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Pagers are also popular among people who work in secure areas (in the sense of national security, e.g., at national labs) because they are one-way so you can br
by jessriedel 3y ago
Pagers are also popular among people who work in secure areas (in the sense of national security, e.g., at national labs) because they are one-way so you can bring them inside; they receive information but cannot transmit it out.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoDo they submit the pager for validation every time they clock in then? Seems like the perfect vector otherwise.
- skissane 3y agoKeep the pager in the secure area. Turn it on when you enter, turn it off and hand it back in when you exit. Also, I’ve been to places where they do things like “no external laptops; however you can bring your phone in-we will cover the camera with security tape, and check the tape on the way back out”. Obviously that is not what they do for classified stuff, but not everything sensitive is classified (indeed, some governments have a category “sensitive but unclassified”). And some private sector entities copy aspects of public sector security, but rarely to the same extreme, which can produce similar rules.
- hobobaggins 3y agoThey don't allow laptops but they allow phones?
- skissane 3y agoYes, that was their policy. I won’t say their name, but it was the headquarters of a major financial services firm in South Korea One of my Korean colleagues had this theory-senior executive ranks in Korea are dominated by former military officers, and as a result the corporate culture is heavily influenced by the military - including an obsession with countermeasures against corporate espionage. In practice, I don’t they were doing anything worth spying on, while the extreme security rules were a big burden on developer productivity
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThat is even more baffling then that they’d fail to see a phone with tape on it poses the same risks as the laptops they ban
- m463 3y agoa friend told me about a facility that didn't allow phones. Then there was an active shooter incident and they changed the rules afterwards.
- jessriedel 3y agoI believe the rules are aimed to keep people with clearance from being foolish, risky, or bending the rules, not to prevent dedicated spies. I don't think they're getting patted down.
- nextaccountic 3y agothis is crazy because i bet pager encryption isn't particularly strong
- ipython 3y agoThe encryption isn't too much of an issue, you're usually just paging a phone number or a code like '911' from your family who otherwise have no other way to reach you.
- ape4 3y agoStill might be useful to an adversary.
- klyrs 3y agoUnfortunately they're used in hospital settings where patient information inevitably winds up getting transmitted in the clear. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/au/security/news/vulnerabilities-and-exploits/unsecure-pagers-in-vancouver-expose-sensitive-patient-data-what-this-means-for-enterprises https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/au/security/news/vulnerabil...
- nextaccountic 3y agoI'm talking about this > Pagers are also popular among people who work in secure areas (in the sense of national security, e.g., at national labs)
- ipython 3y agoThat’s what I was talking about as well. A pager is the only mobile communication device allowed in those spaces so it’s impossible for a family member to contact you when you’re walking around otherwise.
- pc86 3y agoThe biggest concern in these environments isn't information reaching the people inside - it's those people extricating that information (intentionally or otherwise). So having a system where e.g. some scientist's family can tell them they need to call right away is super helpful and not a huge security risk because they have to go through the process of leaving before they can actually contact them. There's no [obvious] way to MITM the pager and get it to extricate any data.
- sargun 3y agoDumb question: how do these work? Specifically, how does the network know where to transmit the page, and whether to stop retransmission (if the pager is offline when originally paged).
- hobobaggins 3y agoI am wondering that too. Do they detect/record location like mobile phone towers do?
- c0pium 3y agoHow could a one-way device do that?
- c0pium 3y agoIt doesn’t, one-way really does mean one-way. Pagers are broadcast over an entire region. Regions can be as small as metro areas or as large as the continental United States.
- rtkwe 3y agoTrue one way pagers only receive if they're on at the time a page is sent out. Think a radio with a transcriber, if it's on when the page is sent it records it and plays it's notification sound. There are two-way pagers that could respond to and acknowledge pages.
- m463 3y agothat's interesting, because it means you can't track the recipient either.