5 ms·

Why is it always the Russians or Chinese? Why isn't there a American or Western European scientist/cosmonaut committing similar mistakes/blunders?

lkozma 13y ago
Because you are reading American/Western European news.
thejosh 13y ago
That you hear of anyway.
slacka 13y ago
I don't know about Russian, but when I lived in China, I discovered that the Chinese expect PCs to have malware. From my tailor to our factories, every machine I used was infected. Opening a new web page on someone else’s PC always started a game of wack-a-mole to close all the popups. Even the pirated XP CDs they'd sell everywhere came with malware pre-installed.
a1a 13y ago
Before assuming they are the ones "always committing mistakes/blunders" please provide source or at least some examples. You are making use of the logical fallacy "Complex Question Fallacy" - http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-question/ http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-questio... - and I do not approve.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  I don't think winter_blue meant what you think he/she meant. The question is why we hear these stories more often than american-made blunders. Which I am not even very sure we do.
ghshephard 13y ago
Different cultures, different attitudes towards these things. I was recently in Aschaffenburg (Germany) doing interoperability tests with some of our networking equipment and a large SCADA vendor. About two hours into the tests, we ran into some problems, which we quickly identified as being related to the firewall on one of the test laptops in their lab having a very restrictive firewall rule (wouldn't allow ping). We had to wait for the better part of two hours while they got approval to adjust the firewall rules to allow ping from another device in the same lab. Note that this was a lab laptop, and these were technically sophisticated people - they understood the implication of allowing ping - it's just that their policy/procedures with regards to security were very, very strict. I can guarantee you, in any interop tests I've done in Silicon Valley - there would be zero friction (even with the utility companies, enterprise software vendors, scada vendors) around opening up icmp on a lab laptop firewall. I cite this as an example where Americans (at least those in Norcal) are more lax regarding security than another culture (in this case, whatever was prevalent in the part of Germany Aschaffenburg is located in)
- kmasters 13y ago
  You can guarantee that? I dont think so, Im not a sysop but if I was, you would need to explain why ICMP needs to be open. Whether Im in Norcal or not. Most sane organizations are going to turn off ping, its not a cultural thing and it doesnt seem like you faced any friction since you got it opened in 2 hours. Ive been working here in norcal my whole life and I dont see a culture of lax security in shops that have actual security requirements. Its not the country is the quality of the network administration team.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    I've been a network engineer for 15+ years, and I'm saying that 95% of all employees I deal with in the Bay Area would not think twice about opening up a firewall rule and allowing you to ping a lab machine, particularly when the purpose of your engagement was to verify end-end network connectivity. They would make the call, themselves, on the spot. The reason I bring this up, is that I've been told by a number of my colleagues that german culture, in particular, has a tendency to be more rule structured than in the United States, so, if there was a security policy in place, it had a greater chance of being adhered to in Germany, than in the Norcal. And the entire point of my little anecdote was to make it clear, that there is broad diversity of attitudes towards rules, policy - and that the "United States" doesn't have a lock on following rules/policy.
  - darklajid 13y ago
    Most sane organizations are going to turn off ping Why? That never made sense in my world. Now, I'm not a network ops guy, but .. why would you ever do that? And that ignores related moves (like blocking all of icmp, while we're at it).
dimitar 13y ago
Because people from poorer countries like these use their employers computers to download movies, games and music from p2p networks. The Westerners have more disposable income so they a) use their own computers for entertainment and b) buy stuff from amazon and itunes instead of searching for warez. So its about income and culture. Company cars are also viewed as a perk and its not unusual to take a company car for a picnic. Employers are usually fine with this - it improves morale and is less costly than actually paying more.
- malloc2x 13y ago
  An interesting idea. s|movies, games, music|games/software| and it might be more plausible. (.mkv, .mp3 or even the .rmvb that's weirdly popular in China are hardly common attack vectors.) However, if we're talking about China, and the demographic of employees that get sent for international matters, then we're definitely not talking about people that can't afford their own computers. I would posit this holds for nearly any country (except North Korea?) Taking your argument as just "a culture of grabbing untrustworthy software from anywhere is the reason", it becomes more persuasive to me.
fakeer 13y ago
You read the book just like the publisher published and finally press guy printed it.

