3 ms·

What makes you think the data was all stored on standard hard drives? How about: CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, magneto-optical disks, Zip disks, USB thumb drives, high-d

What makes you think the data was all stored on standard hard drives? How about: CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, magneto-optical disks, Zip disks, USB thumb drives, high-density archive media that I'm not even familiar with...oh, and hard drives. What does huge storage array even mean in today's context? I recently built a 20TB server at a price point less than a new 13" MacBook Pro for personal use that occupies a cross section the size of a notebook sitting at the edge my desk...all from commercial-grade hardware that's been on the market for at least 2 years. I would think that the home setup of any serious professional engineer who has been in industry for the better part of my adult life would have some sweet kit up his sleeves. Imagine this: authorities confiscate anything that looks like storage media, storage capacity rough order of magnitude is calculated, figures reported to media, an assumption is made that it's all highly classified, spin some click bait article. We're talking about a civilian contractor from private industry who supposedly played an "advisor" role, not some intern whose shoulder was constantly being looked over.

cyberpunk 10y ago
20TB less than the size of a notebook? I'm not calling outright fibs here but we're talking 10 2TB sata's here or what? I'd take maybe a 1U with SFF's, but then again I've not seen how big your laptop is ;) edit: yep, ok, I missed the words 'server' and 'cross section' there and thought you were talking about some magic home setup...... apologies and: doh!
- ewams 10y ago
  20TB of data can fit on 3 hard drives now...
  - cyberpunk 10y ago
    I've clearly not been keeping up.. Assuming a stripe then we're talking 7-8TB drives? How much do those cost? I guess that's a kind of expensive setup for what's being suggested was his home setup though? 20TB in a mirror is cheap as in the DC, at home I've not pushed above about 5 (don't have that much data and thus won't spank so much money on capacity)... Are you running these things?
    - 5ilv3r 10y ago
      seagate has 10TB drives. $500
openmosix 10y ago
I think the problem is not much how do you store it once it is out. I have a cheap SAN bought on Amazon that handles 20TB. The problem is how you get 20T out of a place that has military-grade security. You cannot easily sneak a HD in or out - that will never pass a metal detector. You can have /some/ luck with DVDs. But if you take an average of ~5G per support (single layer DVD, to not make it fancy with a BlueRay, etc) and you get out one DVD per day, it takes 10240 days to move that data. That's a 39 years of data extraction. You can move many DVDs per day (risky), but unless you move dozens of DVDs/day, you'd still take forever.
- metaphor 10y ago
  > The problem is how you get 20T out of a place that has military-grade security. This remark suggests that you know the location(s) of where the data was exfiltrated from. It also suggests that you're intimately familiar with not only the exfiltration sites' OPSEC and COMSEC procedures, but of a particular government contractor's as well. Moreover, it suggests that the reported amount of exfiltrated data is unquestionably accurate. Do you see where I'm going with this? For the sake of curiousity, how would you describe military-grade security, and have you ever legitimately handled classified information in a secure enclave?
  - angry_octet 10y ago
    I think there is a Hollywood perception of how classified document handling occurs, which is quite different to actual practice. The whole system runs at 'system high' mode, both computers and people, which is that everything with access is trusted, on penalty of prison time if you even make a mistake. Events are logged but not necessarily verified in real time. There are no metal detectors or routine cavity searches. The risk of leaks is treated by compartmentalisation of information. There are a few fields, like crypto, where special hardware is used to handle data (e.g. KYK fill devices), but they would be the exception. These techniques were implemented after the Walker spy ring leaked all the USN keymat to the USSR for decades. Its typical that innovation was only allowed to occur in response to a problem. Who is to say the Russians/Chinese/* have not been paying an insider for the same access that Snowden had?
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
> What makes you think the data was all stored on standard hard drives? How about: CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, magneto-optical disks, Zip disks, USB thumb drives, high-density archive media that I'm not even familiar with... He had to get it out of there somehow, and everything you listed has much higher mass/volume per terabyte than ordinary platter drives. That's why we're confused. (Possibly excepting magnetic tape backups--I'm not sure if they're still smaller than the equivalent hard drive--but you need bulky, very slow hardware to write them.)
- metaphor 10y ago
  > He had to get it out of there... Can I buy a vowel as to where there is? Apparently, everyone else seems to be confidently in the know, along with an intimate familiarity of there's OPSEC and COMSEC procedures.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    It's probably safe to assume that "there" was an NSA office or offices, and it's not unreasonable to expect NSA offices to have pretty tight security.
    - metaphor 10y ago
      Why would that be a safe assumption? The indictment also alleges that Martin stole documents from U.S. Cyber Command, the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office. Why not the office(s) of USCC, CIA, or NRO? Why not internally within BAH itself?
      - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        > Why would that be a safe assumption? ...If he stole data from the NSA, where would it have been besides an NSA office? I mean, he didn't get it from the Tooth Fairy. > Why not the office(s) of USCC, CIA, or NRO? Why not internally within BAH itself? There's an "also" in there. He stole stuff from the NSA, and some other guys too. And all of them should have had the same level of security, so that doesn't really change much.
Laforet 10y ago
>Imagine this: authorities confiscate anything that looks like storage media, storage capacity rough order of magnitude is calculated, figures reported to media, an assumption is made that it's all highly classified, spin some click bait article. I was thinking along the lines of “50 terabytes of data seized, some of which may be stolen classified info”, but I agree that your version of events are more likely.
- metaphor 10y ago
  > ...your version of events are more likely. Is it really though? Probable? Sure, of course without any quantitative measure. Likely? I simply can't convince myself of that given we know absolutely nothing of the security measures this guy had to overcome to exfiltrate the data he had.
bigiain 10y ago
So 50TB on CDs (google google google, calculate calculate calculate) is a pile of over 73,500 1.2mm thick disks approximately 92.3m or just over 300 feet high. I'm _pretty_ sure that's not how he got the data out. 18 CDs every working day for 20 years? Nope. (A DVD pile might only be 50 feet high, but they almost didn't exist 20 years ago - certainly not at "I'll just fill up three of these every day at work" prices.) ;-)
- metaphor 10y ago
  So let's pretend 50TB is unquestionably a legit figure, pick the lower storage density of arbitrarily listed portable media options that a single person could think of off the top of his head, and assume exfiltration was exclusively performed with this media type (think think think, ponder ponder ponder). Nope. /s Did you even pause for a second to consider that 50TB may be a grossly misrepresented figure, or digest the parent comment to size up the context of my remark?
  - bigiain 10y ago
    Yeah - I did pause for a second and reconsider the furthest extreme of the reductio ad absurdum arguement, I'd _considered_ quoting the height of the pile in 0.39" thick jewel cases - which comes out at over 2500feet tall - but I didn't want to get _too_ silly... (Apologies if you thought I was taking you out of context disparagingly - there's some gross misrepresentations here by people including me...)
- angry_octet 10y ago
  This reminds me of when newspapers described data in terms of the number of 1.44MB floppies it would fill, or how many Encyclopedia Brittanicas worth.

