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Hi! Thanks for your comments. I'm one of the authors of this post. It is the same platform at the moment (just not tagged with editorial tags so it stays away f

by wftglf 8y ago

Hi! Thanks for your comments. I'm one of the authors of this post. It is the same platform at the moment (just not tagged with editorial tags so it stays away from the fronts), though sometimes the team that approves non-editorial posts to the site can be concerned about us writing about outages and things as it might carry a 'reputational risk', so we may end up migrating to a different platform in the future so we can publish more quickly, we'll see!

AlexCoventry 8y ago
Does SecureDrop run on your AWS infrastructure?
- dmix 8y ago
  It’s probably better if they didn’t answer this question...
  - AlexCoventry 8y ago
    It's a bit disturbing to me that they seem to be using AWS for confidential editorial work. > Due to editorial requirements, we needed to run the database cluster and OpsManager on our own infrastructure in AWS rather than using Mongo’s managed database offering.
    - nexuist 8y ago
      >Since all our other services are running in AWS, the obvious choice was DynamoDB – Amazon’s NoSQL database offering. Unfortunately at the time Dynamo didn’t support encryption at rest. After waiting around nine months for this feature to be added, we ended up giving up and looking for something else, ultimately choosing to use Postgres on AWS RDS.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - AlexCoventry 8y ago
        Anyone who gets control of the live server can still read a database, even if it encrypts its storage.
        grogenaut 8y ago
        Encryption at rest is still important as it closes off a few attack/loss vectors: mis-disposed hard drives, re-allocated hosts. I'm probably missing a few others.
        AlexCoventry 8y ago
        Yeah, but it doesn't really address my concern.
        nixgeek 8y ago
        Anyone who can control a server in any environment can potentially interact with the database powering applications running on that server. How is running on AWS different than Guardian Cloud in their basement?
        AlexCoventry 8y ago
        The level of control over who has physical access, of course. Did reports of the Snowden revelations reside on the CMS?
        untog 8y ago
        Probably not, no, until they were about to be published. I imagine that the choice between "run an entire data centre ourselves, store everything there" and "use AWS, but keep high sensitivity stories on local machines" is an easy one. After all, the client computer that connects to the CMS is just as, or more likely to be compromised. I wouldn't be surprised if the coverage (or at least parts of it) were edited on airgapped laptops.
    - philjohn 8y ago
      They're using AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) which isn't open to the world (you use a VPN to bridge the VPC into your internal network) and which you can spin up dedicated instances that don't share underlying hardware with other AWS customers.
    - wftglf 8y ago
      In a happy world the guardian wouldn't rely on a company we spend a lot of time reporting on for unethical practices (tax avoidance, worker exploitation etc.) - but we decided it was the only way to compete. One of the big drivers was a denial of service attack on our datacentre in 2014 on boxing day - not an experience any of us want to have to deal with again.
- wftglf 8y ago
  No, I think it's on our own infrastructure.
  - AlexCoventry 8y ago
    Thanks for the info, here and below.
reilly3000 8y ago
In our era of deplatforming a publisher publishing on something like Medium seems antithetical, even for a dev team that just wants to get words out. Should you spend some cycles on the dev blog? Probably, but you should also split test the donation copy and get the data warehouse moved forward for 2019 initiatives and fix 1200 other issues. Thanks for sharing a great post. I shared it with my team and we all learned a lot.
- wftglf 8y ago
  Thanks to hacker news and reddit this piece got over 100,000 page views which should be enough to justify the blog staying on platform!
pfriend 8y ago
Thanks for writing the blog post. Insights like these and of such high quality are rare. Can I ask what was the total cost of the migration? If there was software that could do this database migration without downtime, how much would you/Guardian be willing to pay?

by wftglf 8y ago

AlexCoventry 8y ago

Does SecureDrop run on your AWS infrastructure?

dmix 8y ago
It’s probably better if they didn’t answer this question...
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  It's a bit disturbing to me that they seem to be using AWS for confidential editorial work. > Due to editorial requirements, we needed to run the database cluster and OpsManager on our own infrastructure in AWS rather than using Mongo’s managed database offering.
  - nexuist 8y ago
    >Since all our other services are running in AWS, the obvious choice was DynamoDB – Amazon’s NoSQL database offering. Unfortunately at the time Dynamo didn’t support encryption at rest. After waiting around nine months for this feature to be added, we ended up giving up and looking for something else, ultimately choosing to use Postgres on AWS RDS.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - AlexCoventry 8y ago
      Anyone who gets control of the live server can still read a database, even if it encrypts its storage.
      - grogenaut 8y ago
        Encryption at rest is still important as it closes off a few attack/loss vectors: mis-disposed hard drives, re-allocated hosts. I'm probably missing a few others.
        AlexCoventry 8y ago
        Yeah, but it doesn't really address my concern.
        nixgeek 8y ago
        Anyone who can control a server in any environment can potentially interact with the database powering applications running on that server. How is running on AWS different than Guardian Cloud in their basement?
        AlexCoventry 8y ago
        The level of control over who has physical access, of course. Did reports of the Snowden revelations reside on the CMS?
        untog 8y ago
        Probably not, no, until they were about to be published. I imagine that the choice between "run an entire data centre ourselves, store everything there" and "use AWS, but keep high sensitivity stories on local machines" is an easy one. After all, the client computer that connects to the CMS is just as, or more likely to be compromised. I wouldn't be surprised if the coverage (or at least parts of it) were edited on airgapped laptops.
  - philjohn 8y ago
    They're using AWS VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) which isn't open to the world (you use a VPN to bridge the VPC into your internal network) and which you can spin up dedicated instances that don't share underlying hardware with other AWS customers.
  - wftglf 8y ago
    In a happy world the guardian wouldn't rely on a company we spend a lot of time reporting on for unethical practices (tax avoidance, worker exploitation etc.) - but we decided it was the only way to compete. One of the big drivers was a denial of service attack on our datacentre in 2014 on boxing day - not an experience any of us want to have to deal with again.
wftglf 8y ago
No, I think it's on our own infrastructure.
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  Thanks for the info, here and below.

reilly3000 8y ago

In our era of deplatforming a publisher publishing on something like Medium seems antithetical, even for a dev team that just wants to get words out. Should you spend some cycles on the dev blog? Probably, but you should also split test the donation copy and get the data warehouse moved forward for 2019 initiatives and fix 1200 other issues. Thanks for sharing a great post. I shared it with my team and we all learned a lot.

wftglf 8y ago
Thanks to hacker news and reddit this piece got over 100,000 page views which should be enough to justify the blog staying on platform!

pfriend 8y ago

Thanks for writing the blog post. Insights like these and of such high quality are rare. Can I ask what was the total cost of the migration? If there was software that could do this database migration without downtime, how much would you/Guardian be willing to pay?