4 ms·

Cyber memo warns of new risks to White House network

90 points by hsnewman 7y ago

zenpaul 7y ago
It's another indication of the danger of the incompetency of the current administration as outlined in Michael Lewis' excellent book "The Fifth Risk". The Fifth Risk being "Project management", or lack thereof. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk
kelnos 7y ago
> [The Office of Administration's general counsel] added that it also puts information required to be preserved by the Presidential Records Act outside of the Executive Office of the President's oversight. The rest of the article seems really bad, but isn't this bit a good thing? Shouldn't a somewhat-independent body be responsible for ensuring that presidential records are properly preserved?
- velcrovan 7y ago
  I may be wrong, but just because they are outside the oversight of the “Executive Office of the President” does not mean they have been transferred into the oversight of some equally competent authority. The president is probably still in control of this info but he doesn’t want it formally handled by this office. (Realistically there's a 50/50 chance it’s being managed by Rudy Giuliani at this point.)
  - jethro_tell 7y ago
    Or deleted by a 500 lb bed hacker after all the security guys are removed.
  - jonfw 7y ago
    > outside of the Executive Office of the President's oversight > The president is probably still in control What you're saying is directly contrasting the quote you responded to
    - shantly 7y ago
      "Executive Office of the President" "President" Not the same thing.
- plazmatic 7y ago
  Uh, what? How in the world do you find this to be a good thing? Bloody Americans have lost their minds.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- lisper 7y ago
  > isn't this bit a good thing? Well, yeah, but you're kind of missing the bigger picture of what's going on here, which is that the administration is apparently trying to undermine this safeguard. So yes, it's a good thing that the safeguard exists, but no, it's not a good thing that the administration is trying to do an end-run around it, which is what makes this news.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  No, the White House wants to transfer records which must legally be preserved into the hands of pliable partisan hacks who can hide or destroy them with no accountability, instead of leaving them in the hands of ethical information-security experts.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
> But in a July reorganization, the OCISO was dissolved and its duties placed under the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer, led by CIO Ben Pauwels and Director of White House IT Roger L. Stone. Stone was pulled from the ranks of the National Security Council where he was deputy senior director for resilience policy. (Stone is not related to indicted Republican political consultant Roger J. Stone.) I wonder if Roger L. Stone feels any sympathy for people who have similar names to those on the No Fly List. I wonder if people ask him about indictment, and he says "No, it is the other Roger Stone in the Trump administration, Roger J. Stone who was indicted. I am Roger L. Stone"
- schoen 7y ago
  I remember reading about how were two Stephen R. Bournes working at Bell Labs at the same time (only one of whom was the author of the Bourne shell). https://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/README.cf.8.8.html https://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/README.cf.8.8.html > [...] and at one time Bell Labs had two Stephen R. Bournes with offices along the same hallway. Which one will be forced to suffer the indignity of being Stephen_R_Bourne_2? The less famous of the two, or the one that was hired later?
davidw 7y ago
Were they getting in the way of sharing information with Russia?
throwaway5752 7y ago
"Senior staffer quits over "highly concerning" lack of security practices." [...] "It is my express opinion that the remaining incumbent OCISO staff is being systematically targeted for removal from the Office of Administration," departing White House network defense branch chief Dimitrios Vastakis wrote in the memo. The security team had seen incentive pay revoked, scope of duties cut, and access to systems and facilities reduced, Vastakis noted. Staffers' "positions with strategic and tactical decision making authorities" had also been revoked. "In addition, habitually being hostile to incumbent OCISO staff has become a staple tactic for the new leadership... it has forced the majority of [senior civil servant] OCISO staff to resign." This is the story.
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  I don't think it's a complete story either way. It's just some bureaucrats complaining that they've been made redundant and from there we are lead by the author to conclude that the White House has inadequate IT security going forward. This is unrealistic. It's a reorganization. That shit happens all the time in organizations everywhere. Of course the people losing their jobs are unhappy, and it's their right to complain about it, but not necessarily a bad thing that the DoD is now in charge of White House security. I'm curious if I'm being downvoted because something about my comment was wrong, or simply because "orange man bad." Maybe share some insight about the right chain of command for government IT security operations? I'm not saying that the reorganization is a good thing, only that there is insufficient evidence provided to conclude that it's a bad thing.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    >The security team had seen incentive pay revoked, scope of duties cut, and access to systems and facilities reduced, Vastakis noted. Staffers' "positions with strategic and tactical decision making authorities" had also been revoked You consider this a re-org?
    - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
      The article said the responsibilities had been transferred to a DoD entity and tried to imply that having the DoD involved in White House operations is somehow bad. Yea that's a re-org. That's how you fire someone in government because it's so convoluted to outright terminate people. [Note] since I posted this, the original article link was updated from an Ars Technica link to an Axios article with even _less_ analysis. This is kind of absurd.
personjerry 7y ago
They should hire Alex Stamos
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Are you serious? If you read the article, it's quite clear this is a coordinated effort within the administration to gut this group (OCISO). They don't want to improve things by hiring Stamos. That is the opposite of their goal.
ForHackernews 7y ago
Without getting too political, this is an administration that has flaunted convention, oversight, and basic professionalism on virtually every front. To hear that they do the same when it comes to IT security is utterly unsurprising.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  It's as though they have to walk around with signs and bullhorns declaring themselves assets of adversaries at this point. The only thing that makes me doubt it is how ham-handed they are at it,
- dev_dull 7y ago
  Also an administration that has been wiretapped (maybe illegally? Let’s see what Durham finds), leaked against, and the recipient of other unprecedented behavior (such as anonymous Nytimes op-eds). Does everybody here know the #2 at the FBI counter intel was texting his lover and asking if there’s anybody in the White House who could spy for them?[1] They’d be foolish if they don’t try and dramatically shake things up. If I were them I wouldn’t trust any previous admin holdovers. 1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/pjmedia.com/trending/strzok-page-texts-suggest-effort-to-recruit-white-house-staffers-to-spy-on-trump-team/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/pjmedia.com/trending/strzok-pag...
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    Neither Strzok nor Page was "the #2 at the FBI". Strzok was the second in command of the counter-intelligence division, but that's just one division of the FBI. Since when are unfriendly op-eds in the NYT "unprecedented"? Look, I'm sure the Trump administration has plenty of legitimate reasons to be paranoid about people trying to undermine them, but it's pretty hard for me to accept that driving out all your competent opsec people is going to reduce the amount of leaks and compromises.
  - werm82 7y ago
    >the #2 at the FBI He was the #2 in the FBI Counterintelligence Division, which isn't exactly second in command of the entire bureau. Also, the article you linked said that the texts "may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump's transition team". And that is according to one senator from Iowa. That's a big difference from what you're saying actually happened. Edited for formatting.
typeformer 7y ago
This will surely end well...
dang 7y ago
Url changed from https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/white-house-guts-infosec-team-posturing-itself-to-be-compromised-again/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/white..., which points to this.
mmanfrin 7y ago
Why was this post nuked? It was at the top, then all of a sudden it was merged in to another lower post and has very quickly dropped to the bottom.
- callmeal 7y ago
  It's a technique to control public discourse and provide the illusion of free speech. Read this[0] and weep. [0]: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