lkozma 13y ago

Because you are reading American/Western European news.

thejosh 13y ago

That you hear of anyway.

slacka 13y ago

I don't know about Russian, but when I lived in China, I discovered that the Chinese expect PCs to have malware. From my tailor to our factories, every machine I used was infected. Opening a new web page on someone else’s PC always started a game of wack-a-mole to close all the popups. Even the pirated XP CDs they'd sell everywhere came with malware pre-installed.

a1a 13y ago

Before assuming they are the ones "always committing mistakes/blunders" please provide source or at least some examples. You are making use of the logical fallacy "Complex Question Fallacy" - http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-question/ http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-questio... - and I do not approve.

rbanffy 13y ago
I don't think winter_blue meant what you think he/she meant. The question is why we hear these stories more often than american-made blunders. Which I am not even very sure we do.

ghshephard 13y ago

Different cultures, different attitudes towards these things. I was recently in Aschaffenburg (Germany) doing interoperability tests with some of our networking equipment and a large SCADA vendor. About two hours into the tests, we ran into some problems, which we quickly identified as being related to the firewall on one of the test laptops in their lab having a very restrictive firewall rule (wouldn't allow ping). We had to wait for the better part of two hours while they got approval to adjust the firewall rules to allow ping from another device in the same lab. Note that this was a lab laptop, and these were technically sophisticated people - they understood the implication of allowing ping - it's just that their policy/procedures with regards to security were very, very strict. I can guarantee you, in any interop tests I've done in Silicon Valley - there would be zero friction (even with the utility companies, enterprise software vendors, scada vendors) around opening up icmp on a lab laptop firewall. I cite this as an example where Americans (at least those in Norcal) are more lax regarding security than another culture (in this case, whatever was prevalent in the part of Germany Aschaffenburg is located in)

kmasters 13y ago
You can guarantee that? I dont think so, Im not a sysop but if I was, you would need to explain why ICMP needs to be open. Whether Im in Norcal or not. Most sane organizations are going to turn off ping, its not a cultural thing and it doesnt seem like you faced any friction since you got it opened in 2 hours. Ive been working here in norcal my whole life and I dont see a culture of lax security in shops that have actual security requirements. Its not the country is the quality of the network administration team.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  I've been a network engineer for 15+ years, and I'm saying that 95% of all employees I deal with in the Bay Area would not think twice about opening up a firewall rule and allowing you to ping a lab machine, particularly when the purpose of your engagement was to verify end-end network connectivity. They would make the call, themselves, on the spot. The reason I bring this up, is that I've been told by a number of my colleagues that german culture, in particular, has a tendency to be more rule structured than in the United States, so, if there was a security policy in place, it had a greater chance of being adhered to in Germany, than in the Norcal. And the entire point of my little anecdote was to make it clear, that there is broad diversity of attitudes towards rules, policy - and that the "United States" doesn't have a lock on following rules/policy.
- darklajid 13y ago
  Most sane organizations are going to turn off ping Why? That never made sense in my world. Now, I'm not a network ops guy, but .. why would you ever do that? And that ignores related moves (like blocking all of icmp, while we're at it).

dimitar 13y ago

Because people from poorer countries like these use their employers computers to download movies, games and music from p2p networks. The Westerners have more disposable income so they a) use their own computers for entertainment and b) buy stuff from amazon and itunes instead of searching for warez. So its about income and culture. Company cars are also viewed as a perk and its not unusual to take a company car for a picnic. Employers are usually fine with this - it improves morale and is less costly than actually paying more.

malloc2x 13y ago
An interesting idea. s|movies, games, music|games/software| and it might be more plausible. (.mkv, .mp3 or even the .rmvb that's weirdly popular in China are hardly common attack vectors.) However, if we're talking about China, and the demographic of employees that get sent for international matters, then we're definitely not talking about people that can't afford their own computers. I would posit this holds for nearly any country (except North Korea?) Taking your argument as just "a culture of grabbing untrustworthy software from anywhere is the reason", it becomes more persuasive to me.

fakeer 13y ago

You read the book just like the publisher published and finally press guy printed it.