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Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

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Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#81

Post by sametmax »

fabled_giraffe wrote: post #78
sametmax wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have backup, a crash won't lose months of data. I'm ok to lose a so called "competent worker" if he/she hasn't been doing something as simple as off-site backup. It's local data corruption here. At worst you loose the data since the last backup. Now, in the army, they have redundancy procedures for everything, and you want to make us believe the one server used to keep them in check, not only had crash beyong…

You'd be surprised how tenuous backup situations are at most companies and organizations. Even if your company is doing full disaster recovery checks 24/7, one after the other, a "well-placed" failure/mistakes or small series of failures/mistakes can lead to data loss. Many of the things that cause data loss are just simple mistakes caused by a failure to review changes carefully, even when you have multiple levels o…

We are not talking about "most companies". We are talking of the air force, an organisation that is built to be resilient and handle crisis. Backups, fallbacks, redundancy, checks, reviews, access management and risk evaluation are BAKED IN their culture and mission.

And we are not talking about "any data". This was cleary very sensitive data they new they needed to protect.

Either the Air Force is failling at being the very thing it's been created to be (which I doubt) or something is fishy (ocaml razor).

Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#82

Post by lostcolony »

fabled_giraffe wrote: post #78
sametmax wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have backup, a crash won't lose months of data. I'm ok to lose a so called "competent worker" if he/she hasn't been doing something as simple as off-site backup. It's local data corruption here. At worst you loose the data since the last backup. Now, in the army, they have redundancy procedures for everything, and you want to make us believe the one server used to keep them in check, not only had crash beyong…

You'd be surprised how tenuous backup situations are at most companies and organizations. Even if your company is doing full disaster recovery checks 24/7, one after the other, a "well-placed" failure/mistakes or small series of failures/mistakes can lead to data loss. Many of the things that cause data loss are just simple mistakes caused by a failure to review changes carefully, even when you have multiple levels o…

Please note the severity of this. It's not "We had a crash and lost a weeks worth of data" - yeah, that happens. And it's totally acceptable if you're unable to restore it, for any of the reasons you mention.

This is "We had a crash and lost over a decade's worth of data" - yeah, that shouldn't happen. Ever. If you don't have a working backup from sometime in the past 13 years, -you are doing something wrong-. That's not a small series of failures or mistakes. That's either staggering levels of incompetence, or maliciousness.

Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#84

Post by pfortuny »

jMyles wrote: post #51
sverige wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. Edit: it also inspired a variation on an old joke about how the same word means different things to different people. For example, suppose the order goes out to "secure the data center." Marines report back, "We have destroyed the data center." Army reports, "We have killed e…

> Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. I've had this thought before. Can you think of a general, defensible clause to add to Hanlon's razor to account for this?

It only applies to physical persons, not to groups.

Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#86

Post by madaxe_again »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26

There has been too much recently of government agencies losing data due to "crashes" or "inadvertent" deletions. For example the IRS, state department, and now the Air Force. A really easy way to fix this is to make a law so that if government data such as this gets lost, then the cabinet level person responsible for overseeing the agency immediately loses their cabinet level position and is barred from further work…

Losing their position is meaningless - they'll just go private and make even more money while being recklessly incompetent. They'd just hire a clean agent as their intermediary for government contracts.

No, I'd slap prison sentences on everyone involved, not just loss of government employment.

Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#87

Post by Bartweiss »

lostcolony wrote: post #82
fabled_giraffe wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how tenuous backup situations are at most companies and organizations. Even if your company is doing full disaster recovery checks 24/7, one after the other, a "well-placed" failure/mistakes or small series of failures/mistakes can lead to data loss. Many of the things that cause data loss are just simple mistakes caused by a failure to review changes carefully, even when you have multiple levels o…

Please note the severity of this. It's not "We had a crash and lost a weeks worth of data" - yeah, that happens. And it's totally acceptable if you're unable to restore it, for any of the reasons you mention. This is "We had a crash and lost over a decade's worth of data" - yeah, that shouldn't happen. Ever. If you don't have a working backup from sometime in the past 13 years, -you are doing something wrong-. That's…

This is exactly right. A misconfigured backup script, or a pessimal chain of crashes, or a lot of other things could lose recent data. I wouldn't be shocked by data loss.

This is decade of data. It should have been on in cold storage, on tested media, in multiple locations. No single error, or small chain of errors, should have enabled this to happen.

Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#88

Post by Bartweiss »

jMyles wrote: post #51
sverige wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. Edit: it also inspired a variation on an old joke about how the same word means different things to different people. For example, suppose the order goes out to "secure the data center." Marines report back, "We have destroyed the data center." Army reports, "We have killed e…

> Yeah, forgive me if I'm too cynical, but Hanlon's razor fails when this sort of thing involves criminal investigations of government employees. I've had this thought before. Can you think of a general, defensible clause to add to Hanlon's razor to account for this?

The usual formulation I hear is:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. But don't rule out malice."

Re: Computer Crash Wipes Out Years of Air Force Investigation Records

#89

Post by Bartweiss »

King-Aaron wrote: post #56
chipperyman573 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>office party around the paper shredder This phrase made me laugh, but I don't really understand what it means, can you explain please?

"frantically destroying documents" I suppose would be another way to frame it... But I seem to remember that was the wording on the show, or pretty close to it. It made it sound like the staff were running around and being very energetic in their operation of the paper shredder.

It's the 'big government agency' version of that movie scene where the hacker tosses all their drives in the microwave as the feds kick down the door.
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