4 ms·

My main thought reading this as a non-network admin was of Mr Robot, and all the Linux installs on low level hardware used for hacks on that show. Very interes

by geenew 5y ago

My main thought reading this as a non-network admin was of Mr Robot, and all the Linux installs on low level hardware used for hacks on that show. Very interesting read and lots of upside to what is discussed, but the thought of the uncountable, almost invisible operating systems running in a large network give me a odd feeling in the pit of my stomach. So many potential places for malfeasance to hide.

myself248 5y ago
Keep that feeling in the pit of your stomach for a few years. Watch as a multitude of forces (mostly related to surveillance capitalism) foist billions of such devices on unsuspecting consumers. Tell anyone who'll listen, how shortsighted this is, how much of a fall it's setting us up for. Watch it happen anyway. Watch it accelerate. Watch the devices grow in complexity, capability, connectivity, and vulnerability. Watch innumerable manufacturers go out of business with no software-update succession plan, no code escrow, no upgrade path for victi^H^H^H^H^H end users. The pit of your stomach gets pretty damn sick of the state of things.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Cyberpunk used to be fiction. It disgusts me when I realize I'm already living in it.
  - bigiain 5y ago
    That feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realise you've been _building_ it hurts. I still feel complicit. I worked for a hardware startup in 2013/2014. Part of my role was to populate and run the private pacman server that the devices got their OS and software updates from (we ran ARCH, but didn't connect to the public ARCH pacman repos, because we had some hardware specific code and kernel mods we needed to work, so we tested everything that updated on there public pacman repos before letting the devices load them). The startup failed after the first batch of products were shipped - as they are wont to do. Much acrimony about who owned what. I kept the Linode instance running the pacman server on my own credit card for years, but eventually the domain name (or perhaps the dns hosting, I don't recall) expired and the only devices that still knew how to get to the repo were my own. If I'd have a heads-up that dns was going to die, I could have pushed a config change to use a domain name under my control, but it just unexpectedly switched off. There were only a few hundred devices I was keeping software updates flowing to. But the feeling of despair when I was no longer able to do that and finally decommissioned that Linode server was heartbreaking.
    - myself248 5y ago
      Everyone on HN is building it. It is the purpose of this entire place. Don't feel alone.
inetknght 5y ago
Wait until you hear about the Internet of Things
- bonzini 5y ago
  Also known as the Internet of Things That Should Not Be on the Internet.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  The 'S' in 'IoT' stands for Security. (Old but good.)
kragen 5y ago
They're not potential; do you know about Intel ME, cellphone baseband firmware, Apple's new on-phone CSAM scanning plans, and yellow printer dots?
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Intel ME and cellular baseband are particularly worrisome. They are essentially separate and inaccessible (outside of very restricted APIs) systems with their own CPU, running their own OS and applications with the lowest level access to all hardware.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Thanks for the correction!
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Cellular baseband modem is especially evil since lack of software freedom is mandated by law. It controls the phone's radiofrequency emissions which means it must only ever run government-approved software. There's just no telling what this thing does and the best we can hope for is isolation from the rest of the phone.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  Another fun one is the "EURion constellation", a set of features on printed currency that photoshop and color copiers will read and then refuse to operate on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
- rincebrain 5y ago
  I think my favorite "you put cleverness where it didn't belong, and look what it got you" is the Xerox "oops we stored your scan compressed and our compression matched some characters as identical that weren't so the thing we scanned has characters substituted in the image". [1] Honorable mention goes to: - the Dell switch with the changelog note "if you had a device with a MAC starting with these bytes plugged in, the last N ports on the switch will stop working" [1] - https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres...

by geenew 5y ago

myself248 5y ago

Keep that feeling in the pit of your stomach for a few years. Watch as a multitude of forces (mostly related to surveillance capitalism) foist billions of such devices on unsuspecting consumers. Tell anyone who'll listen, how shortsighted this is, how much of a fall it's setting us up for. Watch it happen anyway. Watch it accelerate. Watch the devices grow in complexity, capability, connectivity, and vulnerability. Watch innumerable manufacturers go out of business with no software-update succession plan, no code escrow, no upgrade path for victi^H^H^H^H^H end users. The pit of your stomach gets pretty damn sick of the state of things.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Cyberpunk used to be fiction. It disgusts me when I realize I'm already living in it.
- bigiain 5y ago
  That feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realise you've been _building_ it hurts. I still feel complicit. I worked for a hardware startup in 2013/2014. Part of my role was to populate and run the private pacman server that the devices got their OS and software updates from (we ran ARCH, but didn't connect to the public ARCH pacman repos, because we had some hardware specific code and kernel mods we needed to work, so we tested everything that updated on there public pacman repos before letting the devices load them). The startup failed after the first batch of products were shipped - as they are wont to do. Much acrimony about who owned what. I kept the Linode instance running the pacman server on my own credit card for years, but eventually the domain name (or perhaps the dns hosting, I don't recall) expired and the only devices that still knew how to get to the repo were my own. If I'd have a heads-up that dns was going to die, I could have pushed a config change to use a domain name under my control, but it just unexpectedly switched off. There were only a few hundred devices I was keeping software updates flowing to. But the feeling of despair when I was no longer able to do that and finally decommissioned that Linode server was heartbreaking.
  - myself248 5y ago
    Everyone on HN is building it. It is the purpose of this entire place. Don't feel alone.

inetknght 5y ago

Wait until you hear about the Internet of Things

bonzini 5y ago
Also known as the Internet of Things That Should Not Be on the Internet.
jjoonathan 5y ago
The 'S' in 'IoT' stands for Security. (Old but good.)

kragen 5y ago

They're not potential; do you know about Intel ME, cellphone baseband firmware, Apple's new on-phone CSAM scanning plans, and yellow printer dots?

jaywalk 5y ago
Intel ME and cellular baseband are particularly worrisome. They are essentially separate and inaccessible (outside of very restricted APIs) systems with their own CPU, running their own OS and applications with the lowest level access to all hardware.
- kragen 5y ago
  Thanks for the correction!
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Cellular baseband modem is especially evil since lack of software freedom is mandated by law. It controls the phone's radiofrequency emissions which means it must only ever run government-approved software. There's just no telling what this thing does and the best we can hope for is isolation from the rest of the phone.
sbierwagen 5y ago
Another fun one is the "EURion constellation", a set of features on printed currency that photoshop and color copiers will read and then refuse to operate on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
rincebrain 5y ago
I think my favorite "you put cleverness where it didn't belong, and look what it got you" is the Xerox "oops we stored your scan compressed and our compression matched some characters as identical that weren't so the thing we scanned has characters substituted in the image". [1] Honorable mention goes to: - the Dell switch with the changelog note "if you had a device with a MAC starting with these bytes plugged in, the last N ports on the switch will stop working" [1] - https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres...