6 ms·

Remember, you don't have to be unhackable, just sufficiently unimportant to not be worth burning any novel capability on

INTPenis 1y ago
That's right, just keep your head down, smile and nod, do your job and nothing will ever go wrong. /s
- brigandish 1y ago
  A more charitable view would be to act like a zebra in a herd of zebra rather than a zebra in a herd of horses.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Charitable, but also privileged. Many people only have the option of looking like a cow in a cattle yard.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- GreenWatermelon 1y ago
  You /s but this is actually valid advice for someone who just wants to get by in life and is content.
  - energy123 1y ago
    Downvoted, but so much evil is caused by people due to their distorted yet sincerely believed moral virtues. Not due to an absence of morality but because of it. Whatever you have in your mind as the image of quintessential evil is probably caused by those people's sincerely held moral system, a moral system they believed in as strongly as you do yours. So people who just live their lives and do not grasp on external change are fine by me.
    - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
      are you saying that you've downvoted me, or just pointing out that I've been downvoted? If the former, why?
    - 6510 1y ago
      Unless you believe in the extinction of bad people the burden of restoring normality is for everyone else. Those who are not part of the solution are not part of the problem, they are the problem. You cant have the problem without them and you cant have them without having the problems.
  - throwaway_dang 1y ago
    Do the bombs dropping in war zones avoid apolitical people? If not, when is the appropriate time to get sufficiently political to avoid having a bomb dropped on one's head?
    - adrianN 1y ago
      Very few individuals can influence whether or not bombs drop. The best way to avoid having bombs dropped on your head is moving to a place where fewer bombs are dropped.
      - jimnotgym 1y ago
        But many people together, although none of them individually influencial enough, certainly can influence where bombs get dropped. When you start successfully reaching many people you can be sure that security agencies will start watching you.
        adrianN 1y ago
        In areas where bombs are dropped there is generally a large majority in favor of stopping that, but they have little influence.
    - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
      "Keeping your head down" means not doing anything that would cause a government (especially your own) to want to disappear you. If you vocally oppose your tyrannical government, you won't avoid a bomb on your head. In the best case you'll get a bullet through your head. Worst case, you spend a lifetime in a prison.
  - INTPenis 1y ago
    True enough. I'm content as long as I don't hear the news anywhere. Recently had my dad over and he can't go 5 minutes without the news on in the background. Really hard to be content then.
  - ragazzina 1y ago
    >someone who just wants to get by in life and is content "It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does."
    - lisbbb 1y ago
      That's stupid. It's not all an illusion. The scale definitely matters. If you are buying stocks you can make a profit as a little guy that if the big guys tried to do it they would quickly become the "market maker" and the strategy would not scale up. It's the same with criminal activity or insurgency--small mosquitoes are ignored while the major threats get swatted hard.
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  I don't think that's the interpretation, but make your computer systems disconnected from what you do. If relevant adversaries don't know which computer to burn the exploit on, then they won't burn it on the right one.
aa-jv 1y ago
I think the more important maxim to follow is this: if you didn't manufacture your own sillicon, you are infinitely more hackable than if you did. Alas, no matter how hard we try to trust our compilers, we must also adopt methods to trust our foundries. Oh, we don't have our own foundries? Yeah, thats the real problem. Who owns the foundries?
- pydry 1y ago
  When has anybody ever been hacked via a foundry? While having your own foundry is undoubtedly a good thing from the perspective of supply chain resiliency, if hacking is what you're worried about there are probably easier ways to mitigate (e.g. a bit more rigor in QC).
  - aa-jv 1y ago
    Do you know what "your" CPU is doing? Do you really?
    - lisbbb 1y ago
      I always figured the spy crap was programmed right in to the chips themselves and the BIOS.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    "When" is what we will likely never know, given the subterranean depth of trust and visibility there. Probably never...
  - kragen 1y ago
    Roughly everybody you've ever met, 100% of the time. There's a reason the NSA can get Intel CPUs without IME and you can't. Given the incentives and competence of the people involved, it's probably an intentional vulnerability that you can't escape because you don't fab your own chips. There's strong circumstantial evidence that Huawei got banned from selling their products in the US for doing the same thing. And the Crypto AG backdoor (in hardware but probably not in silicon) was probably central to a lot of 20th-century international relations, though that wasn't publicly known until much later. And this is before we get into penny-ante malicious hardware like laser printer toner cartridges, carrier-locked cellphones, and HDMI copy protection. No amount of QC is going to remove malicious hardware; at best, it can tell you it's there.
shiandow 1y ago
Given that choice I'd rather choose to be unhackable.
itsnowandnever 1y ago
I think people don't understand what this means either. the nation-state "agencies" that can and will get into your network/devices can do so because they would employ tactics like kidnapping and blackmailing a local telco field technician. or if it's your own government, they can show up with some police and tell them to do whatever and most will comply without even receiving a proper court order. so unless you're worth all that trouble, you're really just trying to avoid being "low hanging fruit" compromised by some batch script probing known (and usually very old) vulnerabilities
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  plenty of big telcos push back to gub'mnt orders. they usually get a warrant. or they just pay the $2100 per API call to download it from the telco or social media company. it's not improper if you agreed to give a company the ability to sell your data to anyone -- the government is anyone, and they have the money.
andai 1y ago
So the advice would be for an activist to choose extremely boring forms of activism? ;)
- broodbucket 1y ago
  If you're at that level where some powerful entity really takes an interest in you, you just have to operate as if you're always compromised, I think.
lisbbb 1y ago
I like the "gray man" concept, but can't predict when you end up on the radar or why. As a young graduate student, I once wrote an article that rebuffed the government's "Total Information Awareness" trial balloon and suddenly found myself embroiled in much unexpected controversy, including some big name journalists e-mailing me and asking questions. You just never know when you stumble into something that you're not supposed to know about and what might happen.

