back to article NSA boss reveals top 3 security nightmares that keep him awake at night

Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the NSA and the US Cyber Command, has told delegates during his keynote address at RSA 2016 the three things that keep him awake at night. His first fear is an online attack against US critical infrastructure, which he said was a matter of when it will happen, not if. Citing the recent Ukrainian …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We'll help defend against the bad guys the second we can stop defending ourselves against the NSA

    1. Ole Juul

      The devil within

      In fact the NSA is its own worst enemy.

      "Citing the recent Ukrainian power grid hack as an example, "

      And isn't it interesting that his best example is factually questionable? Seriously, why don't these guys just go back to discussing how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: The devil within

        "And isn't it interesting that his best example is factually questionable? Seriously, why don't these guys just go back to discussing how many angels can dance on the point of a pin."

        Now I'm a bit confused.

        Who wrote STUXNET and did that not destroy someones' critical infrastructure?

      2. fedoraman
        Coat

        Re: The devil within

        I thought that Sir Terry (and Neil Gaimen) had established that the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin was one - as long as it was the gavotte.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yawn...

      Society blithely building it's networked technology up to a point where any old script kiddie anywhere can turn off its civilisation completely? Oh how dull, who is going care about that?

      I always thought that the N in NSA stood for National, so it belongs to the people. So presumably it exists and does what it does purely because the elected representatives think it should, and they'd only be reflecting the overall wishes of their electorate.

    3. James Micallef Silver badge

      So, actually, (3), "the terror-rists" isn't actually a threat, just him worrying that a specific group of people will act on threats (1) and (2).

      More importantly, the way to mitigate threats 1 and 2 is strong encryption and data security implemented by private individuals and corporations, which is the exact opposite of what the 3-letter agencies are asking for.

  2. Paul Crawford Silver badge

    Simplified list

    All 3 points come down to one basically: We, as people, have accepted piss-poor security in so many computer applications for years, but now we have put important stuff within an electronic arm's reach of world+dog to have a go if they feel like it.

    The current arguments about cryptography for law enforcement, etc, is a stupid distraction flamed by clueless politicians and civil servants and distracts from the above. We have found ways of catching and prosecuting criminals when they talked in person and did not write stuff down for many many years, so while it might be nice to get phone contents, it should not be necessary.

    Sadly we need to start making a big deal about businesses and gov departments that expose important stuff (from personnel/medical records, through to infrastructure like power and gas) to the world, and/or collect sensitive stuff they don't really need. Make damn sure that those in charge can face personal prosecution if they fail to manage the process, fail to have a system in place to check and fix things, and fail to get outside support to check its good enough.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Megaphone

      Re: Simplified list

      @ Paul Crawford

      What are you, some kind of communist? Don't you know that shareholders and corporate execs aren't satisfied with OWNING the oil well, pipeline and gas station? Don't you understand that they need to be able to access the number of barrels coming out of the well every hour, and how much they are making on that, and then how much oil is in the pipeline, and how much they are making on that, and how much gasoline is coming out of the pumps at the gas station, and how much they make on that? The importance of securing this infrastructure so that we don't have pipelines exploding or so ambulances, fire trucks and delivery vans can pull into the gas station and find that the pumps are actually working is unimportant, as long as the endless, on-demand panopoly of lucre is on display!

      Our capitalist way of life depends on it!!

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Re: Simplified list @Marketing Hack

        Yes, quite so, Marketing Hack, and the defending and promoting of the indefensible and oppressive by the likes of an Admiral Michael Rogers, head of the NSA and the US Cyber Command type [and Blighty is blighting itself with similar clones and drones of the model, as are most probably many more entangled state enterprises] is ...... well, a Titanic Folly identifying the Fools' Tools ....... and in a smarter and getting even smarter age and Live Operational Virtual Environment, are they of zero future value in any Present Marketing Space which refines and defines the Madness and Mayhem in AIMarket Places with CHAOS for Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems.

        Such be nature of the current beasting reality and virtual reality ...... IT does not suffer the Folly of Fools either gladly or badly in Advancing IntelAIgent Markets.

    2. Primus Secundus Tertius

      Re: Simplified list

      People say they want secure, bug-free systems; but will they pay for them? Hell, no!

