Understand the world we live in?

[Janic]

Econologue expert
Re: Understand the world we live in?





18/09/22, 10:06
Well, it's not true but it could, right?

[Janic]

18/09/22, 10:06
humus

Well, it's not true but it could, right?

this is true for a part of the population that has retained some ethical values ​​(defamation is not one of them! obviously); for others it has gone "out of fashion".

[Obamot]

[Exnihiloest]

 
Did you know that it's been 7 years since the sea ice melted?

"Arctic sea ice 'to melt by 2015'
Arctic sea ice could completely melt away by the summer of 2015, destroying the natural habitat of animals like polar bears, one of Britain's leading ocean experts has claimed."

"The absence of ice during the peak of summer would rob polar bears of their summer hunting ground and threaten them with extinction"


Well no, teddy is doing well.
You will have understood (well not everyone, I have the names), the "world in which we live" is not and will never be the one of which the fundamentalists of the ecological religion or the "leading experts " in pseudo-science, these climatologists at the boot of the so-called green industry and politicians. As for the covid, the latter brandish the climate as a threat to exercise their power over the citizens without them rebelling, and the most tart among them submit to it, accept anything and in addition preach the good word to useful idiots of the ecological clergy.

[GuyGadeboisTheBack]

(Int Mail 15/11/2022)

[Exnihiloest]

 

Law N°3 of the green industry and its armed branch, environmentalism:

"We only need energy when it's windy and sunny".

[GuyGadeboisTheBack]

Aren't you tired of beating the charm after a while?

[Exnihiloest]

Aren't you tired of beating the charm after a while?

Oh yes ! When the charm of the pathological warmists stops, I will stop too. In the meantime, I take it upon myself, duty of resistance...

[GuyGadeboisTheBack]

[GuyGadeboisTheBack]

Twitter accused of serious breaches by its ex-chief of security, a legendary hacker

Times are tough for Twitter. In the midst of a legal duel with Elon Musk concerning the cancellation of its takeover of the social network, the company is at the same time accused of unacceptable shortcomings in terms of computer security by Peiter "Mudge" Zatko, who had been recruited at the end of 2020 to put it back. of the order. A pioneer of ethical hacking, the man is a revered figure in the sector, and known for his great integrity.

New scandal for Twitter, and not the least. A complaint filed by a whistleblower and made public on August 23 by CNN and the Washington Post reveals that the company has "extreme deficiencies" in terms of IT security, that it does not make any real effort to combat the spam, and that it has been compromised by foreign government spies.

Parag Agrawal, former CTO and current CEO of the company since November 2021, is heavily incriminated by the document, which totals nearly 200 pages and was sent last month to several American government agencies, including the Department of Justice, the FTC (which regulates business practices), and the SEC (regulator of financial markets).

He concludes that the service poses a danger to the personal information of its users, but also to the national security of the United States and even to democracy. Several American senators have indicated that they want to take up the case.

An unfailing reputation

For its part, Twitter brushes off the accusations out of hand and attributes them to the bitterness of an employee who was fired in January 2022 for "insufficient performance". The man in question is Peiter Zatko, and was recruited as head of security by Jack Dorsey at the end of 2020 after the social network was hacked.

The problem with this answer is that Zatko, better known by his pseudonym "Mudge", is a living cybersecurity legend. A pioneer in the sector (notably discoverer of "buffer overflow" attacks), he was one of the first "ethical hackers" in history, testifying before the American Congress in 1998 to warn about the importance of computer security. A prestigious government career followed, followed by executive roles in the private sector, notably at Google and Stripe.

His credibility is therefore particularly high, and he does not hide in his interview with the Washington Post that the decision to place himself as a whistleblower was the result of an "ethical compulsion". We also note that he had started this procedure before his dismissal (as well as well before Elon Musk expressed an interest in taking over the company). He judges that he was just kicked out because he insisted on warning about the elementary failings he had observed.
Aberrant shortcomings

Peiter Zatko describes implausible practices, including access by thousands of employees (nearly half of the company's workforce) to the platform's critical controls. It's not hard to believe. For example, an employee with low responsibilities (customer service) had deleted the account of Donald Trump, then President of the United States, on his last day at the company.