INTPenis 1y ago

That's right, just keep your head down, smile and nod, do your job and nothing will ever go wrong. /s

brigandish 1y ago
A more charitable view would be to act like a zebra in a herd of zebra rather than a zebra in a herd of horses.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Charitable, but also privileged. Many people only have the option of looking like a cow in a cattle yard.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
GreenWatermelon 1y ago
You /s but this is actually valid advice for someone who just wants to get by in life and is content.
- energy123 1y ago
  Downvoted, but so much evil is caused by people due to their distorted yet sincerely believed moral virtues. Not due to an absence of morality but because of it. Whatever you have in your mind as the image of quintessential evil is probably caused by those people's sincerely held moral system, a moral system they believed in as strongly as you do yours. So people who just live their lives and do not grasp on external change are fine by me.
  - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
    are you saying that you've downvoted me, or just pointing out that I've been downvoted? If the former, why?
  - 6510 1y ago
    Unless you believe in the extinction of bad people the burden of restoring normality is for everyone else. Those who are not part of the solution are not part of the problem, they are the problem. You cant have the problem without them and you cant have them without having the problems.
- throwaway_dang 1y ago
  Do the bombs dropping in war zones avoid apolitical people? If not, when is the appropriate time to get sufficiently political to avoid having a bomb dropped on one's head?
  - adrianN 1y ago
    Very few individuals can influence whether or not bombs drop. The best way to avoid having bombs dropped on your head is moving to a place where fewer bombs are dropped.
    - jimnotgym 1y ago
      But many people together, although none of them individually influencial enough, certainly can influence where bombs get dropped. When you start successfully reaching many people you can be sure that security agencies will start watching you.
      - adrianN 1y ago
        In areas where bombs are dropped there is generally a large majority in favor of stopping that, but they have little influence.
  - GreenWatermelon 1y ago
    "Keeping your head down" means not doing anything that would cause a government (especially your own) to want to disappear you. If you vocally oppose your tyrannical government, you won't avoid a bomb on your head. In the best case you'll get a bullet through your head. Worst case, you spend a lifetime in a prison.
- INTPenis 1y ago
  True enough. I'm content as long as I don't hear the news anywhere. Recently had my dad over and he can't go 5 minutes without the news on in the background. Really hard to be content then.
- ragazzina 1y ago
  >someone who just wants to get by in life and is content "It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does."
  - lisbbb 1y ago
    That's stupid. It's not all an illusion. The scale definitely matters. If you are buying stocks you can make a profit as a little guy that if the big guys tried to do it they would quickly become the "market maker" and the strategy would not scale up. It's the same with criminal activity or insurgency--small mosquitoes are ignored while the major threats get swatted hard.
impossiblefork 1y ago
I don't think that's the interpretation, but make your computer systems disconnected from what you do. If relevant adversaries don't know which computer to burn the exploit on, then they won't burn it on the right one.

