<story><title>Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-stole-nsa-data-on-u-s-cyber-defense-1507222108</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>indubitable</author><text>I find these allegations are deserving of some scrutiny. The entire story is quite bizarre when you begin to consider it. The NSA is apparently leaking like a broken pipe with this information. And it&amp;#x27;s peculiar because this is information that makes our intelligence agencies look completely inept. That is a very good thing if this story is fake, but a very bad thing if its true.&lt;p&gt;It is stupefying that NSA contractors&amp;#x2F;employees would be genuinely copying classified information that is heavily related to national security, and then just loading it up on their personal Windows PC with no apparent encryption or access controls. For instance why in the world wouldn&amp;#x27;t they have OS level software restricting read access of a certain secure partition (or removable media) to a specific whitelist of processes? Or why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they use an airgapped machine? Then there are issues like the NSA being so anxious and happy to leak this information, and then them indirectly &amp;#x27;wink wink&amp;#x27; confirming it publicly completely destroying the purpose of we don&amp;#x27;t comment on speculation --- when you start commenting on certain speculation, it indirectly says something about other speculation that you actually choose not to comment on. They&amp;#x27;re also seemingly unconcerned that somebody is leaking information that, if true, shows the NSA to be incompetent and also exposes attack vectors for enemy actors. There are also things like Kaspersky previously volunteering to provide complete source access to the government. Our government declined the offer. How does this make sense?&lt;p&gt;Since Iraq I have become much more critical of pretty much everything. Our media and our government lied to generate a case for war. And I feel lately that they are now trying to build a case for some sort of conflict, presumably cold, against Russia. Or at the minimum start Red Scare 3.0. I have no idea why they would want to do this, but I tend to abide Occam&amp;#x27;s razor, and this all being true requires a lot more effort than this just being &amp;quot;Yellowcake 2.0.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dreamfactored</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m going to take it that you&amp;#x27;ve never done public sector contracting. The security rules are in reality less 007 and more school library, and this is totally believable. There is another story in the news now about soldiers smartphones being hacked in Eastern Europe. The troops are therefore made to go through water every day but some of them just put their phones in condoms. Defense contractors aren&amp;#x27;t even state employees and the security checks are basically akin to credit checks.&lt;p&gt;Russia (and China and others) have an advantage here in having recently been run as controlled states and having much of the bureaucratic apparatus and social habits still in place (e.g. bring your passport to buy a train ticket to another town; little old lady stationed on every floor of a hotel keeping an eye on comings and goings etc).</text></comment>
<story><title>Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-stole-nsa-data-on-u-s-cyber-defense-1507222108</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>indubitable</author><text>I find these allegations are deserving of some scrutiny. The entire story is quite bizarre when you begin to consider it. The NSA is apparently leaking like a broken pipe with this information. And it&amp;#x27;s peculiar because this is information that makes our intelligence agencies look completely inept. That is a very good thing if this story is fake, but a very bad thing if its true.&lt;p&gt;It is stupefying that NSA contractors&amp;#x2F;employees would be genuinely copying classified information that is heavily related to national security, and then just loading it up on their personal Windows PC with no apparent encryption or access controls. For instance why in the world wouldn&amp;#x27;t they have OS level software restricting read access of a certain secure partition (or removable media) to a specific whitelist of processes? Or why wouldn&amp;#x27;t they use an airgapped machine? Then there are issues like the NSA being so anxious and happy to leak this information, and then them indirectly &amp;#x27;wink wink&amp;#x27; confirming it publicly completely destroying the purpose of we don&amp;#x27;t comment on speculation --- when you start commenting on certain speculation, it indirectly says something about other speculation that you actually choose not to comment on. They&amp;#x27;re also seemingly unconcerned that somebody is leaking information that, if true, shows the NSA to be incompetent and also exposes attack vectors for enemy actors. There are also things like Kaspersky previously volunteering to provide complete source access to the government. Our government declined the offer. How does this make sense?&lt;p&gt;Since Iraq I have become much more critical of pretty much everything. Our media and our government lied to generate a case for war. And I feel lately that they are now trying to build a case for some sort of conflict, presumably cold, against Russia. Or at the minimum start Red Scare 3.0. I have no idea why they would want to do this, but I tend to abide Occam&amp;#x27;s razor, and this all being true requires a lot more effort than this just being &amp;quot;Yellowcake 2.0.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>0xfeba</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m so skeptical now of skeptical Russia posts. A 25 day old account who&amp;#x27;s first comment [0] was about media and divisiveness.&lt;p&gt;0 - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15336362&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15336362&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>