cyberpunk 10y ago

20TB less than the size of a notebook? I'm not calling outright fibs here but we're talking 10 2TB sata's here or what? I'd take maybe a 1U with SFF's, but then again I've not seen how big your laptop is ;) edit: yep, ok, I missed the words 'server' and 'cross section' there and thought you were talking about some magic home setup...... apologies and: doh!

ewams 10y ago
20TB of data can fit on 3 hard drives now...
- cyberpunk 10y ago
  I've clearly not been keeping up.. Assuming a stripe then we're talking 7-8TB drives? How much do those cost? I guess that's a kind of expensive setup for what's being suggested was his home setup though? 20TB in a mirror is cheap as in the DC, at home I've not pushed above about 5 (don't have that much data and thus won't spank so much money on capacity)... Are you running these things?
  - 5ilv3r 10y ago
    seagate has 10TB drives. $500

openmosix 10y ago

I think the problem is not much how do you store it once it is out. I have a cheap SAN bought on Amazon that handles 20TB. The problem is how you get 20T out of a place that has military-grade security. You cannot easily sneak a HD in or out - that will never pass a metal detector. You can have /some/ luck with DVDs. But if you take an average of ~5G per support (single layer DVD, to not make it fancy with a BlueRay, etc) and you get out one DVD per day, it takes 10240 days to move that data. That's a 39 years of data extraction. You can move many DVDs per day (risky), but unless you move dozens of DVDs/day, you'd still take forever.

