7 ms·
NSA ‘Systematically Moving’ All Its Data to the Cloud
- ilyanep 8y agoI think to whatever extent it's possible to get buzzword poisoning, this article would do it.
- bartread 8y agoIndeed: I think I'd reached semantic satiety by about paragraph 3.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoIn the context of the NSA, I don't think it is very important. They are keeping everything inside a 100% fully-controlled-by-NSA datacenter, right? The "JimsFamousKefir.com" domain isn't going to be hosted on some servers in the next rack over...
- qop 8y agoI had kefir for the first time the other day and I'm pissed that I've wasted 50 years of my life not drinking it. It's delicious!
- cwilkes 8y agoJust wait till you find frozen kefir
- rl3 8y ago>The "JimsFamousKefir.com" domain isn't going to be hosted on some servers in the next rack over.. Unless we find out Jim is an NSA asset, and his famous kefir just a small piece of a larger network traffic injection/payload delivery operation.
- natch 8y ago“640k ought to be enough for anybody.” And the secure cloud should be just fine for protecting the archival copies of your family’s personal and private conversations stored in the NSA’s stash of “its” data. /s
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago>They are keeping everything inside a 100% fully-controlled-by-NSA datacenter, right? You're joking, right? Ever hear of a guy named Snowden? The idea of full, 100% control over anything is a fantasy.
- zyxwvu 8y agoSo how long until this has a massive security breach or the servers privatized and passwords.txt is just left open?
- onetimemanytime 8y agoNot likely to happen, they changed the password to password123 :) If it's online or in one easy-to-copy place and if 1000's of people have access to it, it's just a matter of time. But then, I guess Russia's or China's secrets have probably been hacked by NSA, so we're even. What a nightmare must be for NSA...your deepest secrets out there, for everyone to see.
- 908087 8y agoYou mean the deepest secrets of everyone the NSA has been indiscriminately spying on?
- jlgaddis 8y agoDid they run out of storage at Bluffdale already?
- free2chill 8y agoGreat single point of failure. Hack this center and it's like the nsa is collecting data for you.
- albntomat0 8y agoAlternatively, this allows better defense, rather than everyone and their grandmother having to run their own setup. It is a single point, but also allows defenders to focus their efforts.
- mikec3010 8y agoIt is if there is some central root user for the whole thing. I doubt they'd be dumb enough to do that, however. Just brainstorming, but at this scale, you could have a separate encryption network built in to the hardware so that users request data only in gigabyte blocks, then read it on hardware that asynchronously requests the key and does JIT decryption via a secure network that IS locked down in the Pentagon somewhere. Hell, it could even be airgapped and just hire a grunt to walk to a file cabinet each time to unlock it. So that even if you exfiltrated their whole datacenter, you'd have nothing without the keys (that's a given regardless). The keys could be hot-rotating so that if the key center was hacked (and they detected it), they could shut off the cloud, re encrypt everything with new backup keys, and keep running. But that's sci-fi level shit. In all likelihood it's some crappy instance of azure outsourced to Bozo Hamilton
- ceejayoz 8y ago> It is if there is some central root user for the whole thing. I doubt they'd be dumb enough to do that, however. I wouldn't be certain of that... "Launch code for US nukes was 00000000 for 20 years" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-was-00000000-for-20-years/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-...
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago>I doubt they'd be dumb enough to do that, however. Me too, I think it will be due to a toxic brew of stupidity, hubris, and incompetence, rather than just being dumb.
- robbiet480 8y agoTo be clear, it appears they are moving to their own thing called "GovCloud" not AWS GovCloud which doesn't allow for safe storage of secret information. AWS C2S does though (thats the special region they built for CIA that launched last year)
- dev_dull 8y ago> not AWS GovCloud which doesn't allow for safe storage of secret informatio Sure it does. I think this has a lot more to do with federal data requirements than technical security. E.g. data centers are all so many miles apart.
- geofft 8y agoI think the comment was that GovCloud is not approved for storing information whose classification level is "secret," not that AWS does not keep data in GovCloud secret.
- Diederich 8y agoQuite a few government agencies now use C2S besides the CIA. It's qualified for top secret as well as compartmentalized data.
- eaandkw 8y agoVault 8 data breach in 3, 2, 1...
- majestik 8y agoThey aren’t moving to “the Cloud” as in AWS or Azure, they’re just moving to bigger/faster/better Gov-owned data center(s). Business as usual.
- luma 8y agoMore specifically, an NSA owned and operated datacenter. They are offering access to other intelligence community services, so technically that would be "cloud", but in this case it's NSA's own "cloud".
- blattimwind 8y agoThe usage of "cloud" is now so broad that basically Hacker News is a cloud, because I can log into it.
- api 8y agoPeer to peer networking is being rebranded as "fog" because its cloud brought down to encompass everything. So now your laptop, phone, fridge, and toilet are the cloud too.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoFridge and Toilet would fall more under IoT I would think no?
- ethbro 8y agoIoT definitely exists in the fog.
- mrjudgejoebrown 8y agoInternet of Turds in the case of the toilet.
- labster 8y agoToilets and refrigerators have always been connected to a series of tubes.
- ryeguy_24 8y agoThe word "cloud" is consistently overused. This article would get no points if the title read "NSA Moving All Its Data to a Bigger Cooler Database" which is really all they are doing, no?
- gsich 8y agoWhat a "news". An organization moves data from computer A to computer B.
- philip1209 8y agoSo, they're decoupling software from hardware?
- joewee 8y agoThe interesting part of this article is that they are improving how data is tagged and implementing a new architecture as part of the migration to allow other agencies more access to what’s collected. The only thing that seems significant about the term “cloud” is that it’s shared infrastructure with the other agencies. And based on all of the press releases, all the USA government “clouds” are AWS.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoCloud-to-Butt browser extension never gets old...
- beenBoutIT 8y agoIdiots are going to stumble across this on Breitbart or wherever, and later find themselves stuck in traffic in their truck thinking 'NSA's movin' to the AWS cloud, maybe the time's right for me'. After bouncing that same simple thought around their trusted-idiot circle at a bar, the concept will gain steam and AWS is fast on its way to becoming a trusted name in the idiot community.
- jonhendry18 8y agoBreitbart readers hate Bezos because Trump hates Bezos, so their reaction would probably be somewhat different. It would probably involve the terms "Bezos", "Deep State", "Treason".
- AngryData 8y agoAKA, moving their data to a different server.
- therealtomsmith 8y agoMoving All OUR Data To The Cloud
- arisAlexis 8y agosiacoin would be a fully encrypted alternative but not ready yet
- arisAlexis 8y agothe blockchain hate is strong..
- rurban 8y agoSo there's now definite proof that there is no oversight. This will only stop if sone politicians most private data will leak from some cloud misconfiguration, as it usually does sooner or later.