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Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

reuters.com

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Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> different skin color. In the 1970s, armed Black Panther members took the California State Capitol and no one died. At least one officer is dead (this changes daily so who knows) and one protestor (she was unarmed, that's a protestor, trespasser at best) was shot by sorry excuse of a Capitol Officer who shot wildly into a crowd (almost hitting the other Federal Officer behind her!) Please stop making this about race…

The lady that was shot was attempting to enter a hallway through a window while people in the hallway were pointing guns at her. Just because she didn't have a visible weapon doesn't mean she wasn't a threat. Climbing through a broken window into a hallway protected by a makeshift barricade is itself a threatening action. No one at the head of a mob climbing over a barricade ever did so for innocent and non-threateni…

Note that she was wearing a good sized backpack. The shooter was wearing plainclothes- possibly Secret Service. It appears he was protecting something or someone important. Pence?

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#402
post #241

I'm surprised congressional office's laptops do not embed remotely detonated explosives/destruction devices triggered with sat or cellular comms.

You're surprised that politicians don't attach remotely detonated bombs to the laptops?

In particular remotely denoted "Kill" devices. Which destroy the entirety of the laptops contents.

Encryption by itself is likely not enough to secure the contents from a nation state actor.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They took selfies with the insurrectionists. They were complicit.

> insurrectionists Peaceful protestors. Were the BLM people who stormed city hall in Seattle insurrectionists? Where the Black Panthers who took the California State Capitol in the 1970s insurrectionists? Stop with the bullshit name games. These were not rioters. They didn't set anything on fire. They should not have stolen or broken anything. That's wrong and bad and should be condemned. Those people should get fede…

Black Panthers were literally insurrectionists and wore that badge with pride.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#404

Beyond the information security risk around the loss of this specific device, what really worries me is the physical security implications here. I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it seems to me like, in a building like the US Capitol, it should not be anywhere near this easy for unauthorized people to waltz into an office or conference room in the first place. Let alone walk away with items from within that…

In the Netherlands there are a few entry ways and they look a bit like this: https://www.dormakaba.com/resource/blob/128222/7d74af646dce4... They're configured one-way only, can be fully opened for high through-put or emergencies, but are otherwise single-person only. They can detect multiple people in various ways. The default for sensitive areas would be biometric (e.g. weight, some parlement members coming back fr…

The US Capitol belongs to the people. There are risks from that which fall on the people who serve there. In counties with monarchs there are different traditions expressed by the architecture of public institutions and the seats of power.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#405

Myself, I would be more worried about any keyloggers, or wifi/cell interception, "man-in-the-middle" devices being left behind...

did you see the photos of the rioters? Do you really believe they are that tech-savy?

Do you often judge people by their appearances ?

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire the restraint on display here, but if even one of those guys had been black, the cops would have iced every one of them. Imagine someone grabbing a cop's gas mask at a BLM march and not being dead 2 seconds later.

Hyperbole, this kind of stuff happened all the time at BLM protests. There is literally hundreds of videos of this stuff. No one was getting 'iced'.

[deleted]

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#407

Myself, I would be more worried about any keyloggers, or wifi/cell interception, "man-in-the-middle" devices being left behind...

I know someone who had their government laptop taken from them (then they came back with it), when going through customs of another country. The first thing their bosses told them was do not turn it on. The laptop had very sophisticated encryption and I would assume they just straight out destroyed it. They got an exact replacement.

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#408

> belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations Yikes. My first though was - oh this should be no big deal chances are there are good policies in place for laptops that go home with people. Then I realized it is a shared/central machine which means it probably has the most effed up and relaxed security in the fleet, post-it notes with passwords taped to the palm rests, and god knows what else. IT depar…

IT should be able to revoke any access the machine has, so the only compromise would be what was already on the machine; which would be the case regardless of security policy, as they could just access the harddrive directly regardless of OS security policy.

In practice, it wouldn't suprise me if that computer was locally storing passwords that were not specific to that machine, which might mean needing to revoke a bunch of passwords

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FDE only works if the machine is powered off. If a machine is stolen while it is still running there's a risk the user account could be compromised. Depending how sophisticated your adversary is they could potentially completely compromise the machine and extract all of the data. When you have physical access and no time pressure the options are vast.

> Depending how sophisticated your adversary is The videos I saw don't inspire much dread, there, but they may give the laptop to someone that can do digital forensics. Lots of LEOs in that lot. They would be smart enough to stay out of the building, but might have been waiting for someone to come out with something like that. But, as someone pointed out, a lot of the folks wouldn't bother trying to read anything. Th…

Are you sure?

Most of the rioters seem like herpa-derpers, but some came there on a mission, like this guy: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13690389/us-capitol-rioters-zi...

(those are not regular zipties, but the "taking hostages" kind)

Re: Laptop stolen from Pelosi's office during storming of U.S. Capitol, says aide

#410
post #274

> belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations Yikes. My first though was - oh this should be no big deal chances are there are good policies in place for laptops that go home with people. Then I realized it is a shared/central machine which means it probably has the most effed up and relaxed security in the fleet, post-it notes with passwords taped to the palm rests, and god knows what else. IT depar…

Maybe stealing it also removed a bunch of foreign operative bugs and keyloggers :) "How can we remove this compromised system from the building without letting on that we know " "just have a 'theft' remove it!"

Didn't one of the insurrectionists arrested require a Russian translator at his booking?
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