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Why would the company be embarrassed? The users (i.e. high level U.S. officials) did no due diligence. Of course a private company is going to take the easiest

Why would the company be embarrassed? The users (i.e. high level U.S. officials) did no due diligence. Of course a private company is going to take the easiest and cheapest route. If it goes bad, just shut down and spin up a new entity. Some speculate this was intentional intelligence gathering by the Israelis which is plausible too.

dylan604 1y ago
>Some speculate this was intentional intelligence gathering by the Israelis which is plausible too. Which does not bode well for the customers' counter intelligence abilities
n2d4 1y ago
> Some speculate this was intentional intelligence gathering by the Israelis which is plausible too. How does this make sense? If they were gathering data, why would they add a public download? Surely the Israeli officials would not want foreign powers to access this? Per Hanlon's razor, I don't think this is attributable to anything other than incompetence.
- g-b-r 1y ago
  I mean, it could theoretically have been to provide plausible deniability, but it seems extremely more likely to have been incompetence and carelessness (and if they were also sending everything to Israel, it was probably through some unencrypted ftp upload).
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Two things can be true at once. Them using their access to unencrypted messages for nefarious purposes and them being incompetent at the same time leaving that endpoint open.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  I mean, one doesn’t preclude the other. This could be an incompetent intentional intelligence gathering.
- jojohohanon 1y ago
  There’s room for both sides of the razor. The heapdumpz could be there maliciously, but incompetently made globally accessible.
  - pigbearpig 1y ago
    From the Wired article: "The archive server is programmed in Java and is built using Spring Boot, an open source framework for creating Java applications. Spring Boot includes a set of features called Actuator that helps developers monitor and debug their applications. One of these features is the heap dump endpoint," So the heapdumps being available is a Spring Boot feature so it does not appear to be malicious.
    - evrflx 1y ago
      This feature must be explicitly enabled, it is not on by default nor by accident.
      - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
        huh, I sure seem to be needing to debug this a lot, I guess I'll just leave it turned on all the time that way I can say a few seconds next time. Larry Wall says one of the virtues of being a great developer is laziness!
        szundi 1y ago
        [dead]
      - terom 1y ago
        Based on [1] it seems like one `management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*` is enough to expose everything including the heapdump endpoint on the public HTTP API without authentication. It's even there in the docs as an example. Looks like there is a change [2] coming to the `management.endpoint.heapdump.access` default value that would make this harder to expose by accident. Let's look for `env` next... [1] https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/actuator/endpoints.html#actuator.endpoints.security https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/actuator/endpoi... [2] https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/pull/45624 https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/pull/45624
- michaelt 1y ago
  Imagine you ran a spy agency and you were infiltrating signal, Facebook, Google, aws, cloudflare, and so on. Would you have them make a secure back door that could only be intentionally designed, and potentially traced back to you? Or would you just have them be incompetent in plausible, deniable ways? Nobody’s getting shot for espionage because they chose log4j and it had the shell shock bug.
donnachangstein 1y ago
> The users (i.e. high level U.S. officials) did no due diligence. But why would they? It's not their job. They have massive IT staff supporting them. "High level U.S. officials" are just executives; the pointy-haired bosses to the pointy-haired boss. Only difference is these wear little decorative pins over their breast pocket. Every Fortune 500 company has dedicated IT staff for execs; someone you can call 24/7 and say "my shit's broke" and they respond "we just overnighted you a new phone". These people couldn't even install an app on their MDM-controlled device, now the narrative has become we expect them to be making low-level IT decisions too? Next week we'll be scrutinizing Pete Hegseth's lack of thoughts on rotating backup tapes.
- Jedd 1y ago
  > ... narrative has become we expect them to be making low-level IT decisions too? I think that's a misdirection. The narrative is that: a) they were using a compromised piece of software b) they should not have been using that software - not (necessarily) because it was compromised, but because it wasn't US DoD accredited for that use case. (I understand your point that these guys are not tech savvy, and do not need to be, but they should be regulation-savvy (clearly they either are not, or willingly broke those regulations), and they should be following organisational guidelines that presumably cover the selection and use of these tools types.)
  - da_chicken 1y ago
    Yeah, and the purchase approval process is in place specifically so that someone who knows what to look for has looked at it and verified that it's an acceptable configuration. This is the exact same problem as Clinton's blackberry enterprise server. Doing it right was hard and time consuming, so they ignored that and did what they wanted. Only we should be a lot more demanding that our officials in 2025 have a better basic understanding of the importance of computer security than in 2005.
- hristov 1y ago
  Their massive it staff provides them with a way to communicate securely and they ignore it deliberately so that their communications are not preserved for history or for future court cases.
bigbacaloa 1y ago
[dead]
aucisson_masque 1y ago
The Israeli would have made it secure so only them can access the data because knowing someone else's secret is worth something only when it's still a secret, if china, Russia and everyone can read the log of the American government it's worth nothing.