aa-jv 1y ago

I think the more important maxim to follow is this: if you didn't manufacture your own sillicon, you are infinitely more hackable than if you did. Alas, no matter how hard we try to trust our compilers, we must also adopt methods to trust our foundries. Oh, we don't have our own foundries? Yeah, thats the real problem. Who owns the foundries?

pydry 1y ago
When has anybody ever been hacked via a foundry? While having your own foundry is undoubtedly a good thing from the perspective of supply chain resiliency, if hacking is what you're worried about there are probably easier ways to mitigate (e.g. a bit more rigor in QC).
- aa-jv 1y ago
  Do you know what "your" CPU is doing? Do you really?
  - lisbbb 1y ago
    I always figured the spy crap was programmed right in to the chips themselves and the BIOS.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  "When" is what we will likely never know, given the subterranean depth of trust and visibility there. Probably never...
- kragen 1y ago
  Roughly everybody you've ever met, 100% of the time. There's a reason the NSA can get Intel CPUs without IME and you can't. Given the incentives and competence of the people involved, it's probably an intentional vulnerability that you can't escape because you don't fab your own chips. There's strong circumstantial evidence that Huawei got banned from selling their products in the US for doing the same thing. And the Crypto AG backdoor (in hardware but probably not in silicon) was probably central to a lot of 20th-century international relations, though that wasn't publicly known until much later. And this is before we get into penny-ante malicious hardware like laser printer toner cartridges, carrier-locked cellphones, and HDMI copy protection. No amount of QC is going to remove malicious hardware; at best, it can tell you it's there.

shiandow 1y ago

Given that choice I'd rather choose to be unhackable.

itsnowandnever 1y ago

I think people don't understand what this means either. the nation-state "agencies" that can and will get into your network/devices can do so because they would employ tactics like kidnapping and blackmailing a local telco field technician. or if it's your own government, they can show up with some police and tell them to do whatever and most will comply without even receiving a proper court order. so unless you're worth all that trouble, you're really just trying to avoid being "low hanging fruit" compromised by some batch script probing known (and usually very old) vulnerabilities

red-iron-pine 1y ago
plenty of big telcos push back to gub'mnt orders. they usually get a warrant. or they just pay the $2100 per API call to download it from the telco or social media company. it's not improper if you agreed to give a company the ability to sell your data to anyone -- the government is anyone, and they have the money.

andai 1y ago

So the advice would be for an activist to choose extremely boring forms of activism? ;)

broodbucket 1y ago
If you're at that level where some powerful entity really takes an interest in you, you just have to operate as if you're always compromised, I think.

lisbbb 1y ago

I like the "gray man" concept, but can't predict when you end up on the radar or why. As a young graduate student, I once wrote an article that rebuffed the government's "Total Information Awareness" trial balloon and suddenly found myself embroiled in much unexpected controversy, including some big name journalists e-mailing me and asking questions. You just never know when you stumble into something that you're not supposed to know about and what might happen.