Slashdot Mirror
NBC News Confuses the World About Cyber-Security
Nerval's Lobster writes "In a video report posted Feb. 4, NBC News reporter Richard Engel, with the help of a security analyst, two fresh laptops, a new cell phone, and a fake identity, pretended to go online with the technical naiveté of a Neanderthal housepet. (Engel's video blog is here.) Almost as soon as he turned on the phone in the Sochi airport, Engel reported hackers snooping around, testing the security of the machines. Engel's story didn't explain whether 'snooping around' meant someone was port-scanning his device in particular with the intention of cracking its security and prying out its secrets, no matter how much effort it took, or if the 'snooping' was other WiFi devices looking for access points and trying automatically to connect with those that were unprotected. Judging from the rest of his story, it was more likely the latter. Engel also reported hackers snooping around a honeypot set up by his security consultant which, as Gartner analyst Paul Proctor also pointed out in a blog posting, is like leaving the honey open and complaining when it attracts flies. When you try to communicate with anything, it also tries to communicate with you; that's how networked computers work: They communicate with each other. None of the 'hacks' or intrusions Engel created or sought out for himself have anything to do with Russia or Sochi, however; those 'hacks' he experienced could have happened in any Starbucks in the country, and does almost every day, Proctor wrote. That's why there is antivirus software for phones and laptops. It's why every expert, document, video, audio clip or even game that has anything at all to do with cybersecurity makes sure to mention you should never open attachments from spam email, or in email from people you don't know, and you should set up your browser to keep random web sites from downloading and installing anything they want on your computer. But keep up the fear-mongering."
This NBC thing is why I treat blogs and traditional media with equal amounts of respect and skepticism. The "real" media is actually far more prone to making things up wholesale than any blogger, who lives and dies by reputation, ever did.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FYI, the world doesn't watch NBC.
No one here gives a shit about that lame "o noes hax0rz in mah cup of coffee" NBC article.
:/
The real news is that, after having read tonight's even *more* lame, unhelpful, patronizing and disappointing Slashdot Beta feedback thread, it's now clearer than ever that this ship of ours is sinking. At long last, I think that Netcraft really HAS confirmed it.
Soulskill and the other Dice weasels may indeed be "listening" to us, but they've still got a righteous hard-on for destroying this website regardless of how many times we've rubbed their noses in the beta's odiferous offal. I don't believe their calculated, faux-caring, used-car-salesmen spiel for one moment.
The question now is: Exactly when do we take to the lifeboats, and to what safe harbor do we start rowing towards?
~JPE
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
It's not hard to believe there might be a lot of attacks on wireless devices in Sochi. The place is pretty fucked up. Whether these reporters and their consultants know their ass from a wifi antenna or not.
From a story I've linked below:
Dmitry Kozak, a Russian deputy prime minister in charge of preparations for the Olympics, complained about water being wasted by hotel guests when said; "We have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turn on the shower, direct the nozzle at the wall and then leave the room for the whole day,"
It didn't occur to Kozak that someone might have a problem with being surveilled in the shower until after he blurted this interesting bit of knowledge.
You just have to wonder what sort of pay-offs went into this Sochi Olympics deal. Russia is a deeply fucked up place to begin with and Sochi is a special level of fucked up within that.
My computer is password protected, and I simply don't give the password to NBC reporters. So far, no viruses yet! :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comp.misc on Usenet is the new Slashdot. It is a totally abandoned group, and I have already inaugurated it. Nobody even uses it, so we won't be offending anybody.
Come one come all, join the Slashdot exodus on usenet! Eternal September is a free Usenet provider, and you can read news with Seamonkey, MS Outlook, Opera, Unison (pay product), or the classic Unix programs such as tin, rn, slrn and so forth.
Usenet is free, distributed, uncensored, and allows you to shit-can offensive posters. While it doesn't have moderation per se, the number of replies a topic gets can indicate how interesting the topic is. Additionally, a conversation can go on for months or years (or decades as some have) so you can keep that flamewar going, and with the handy killfile feature you don't have to worry about spamming other people!
Join me there!
I'll admit Slashdot has serious balls to link to a news site that just got its own redesign, with the exact response that this site's beta got (and deserved just as much).
No, it deserved it more. Next to nbcnews.com, beta.slashdot.org is a masterpiece of clean Web design. (Hell, the new nbcnews.com makes buzzfeed.com look not too bad.)
but it does have a few interesting features.
Like what?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't know where all of this (beta) thing is going. But this is currently impossible to read a story at /. Not only everyone digresses into "beta", but also no relevant "mod" is performed. I just hope it all gets fixed quickly - whatever the solution is - that starts to be annoying.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
..they were in Moscow..
How all of the comments about Beta are being moderated to ZERO or worse since that recent story.
Stay strong people... uprate slashbeta comments despite this blatant attack on the userbase.