90 points by hsnewman 7y ago

It's another indication of the danger of the incompetency of the current administration as outlined in Michael Lewis' excellent book "The Fifth Risk". The Fifth Risk being "Project management", or lack thereof. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

kelnos 7y ago

> [The Office of Administration's general counsel] added that it also puts information required to be preserved by the Presidential Records Act outside of the Executive Office of the President's oversight. The rest of the article seems really bad, but isn't this bit a good thing? Shouldn't a somewhat-independent body be responsible for ensuring that presidential records are properly preserved?

velcrovan 7y ago
I may be wrong, but just because they are outside the oversight of the “Executive Office of the President” does not mean they have been transferred into the oversight of some equally competent authority. The president is probably still in control of this info but he doesn’t want it formally handled by this office. (Realistically there's a 50/50 chance it’s being managed by Rudy Giuliani at this point.)
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  Or deleted by a 500 lb bed hacker after all the security guys are removed.
- jonfw 7y ago
  > outside of the Executive Office of the President's oversight > The president is probably still in control What you're saying is directly contrasting the quote you responded to
  - shantly 7y ago
    "Executive Office of the President" "President" Not the same thing.
plazmatic 7y ago
Uh, what? How in the world do you find this to be a good thing? Bloody Americans have lost their minds.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lisper 7y ago
> isn't this bit a good thing? Well, yeah, but you're kind of missing the bigger picture of what's going on here, which is that the administration is apparently trying to undermine this safeguard. So yes, it's a good thing that the safeguard exists, but no, it's not a good thing that the administration is trying to do an end-run around it, which is what makes this news.
jacobolus 7y ago
No, the White House wants to transfer records which must legally be preserved into the hands of pliable partisan hacks who can hide or destroy them with no accountability, instead of leaving them in the hands of ethical information-security experts.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago

> But in a July reorganization, the OCISO was dissolved and its duties placed under the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer, led by CIO Ben Pauwels and Director of White House IT Roger L. Stone. Stone was pulled from the ranks of the National Security Council where he was deputy senior director for resilience policy. (Stone is not related to indicted Republican political consultant Roger J. Stone.) I wonder if Roger L. Stone feels any sympathy for people who have similar names to those on the No Fly List. I wonder if people ask him about indictment, and he says "No, it is the other Roger Stone in the Trump administration, Roger J. Stone who was indicted. I am Roger L. Stone"

schoen 7y ago
I remember reading about how were two Stephen R. Bournes working at Bell Labs at the same time (only one of whom was the author of the Bourne shell). https://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/README.cf.8.8.html https://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/README.cf.8.8.html > [...] and at one time Bell Labs had two Stephen R. Bournes with offices along the same hallway. Which one will be forced to suffer the indignity of being Stephen_R_Bourne_2? The less famous of the two, or the one that was hired later?

