7 ms·

I work at the courts and manage our ECF system. Our government was very quick to respond, but not sure it matters considering Russians were in the system for 8

by tdhz77 6y ago

I work at the courts and manage our ECF system. Our government was very quick to respond, but not sure it matters considering Russians were in the system for 8 months. On top of that, several vendors were exploited VMware and Microsoft. I’ve fought for the federal government to create instead of buy. I continue to fail. It’s becoming increasing obvious the United States needs a privacy branch for data breaches and also for a whole bunch of engineers building out the next generation of apps for a better/smarter government. This is my life’s work, and I will keep trying.

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
We hear you. A long time ago I tried to start something similar in UK - http://oss4gov.org/manifesto http://oss4gov.org/manifesto My contacts are in the profile if you want to chat / scheme :-)
m12k 6y ago
Can we just designate Russia as a rogue state and sanction the fuck out of them already? Annexing Crimea, shooting down MH17, Meddling in the '16 US election, meddling in the Brexit vote, poisoning Navalny, meddling in the '20 US election and now this massive hack. A government should not be able to act like that and still get to to interact normally with the rest of international society.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  One day the USA is gonna start getting slapped with sanctions for all the stuff it does. I don’t think they’re prepared for that.
  - m12k 6y ago
    Absolutely, the world should not tolerate aggression or deceitfulness like that from any country. Oh, I nearly forgot about Russia's polonium poisoning in the UK, and the massive state-funded doping program for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics where the majority of Russian athletes were doped. It really does feel like the past 7 years, Putin has really been testing the limits of what he can get away with, and sadly the answer so far is "as much backstabbing as he wants". Time for that to change
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    That would take the USD falling from world currency reserve status - which would be the end of modern finance. That kind of economic collapse would make sanctions irrelevant.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      That’s hyperbole. The USD has been losing its power as a reserve currency, continuously, for the past several decades. See: Yuan. Modern finance still exists.
      - chii 6y ago
        tell me who wants to hold yuan as a currency (not just a little bit for liquidity of trading), instead of holding USD.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        The hundreds of millions sanctioned by the US are a good start.
        lebuffon 6y ago
        Not so much now perhaps but a digital Yuan exists. Where that is headed is not clear but it has the possibility of disrupting the current order.
  - theflyinghorse 6y ago
    US is a hegemony and the strongest nation in every respect. Who would dare slap sanctions on US without being retaliated upon? Consider the Nord Stream[1] for instance - Russians and Germans want it, US does not want it so Nord Stream is dead in the water (literally in this case). There is not a nation on this planet that could so much as think of sanctioning US and come out ahead. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
- koheripbal 6y ago
  If you think these are bad, you should see the list of things they did during the Cold War. Also, how many other countries behave badly and should be "sanctioned the fuck out of"? Once you start looking at each country under a microscope, your list of countries that deviate from "interact normally" is going to get so long that you're really just walling off the G7 from the rest of the world economy - which is something Russia would love us to do.
  - m12k 6y ago
    It should work like the criminal system in most countries do - do a crime, go to prison for X years. Don't do the crime again, and you get to stay out of prison. Sure it might sting a bit until countries learned that doing things like that hurts them more than it gains them. But slightly longer term, the preventive effects should kick in, and we might get some semblance of civility in international affairs. So we wouldn't wall off the G7 from the rest of the world unless they were very stupid and kept committing crimes.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      What would a country "going to prison" involve? Either way, this system is not feasible without basically a UN replacement. Until then, remember the US' long list of crimes before you call for economically crippling the Russian citizens.
      - m12k 6y ago
        Da comrade, we must discuss the US's transgressions before it would make sense to discuss Russia's. Edit: Tostino, in case it wasn't clear, this was meant sarcastically, and I precisely wanted to call out the whataboutism, since that is doing Putin's errand, whether trough ignorance or malice.
        Tostino 6y ago
        No. It makes sense to discuss Russia's as well as the US's. Stop cutting in while we are doing the former. Start your own thread about how terrible the US is. Stop with the whataboutism.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Rouge state? Do you mean like invading sovereign nations? Without being provoked? Without declaring war prior to invasion? And ultimately killing thousands of civilians in the process? Iraq and Afghanistan - who got super power'ed twice - would certainly agree with you. But their most recent concerns are not Russia. p.s. The USA has quite a history of election meddling as well.
  - m12k 6y ago
    Absolutely, election meddling and invasions are terrible and should be punished no matter who does them. Currently Russia seems to be the primary perpetrator, so they are the ones that we should be discussing sanctions for. (They also did the most recent invasion, in Crimea). All this "but the US also!" is exactly the kind of whataboutism that Glavset trolls routinely engage in, and it's not constructive at all. Yes, the US plays dirty, as does China, but that's no reason to let Russia do so too.
    - posix_me_less 6y ago
      So you understand every state uses similar dirty tools of power. Where do you start changing that? There is no upside for any big state to unilaterally respect and build international law / UN while others take advantage. It is a mere toothless idea now, these states don't have much incentive to follow it.
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  > Can we just designate Russia as a rogue state and sanction the fuck out of them already? I have two points on this. One. The power to sanction is losing the zest it once had. Russia has been building relationships that surpass mere political ties. They'll be fine. Two. Maybe you don't know you're governments history. Maybe you don't care. I would say ask the middle east and South Americas, the history of any non-EU country that tried building national infrastructure using loans from the world bank and dead democratically elected presidents all over the Levant, Douth Americas and Africa. Should I especially mention Libya? Did the US want to help Libya from being a top African/Arab nation? What about Venezuela? They're much closer. Are they helping Venezuela?
  - m12k 6y ago