Following the Jan. 6 uprising, in which Donald Trump supporters attempted to storm key government bodies, Zatko became concerned that a Twitter employee could manipulate the social network to make the situation worse. He would have tried to secure access to production, something that would have proven impossible because... all engineers have access, and there is no logging of access or actions performed. There would be no dedicated development environment, everything would be done directly in production.

Clearly, no way to verify who is doing what, or even that what action has been performed. Which makes him say that Twitter has never properly complied with its obligations following its agreement with the FTC in 2011 concerning the management of the personal data of its users. The company would not even know what happens to the data when a user erases it (understand that it could remain stored somewhere). And to make matters worse, four out of ten workstations across the company are not properly secured, according to an internal report.
Poorly managed data centers

And it doesn't stop there. Zatko argues that the network infrastructure itself is misunderstood internally, and that its 500 servers are themselves in an unacceptable state of vulnerability. Half of them are said to run on outdated software, which doesn't support basic features like data-at-rest encryption, or receive security updates.

The whistleblower had informed the regulators of this in February by means of a letter. Twitter would also not have enough redundancy capacities, nor adequate procedures to restart its data centers, which could in theory put the social network out of service even in the event of a minor problem.
Significant espionage risks

Another problem raised and not the least: vulnerability to the actions of certain foreign governments whose interests would be contrary to those of the United States. Peiter Zatko reveals that shortly before his departure, the US government would have communicated to Twitter evidence that at least one of its employees was an agent of a foreign intelligence service.

It should be noted that a former manager of the company was sentenced two weeks ago for espionage in the service of Saudi Arabia. In addition, the whistleblower argues that the Indian government would have forced the social network to hire one of its agents. He also points to an exchange with Parag Agrawal in which the latter allegedly argued in favor of following the censorship rules requested by Russia (which was ultimately not the case following the invasion of Ukraine).

Twitter executives implicated

Parag Agrawal and his lieutenants are said to have constantly tried to discourage Peiter Zatko from sharing his findings with the board of directors, for example urging him to talk about it orally and not through a written document, asking him to skillfully sifting through information to give the illusion that progress has been made, or going behind him to suppress a report on government propaganda and disinformation that he commissioned from an outside firm. This is identified as Alethea Group, and its report pointed to insufficient staffing and working conditions where teams "stumble from one crisis to another".

CNN reports that Zatko is more lenient towards Jack Dorsey, with the whistleblower believing that he genuinely seemed to desire an improvement in the service's security issues, however his report highlights that he was extremely withdrawn from his obligations during this last year and that his teams had little contact with him.
A boon for Elon Musk

If Peiter Zatko's action is not directly linked to the dispute between Elon Musk and Twitter, it could work in the billionaire's favor. The latter had shown himself to be particularly cavalier during the takeover procedure, the rate of spam on the platform (which he puts forward as a reason for canceling his takeover) not appearing, for example, among the reasons that could lead to the end of the agreement. But Peiter Zatko's statements are much more serious and could in theory constitute "material damage" sufficient to justify this reversal.

It should be noted that Peiter Zatko also directly mentions the issue of spam in the prelude to his report and that he presents certain elements as supporting Musk's position, but that his arguments on the matter are in fact unconvincing. This short passage, with little relation to the rest of his alert, seems at best to be a tactic to amplify the media echo of his action, and at worst the result of a poor legal understanding of the nature of the dispute between Elon Musk and Twitter (it must be said that the entrepreneur also blurs the tracks). A reminder that great expertise is still not transferable from one field to another.

Anyway, this scandal is the business of the boss of SpaceX and Tesla. Elon Musk's lawyers say they had already solicited Peiter Zatko in the context of the trial, simply on the basis of his abrupt departure, just as they solicited Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of whom we know that he was involved in the submarine buyout project. Fluke or fluke, Musk could in any case get away with it, even if nothing is decided yet.
Julien Bergounhoux

https://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/t ... e.N2035892