3 ms·

Nearly 20 years ago I was attacked on forums for suggesting such treats were even a possibility. I think you are describing cult behavior. I've seen managers

Nearly 20 years ago I was attacked on forums for suggesting such treats were even a possibility. I think you are describing cult behavior. I've seen managers do this to protect questionable deals they made with dodgy vendors. For what it's worth, I've seen some of this in action on firewalls that shall not be named. They assumed incorrectly that we would not see the devices trying to phone home on the management cards and by home I mean a sanctioned country. This was in the hardware and not the firewall OS. I have also met a team responsible for managing the backdoor on the management boards that also shall not be named. Their backdoor was said to be for access by their support team when customers locked themselves out. All the other backdoors I've seen were either in the OS or vendor packages. Some vendors get really nervous when their clients gain root access to their appliances and start poking around.

R0b0t1 4y ago
I think it's more likely it was astroturf/COINTELPRO related.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Normally I'd consider this conspiracy theorist stuff, but at this point it's pretty clear that it's happening, that state actors are involved, and that they're very much interested in keeping what they have and that means distracting us from the problem and dismissing that it exists. Hardware manufacturers are partly to blame too, both for not testing their products to catch these threats, but also for the lack of transparency. I get that it'd be difficult/expensive to recall and replace a bunch of physical devices which may or may not all be backdoored, and I wouldn't be surprised if some companies were told not to by some three letter agency here in the US too, but if it comes to light that they have been knowingly selling compromised hardware they should be dragged into court and made to pay for it.

R0b0t1 4y ago

I think it's more likely it was astroturf/COINTELPRO related.

autoexec 4y ago
Normally I'd consider this conspiracy theorist stuff, but at this point it's pretty clear that it's happening, that state actors are involved, and that they're very much interested in keeping what they have and that means distracting us from the problem and dismissing that it exists. Hardware manufacturers are partly to blame too, both for not testing their products to catch these threats, but also for the lack of transparency. I get that it'd be difficult/expensive to recall and replace a bunch of physical devices which may or may not all be backdoored, and I wouldn't be surprised if some companies were told not to by some three letter agency here in the US too, but if it comes to light that they have been knowingly selling compromised hardware they should be dragged into court and made to pay for it.