I find I have to side with Kurt although that is not to be seen as negating
your own valid points Ken.
The NSA is a special case as regards computing and security compared to what
the vast majority of us are used to in our work-a-day world. I do expect an
extreme level of security. I do expect a strict definition of who is allowed
to do what and account permissions being created accordingly. I do expect
that the person in charge of the computing side be an employee and
well-versed in the technology being used.
I also expect to win the lottery any day now. Man I'm tired of being
disappointed!
That latter point is likely the aspect that got violated. If I were the head
sys dude in that environment, the one with full admin rights everywhere, the
only person who would have equivalent rights would be my boss and both my
account and his would be 100% logged and archived to be examined by the
security wonks (I'd have a separate user account for my regular activities).
Every single account below me would be restricted to only what was needed
for them to accomplish their assigned tasks and not one bit more.
But that's just me. YMMV
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Schaefer
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2013 7:21 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Re: Finally.
Yes, I think it does.
Small orgs are much more agile than large enterprises:
- it's easy/easier to gather requirements,
- requirements have fewer conflicts (because there are fewer stakeholders)
- they don't tend to work 24x7 or require 5 9s uptime, so things can be
shutdown, upgraded, replaced, migrated with relative ease
The bigger and the more "information heavy" the enterprise is, the less
agile it becomes in terms of remediating older systems. Many of the projects
for the bank I work for (as a touch point) register hundreds of
dependencies - some over a thousand. Just moving a data centre (as an
example) is a 42 month exercise. Sometimes things get missed.
I personally haven't run into any security architects at any of the large
accounts I've worked at that have your level of confidence in the systems
and processes that they have in-place. So, either they're incompetent
(possible - I'll give you that), or the problem is more complex than you
make it out to be.
Personally, I think security in non-trivial environments is hard: how do I
vet every piece of code coming into my environment? How do I audit it
continuously? How do I make sure that no one's restored a backup somewhere?
How do I know no-one's tapped my network? A business user hasn't mis-applied
permissions to an application? Etc. How do I do all of this in a timely
manner, so that I close the holes before they're exploited? There is no
silver bullet that solves this - which is why everyone's still struggling
and we still have incidents.
Even in well run organisations, using technology largely from a single
vendor, there's still outages and things that go wrong (e.g. Microsoft's
Azure storage, or the recent O365 outage). I agree that sometimes people do
stupid things - I'm sure that happens in small environments too. But in big
environments, even with the best intentions, smart people and good
processes, things still go wrong.
Cheers
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Kurt Buff
Sent: Monday, 2 September 2013 9:52 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Re: Finally.
Nope. Does that matter? Well, I suppose you think it does, but I doubt it.
With scale should come resources, and the NSA obviously does have resources,
including people with far more training, and who of whom are smarter, than
me.
There are no excuses for this.
Kurt
On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Ken Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote:
You've designed "more secure" systems at scale (40K+ employees) in an
information heavy organisation (bank, accountancy etc.)?
Cheers
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Kurt Buff
Sent: Monday, 2 September 2013 4:01 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Re: Finally.
Aside from reading all those Le Carre novels?
I've already designed more secure systems than were obviously in place, as
have many people on this list, perhaps including you.
Kurt
On Sat, Aug 31, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Ken Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote:
And what are your qualifications/experience, that allow you to make
such a call? (I’m assuming that you have no inside knowledge of how
the NSA works, and are relying on the public speculation/allegations
at el Reg etc.)
Cheers
Ken
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Kurt Buff
Sent: Sunday, 1 September 2013 12:03 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Re: Finally.
On the evidence, absolutely.
For an intelligence/espionage operation to be so thoroughly pwned
because of such amazingly poor internal operational security, there
can be only one conclusion - management responsible for internal security
should be fired.
I'm just glad they weren't, and I hope that what Snowden took is
enough to bring them down, and that it's all revealed to the public.
Kurt
On Sat, Aug 31, 2013 at 4:20 AM, Ken Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote:
So, you’re saying that the feared NSA, which has a bunch of
un-discovered rootkits, which able to undertake some of the most
advanced espionage in the world, is managed by idiots? Seriously?
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Jon Harris
Sent: Saturday, 31 August 2013 6:17 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Re: Finally.
Generally from I have seen in state (Florida) organizations is that
they don't like promoting anyone but a moron into supervisory positions.
Occasionally someone will make a mistake and promote an intelligent
person but not often. I would suspect this is the case with the Feds
as well (worked with them too). Several times I have seen them hire
those with less brains and longer tongues and large lips over those
with brains. As long as this keeps happening then we will continue
to see this happen. It will be a long time before they get rid of
all the defective management personnel as I would think private
companies would have little to gain by keeping them (maybe why they
seem to concentrate in public jobs?) and in a government job it is MUCH
harder to get rid of them.
Jon
________________________________
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 14:34:15 -0400
Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Re: Finally.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
+13
On Aug 30, 2013 11:05 AM, "Kurt Buff" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 10:52 AM, Micheal Espinola Jr
<[email protected]> wrote:
I accidentally hit CTRL-Enter before finishing that email... and
apparently that's a shortcut to instantly-send a message in Gmail. Yay!
I
love learning new things... but anyways - So, yea, this Forbes article
was
the first I have seen that highlights the real underlying IT problem
regarding Snowden - aside from other OT issues.
<snip>
I may have missed some article by someone else somewhere, but Its
to see Forbes 'get it' before anyone else...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/30/if-the-nsa-reall
y -let-edward-snowden-do-this-then-someone-needs-to-be-fired/
--
Espi
Agreed- massive failure on the part of many people in the NSA in
implementing security procedures.
Of course, what Snowden showed, beyond that, is the massive failure
that is government policy and practices regarding
surveillance/espionage in general, so I'm actually quite happy
Snowden was able to do what he did.
Kurt