    To your first point: If you look at the kind of reaction the Magnitsky Act got from the Kremlin (cf. that meeting with Don Jr to discuss getting rid of it), it seems that sanctions very much do have an effect on the Putin regime. To your second point: What kind of whataboutism is this? The US does plenty of dirty deeds and should be called out for it by the rest of the world. That's no reason not to do so with Russia as well. I'm currently reading "The Divide", so I happen to recognize all those coups and dirty deeds you mention - and they are terrible, but also completely inpertinent to the question of holding Russia accountable for its actions on the world stage.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > should be called out for it by the rest of the world The rest of the world isn't really calling the US out on this out of fear of retaliation. Why aren't you doing it? Are you also afraid of repercussions inside your own country if you call them out? Knowing it's a crime and keeping quiet makes you complicit. Unless you don't actually care about the crime, just the perpetrator, which invalidates the premise of your comment which was: > A government should not be able to act like that and still get to to interact normally with the rest of international society. Obviously it can. Other government and the hundreds of millions of people they represent prove it.
      - deleted 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bovermyer 6y ago
  Every single one of the "superpowers" is guilty of this, not just Russia. Russia's just easy to target because it's obviously authoritarian, and thus villainous by default. The problem is obvious. The solution is not. Sanctions won't help, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say what WOULD help.
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Russia's an easy target because of its history and its positioning against the west, the same is true of China. It's obvious that they're taking advantage of this situation - it directly weakens NATO which directly increases their power. It's not because "they're the big bad." It's because it makes the most logical sense and there is a lot of pretty easily verifiable smoke.
    - bovermyer 6y ago
      The governments of Russia and China are ideologically anathema to me personally. I try very hard to avoid my gut reaction, which is rather... final. Knowing this reaction of mine, every time I post something about either country, I have to be extra careful that I'm not indulging that.
- odiroot 6y ago
  Also assassinating a person in the middle of Berlin -- coincidentally a walking distance from my apartment.
- Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
  Can we just designate the United States of America as a rogue state and sanction the fuck out of them already? << Insert numerous citations >>. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Or, to put it another way - One mans' terrorist is anothers' freedom-fighter.
jlgaddis 6y ago
> On top of that, several vendors were exploited VMware and Microsoft. I haven't really kept up on the latest news about this hack so perhaps I missed an "official announcement" but I had assumed that both Microsoft and VMware were likely additional "attack vectors" as well (after initially "getting in" via Orion). Microsoft had that NETLOGON issue (CVSS 10.0) a while back and VMware has had at least two (CVSS ~9.8+) "critical" (a.k.a. "drop everything and patch now") issues that I know of in the last several months as well. Any one of those issues would almost certainly have given an attacker "the keys to the kingdom" (and, from my own experience at least, domain controllers, ESXi hypervisors, and vCenter servers don't typically get updated immediately!). > I’ve fought for the federal government to create instead of buy. Unfortunately, that just leads to the Government paying way too much for designed by committee software that isn't compatible with anything that anyone else uses. We've been there before and, IMO, the shift to COTS software was one of the best things to ever happen to U.S. Government agencies. (On a side note, I've lost a lot of faith in VMware. For something they claim to be "secure by default", there sure have been a shitload of CVEs in the last year or two! Also, just a few months ago, they had to "re-release" patches for a 9.8 because the original patches didn't completely fix the issue!)
- SSLy 6y ago
  VMware is preoccupied with stealing Linux code, not fixing bugs.
  - jlgaddis 6y ago
    Yep, it seems like 90% or more of "their" products are simply open-source code with a web-based front-end that they've slapped on (which is why I refuse to give them any money).
- dannyw 6y ago
  The federal government should not create its own operating system, or log system, but it should pour all of its resources into properly securing the systems it uses; weighted by its security risk. Systems running in root or hypervisor space deserve the most scrutiny and sandboxing. A JS app, less so, assuming its run in a secure sandboxed browser in a secure sandboxed operating system. Attack vectors like Intel ME must die. (There are already DoD- mandated high-assurance flags to disable parts of ME; but megabyte blobs running on ring -1 must go completely so we can secure ring 0).
teorema 6y ago
It's not just the federal government — the problems with ransomware in healthcare are the same problem. Similar issues are emerging at the state level in places like universities, which used to roll out platforms all the time, individually or collectively.
Daho0n 6y ago
As long as they can get everyone to trust them every time they shout "Russia" this won't happen. Step one is to not listen to the propaganda machine, otherwise we'll just exchange one broken system with another. I'm amazed at how almost everyone seems to distrust the government except when it points at Russia. If the government points at Russia, PRC or NK I would take a step back and disregard all information from anyone associated with them and then make up my mind. I don't believe for a second that Russia is behind this unless NSA etc. already knew and did nothing for whatever reason and that's far worse than having Russia access your systems.
- rendall 6y ago
  "Russia" has turned into an "airhorn" term, one that when deployed stops all further thought. Others: "terrorist", "white supremacist/racist", "sex trafficker" and the perennial favorite, "What about the children?"
- kamarg 6y ago
  Any particular reason you don't think it was Russia?
  - theflyinghorse 6y ago
    Russia seems to be the go-to nation to be blamed for hacking activity, and so I am by default skeptical. Is there actual evidence of it being a Russian state attack or was Russia blamed out of habit? Skepticism of course stems from decades of government lies and misrepresentations of truth in order to justify horrendous actions ie. what was done to Iraq, Lybia, Syria.
    - tomatotomato37 6y ago
      While I do agree that Russia is use a lot as a scapegoat for the embarrassing failures of our political system; on terms of pure espionage Russia is probably the true culprit. They have been our equals in spycraft through the cold war, and due to the current Russian president being ex-KGB it's safe to say they are probably very favored in their current administration. Espionage is one of Russia's core competencies, it's just how it is. (Note I'm talking about espionage in the information gathering sense, not the overthrowing of regimes action movie sense)