  3. Christoph

    And all three of those absolutely require strong crypto with no backdoors.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Item 2

    > Number two on his insomnia list was data tampering.

    And a good mitigation against tampering is strong encryption. Can anyone see the irony here?

    //straight face icon

    1. Kurt Meyer

      Re: Item 2

      @ 2+2=5 "And a good mitigation against tampering is strong encryption. Can anyone see the irony here?"

      From the article; "Rogers, who is on the record as supporting strong crypto..."

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: Item 2

      Yes, but not for you

    3. Britt Johnston

      Re: Data tampering

      This is a real problem in industry databases, as managers come, redefine terms or scope, and go. It is a kind of revisionism, and over time can degrade a company's history. It reduces the useful life of basic infrastructure systems, accelerating their replacement time to every 10 - 20 years. Mergers, legislation and reorganisations speed the decay.

      Equating company management to non-state terrorists is a bit heavy though.

  5. g00se
    Headmaster

    Is that American Dad?

    Hint: None of them are Apple

    None of them IS Apple

    FTFY

    1. Uffish

      Re: Is

      None has been singular or plural since at least the ninth century. I'm not a grammar boffin so I am not qualified to say that you are wrong but I will say that you are not exclusively right.

    2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Not so fast: English is an analytic language; not a synthetic one.

      I draw your attention to the note halfway down this page:

      In recent years, the SAT testing service has considered none to be strictly singular. However, according to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage: "Clearly none has been both singular and plural since Old English and still is. The notion that it is singular only is a myth of unknown origin that appears to have arisen in the 19th century. If in context it seems like a singular to you, use a singular verb; if it seems like a plural, use a plural verb. Both are acceptable beyond serious criticism."

      Note the emphasis I have added.

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Not so fast: English is an analytic language; not a synthetic one.

        None of IT is Apple.

        None of THEM are Apple.

        The singular/plural lies in what you are excluding.

        Or, considering none to be a contraction of "not one", not one would always have to be plural (zero being considered as plural). But "not one of it are Apple" doesn't sound right.

        I wish I hadn't automatically upvoted the grammar nazi simply on the basis the American Dad title made me laugh.

        1. JeffreyJames

          Re: Not so fast: English is an analytic language; not a synthetic one.

          Ya'll be trippin'. If youse people could get past your collective arse and focus, puh-lease!

        2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

          Re: Not so fast: English is an analytic language; not a synthetic one.

          @TRT

          Both "none of it" (absence of a single, probably continuous, entity or trait) and "none of them" (absence of multiple, probably discrete, quantities) are ways of saying nothing; the subject of both sentences is zero. And, anyway, if we use the object of an of-clause to determine plurality, then my phrase "the subject of both sentences is zero" would have to be rewritten "the subject of both sentences are zero" While, if your theory about zero being plural is true, wouldn't we'd say "Nothing are due to Apple"?

          There just isn't a right way on this one. We can delete the qualifying of-clause and still argue about whether it's "none is Apple" or "none are Apple." Both are in widespread use.

          1. TRT Silver badge

            Re: Not so fast: English is an analytic language; not a synthetic one.

            Not really.

            "the subject of both sentences is zero" is correct because the "is" refers to the first definite noun in the sentence; "the sentence". None is an indefinite pronoun. "Them" and "it" are definite pronouns.

            "Nothing" is a contraction of "No" and "Thing". "Thing" is singular, which is why "Nothing are due to Apple" sounds wrong. I was talking about "none" which, from Mirriam-Webster, means "Not any", "Not one", "No part", and comes from a contraction of "Not one", in Middle English pronounced "nan". It's the same in the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries.

            It's not my idea that zero is a plural; I checked before I posted and got it from quora.com, Mirriam-Webster and BBC's language section. Apparently the French treat "zero" as a singular.

            I was wondering why the thing about "none" being singular arose when "not one" is the same as the definition of "plural" anyway. Is it from French, where zero is a singular? Sounds kind of pretentious. Though I persist in using "data" in the plural and steadfastly refuse to budge from this position, even though the authoritative sources appear to have given up the fight on that one and say it can be either.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Not so fast: English is an analytic language; not a synthetic one.

          > Or, considering none to be a contraction of "not one"

          Full etymology here:

          <http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-non2.htm>

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    US critical cyber infrastructure?

