Cyberattacks in 12 Nations Said to Use Leaked N.S.A. Hacking Tool

Post by rgbrenner » Fri, May 12, 2017, 11:13 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #216

maerF0x0 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be completely fair, it's not the NSA's fault that software has faults. Its the software manufacturers'. The ethical concern here is whether the NSA should have reported the holes to the manufacturers and the failure to handle its privileged knowledge in a safe manner.

He is not talking about the actual flaws as being the example as to why we shouldn't give the NSA backdoor access; he is saying that the leaks prove that even the NSA can't keep their stuff secret. If they couldn't keep their hacking tools secret, why should we think they can keep their backdoor access secret?

Post by robin_reala » Fri, May 12, 2017, 11:16 PM UTC

korethr wrote: post #284

alasdair_ wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To be completely fair, it's not the NSA's fault that software has faults. Its the software manufacturers'. The NSA has a specific mission to secure the nation's infrastructure. In witholding key information from US companies, it's failing that mission.

That's half the NSA's mission. Tt has another half and that is eavesdropping and getting into things. Those two missions are at odds with each other, and so the NSA has to make decisions about trade-offs. As these incidents show, the trade-offs the NSA has chosen to make have turned out to have been bad ideas.

Post by kefabean » Fri, May 12, 2017, 11:20 PM UTC

djmobley wrote: post #301

kefabean wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears the Theresa May is trying to deflect attention from the fact that there has been massive under investment in NHS IT infrastructure by reinforcing that it is a 'international attack on a number of countries and organisations'. Whilst this is true, it's probably also true that the impact of this attack is highly concentrated across organisations with chronic under-investment and a laissez-faire attitude to s…

In fairness, massive over-investment in NHS IT infrastructure hasn't gone so well either: https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/18/nhs-records-...

Post by r00fus » Fri, May 12, 2017, 11:23 PM UTC

mhogomchungu wrote: post #61

devrandomguy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This malware is well written, and uses strong encryption. I would suggest that you and your father spend the evening reading up on backup practices, and reconsider the value proposition of open source software. I hope I am not coming off as a smug jerk. My hope is that rather than becoming frustrated and demoralized after an evening of fruitless hacking, you and your uni will recover, and become resilient against fut…

He has backups of his data. I personally use linux and my github repo is here[1] where i have a bunch of encryption related projects(zuluCrypt,SiriKali and lxqt_wallet). The last windows computer i used was windows xp. I dont want to move him to linux because i am not always around and he can ask other people for help when he is on windows. [1] https://github.com/mhogomchungu

Post by kartan » Fri, May 12, 2017, 11:24 PM UTC

_asummers wrote: post #291

hkmurakami wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you explicitly ask someone with the form "are there are organizations that are infalliable to leaks?" they're likely to say "no of course not. Humans make errors" But if you phrase it to something like "Can the government be trusted with backdoors to protect us from terrorists and Chinese hackers", then suddenly public sentiment will change dramatically.

To quote Göring, > Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. Patriotism is both a wonderful and terrible thing, and it is made worse by feari…