by tdhz77 6y ago

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

We hear you. A long time ago I tried to start something similar in UK - http://oss4gov.org/manifesto http://oss4gov.org/manifesto My contacts are in the profile if you want to chat / scheme :-)

m12k 6y ago

Can we just designate Russia as a rogue state and sanction the fuck out of them already? Annexing Crimea, shooting down MH17, Meddling in the '16 US election, meddling in the Brexit vote, poisoning Navalny, meddling in the '20 US election and now this massive hack. A government should not be able to act like that and still get to to interact normally with the rest of international society.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
One day the USA is gonna start getting slapped with sanctions for all the stuff it does. I don’t think they’re prepared for that.
- m12k 6y ago
  Absolutely, the world should not tolerate aggression or deceitfulness like that from any country. Oh, I nearly forgot about Russia's polonium poisoning in the UK, and the massive state-funded doping program for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics where the majority of Russian athletes were doped. It really does feel like the past 7 years, Putin has really been testing the limits of what he can get away with, and sadly the answer so far is "as much backstabbing as he wants". Time for that to change
- koheripbal 6y ago
  That would take the USD falling from world currency reserve status - which would be the end of modern finance. That kind of economic collapse would make sanctions irrelevant.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    That’s hyperbole. The USD has been losing its power as a reserve currency, continuously, for the past several decades. See: Yuan. Modern finance still exists.
    - chii 6y ago
      tell me who wants to hold yuan as a currency (not just a little bit for liquidity of trading), instead of holding USD.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        The hundreds of millions sanctioned by the US are a good start.
      - lebuffon 6y ago
        Not so much now perhaps but a digital Yuan exists. Where that is headed is not clear but it has the possibility of disrupting the current order.
- theflyinghorse 6y ago
  US is a hegemony and the strongest nation in every respect. Who would dare slap sanctions on US without being retaliated upon? Consider the Nord Stream[1] for instance - Russians and Germans want it, US does not want it so Nord Stream is dead in the water (literally in this case). There is not a nation on this planet that could so much as think of sanctioning US and come out ahead. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
koheripbal 6y ago
If you think these are bad, you should see the list of things they did during the Cold War. Also, how many other countries behave badly and should be "sanctioned the fuck out of"? Once you start looking at each country under a microscope, your list of countries that deviate from "interact normally" is going to get so long that you're really just walling off the G7 from the rest of the world economy - which is something Russia would love us to do.
- m12k 6y ago
  It should work like the criminal system in most countries do - do a crime, go to prison for X years. Don't do the crime again, and you get to stay out of prison. Sure it might sting a bit until countries learned that doing things like that hurts them more than it gains them. But slightly longer term, the preventive effects should kick in, and we might get some semblance of civility in international affairs. So we wouldn't wall off the G7 from the rest of the world unless they were very stupid and kept committing crimes.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    What would a country "going to prison" involve? Either way, this system is not feasible without basically a UN replacement. Until then, remember the US' long list of crimes before you call for economically crippling the Russian citizens.
    - m12k 6y ago
      Da comrade, we must discuss the US's transgressions before it would make sense to discuss Russia's. Edit: Tostino, in case it wasn't clear, this was meant sarcastically, and I precisely wanted to call out the whataboutism, since that is doing Putin's errand, whether trough ignorance or malice.
      - Tostino 6y ago
        No. It makes sense to discuss Russia's as well as the US's. Stop cutting in while we are doing the former. Start your own thread about how terrible the US is. Stop with the whataboutism.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
Rouge state? Do you mean like invading sovereign nations? Without being provoked? Without declaring war prior to invasion? And ultimately killing thousands of civilians in the process? Iraq and Afghanistan - who got super power'ed twice - would certainly agree with you. But their most recent concerns are not Russia. p.s. The USA has quite a history of election meddling as well.
