Almost as if those “backdoors only for the good guys” ideas are bad ideas afterall…
something something leopards and faces
Russians and iranians are too stupid to figure them out bro, we own the IP🤡
If only the US had a cohesive, cooperative, positive reinforcing, mutually benefiting coordinated government organization staffed by people that mutually trusted one another and their leadership for the protection and benefit of their nation.
Best I can do is a hollow shell piloted by the most corrupt individuals which only exists to the extent that it channels tax dollars into donors pockets.
What I’ve learned over the last few years:
- Only academics, commentators and researchers truly care about collective security, where the whole world gains because certain technology and is commonly agreed to be off-the-table
- Everyone else (that is, corporations including government and private enterprise) only cares about zero-sum security - your insecurity is my security gain - but they pretend in their messaging to care about collective security. It explains why nation states continue to demand purpose-built backdoors into hardware and encryption implementations, and why employers are content to treat your mobile phone like their own property, demanding apps, RATs, etc. be installed
- Most cybersecurity is thinly-veiled compliance, and amounts to certified bureaucrats implementing products from that small bunch of vendors with the means to influence policymaking
- The public messaging around security always uses the noun in the abstract, which to me is telling. Security for whom? Security against what? Security for what? See also social media and the term “safety”.
- Anyone implementing real security is seen as suspicious and likely criminal and subjected to greater scrutiny by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
no good. beyond using a VPN and dnssec, how can end users protect themselves from this?
Probably make sure you have your own firewall on your private network, and if anything is exposed to the internet, make sure it’s locked down as tight as you can. For the record, very few people outside of professionals and enthusiasts are running Cisco equipment in their homes.
Against this specifically?
- Don’t ever expose your firewall/router management access to the Internet.
- Install firmware updates asap.
- Don’t be a an attractive target for nation-state hackers.
Additionally, ensure that you are following best practices for your own data by enabling MFA wherever you can and dont re-use passwords for any service.
Meanwhile, the UK is asking for blanket access to all data from Apple.
Also, how expensive is it to get updates from Cisco and patch those routers?
