back to article Azure goes quiet, Huawei Canada ban urged, US Senators are after Google, and more

This week we caught wind of another Facebook blunder, a dodgy Patch Tuesday bundle, and more China trouble. Here's the rest of what went down. Fake Flash, fake money, real malware Stop us if you'd heard this one before: but unsolicited Flash download pages on random sites can be a bit dodgy. Palo Alto Networks says it has …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Given the existence of Wireshark

    "...Huawei to put backdoors and monitoring gear into the hardware, then use those points to intercept and spy on communications..."

    Give the existence of Wireshark, you'd think that somebody would have copied-and-pasted a crystal clear example by now.

    I'm not claiming that it doesn't exist, just that nobody seems to have bothered providing an example that would justify all this.

    Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? They put up huge pictures of the missile installations at the UN and said, "Look..." and "Don't wait for the translation."

    In the 1980s, Clifford Stoll famously tracked a spy through the maze of computers. In the 1980s!!

    Ref. his book, 'The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage'

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Given the existence of Wireshark

      US says our backdoors in Canadian telecoms are just fine but no one else's are allowed...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Given the existence of Wireshark

        US says please keep buying Cisco and Apple. It's not just about our backdoors but preventing the rise of China and doing a little for the dire US debt.

    2. J. R. Hartley

      Re: Given the existence of Wireshark

      They ripped off Cisco source code, used it in their own hardware, comments and all.

  2. ratfox

    a colonel makes $78,000-$100,000 base pay a year

    To be honest, I'm surprised by how low this is. Don't colonel have a rank just below general, and are supposed to lead about a thousand people?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    As things stand right now...

    ... I have zero faith in any security regime based on Xeon, and several other, lines of silicon despite any assurances from Microsoft.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: As things stand right now...

      Realistically if security and privacy matters then you must keep stuff on-premises.

      Of course if all you are looking for is cloud backup (not live data or VMs) then you could encrypt the data before it leaves your network, but I would not trust any cloud provider's own mechanism given the various oppressive "national security" laws in most countries that could be used to force them to add a backdoor. Which they are then legally obliged to lie about its non-existence.

  4. K
    Terminator

    keep pace with what the private sector is offering...

    Can't see this having much success, talented IT security geeks (whether whitehat or blackhat) go where they feel most appreciated, or to work on the really juicy stuff..

    That's why, I'm off to area 51!

  5. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Oh really ?

    "the Army says it will be commissioning officers into is cyber security programs with the rank of colonel"

    And now I can't help but picture a roomfull of PFYs with colonel shoulderboards. Feels like I'm looking at Major Valerian all over again, and that doesn't feel any more credible now than it did then. The Army should just stop with the grade nonsense, create a special designation/grade with the salary that will give them the required clout to get talent, and move on. These guys are hackers, colonels they are not and they never will be.

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: Oh really ?

      Very much so, but it is much the same in many UK businesses where a good engineer gets promoted to being a poor manager in order to get a pay rise.

      The army, etc, should keep its general rank structure based on experience and progression but have some pay "bonus" for having cyber qualifications / job role / etc to bring the salary in to alignment with the job market.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh really ?

      Though you are correct as regards knowledge of the army, administrative skills and so on, each of these people could easily have a full colonel's level of effect.

      I believe the same thing happened in WW2 when particularly good pilots - another uncommon skill - could be full colonels in their early 20s.

  6. RyokuMas
    Facepalm

    Five an a half months early...

    "The aim, said Google, was to give journalists and those worried about surveillance a reliable, secure connection."

    April 1st is over five months away...

    1. Tom 35

      Re: Five an a half months early...

      The GOP don't care about "people worried about surveillance", they are upset about what happens when you do a google image search for idiot.

    2. LauraSmith

      Re: Five an a half months early...

      Why don't google releases a tool that will allow companies to set up and maintain google cloud. It will also give people a secure connection.

      Market is full of tools to setup and maintain servers for DigitalOcean like Kinsta and Cloudways etc. But their is nothing to manage google cloud.

  7. GnuTzu
    Joke

    DigitalOcean cloud

    An ocean in the cloud? Must be full of flying fish.

    Couldn't help it, but I did set the "joke alert" icon.

  8. J. R. Hartley

    Never forget Marconi

    Mortally wounded by BT picking Huawei kit over the superior Marconi kit. We used Marconi at NTL too. Nowadays your DSLAM is probably Huawei or ECI. Both shite.

    Ah well. When will we learn.

    Also, Nortel. The Chinese had complete access to Nortel's entire network for over ten years. Just think about that. Emails, business plans, hardware/software code. Everything.

    1. JCitizen
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Never forget Marconi

      I've had clients that told me what was going on in Washington and other networks, and I was shocked to see they contracted our country away to the PRC wholesale! It took them more than 5 years before they finally started to admit their mistakes - but that is no excuse when you have whistle blowers making a huge noise and no one was listening back then! It is absolutely disgusting to me!!

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