- m12k 6y ago
  Absolutely, election meddling and invasions are terrible and should be punished no matter who does them. Currently Russia seems to be the primary perpetrator, so they are the ones that we should be discussing sanctions for. (They also did the most recent invasion, in Crimea). All this "but the US also!" is exactly the kind of whataboutism that Glavset trolls routinely engage in, and it's not constructive at all. Yes, the US plays dirty, as does China, but that's no reason to let Russia do so too.
  - posix_me_less 6y ago
    So you understand every state uses similar dirty tools of power. Where do you start changing that? There is no upside for any big state to unilaterally respect and build international law / UN while others take advantage. It is a mere toothless idea now, these states don't have much incentive to follow it.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> Can we just designate Russia as a rogue state and sanction the fuck out of them already? I have two points on this. One. The power to sanction is losing the zest it once had. Russia has been building relationships that surpass mere political ties. They'll be fine. Two. Maybe you don't know you're governments history. Maybe you don't care. I would say ask the middle east and South Americas, the history of any non-EU country that tried building national infrastructure using loans from the world bank and dead democratically elected presidents all over the Levant, Douth Americas and Africa. Should I especially mention Libya? Did the US want to help Libya from being a top African/Arab nation? What about Venezuela? They're much closer. Are they helping Venezuela?
- m12k 6y ago
  To your first point: If you look at the kind of reaction the Magnitsky Act got from the Kremlin (cf. that meeting with Don Jr to discuss getting rid of it), it seems that sanctions very much do have an effect on the Putin regime. To your second point: What kind of whataboutism is this? The US does plenty of dirty deeds and should be called out for it by the rest of the world. That's no reason not to do so with Russia as well. I'm currently reading "The Divide", so I happen to recognize all those coups and dirty deeds you mention - and they are terrible, but also completely inpertinent to the question of holding Russia accountable for its actions on the world stage.
  - buran77 6y ago
    > should be called out for it by the rest of the world The rest of the world isn't really calling the US out on this out of fear of retaliation. Why aren't you doing it? Are you also afraid of repercussions inside your own country if you call them out? Knowing it's a crime and keeping quiet makes you complicit. Unless you don't actually care about the crime, just the perpetrator, which invalidates the premise of your comment which was: > A government should not be able to act like that and still get to to interact normally with the rest of international society. Obviously it can. Other government and the hundreds of millions of people they represent prove it.
    - deleted 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bovermyer 6y ago
Every single one of the "superpowers" is guilty of this, not just Russia. Russia's just easy to target because it's obviously authoritarian, and thus villainous by default. The problem is obvious. The solution is not. Sanctions won't help, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to say what WOULD help.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Russia's an easy target because of its history and its positioning against the west, the same is true of China. It's obvious that they're taking advantage of this situation - it directly weakens NATO which directly increases their power. It's not because "they're the big bad." It's because it makes the most logical sense and there is a lot of pretty easily verifiable smoke.
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    The governments of Russia and China are ideologically anathema to me personally. I try very hard to avoid my gut reaction, which is rather... final. Knowing this reaction of mine, every time I post something about either country, I have to be extra careful that I'm not indulging that.
odiroot 6y ago
Also assassinating a person in the middle of Berlin -- coincidentally a walking distance from my apartment.
Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago
Can we just designate the United States of America as a rogue state and sanction the fuck out of them already? << Insert numerous citations >>. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Or, to put it another way - One mans' terrorist is anothers' freedom-fighter.

