[Cialug] SysAdmin FYI

[Matt Stanton]

The thing that bothers me most about this is not that the NSA is keeping a list of sysadmins, or that they may from time to time hack those sysadmins' personal/work computers just to get unfettered access to the systems and networks that admin controls, but that the language used in the internal NSA presentations detailing how the process is to be carried out.  It shows how one of the most overreaching arms of Big Brother is under the control of a bunch of 20-something "l33t haxx0rz", who are out to rain "PWNage" all of us with their "m4d sk1llz".

In the military, they may send thousands of 18 year olds to block bullets, but generally the people who are making the decisions as to whether we are going to put those young men in harm's way have gained at least a modicum of wisdom prior to making those calls.  Someone with some experience, who has the respect of those he is sending, and who has been chosen from among many others based on his wisdom and results is the person who is (at least theoretically) in charge.  At the NSA, they grab hundreds of recent college graduates (or maybe even people who haven't yet graduated?) and put them in front of the controls of a huge pool of technology, without any work experience OR LIFE EXPERIENCE.

We can hope that maybe the people who use the gathered information use it wisely, but the thing is, these people could be leaving backdoors all over the internet, free to be abused by anyone who knows how to take advantage of them.  If they go around breaking the firewalls and any OS security measures on the computers of systems or network admins, that leaves those networks open for the Chinese or the groups of hackers taking refuge in Russia or Romania (among other places).

-- Matt (N0BOX)

P.S. - Maybe I'm just paranoid, and maybe I don't know enough about how hackers do their work and am therefore blowing things out of proportion, but giving the reins of Big Brother's databases and collection methods to a bunch of immature l33tspe4k users seems like a dumb move to me.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer

-----Original Message-----
From: Morris Dovey <mrdovey at iedu.com>
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group <cialug at cialug.org>
Sent: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 2:21 AM
Subject: [Cialug] SysAdmin FYI

Of possible interest...

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/20/inside-nsa-secret-efforts-hunt-hack-system-administrators/
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