A simple command allows the CIA to commandeer vulnerable Cisco switches

Capitalist firms are owned by asshole billionaires, nice billionaires, pension funds, individual investors, and retirement funds. They're still owned by and made up of people.

Instead of inventing false accusations about them, debate them on their merits.

Apple and Google are on the same playing field though. They're fundamentally the same type of entity. An intelligence agency vs a pure private-sector company is not.

>Any employee that is involved in this would almost certainly speak to someone. This isn't like a National Security Letter; there's no force of law to compel silence. It would be a foolish move for Joe.

While certainly risky, I'm not saying Joe wouldn't be legally protected. His favor very well could be under the auspices of an official program. Heck, IANAL but it possibly could even be in the form of an NSL. As far as I'm aware they're the legal equivalents of blank slates and don't necessarily require informing the upper echelon of a company of their issuance, but I could be wrong on that. I know that it is at least customary to do so, however.

Either way, let's say the government wants to issue a NSL requesting a very specific, perhaps even temporary backdoor to a Bay Area company. The normal route would likely start a veritable war with that company's legal department, and runs a non-insignificant chance of being leaked by those who know about it.

Contrast that scenario to issuing the NSL directly to Joe, who they know in advance is solid. If Joe happens to be an engineer, mission accomplished. If he isn't technical, then maybe he just happens to bring a USB stick to the office one day and plugs it in.

If that sounds far-fetched, keep in mind that the NSA compromised Google's internal network during the course of their operations, so network exploitation against U.S. companies isn't even off the table.

>People that are so loyal to the CIA don't leave for a pure private sector company. They go to a contractor so they can stay in the ecosystem. People going to Cisco are (1) physically moving away from Northern Virginia, (2) losing access to secrets.

All good points, but it doesn't mean they're cutting ties and shunning their former life either.

>Again, I'm glad you're engaging. I'm not down voting you.

Thanks. :)

It looks like a better version might be "Some older Cisco switches are vulnerable to a simple telnet-based exploit." And then buried deep in the body it could be noted that, while the CIA should probably be expected to be aware of any vulnerabilities, we actually know that they are aware of this one in particular due to some leaks.

(Whereas the existing headline suggests that ONLY the CIA can use this vulnerability, which was false even before the leak.)

But then, an article about how you shouldn't expose telnet to the public internet wouldn't be very newsworthy would it? :)

These are capitalist countries, in which wage labour is the primary way by which workers sustain themselves; property is privately owned (and yes, the government can privately own property).

>North Korea

North Korea is an ethno-nationalist dictatorship run by a hereditary monarchy.

What's your point?