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Good luck pulling that off.

by sarciszewski 11y ago

themartorana 11y ago
I presume this is sarcasm, since governments have been pulling this off since time immemorial?
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  Pulling off a massive, international, targeted attack on several individuals of varying degrees of stubbornness to coerce them to do something unspecified and malicious to the code base of an open source software project and not get detected isn't exactly a practical goal for even intelligence agencies.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    How about they just ask three payment networks (VISA/MC/Paypal) to cut off their payments then watch them wither and die? That's how Wikileaks was destroyed by Bank of America and Co when they threatened to leak on the big banks. All that OPSEC can't help without money to support it. Worked like a charm and not a single shot fired.
  - kleer001 11y ago
    The code base is not the only vulnerable part.
- toolz 11y ago
  Couldn't reply to your child comment, so I'll put it here. You don't seem to realize how easy it is to discredit someone that the general public doesn't recognize. The cryptographers are one false planting of child porn away from no influential majority of people believing a word they say. You won't defend them, because you'll question the authenticity of the child porn claims and you'll have no evidence to the contrary. Overnight these kinds of people can be taken down and made into nothing.
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    The problem isn't "how to coerce", it's "how to coerce without being detected".
    - toolz 11y ago
      Who is going to detect a government agency when they forcefully steal your hardware and claim it has child porn on it? They don't even have to put the child porn on the machine, nor do they need to get a conviction for child porn. It will be all over the media for as long as it needs to be in order to cause these peoples ideas to fail.
      - sarciszewski 11y ago
        And when that happens, I'll entertain your assertions. It hasn't yet, and I don't see any reason to believe it will soon.
        toolz 11y ago
        Obviously, I don't know which stories are bogus and which ones are real, but you can do a quick google search and find all kinds of cases of people claiming government cover up. You obviously don't entertain the idea that those could be legitimate. What makes you think you'll entertain the idea if it were to happen to a lead cryptographer that you've never met before in your life?
        toolz 11y ago
        and how are you determining what is probable? Just because you believe the government doesn't make last ditch efforts to cover up with lies, doesn't mean that is necessarily the truth. How many coups need to happen before you consider me a rather typical cynic rather than a paranoid extremist? I very much agree with you that it's not worth focusing on, but you were acting like it was never a possibility simply because the people being attacked would be well educated.

Good luck pulling that off.

themartorana 11y ago

I presume this is sarcasm, since governments have been pulling this off since time immemorial?

sarciszewski 11y ago
Pulling off a massive, international, targeted attack on several individuals of varying degrees of stubbornness to coerce them to do something unspecified and malicious to the code base of an open source software project and not get detected isn't exactly a practical goal for even intelligence agencies.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  How about they just ask three payment networks (VISA/MC/Paypal) to cut off their payments then watch them wither and die? That's how Wikileaks was destroyed by Bank of America and Co when they threatened to leak on the big banks. All that OPSEC can't help without money to support it. Worked like a charm and not a single shot fired.
- kleer001 11y ago
  The code base is not the only vulnerable part.
toolz 11y ago
Couldn't reply to your child comment, so I'll put it here. You don't seem to realize how easy it is to discredit someone that the general public doesn't recognize. The cryptographers are one false planting of child porn away from no influential majority of people believing a word they say. You won't defend them, because you'll question the authenticity of the child porn claims and you'll have no evidence to the contrary. Overnight these kinds of people can be taken down and made into nothing.
- sarciszewski 11y ago
  The problem isn't "how to coerce", it's "how to coerce without being detected".
  - toolz 11y ago
    Who is going to detect a government agency when they forcefully steal your hardware and claim it has child porn on it? They don't even have to put the child porn on the machine, nor do they need to get a conviction for child porn. It will be all over the media for as long as it needs to be in order to cause these peoples ideas to fail.
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      And when that happens, I'll entertain your assertions. It hasn't yet, and I don't see any reason to believe it will soon.
      - toolz 11y ago
        Obviously, I don't know which stories are bogus and which ones are real, but you can do a quick google search and find all kinds of cases of people claiming government cover up. You obviously don't entertain the idea that those could be legitimate. What makes you think you'll entertain the idea if it were to happen to a lead cryptographer that you've never met before in your life?
        toolz 11y ago
        and how are you determining what is probable? Just because you believe the government doesn't make last ditch efforts to cover up with lies, doesn't mean that is necessarily the truth. How many coups need to happen before you consider me a rather typical cynic rather than a paranoid extremist? I very much agree with you that it's not worth focusing on, but you were acting like it was never a possibility simply because the people being attacked would be well educated.