dylan604 1y ago

>Some speculate this was intentional intelligence gathering by the Israelis which is plausible too. Which does not bode well for the customers' counter intelligence abilities

n2d4 1y ago

> Some speculate this was intentional intelligence gathering by the Israelis which is plausible too. How does this make sense? If they were gathering data, why would they add a public download? Surely the Israeli officials would not want foreign powers to access this? Per Hanlon's razor, I don't think this is attributable to anything other than incompetence.

g-b-r 1y ago
I mean, it could theoretically have been to provide plausible deniability, but it seems extremely more likely to have been incompetence and carelessness (and if they were also sending everything to Israel, it was probably through some unencrypted ftp upload).
barbazoo 1y ago
Two things can be true at once. Them using their access to unencrypted messages for nefarious purposes and them being incompetent at the same time leaving that endpoint open.
notpushkin 1y ago
I mean, one doesn’t preclude the other. This could be an incompetent intentional intelligence gathering.
jojohohanon 1y ago
There’s room for both sides of the razor. The heapdumpz could be there maliciously, but incompetently made globally accessible.
- pigbearpig 1y ago
  From the Wired article: "The archive server is programmed in Java and is built using Spring Boot, an open source framework for creating Java applications. Spring Boot includes a set of features called Actuator that helps developers monitor and debug their applications. One of these features is the heap dump endpoint," So the heapdumps being available is a Spring Boot feature so it does not appear to be malicious.
  - evrflx 1y ago
    This feature must be explicitly enabled, it is not on by default nor by accident.
    - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
      huh, I sure seem to be needing to debug this a lot, I guess I'll just leave it turned on all the time that way I can say a few seconds next time. Larry Wall says one of the virtues of being a great developer is laziness!
      - szundi 1y ago
        [dead]
    - terom 1y ago
      Based on [1] it seems like one `management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*` is enough to expose everything including the heapdump endpoint on the public HTTP API without authentication. It's even there in the docs as an example. Looks like there is a change [2] coming to the `management.endpoint.heapdump.access` default value that would make this harder to expose by accident. Let's look for `env` next... [1] https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/actuator/endpoints.html#actuator.endpoints.security https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/reference/actuator/endpoi... [2] https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/pull/45624 https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/pull/45624
michaelt 1y ago
Imagine you ran a spy agency and you were infiltrating signal, Facebook, Google, aws, cloudflare, and so on. Would you have them make a secure back door that could only be intentionally designed, and potentially traced back to you? Or would you just have them be incompetent in plausible, deniable ways? Nobody’s getting shot for espionage because they chose log4j and it had the shell shock bug.

donnachangstein 1y ago

> The users (i.e. high level U.S. officials) did no due diligence. But why would they? It's not their job. They have massive IT staff supporting them. "High level U.S. officials" are just executives; the pointy-haired bosses to the pointy-haired boss. Only difference is these wear little decorative pins over their breast pocket. Every Fortune 500 company has dedicated IT staff for execs; someone you can call 24/7 and say "my shit's broke" and they respond "we just overnighted you a new phone". These people couldn't even install an app on their MDM-controlled device, now the narrative has become we expect them to be making low-level IT decisions too? Next week we'll be scrutinizing Pete Hegseth's lack of thoughts on rotating backup tapes.

Jedd 1y ago
> ... narrative has become we expect them to be making low-level IT decisions too? I think that's a misdirection. The narrative is that: a) they were using a compromised piece of software b) they should not have been using that software - not (necessarily) because it was compromised, but because it wasn't US DoD accredited for that use case. (I understand your point that these guys are not tech savvy, and do not need to be, but they should be regulation-savvy (clearly they either are not, or willingly broke those regulations), and they should be following organisational guidelines that presumably cover the selection and use of these tools types.)
- da_chicken 1y ago
  Yeah, and the purchase approval process is in place specifically so that someone who knows what to look for has looked at it and verified that it's an acceptable configuration. This is the exact same problem as Clinton's blackberry enterprise server. Doing it right was hard and time consuming, so they ignored that and did what they wanted. Only we should be a lot more demanding that our officials in 2025 have a better basic understanding of the importance of computer security than in 2005.
hristov 1y ago
Their massive it staff provides them with a way to communicate securely and they ignore it deliberately so that their communications are not preserved for history or for future court cases.

bigbacaloa 1y ago

[dead]

aucisson_masque 1y ago

The Israeli would have made it secure so only them can access the data because knowing someone else's secret is worth something only when it's still a secret, if china, Russia and everyone can read the log of the American government it's worth nothing.