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Moxie, you really think crypto nerds are being attacked? They're not the ones with Keys to the Castle. Sysadmins have the keys! In fact, the NSA has been target

Moxie, you really think crypto nerds are being attacked? They're not the ones with Keys to the Castle. Sysadmins have the keys! In fact, the NSA has been targeting sysadmins for a while. Sysadmins make great targets. Forget about their inability to implement a real security program, a sysadmin can barely get a security compliance regimen off the ground. Here's an article from Glen Greenwald's TheIntercept that details why Sysadmins are sitting ducks against both the NSA and Nation States: https://theintercept.com/2014/03/20/inside-nsa-secret-efforts-hunt-hack-system-administrators/ https://theintercept.com/2014/03/20/inside-nsa-secret-effort... It's Sysadmins who make for a delicious muskrat lunch, not the crypto nerds.

throwaway7767 11y ago
There is a bunch of overlap between those groups (though too many sysadmins indeed don't grasp the threats that face them, or don't take them seriously). I'm saying this as a sysadmin and crypto nerd who really wishes we had a secure messaging system that achieved both of Moxie's stated goals. Unfortunately, I don't want to use it in its current state for largely the same reasons as laid out by 'darklajid. Both goals are important and feed into each other. If we don't have #2, it's easy for NSA and friends to backdoor the software or services for #1, for example like they did with their trusting-trust trojaned XCode. Does anyone really believe these agencies will not react as we deploy "mass-surveillance-proof" software? What will be their next move to collect the data that they want? All of these attacks that people now write off as "crypto-nerd paranoia" will just become the new normal.