Hi, it's called a "boycott."
Think of the "f beta" posts as picketing.
Also, this is pretty much a non-story.
Clueless reporter doesn't know what he's talking about - news at all damn day long on every news channel.
I don't like the beta either but I didn't expect this kind of chaos to ensue. No proper discussion can be had in any article as they are filled only with beta comments. Interesting situation indeed. I'm grabbing the popcorn.
It's the same everywhere you look. The current state of IT security is horrible, utter and total crap, and the main reason is that most of the people who work in the sector have no clue, starting from journalists like those and consultants and... well... almost everyone else.
The reason is that much like cryptography, real security is hard. It's not something you pick up in a week course when your boss decides someone in the team needs to specialize on security. There are a great number of actual experts and over the years I've had the pleasure of meeting or working with many of them, but it's a small world and the total number of experts available world-wide is far smaller than the demand for manpower in the security "industry".
Plus it's a bikeshed problem. Lots of people know a little bit about security, so focus is given to the parts that people believe they understand, instead of the real problems. When I do consulting (I don't very much, I dislike it, but I occasional take jobs because I enjoy the problem, or the company) my metaphor for that is that in IT security, it is very easy to find someone who will sell and install you a 3-inch solid steel door with military level security locks for your front door, but very difficult to find someone who will walk around the house with you and point out the easily broken windows and the open basement door.
Here's a free business hint: When you hire a security consultant, ask them for a quick suggestion for a password policy. If you get the two decades old "at least x letters, at least 1 special character, at least 1 number", don't hire them. That bullshit was adequate on Multics systems in the 70s. Today, it will weaken your password security if you programmatically enforce it. (and yes, I have the data to back that up, but that's a short presentation and not a comment field).
So yes, these journalists are spreading bullshit. They are like the power users in a company - the nightmare of IT support. They probably know a little about security, just enough to get it wrong.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
But can we please just keep on enjoying Slashdot too?
But that's the point isn't it? I want to keep enjoying Slashdot as I have for years, but that is most likely going to change, and well, there isn't a really good alternative out there. So I'm trying to communicate that in the one way that will make them reconsider: fucking up the comments. For some reason the Dice clones think that this site is very similar to a tech section from HuffingtonPost.com, and that all they need to do is tweak the UI to drive up traffic. If they can see that the fucked up comments are actually hurting traffic maybe they'll get the message that Slashdot really wasn't what they thought, and that it really is all about the moderation system and comments like everyone has been trying to tell them.
I'm not hopeful though. The sheer arrogance in corporate board rooms today is breathtaking. Look at the Xbone. They had lots of people shouting at them that they were headed for disaster, people who really cared. They told those people that maybe they ought to get with the times. Those people did: they bought PS4s.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
You know that angry "What the fuck?" bubbling up in the back of your mind?
That's how gun enthusiasts feel when news people start making nonsensical claims about guns.
When some dumb ass says "military style" or "assault magazine clip" or someone ridiculous nonsense, we feel the way you do watching this story.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Who gets their business intelligence from a site that has managed to set off a new record in pissing off the largest number of people in one go?
Seriously though this has got to be a world record. They say they inflicted 25% of users to this? Well this is a website which cripples servers all over the internet just by linking to them. 25% of that bandwidth is a metric fukton of pissed off users.
I thought people come here for content, not stylesheets?
How did I get marked as a troll? Probably should have turned off the karma bonus. Oh, well.
The redesign is less cluttered. I like the static (always at the top) header. The comment widget is nice.
I only said there are a few things I like, there's a lot more I don't.
A boycott would be people not using /. at all. At best all the complaining and 'fuck beta' posts are unproductive protests.
A boycott would be people not using /. at all. At best all the complaining and 'fuck beta' posts are unproductive protests.
That's coming. The complete boycott is Feb. 10th to Feb 17th. In the mean time, keep up the good work with the Beta comments everyone!
Hi, I was one of many supervisors at the London Olympics. All the Routers that were put in every single athletes room had backdoors they were specially designed for the Olympic village. After the games they were destroyed. All mobile phone messages was monitored from a temporary prefabricated building which monitored mobile telephones, and any form of wireless communication. The reason given for monitoring everybody was in case somebody from within the village used a computer, or so on to communicate with somebody outside the village to get them inside the village to kill Olympic athletes. These stupid U.S. propaganda stories are just ridiculous. after the Olympic Games are finished and have been successful the U.S. will forget all about homosexuals and spying. The U.S. doesn't give a dam about homosexuals, it is just using them for propaganda purposes that and this spying nonsense. For security reasons all Olympic Games, are heavily monitored nobody wants to see athletes being murdered by any political groups it has happened before that is why the Olympics is heavily monitored when ever the Olympic Games is held. Being paid to spread anti-Russian propaganda: Benjamin Cohen.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...