davidw 7y ago

Were they getting in the way of sharing information with Russia?

throwaway5752 7y ago

"Senior staffer quits over "highly concerning" lack of security practices." [...] "It is my express opinion that the remaining incumbent OCISO staff is being systematically targeted for removal from the Office of Administration," departing White House network defense branch chief Dimitrios Vastakis wrote in the memo. The security team had seen incentive pay revoked, scope of duties cut, and access to systems and facilities reduced, Vastakis noted. Staffers' "positions with strategic and tactical decision making authorities" had also been revoked. "In addition, habitually being hostile to incumbent OCISO staff has become a staple tactic for the new leadership... it has forced the majority of [senior civil servant] OCISO staff to resign." This is the story.

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
I don't think it's a complete story either way. It's just some bureaucrats complaining that they've been made redundant and from there we are lead by the author to conclude that the White House has inadequate IT security going forward. This is unrealistic. It's a reorganization. That shit happens all the time in organizations everywhere. Of course the people losing their jobs are unhappy, and it's their right to complain about it, but not necessarily a bad thing that the DoD is now in charge of White House security. I'm curious if I'm being downvoted because something about my comment was wrong, or simply because "orange man bad." Maybe share some insight about the right chain of command for government IT security operations? I'm not saying that the reorganization is a good thing, only that there is insufficient evidence provided to conclude that it's a bad thing.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  >The security team had seen incentive pay revoked, scope of duties cut, and access to systems and facilities reduced, Vastakis noted. Staffers' "positions with strategic and tactical decision making authorities" had also been revoked You consider this a re-org?
  - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    The article said the responsibilities had been transferred to a DoD entity and tried to imply that having the DoD involved in White House operations is somehow bad. Yea that's a re-org. That's how you fire someone in government because it's so convoluted to outright terminate people. [Note] since I posted this, the original article link was updated from an Ars Technica link to an Axios article with even _less_ analysis. This is kind of absurd.

personjerry 7y ago

They should hire Alex Stamos

throwaway5752 7y ago
Are you serious? If you read the article, it's quite clear this is a coordinated effort within the administration to gut this group (OCISO). They don't want to improve things by hiring Stamos. That is the opposite of their goal.

ForHackernews 7y ago

Without getting too political, this is an administration that has flaunted convention, oversight, and basic professionalism on virtually every front. To hear that they do the same when it comes to IT security is utterly unsurprising.

throwaway5752 7y ago
It's as though they have to walk around with signs and bullhorns declaring themselves assets of adversaries at this point. The only thing that makes me doubt it is how ham-handed they are at it,
dev_dull 7y ago
Also an administration that has been wiretapped (maybe illegally? Let’s see what Durham finds), leaked against, and the recipient of other unprecedented behavior (such as anonymous Nytimes op-eds). Does everybody here know the #2 at the FBI counter intel was texting his lover and asking if there’s anybody in the White House who could spy for them?[1] They’d be foolish if they don’t try and dramatically shake things up. If I were them I wouldn’t trust any previous admin holdovers. 1. https://www.google.com/amp/s/pjmedia.com/trending/strzok-page-texts-suggest-effort-to-recruit-white-house-staffers-to-spy-on-trump-team/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/pjmedia.com/trending/strzok-pag...
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  Neither Strzok nor Page was "the #2 at the FBI". Strzok was the second in command of the counter-intelligence division, but that's just one division of the FBI. Since when are unfriendly op-eds in the NYT "unprecedented"? Look, I'm sure the Trump administration has plenty of legitimate reasons to be paranoid about people trying to undermine them, but it's pretty hard for me to accept that driving out all your competent opsec people is going to reduce the amount of leaks and compromises.
- werm82 7y ago
  >the #2 at the FBI He was the #2 in the FBI Counterintelligence Division, which isn't exactly second in command of the entire bureau. Also, the article you linked said that the texts "may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump's transition team". And that is according to one senator from Iowa. That's a big difference from what you're saying actually happened. Edited for formatting.

typeformer 7y ago

This will surely end well...

dang 7y ago

Url changed from https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/white-house-guts-infosec-team-posturing-itself-to-be-compromised-again/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/white..., which points to this.

mmanfrin 7y ago

Why was this post nuked? It was at the top, then all of a sudden it was merged in to another lower post and has very quickly dropped to the bottom.

callmeal 7y ago
It's a technique to control public discourse and provide the illusion of free speech. Read this[0] and weep. [0]: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm