As you can probably guess, I get a lot of emails related to whatever’s going on in the security world. There was a very short buzz around the “Russia Hacking” thing but very few security practitioners care about it at all. Except one, who sent me this:
If you’re interested in the swirling scrimmage around attributing the “Russia” cyberattacks on the US 2016 election, there’s another fun bit of analysis dropped today:[1]
The Obama administration is – brilliantly – punishing Russia for “hacking” the US election by censuring a few intelligence officers and forcing them to close a “luxurious 45-acre compound” in Maryland.[1]
Transitive trust is when A trusts B, and B trusts C, A trusts C and probably doesn’t realize it.
Florian smiled around the edge of his beer and said, wryly, “We Swiss are not pacifists because we are weak; it’s because we were rental soldiers in the dark age and renaissance. Fighting for your own selfish reasons is bad marketing.”
About a decade ago, I did a series of talks at various conferences entitled “cyberwar is bullshit” – the problem, I felt, was that the US was talking about being deeply afraid of cyberattack from Eurasia (or was it Eastasia?) but there was considerable irresponsible talk about “weapons of mass destruction-like capability.” Industry insiders like myself wound up divided as to whether it was likely/practical, or good marketing/a chance to make a fast buck. There were a lot of fast bucks made.
The contractor who allegedly took home data from NSA systems, apparently collected over 50 terabytes. But that’s not the kicker…
Let me introduce you to the “intelligence Catch-22.” In case you’re not familiar with Heller’s Catch-22, from the brilliant book by that name, it goes like this:
You cannot possibly get a medical discharge from the military based on insanity, because only insane people want to be in the military; therefore if you want to be discharged from the military you are sane and therefore your discharge is denied.
We keep hearing about it: Russians are manipulating the election! They’re leaking this and that, and hacking this and that, and it’s going to change everything.
I wish.
After the Yahoo! disclosure, there was some general falling all over oneself from some of the other large providers, “we didn’t!” “no, not us!” etc.
Methinks they doth protest too much.