NIST by Don Libes, who also wrote the book about it. I would call that punching about your own weight, if you consider the use and impact of expect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expect https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect/home

>about

above. danged autocorrect.

damned if you use it, damned if you don't.

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

#193

Post by mrguyorama »

ethbr1 wrote: post #182
AlexandrB wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

This is rhetorical sleight of hand.

There is no physical force in the universe that causes words written on a government letterhead to mean anything. The exact same government that granted you "inalienable rights" will ignore them when it's corrupted.

There is no way to construct a government such that it CANNOT execute a minority if enough people want that to happen.

The only answer, as it has always been, is to ceaselessly, diligently, and without fail, never vote in people like Trump.

Unfortunately, the republican party has spent every single moment since Nixon's resignation ensuring that the party would never let that kind of thing stop them again.

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

#194

Post by thesuitonym »

tremon wrote: post #188
thesuitonym wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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?

I honestly am not sure what I did. Definitely missed a few zeroes!

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

#195

Post by bigyabai »

kazinator wrote: post #192

Maybe we need a CVE-like database that isn't dependent on the government of the USA? This is a weakness of the IT world as such.

The US government is a pretty good steward of this sorta thing. We're generally reliable, can afford to spend a few pennies securing a lucrative international export, and hold platform-owners responsible even when their executives hide or intentionally obfuscate issues for marketing purposes.

Who else can you seriously suggest, knowing the past 10 years of CVE history? Subcontract it to Cisco or Oracle?

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

#196

Post by ethbr1 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #193
ethbr1 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

This is rhetorical sleight of hand. There is no physical force in the universe that causes words written on a government letterhead to mean anything. The exact same government that granted you "inalienable rights" will ignore them when it's corrupted. There is no way to construct a government such that it CANNOT execute a minority if enough people want that to happen. The only answer, as it has always been, is to cea…

> The exact same government that granted you "inalienable rights" will ignore them when it's corrupted.

Checks and balances, multiple branches aligned along different timescales, and mandatory minimum change periods. E.g. the states that require consitutional amendments to be voted for in two consecutive elections

And all of that buttressed by belief in institutions and the consistency that effects.

It takes time to change people's minds.

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

#197

Post by mrguyorama »

yieldcrv wrote: post #177
esskay wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the same reason the US considers its self the "leader" of the world. You can't have it both ways, if you want to "lead", you've gotta pay for it.

then you might be pleased to know that I don't want to have it either way let's fix our own cities and domestic infrastructure projects while pulling back the federal government, just like we are doing

The pittance we pay to support things that benefit all humanity have never prevented us from investing in the US.

You don't need to put the federal government in a wood chipper to make the US better, and in fact you often need the federal government to make the US better, like with social security, food stamps, medicaid, the interstate, railroads, most of our infrastructure, the internet, microchips, etc.

In fact, if you want the best infrastructure, why wouldn't you end up importing that? Most of humanity is not a US citizen. "The best" human at something will only rarely be american.

Meanwhile this admin has done nothing to improve things for americans, so stop carrying water for their horse shit.

People love the meme of a runway full of F35s and saying "We are about to demonstrate why the US doesn't have socialized medicine" and it has always been a lie. We can EASILY afford 3k F35s, 13 aircraft carriers, AND healthcare. We've been paying more for healthcare than countries with socialized medicine this whole time.

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

#198

Post by yieldcrv »

mrguyorama wrote: post #197
yieldcrv wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then you might be pleased to know that I don't want to have it either way let's fix our own cities and domestic infrastructure projects while pulling back the federal government, just like we are doing

The pittance we pay to support things that benefit all humanity have never prevented us from investing in the US. You don't need to put the federal government in a wood chipper to make the US better, and in fact you often need the federal government to make the US better, like with social security, food stamps, medicaid, the interstate, railroads, most of our infrastructure, the internet, microchips, etc. In fact, if…

> We can EASILY afford 3k F35s, 13 aircraft carriers, AND healthcare

I'm aware but there is no consensus for that, or addressing the budget, all while our infrastructure crumbles at the same time.

Now there is at least an attempt to address our budget. Regarding foreign policy, other leading nations are not giving aid, they are investing. We could just as easily do our "soft power" stuff in a more equitable way. Every controversial budget change, that's even mocked by leaders of G-7 nations, are things those G-7 nations are already doing. Aid for repayment? yeah they're doing that. Not a controversial concept in reality.

And yes, I still want the federal government to do the things you mentioned regarding federal highways, railroads... infrastructure projects we both agree on.

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

#199

Post by Braxton1980 »

simpaticoder wrote: post #176
Braxton1980 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question the cost how? By saying "is this alot?" Then performing no further investigation to confirm that or make a comparison basically leaving the question open which causes random to assume it's "alot"

I can say "Gee whiz $335M per F-22 seems a bit much!" without being an expert in jets, military equipment, or going into the details of its production. I know a bit more about software so I can safely say something similar about MITRE. The fact that I don't want to spend my time doing (frankly, rather useless since I'm not a journo or in government or influential at all) investigative journalism into the specifics do…

>I can say "Gee whiz $335M per F-22 seems a bit much!..specifics doesn't invalidate my opinion.

You shouldn't and it does invalidate your opinion.

You're an engineer and this is HN so shouldn't making a comparison or judgment be backed up by some factual information?

>The fact that I don't want to spend my time

You don't have to make the comment.

>. Random people will read random things into whatever random content they consume..

Don't you feel that a comment akin to "government be spending alot" is almost like spam considering how often it's mentioned? If you had some information that showed that for what we are talking about then that would be substantial.

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

#200

Post by sofixa »

varjag wrote: post #155
sofixa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See, people look at the stalemate and often draw false conclusions. It's not that Russia was too weak militarily, it's that Ukraine put up one hell of a fight While Ukraine unquestionably put up a hell of a fight, the fact that the numerically superior army with the better and more numerical equipment, backed by the multiple times bigger and richer country failed is a failure. Especially when you consider that Ukra…

> Especially when you consider that Ukraine doesn't have a navy and barely had an air force and anti-air, yet Russia failed at establishing air or naval control, let alone dominance. Ukraine had dozens of airworthy fighter jets and well over a hundred air defense batteries at the start. Many of the latter were lost in the first weeks but Ukraine was fairly packed as far as smaller nations go. > Russia has no chance o…

> Ukraine had dozens of airworthy fighter jets

Russia had how many hundreds? And how much time to prepare how to neutralise them?

> , Russian chance of occupying significant part of Baltics with realistic level of NATO involvement is 1 in 3. It would be most certainly able to overrun the three states absent NATO support

No. If Russia attacks the Baltics, it's guaranteed that Poland will join (with at least some NATO support).

> That's the spirit I was mentioning yeah, "Ukrainians are bit backwards unlike we noble NATO elves". Name one thing in Polish military that Ukrainian military today doesn't have though

Years of preparation and conscious arming with a real budget? Ukraine had to go from a small and under equipped (mostly with obsolete Soviet era stuff) army to a total war in mere days. The complete mobilisation meant that there was limited time to train and equip everyone properly. Poland has had years to prepare equipment, training, planning, coordination.

Again, Russia can't handle Ukraine and has no clear path to victory there. Why on earth do you think it could handle more fronts, especially against better equipped and prepared enemies? Nobody is saying Putin is rational, but even he has to know that.

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