    "Admiral Michael Rogers .. first fear is an online attack against US critical infrastructure"

    Don't connect US critical infrastructure to the Internet?

    "Citing the recent Ukrainian power grid hack as an example"

    Technicians on the ground have stated no 'cyber' attack took place. The Ukrainian power grid was taken down by explosives.

    "Number two on his insomnia list was data tampering"

    Implement a full irrevocable audit trail on the data and don't put your secret records on the Internet.

    "His third nightmare was down to the actions of non-state terrorist groups"

    I think he means anyone who criticizes US foreign policy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: US critical cyber infrastructure?

      "Don't connect US critical infrastructure to the Internet?"

      To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't (directly).

      However, since there are requirements for remote parties to send in billing data, this kind of thing is usually handled by site to site VPN's over the internet.

      The billing systems are usually set in a secure position further into the security layer, usually accessible via proxies and you can bet there will be IDS/IPS taps etc.

      There will always be a need for *some* connectivity between the critical networks and these internal secure services (such as billing etc.) - so whilst there is no *direct* path from the internet to these SCADA networks, there is a daisy chain of systems that can be followed if you know what you are doing etc.

      The exercise for the owners of these networks then becomes a question of layers, monitoring and incident response.

    2. phil dude
      Megaphone

      Re: US critical cyber infrastructure?

      @walter bishop

      Implement a full irrevocable audit trail on the data and don't put your secret records on the Internet.

      We can start with the websites of governments, newspapers and corporations.

      The last few decades has seen the "blurring" of what used to be fact via the update process.

      Scientific results we can (mostly) reproduce - historical facts we cannot.

      Is it not enough that we have ISP's and other data inter-mediaries rewriting webpages?

      P.

  7. Graham Marsden
    Facepalm

    So...

    ... basically none of the things that our politicians are using to scare us into accepting that they should have the ability to snoop on everything we do and every website we visit and everyone we talk to and...

    (Need a Big Brother slapping forehead icon!)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So...

      Should?

      Why are you talking in a conditional future tense when Distopia has been withj us for at least the last 10 years?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Summary

    Essentially, what his three bogeypeople are:

    (1) Russia or China - make that Russia because China is just building over the South China Seas, and they will want to reuse infrastructure,

    (2) Volkswagen - because they make better cars no one buys American any more and this has impacted the economy, and

    (3) Daesh.

    Interesting choice of targets.

  9. Captain DaFt

    One more thing to keep him awake at night

    The things that the paranoid worry others are doing usually turn out to be the things that they themselves are doing, and are afraid of being caught at.

    1. Ammendiable to persuasion..

      Re: One more thing to keep him awake at night

      The psychological term for that is "projection".

      If someone is worried about people gossiping about them, that's because that's what they do. If a business person is worried about folks stabbing him in the back, that's what he/she is doing. If our government is worried about cyber attacks, well..

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Angel

        Re: One more thing to keep him awake at night

        Yes, thieves think everyone else is a thief

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One more thing to keep him awake at night

      You mean like it getting oiut that they already have rear entrances into all of the publically approved Encryption schemes and Tim Cook?

    3. JeffreyJames

      Re: One more thing to keep him awake at night

      LOL...just like an episode of Steve Wilkos. :p

  10. Palpy

    Smart grid. For one thing.

    How does an increasingly complex power network spread across a few hundred thousand square kilometers respond quickly and intelligently to sudden fluctuations in the grid -- without relying on a com network which is at some level exposed to attack? I don't know that it can be done. And realistically, building the infra for a dedicated secure network would bust the chops of most power companies.

    I'm not arguing that it isn't a fine idea to keep everything important disconnected from all other networks. I might suggest, humbly, that it won't happen in the real world. Or not very often, anyway.

    Perhaps it might be productive to focus instead on a single-purpose, hardened OS, and not run industrial automation on Windows. OpenBSD on hard lockdown, sort of.

    Or, more likely, I'm just as much in cloud-cuckoo-land as the worst of them.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Smart grid. For one thing.

      "And realistically, building the infra for a dedicated secure network would bust the chops of most power companies."

      It shouldn't bust the chops of most telecoms companies. What do you think the power companies used before they had the internet to do their coms?