jlgaddis 6y ago

> On top of that, several vendors were exploited VMware and Microsoft. I haven't really kept up on the latest news about this hack so perhaps I missed an "official announcement" but I had assumed that both Microsoft and VMware were likely additional "attack vectors" as well (after initially "getting in" via Orion). Microsoft had that NETLOGON issue (CVSS 10.0) a while back and VMware has had at least two (CVSS ~9.8+) "critical" (a.k.a. "drop everything and patch now") issues that I know of in the last several months as well. Any one of those issues would almost certainly have given an attacker "the keys to the kingdom" (and, from my own experience at least, domain controllers, ESXi hypervisors, and vCenter servers don't typically get updated immediately!). > I’ve fought for the federal government to create instead of buy. Unfortunately, that just leads to the Government paying way too much for designed by committee software that isn't compatible with anything that anyone else uses. We've been there before and, IMO, the shift to COTS software was one of the best things to ever happen to U.S. Government agencies. (On a side note, I've lost a lot of faith in VMware. For something they claim to be "secure by default", there sure have been a shitload of CVEs in the last year or two! Also, just a few months ago, they had to "re-release" patches for a 9.8 because the original patches didn't completely fix the issue!)

SSLy 6y ago
VMware is preoccupied with stealing Linux code, not fixing bugs.
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  Yep, it seems like 90% or more of "their" products are simply open-source code with a web-based front-end that they've slapped on (which is why I refuse to give them any money).
dannyw 6y ago
The federal government should not create its own operating system, or log system, but it should pour all of its resources into properly securing the systems it uses; weighted by its security risk. Systems running in root or hypervisor space deserve the most scrutiny and sandboxing. A JS app, less so, assuming its run in a secure sandboxed browser in a secure sandboxed operating system. Attack vectors like Intel ME must die. (There are already DoD- mandated high-assurance flags to disable parts of ME; but megabyte blobs running on ring -1 must go completely so we can secure ring 0).

teorema 6y ago

It's not just the federal government — the problems with ransomware in healthcare are the same problem. Similar issues are emerging at the state level in places like universities, which used to roll out platforms all the time, individually or collectively.

Daho0n 6y ago

As long as they can get everyone to trust them every time they shout "Russia" this won't happen. Step one is to not listen to the propaganda machine, otherwise we'll just exchange one broken system with another. I'm amazed at how almost everyone seems to distrust the government except when it points at Russia. If the government points at Russia, PRC or NK I would take a step back and disregard all information from anyone associated with them and then make up my mind. I don't believe for a second that Russia is behind this unless NSA etc. already knew and did nothing for whatever reason and that's far worse than having Russia access your systems.

rendall 6y ago
"Russia" has turned into an "airhorn" term, one that when deployed stops all further thought. Others: "terrorist", "white supremacist/racist", "sex trafficker" and the perennial favorite, "What about the children?"
kamarg 6y ago
Any particular reason you don't think it was Russia?
- theflyinghorse 6y ago
  Russia seems to be the go-to nation to be blamed for hacking activity, and so I am by default skeptical. Is there actual evidence of it being a Russian state attack or was Russia blamed out of habit? Skepticism of course stems from decades of government lies and misrepresentations of truth in order to justify horrendous actions ie. what was done to Iraq, Lybia, Syria.
  - tomatotomato37 6y ago
    While I do agree that Russia is use a lot as a scapegoat for the embarrassing failures of our political system; on terms of pure espionage Russia is probably the true culprit. They have been our equals in spycraft through the cold war, and due to the current Russian president being ex-KGB it's safe to say they are probably very favored in their current administration. Espionage is one of Russia's core competencies, it's just how it is. (Note I'm talking about espionage in the information gathering sense, not the overthrowing of regimes action movie sense)