Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
White House Evaluating New Court Ruling Declaring NSA Data-Collection Program Illegal
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
Eloïse
Eloïse,
 User Rank: Apprentice
10/14/2016 | 4:56:09 AM
Re: Must We Confront the Question? 
how can we stop the NSA? There is more privacy ..
RetiredUser
RetiredUser,
 User Rank: Ninja
5/8/2015 | 5:19:46 PM
Must We Confront the Question?
In Docket No. 14-42-cv, it is stated that we "must confront the question whether a surveillance program that the government has put in place to protect national security is lawful.  That program involves the bulk collection by the government of telephone metadata created by telephone companies in the normal course of their business but now explicitly required by the government to be turned over in bulk on an ongoing basis."

It is noted in that same Docket that:

"Considering the issue of advocacy in the context of deliberations involving alleged state secrets, and, more broadly, the leak by Edward Snowden that led to this litigation, calls to mind the disclosures by Daniel Ellsberg that gave rise to the legendary Pentagon Papers litigation."

This is interesting as I have read many articles in which Daniel Ellsberg is quoted praising Snowden's actions as indicators of his moral character.

On that note of "considering" Dr. Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation places in every email the following statement:

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider  
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,      
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example.

What all of this means, then, is that Information Security is more than the sum of its technical pieces, more than the data in various states and the need to protect that data in each state. But does that mean we as caretakers of sensitive data have to change our mindset because of "the question" posed in Docket No. 14-42-cv, or posed by Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg, or Dr. Stallman? No, not at all. Because as caretakers of data it is not our job to ask that question, or to answer it. It is to protect the data we've been charged to protect.

I would say that once you start going down the road of asking the question, you may need to step away from your InfoSec role. I don't mean you step away from moral obligation - by all means, answer that call if you feel in your gut, as Snowden did, something is wrong and you believe you must help right that wrong. But don't mix that activity up with Information Security, with National Security, because that is how holes are formed and how we make mistakes when we aren't fully focused on the job we were tasked with.


Edge-DRsplash-10-edge-articles
I Smell a RAT! New Cybersecurity Threats for the Crypto Industry
David Trepp, Partner, IT Assurance with accounting and advisory firm BPM LLP,  7/9/2021
News
Attacks on Kaseya Servers Led to Ransomware in Less Than 2 Hours
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  7/7/2021
Commentary
It's in the Game (but It Shouldn't Be)
Tal Memran, Cybersecurity Expert, CYE,  7/9/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
Everything You Need to Know About DNS Attacks
It's important to understand DNS, potential attacks against it, and the tools and techniques required to defend DNS infrastructure. This report answers all the questions you were afraid to ask. Domain Name Service (DNS) is a critical part of any organization's digital infrastructure, but it's also one of the least understood. DNS is designed to be invisible to business professionals, IT stakeholders, and many security professionals, but DNS's threat surface is large and widely targeted. Attackers are causing a great deal of damage with an array of attacks such as denial of service, DNS cache poisoning, DNS hijackin, DNS tunneling, and DNS dangling. They are using DNS infrastructure to take control of inbound and outbound communications and preventing users from accessing the applications they are looking for. To stop attacks on DNS, security teams need to shore up the organization's security hygiene around DNS infrastructure, implement controls such as DNSSEC, and monitor DNS traffic
Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2023-33196
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Craft is a CMS for creating custom digital experiences. Cross site scripting (XSS) can be triggered by review volumes. This issue has been fixed in version 4.4.7.
CVE-2023-33185
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Django-SES is a drop-in mail backend for Django. The django_ses library implements a mail backend for Django using AWS Simple Email Service. The library exports the `SESEventWebhookView class` intended to receive signed requests from AWS to handle email bounces, subscriptions, etc. These requests ar...
CVE-2023-33187
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Highlight is an open source, full-stack monitoring platform. Highlight may record passwords on customer deployments when a password html input is switched to `type="text"` via a javascript "Show Password" button. This differs from the expected behavior which always obfuscates `ty...
CVE-2023-33194
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
Craft is a CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web.The platform does not filter input and encode output in Quick Post validation error message, which can deliver an XSS payload. Old CVE fixed the XSS in label HTML but didn’t fix it when clicking save. This issue was...
CVE-2023-2879
PUBLISHED: 2023-05-26
GDSDB infinite loop in Wireshark 4.0.0 to 4.0.5 and 3.6.0 to 3.6.13 allows denial of service via packet injection or crafted capture file