      Nevertheless something other than Windows wouldn't be a bad choice. Dependence on an OS that can be obsoleted at will by a vendor isn't good.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Smart grid. For one thing.

      > How does an increasingly complex power network spread across a few hundred thousand square kilometers respond quickly and intelligently to sudden fluctuations in the grid

      As I understand it (from visiting a potential customer who does this stuff), the processing is localised, very high performance, and triple-redundant. Since any comms network is at risk of outages, my understanding is that the controller of the grid connection cannot depend on messages from "mission control" & instead samples the connected HT lines and analyses the data to work out for itself what the grid is doing.

      I think the customer was going to use QNX or VXworks on the SBC; though the real-time control is all embedded stuff on an enormous FPGA.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've got one...

    Along with everything else in America, why not just outsource the security project to the Chinese.

    -A bad beginning makes a bad ending.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I've got one...

      Don't laugh, because whilst China probably isn't in that mix, some of it at least is being outsourced to Indian firms.

      1. EnviableOne

        Re: I've got one...

        And that worked out well for TalkTalk

  12. heyrick Silver badge

    Right...

    So the head of a bunch of secretive spooks is a keynote speaker and we're supposed to trust a word of what he says? Come on, it's basic social engineering to push an agenda.

    1. FromTheRoot

      Re: Right...

      I wonder these days what this Agenda is......! I fear it may not have our best interests at heart, at least in the short-term, who knows about the long-term. Perhaps they know something more than we do and are actually benevolent. Till then,.....hmmmmm

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Devil

        Re: Right...

        its evidence for Alien infiltration, or they found that Vampires and werewolves exist and need some method to ID them - its all for our own good you know

  13. Anonymous Blowhard

    Strong crypto is the answer to his fears

    Let's look at his three fears from the viewpoint of strong cryptography:

    1) Attacks on Infrastructure

    Properly used, strong cryptography is going to make this harder for the attackers; possibly to the point of making it not worth trying.

    2) Data Tampering

    Strong cryptography is definitely the answer here; if you don't have the keys, you can't get at the data.

    3) Hostile Action

    Hostile action, against infrastructure or data, will only be hampered by strong cryptography; and the opposite is true, "our" back-doors become vulnerabilities for "them" to exploit.

    So, in summary, the Admiral's nightmares will only be worse in a world of government mandated weak cryptography; turns out he should be on our side after all.

    1. The Islander

      Re: Strong crypto is the answer to his fears

      No. 2 may occur based on foreign intent but executed from within.

      The article's context may well suggest contamination on a grand / bulk scale and is valid. But I for one would be just as vexed over internal, subtle and directed attacks.

      Eternally vigilant etc. What's not to like in our future utopia .. I like the flavour exemplified in Brazil myself.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Strong crypto is the answer to his fears

        The Film or the Country?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Strong crypto is the answer to his fears

      Get real - we have "strong crypto" now but it keeps letting us down (well, the implementation does, or it gets misused, or ignored). How many times has Open SSL turned out to be flawed, how many dodgy certificate authorities are out there, etc, etc, etc.

      To use encryption to allow stuff to happen and keep the bad guys out and be 100% confident about it to protect everything, we'd have to throw out everything we have now and do it all again, properly. Which would involve also solving the trustable identity problem, for which we have only very poor solutions at the moment.

  14. DasWezel
    IT Angle

    Eh?

    "What happens when they use cyber for destruction?" he asked

    ... What? That sentence reads like it was an excerpt frrom the Daily Mail.

    1. hplasm
      Facepalm

      Re: Eh?

      Arrg! Cyber!!

      Kill it with fire!!

      What is wrong with these people...?

      1. TRT Silver badge

        Re: Eh?

        In my world, 'cyber' is the request you make for your fifth and above pint.

  15. Nifty Silver badge

    Data tampering. Add Blockchain. Fixed.

  16. Tom 7

    I'd have more time to criticise these dick heads

    but I'm a bit busy encrypting some white noise for them to keep themselves amused.

    1. TRT Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: I'd have more time to criticise these dick heads

      I ran a sample of the white noise gathered from the background hiss of a popular US FM radio station through a self-learning decryption algorithm once. It was a voice repeatedly telling me to obey...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Re: I'd have more time to criticise these dick heads

        just obey, I mean your wife, the local preacher, your dog...

