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CommentRe: Is this distorting the intention? (Score 5, Informative)174

Yes. The headline is intentionally racist to generate interest. As a person with an identifiably generic American accent, I've translated between English speakers who had vastly different accents. American English is the international high standard. Queen's English is losing out, because non-rhotic accents can be ambiguous and confusing. So a real-time accent translator would be a great help to many who have trouble with the various international accents. Translating Cockney to American isn't "racist".

CommentRe: Solution? (Score 4, Insightful)47

The tracking of elected officials should be published on a public website. So every web page, every location dot, every thing they do that anyone in the government tracks of anyone without a warrant is published publicly for all people to see of all the elected officials. Along with the tracking data of everyone within some local distance (to identify associates). Just tracking them was obviously not the point, but also making that tracking available.

CommentRe:What are they? (Score 1)209

by AK Marc (#61494466) Attached to: US Warns EU Against Anti-American Tech Policy

The only way for an American living outside of the US to stop having their income taxed by the US government is to give up their citizenship (as long as they have citizenship of another country beforehand).

The parenthetical is irrelevant. It is closer to relevant if "give up" was "renounce" as the paperwork for renouncing should be rejected if the applicant is not a dual citizen, but if you give up your citizenship, you don't have to have citizenship elsewhere.

It's complicated.

CommentRe:Yes and no (Score 1)68

by AK Marc (#61391856) Attached to: How Should a Company Handle a Ransomware Attack?

I didn't say it was.

Technically correct. You didn't say anything. You simply complained. So no critique of your comment would be valid.

Their job is to give direction,

The job of the CEO is not to micro-manage. In a crisis, if they need to personally "give direction", then the company is either 5 person, or the CEO is incompetent.

From your response I gather you've not seen what the C-level executives do in a high profile emergency, and it doesn't get more high profile than your entire IT infrastructure collapsing.

I've been there for that. The CIO was in every meeting, and asked few questions, and gave exactly zero direction. The CEO drove in after hours, and literally hid in his office, waiting for the CIO to update him, and I only knew he was there because he came down and shook hands after the issue was resolved.

POS bug took out all credit card machines at a large retailer (coincidentally, it happened at closing, so the last 30 minutes, the slow time, the manual process was used), estimated loss was in the millions if the bug wasn't found and eliminated. The manual process isn't as fast or as fraud resistant, and people simply abandon purchases if the line is too long (fraud is unquantifiable, the incidence is small now, as the protections are good, but if people learned the system was down, expect the fraudsters to show up).

And the time it took to identify the bug, confirm it with the POS vendor, and implement a work around, the CEO was not there, and didn't give a single order in person, and the CIO didn't give a single order either. Though I expect one or the other would, if we weren't handling the issue as best we could, for a problem caused by a 3rd party we were making work until they could get us a firmware update to fix the underlying issue.

CommentRe:Amazing (Score 4, Insightful)102

I've had hackers try to compromise my systems. I reported it to the FBI. The response was, "If you haven't been compromised, there is no case to open".

When the FBI treats "failed cyber attack" as seriously as "failed bank robbery", we might see change. There is no point in monitoring and detection that works if the FBI won't treat an attack as a serious event.

CommentRe: Oh you mean exactly like Google or MS or anyon (Score 2)100

Nope. It's not the equipment inherently inappropriately spying on anyone. This is an outsourcing issue. Odd, when most F500 outsource, the only complaint is when someone outsources to the Chinese.

The real issue is handing admin to any contractor. Huawei is irrelevant, and only useful to trigger the racists to bash China

it's a fully confirmed fact.

It's a fully confirmed fact that "admin" outsourcers can do it, not that Huawei did anything to make themselves special, or that Huawei is doing it. If the Dutch company switched to a Dutch outsourcer and gave them root, the result would be the same, just not Chinese, so no outrage from the racists.

CommentRe:Our infrastructure is crumbling (Score 1)157

by AK Marc (#61383066) Attached to: East Coast Facing Gas Shortage Due To Ransomware Attack
Odd, I've lived through the opposite. The "engineers" (PEs and the like) are the ones saying "air gap only", and then someone runs a wire from an unsecured computer to the unsecured SCADA. The network security people said "sure, just pay for a CA, FW, and some other things", and management says "no".

Yeah, I could dial in from home to a PC, then connect through a PCAnywhere serial connection to an unsecured SCADA. The only security was username/password (PAP/CHAP) on the dial-up. That's what management demands. The engineers refused to build security into the SCADA, and the management refused to pay for proper security.

CommentRe:Our infrastructure is crumbling (Score 1)157

by AK Marc (#61383054) Attached to: East Coast Facing Gas Shortage Due To Ransomware Attack
SCADA is generally without any security. The "engineers" demand air gaps, and demand no security, because it gets in their way.

The users bypass the air gaps because security by enforcing zero functionality is stupid. Then you get a SCADA network indirectly connected to the Internet with no real security protecting it.

Building the SCADA on the Internet, and securing it appropriately is actually a better plan than what almost all SCADA networks do today.

CommentRe: Our infrastructure is crumbling (Score 1)157

by AK Marc (#61383048) Attached to: East Coast Facing Gas Shortage Due To Ransomware Attack
Having worked in a SCADA environment, the "engineers" demanded an air gap to keep the SCADA safe, then removed all security features from the SCADA, because it's air gapped.

Then someone runs a cable from an Internet connected computer to a SCADA control point, because it's convenient.

I blame the "engineers" because they deliberately designed an unsafe system, then required vigilance on the user's part to keep it safe, and we know users are idiots.

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