Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter which 3 letter agency is violating the constitution. They all need to stop.
Yes. Only the 4 letter agencies are allowed to do that.
We need to rein in the USGS
NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
71–80 of 90 posts
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#72Hah some networks just get a 403 forbidden accessing this
VPNs seem blocked and return 403
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd recommend reading James Bamford for a more positive look at NSA and their charter...which is essentially math, math, and more math, and unrelated to politics within NSA anyway. The Snowden stuff is extraordinarily excerpted to that which a contractor (Snowden) was seeing in a post 9/11 strange fiasco which did bring politics into play. Bamford predates that mess. Here's a link, for example. https://a.co/d/eMTidtP
NSA is an enormous organization with many chartered activities, some small amount of which involve math, some of which is defensive and benign, some of which is offensive but understandable in the same sense our maintenance of a fleet of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and some of which is probably hard for anybody to get comfortable with (much of which should be halted). A lot of what NSA does is ultra-boring, an…
Have you been in Fort Meade? The Bamford books are much longer than a sentence.
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is. PhD's in Math are very rare, and uneconomic. Aside from Wall Street and Langley, no one outside of SV Talent recruits are paying for someone who has spent their prime thinking years considering the viability of certain types of "up-my-sleeve" numbers - no one else has that capital for specialty, almost certainly fruitlessly, since infosec advantage isn't sum-net-zero. Any APT that will pay will have a slight a…
You are missing the entire point. Even if they hired the sum graduating phd class of every math program in the country it wouldn’t change the fact that math phds are not their hiring target. They have to hire N non-math phds for every M math phd they hire to support their hiring metrics. Like every other large technical bureaucracy in the world. None of that has anything to do with advanced capabilities and, again li…
I got the point. I can be wrong then, for the collective interest.
Even if they hired the sum graduating phd class of every math program in the country
country it wouldn’t change the fact that math phds are not their hiring target.
but the absolute best of those math PhD's already got poached; the challenge like above is dredging for raw infosec talent
they have to attract and retain the most misunderstood talent in the world in the most specific field with the smallest initial return on investment per head.
not doing so hands the lead over to adversaries, that maintain a near-constant academic/competitive edge due to domestic ...infil.
None of that has anything to do with advanced capabilities and, again like every other technocracy, has to do with management and ops.
It is so bizarre that a very-well known factoid is so earnestly debated.
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't have a family, the Air Force won't let you fly a plane. You think being Omni-potent in a modern world wouldn't bring its own shade of problems? It's more akin to the boxers who were deemed not to qualify cuz their deemed arbitrarily too old remind the judges of their youth, all in good fun. If you cannot get access to an @edu email for long enough to verify a 2FA between Facebook familiarity and now, you…
If you don't have a family, the Air Force won't let you fly a plane. Can you cite a source for this? I'm acquainted with some USAF people and have close friends with fighter pilot siblings (I know, family) and I have never heard this before. If by "family" you mean "a spouse", the people going up in trainers are too young to have built families, so that can't possibly be a DQ.
That was kinda an obvious analogous exaggeration.
Although, not too unbelievable for highly-sensitive contexts.
A pilot with less obvious motivation to go AWOL institutionally could only benefit the context.
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can't because it's not true.
It sounded weird af to me. In fairness: so too does the claim that this is a test of whether you can hack a .edu email address, like it's 1994 and the next test in their CTF is whether you can find an X.25 outdial. No, they're just recruiting from engineering schools, like everyone else! Career tip: if hoping for a GG-whatever role at NSA, recommend not committing crimes in the process of trying to impress them. They…
Career tip: if hoping for a GG-whatever role at NSA, recommend not committing crimes in the process of trying to impress them. They are a lot more boring than you think they are.
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't have a family, the Air Force won't let you fly a plane. Can you cite a source for this? I'm acquainted with some USAF people and have close friends with fighter pilot siblings (I know, family) and I have never heard this before. If by "family" you mean "a spouse", the people going up in trainers are too young to have built families, so that can't possibly be a DQ.
That was kinda an obvious analogous exaggeration. Although, not too unbelievable for highly-sensitive contexts. A pilot with less obvious motivation to go AWOL institutionally could only benefit the context.
Is that a rule, or just something you think should be a rule?
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you need HN commenters just to bypass the signup, you will not have a good time in the challenge :P
Just because it's a computer security challenge doesn't mean you should start breaking into the website before the challenge begins. That's akin to suggesting that boxers who were deemed not to qualify for a competition should punching the referee to prove otherwise; what's normal inside the sport can be entirely unacceptable outside it.
I agree, but it clearly says you need an edu email. Either you have an edu email, or by asking how to skip that check you're trying to circumvent the website limitations. So in spirit, you're already trying to break in, just through different means :)
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right. The US IC has shown time and time again that they have no moral compass, no regard for the US Constitution, and no regard for human rights or the rule of law. That said, neither do a lot of hackers. There is a long history of collaboration between hackers and the military-industrial complex. Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley because of the DoD. And the director of the NSA once gave the keynote at DEF-CON…
I’m sure you’re aware of this but Snowden wasn’t in the NSA. He worked for a contractor to manage their IT.
That’s a distinction without a difference. He was directly CIA for a bit, and went through the revolving door to a contractor who was placed at the NSA. It really doesn’t matter which corporate entity’s name is on the pay stub; it’s all the same public-private scam. Whether or not Booz gets a percentage of the tax money firehose for running the payroll or not is of no import.
All of this is covered in his book, which is a decent read. I recommend it because it’s information dense and quick.
Furthermore, I said he was deep into the NSA (which he was), not that he was employed by them.
Re: NSA Codebreaker Challenge 2024
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also a shame they only see recent grads as recruitment targets.
The people whom this is meant for are not the people who would complain about "needing" an EDU email and would just get one or figure out a bypass.
Options I can see:
1. You can get one from Hafis: https://hafis.net/product-category/edu-email/,
2. or host your own mail server after registering an .edu address,
3. or maybe you can find someone in your network who still has a valid .edu address and is willing to register for you.