metaphor 10y ago
> The problem is how you get 20T out of a place that has military-grade security. This remark suggests that you know the location(s) of where the data was exfiltrated from. It also suggests that you're intimately familiar with not only the exfiltration sites' OPSEC and COMSEC procedures, but of a particular government contractor's as well. Moreover, it suggests that the reported amount of exfiltrated data is unquestionably accurate. Do you see where I'm going with this? For the sake of curiousity, how would you describe military-grade security, and have you ever legitimately handled classified information in a secure enclave?
- angry_octet 10y ago
  I think there is a Hollywood perception of how classified document handling occurs, which is quite different to actual practice. The whole system runs at 'system high' mode, both computers and people, which is that everything with access is trusted, on penalty of prison time if you even make a mistake. Events are logged but not necessarily verified in real time. There are no metal detectors or routine cavity searches. The risk of leaks is treated by compartmentalisation of information. There are a few fields, like crypto, where special hardware is used to handle data (e.g. KYK fill devices), but they would be the exception. These techniques were implemented after the Walker spy ring leaked all the USN keymat to the USSR for decades. Its typical that innovation was only allowed to occur in response to a problem. Who is to say the Russians/Chinese/* have not been paying an insider for the same access that Snowden had?

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

> What makes you think the data was all stored on standard hard drives? How about: CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, magneto-optical disks, Zip disks, USB thumb drives, high-density archive media that I'm not even familiar with... He had to get it out of there somehow, and everything you listed has much higher mass/volume per terabyte than ordinary platter drives. That's why we're confused. (Possibly excepting magnetic tape backups--I'm not sure if they're still smaller than the equivalent hard drive--but you need bulky, very slow hardware to write them.)

metaphor 10y ago
> He had to get it out of there... Can I buy a vowel as to where there is? Apparently, everyone else seems to be confidently in the know, along with an intimate familiarity of there's OPSEC and COMSEC procedures.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  It's probably safe to assume that "there" was an NSA office or offices, and it's not unreasonable to expect NSA offices to have pretty tight security.
  - metaphor 10y ago
    Why would that be a safe assumption? The indictment also alleges that Martin stole documents from U.S. Cyber Command, the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office. Why not the office(s) of USCC, CIA, or NRO? Why not internally within BAH itself?
    - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      > Why would that be a safe assumption? ...If he stole data from the NSA, where would it have been besides an NSA office? I mean, he didn't get it from the Tooth Fairy. > Why not the office(s) of USCC, CIA, or NRO? Why not internally within BAH itself? There's an "also" in there. He stole stuff from the NSA, and some other guys too. And all of them should have had the same level of security, so that doesn't really change much.

Laforet 10y ago

>Imagine this: authorities confiscate anything that looks like storage media, storage capacity rough order of magnitude is calculated, figures reported to media, an assumption is made that it's all highly classified, spin some click bait article. I was thinking along the lines of “50 terabytes of data seized, some of which may be stolen classified info”, but I agree that your version of events are more likely.

metaphor 10y ago
> ...your version of events are more likely. Is it really though? Probable? Sure, of course without any quantitative measure. Likely? I simply can't convince myself of that given we know absolutely nothing of the security measures this guy had to overcome to exfiltrate the data he had.

bigiain 10y ago

So 50TB on CDs (google google google, calculate calculate calculate) is a pile of over 73,500 1.2mm thick disks approximately 92.3m or just over 300 feet high. I'm _pretty_ sure that's not how he got the data out. 18 CDs every working day for 20 years? Nope. (A DVD pile might only be 50 feet high, but they almost didn't exist 20 years ago - certainly not at "I'll just fill up three of these every day at work" prices.) ;-)

metaphor 10y ago
So let's pretend 50TB is unquestionably a legit figure, pick the lower storage density of arbitrarily listed portable media options that a single person could think of off the top of his head, and assume exfiltration was exclusively performed with this media type (think think think, ponder ponder ponder). Nope. /s Did you even pause for a second to consider that 50TB may be a grossly misrepresented figure, or digest the parent comment to size up the context of my remark?
- bigiain 10y ago
  Yeah - I did pause for a second and reconsider the furthest extreme of the reductio ad absurdum arguement, I'd _considered_ quoting the height of the pile in 0.39" thick jewel cases - which comes out at over 2500feet tall - but I didn't want to get _too_ silly... (Apologies if you thought I was taking you out of context disparagingly - there's some gross misrepresentations here by people including me...)
angry_octet 10y ago
This reminds me of when newspapers described data in terms of the number of 1.44MB floppies it would fill, or how many Encyclopedia Brittanicas worth.