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How The NSA Secures Computers
An Anonymous Reader wrote to mention an NSA site covering secure configuration guidelines for a number of operating systems. From the site: "NSA initiatives in enhancing software security cover both proprietary and open source software, and we have successfully used both proprietary and open source models in our research activities. NSA's work to enhance the security of software is motivated by one simple consideration: use our resources as efficiently as possible to give NSA's customers the best possible security options in the most widely employed products."
Leave it to the government to tell us how to secure our computers so they can tap into our data later through some backdoor. Good read, except all they really had to say was 'disconnect your computer from the fucking internet'..
Where is the guide for linux?
Why do they treat our tax money so callously?
It's cheaper to replace a 3 year old disk array than it is to do all the paperwork necessary to prove that it was never used.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
The problem is that if you start to allow some things to be sold without being destroyed, the possibility that something is classified incorrectly, and thus has data on it increases. When you are dealing with TS/SCI shit, you just don't take the risk.
When it comes to spy games, there's no such thing as "parinoid enough".
Why do we have to go hunting round 3rd parties to learn how to secure our O/S? Surely this information (in the form of clear and easy Howtos) should be given as part of the O/S package, as purchased from the vendor.
If Slashdot takes down a government website so quickly, is it a threat to our national security?
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
As your posting clearly shows even the fact that the disks were not used is an information worth keeping secret.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Part of it is that they pretty much have to spend their budget, or it'll get reduced during the next cycle.
The other thing is, lets say that they rip out all the HD's and RAM in order to auction off the hardware... well, someone has to do that, someone has to file a bunch of paperwork (in triplicate, everything is in triplicate), someone else is going to file the paperwork that's just been generated, someone else has to make sure the HD's & RAM get destroyed, more paperwork...
The costs can snowball very quickly. It may seriously be cheaper to de-mill the stuff and buy it again.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
American tax dollars hard at work to keep my socialist PC running nicely. Got to love the modern world.
Afraid that the US goverment (the one that makes speeches) might be firmly up MS backside but the parts of the US goverment that actually do stuff seem to like linux.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The problem here, familiar to anyone that has dealt with the classified security system regulations, is that as soon as that equipment went in the door it became classified equipment of some certain level. Forever after that equipment, whether it had data on it or not, is set at the level of classification, period. You can never use it with equipment of a lesser classification nor can you declassify it (which in the eyes of the requlations is using it with unclassified equipment). If you can't deal with it, sorry, but that's the way the system works and it isn't going to change as one mistake can cost not just the country but real lives.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
You don't just have to worry about something being classified incorrectly, you have to worry about bad players who deliberately make "mistakes" when declassifying hardware. That's not acceptable so you need to second- and triple-check everything, and that drives the cost way up since everyone must have the appropriate clearances, all of the paperwork is classified, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken