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General Alexander: NSA to implement two-man rule for sysadmins
General Alexander mentions that NSA is now in process of implementing a two-man rule for NSA system administrators.
At 1:08:10, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/220343
A system administrator is one that actually helps operate/run,
set the conditions, the auditing and stuff on a system or portion
of the network.
When one of those persons misuses their authorities this is a
huge problem.
So, working with the director of National Intelligence, what
we are doing is working to come up with a two-person rule and
oversight for those and ensure that we have a way of blocking
people from taking information out of our system.
This is work in progress. We're working with the FBI on the
investigation. We don't have all the facts yet. We've got to get
those. And as we're getting those facts, we are working through
our system.
Director Clapper has asked us to do that, and providing that
feedback to the rest of our community.
Initially I thought it meant something like pair programming. But it seems more like some kind of linux plugins to enable two-factor auth, where sysadmins will need another sysadmin to approve every `sudo`? How else can they implement this?
- gesman 13y agoNSA also plans to deploy company cars for NSA personnel with two steering wheels. Both drivers will need to agree upon the direction before car will obey. And none of the drivers will not be allowed out of the car unless someone from outside will open the door.
- makerops 13y agoThe problems start when they say fuck it, and start driving motorcycles to and from work.
- w_t_payne 13y agoDon't trust the geeks! They can use those computery-thingamajigs to do stuff!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- amalag 13y agoSo in other words, they have access to everything but the sysadmins could access things without the court order. Now they will try to adhere to the court orders by instituting some sort of two-person rule. We don't know how much data they are storing either.
- pkinsky 13y agoRemember Assange talking about how the presence of organizations like wikileaks would impose additional operating costs on institutions operating under conditions of secrecy? This is that.
- ColinWright 13y agoMore discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5901540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5901540
- thesmileyone 13y agoSo in other words, they don't really care about someone with PRISM access "misusing" their authority, all they care about is someone with PRISM access becoming a whistleblower. Suprise, suprise...