        1. TRT Silver badge

          Re: I'd have more time to criticise these dick heads

          It could have been e-bay; I'm a little hard of hearing sometimes.

      2. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: I'd have more time to criticise these dick heads

        They live, trt. They Live!

  17. Stevie

    Bah!

    See my worst security nightmare is that technology obsessed politicians and policemen spend so much time dithering over how to guard against nebulous threats they let someone fly an airliner into my office window.

    My worst technology nightmare is the hacked google car cruise missile.

  18. Big_Ted

    This man needs to get on message.

    Everyone else tells us its to protect children, stop crime and then protect against terrorists etc

    Doesn't he care about them ? Surely he knows his first words and sleepless night cause are the children.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like the government needs to buy a bit of NSX...

    Protecting the critical infrastructure could be as simple as some micro segmentation.... Let's watch VMware save the day and make some more money.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds like the government needs to buy a bit of NSX...

      Are you a paid employee for this crappy solution?

  20. Christian Berger

    If the NSA would actually see that as a problem...

    ... they would mandate for minimal security standards when it comes to SCADA systems. They would, for example, lobby for mandatory code reviews of such systems, including the source of the operating system they use. (That would lead to simpler operating systems as code reviews get more expensive the more code you've got. Less code leads to less bugs and less security vulnerabilities)

    Instead the NSA wastes our money for spying on everybody, claiming that it would help them catch that one stupid "terrorist" using hotmail to communicate.

  21. A Ghost
    Big Brother

    The potential for a world-changing event is massive right now.

    1: Connecting vital infrastructure to the internet. Check.

    2: Creating super malware to destroy infrastructure not connected to the net. Check.

    3: Dishonest politicians who blatantly lie making vote winning policies (think of the kiddies). Check.

    4: Dishonest politicians making up technical policy as they go along. Check.

    5: Dumbed down and stupid population that just does not care. Check.

    6: Abundance of real enemies with real motives and means to bring it all down. Check.

    7: Refusal of Dishonest politicians to listen to even their tech advisors. Check.

    8: Paranoia and megalomania rife at the highest levels of government. Check.

    9: Internet in early days and a false sense of security because of no Black Swan event, yet. Check.

    10: Vital infrastructure connected to the net, infrastructure busting off-line malware in the wild. Check.

    Yes, point ten is the same as points one and two, but it needed to be said twice. No one is listening anyway.

    Just because it has not happened yet, does not mean it will not happen tomorrow or the next day.

    These are the facts of the matter and we are heading for the perfect storm. It's unbelievable that any systems are internet facing, but some are, so there you go. It's unbelievable that malware is actively being written to target offline installations (stuxnet, Iran etc. usb keys found in car parks as a vector), but it is so there ya go. How much of a threat stuxnet et al are to nuclear power stations I have no idea, but I would imagine that if you go making a habit of something like that, something nasty will occur as an unintended consequence.

    It's also a fact that there are some seriously deranged people on this planet, that would rejoice at causing a nuclear power station here to blow up, or a dam burst, or just simply taking out the national grid for 24 hours. Now, I expect that nuclear power stations aren't connected to the net, though it wouldn't surprise me if they were, but that's all by the by, there is enough out there to cause some real mayhem. I'm surprised no one has done it already. But they will. And probably quite soon (say in the next few years).

    Add on board (see points 3,4,7 above) the fact that dishonest politicians are actively going against the advice of their tech people, and deliberately weakening the system. This is insanity. It is provable insanity. It is criminal insanity. The whole fucking lot of them are behaving as if they are auditioning for the next bond film arch-villain role.

    The will to hurt us, nay, to destroy us is strong - very strong. Some people are prepared to give their lives just to kill a few people with a suicide vest. Hacking, or rather, cracking, sorry, into vital infrastructure is child's play when you probably won't even get caught, if successful.

    When the shit hits the fan, the dumb population will only have itself to blame that they allowed this situation to arise. It will be them that get it in the neck. First. Then everyone will become a victim. The rich, the powerful, the law makers, the criminally insane who orchestrated this time bomb.

    It might not even be ideology driven. It may be ransomware. A shot across the boughs to start with, say taking out london for a whole day so it has no electricity. Never mind a few bitcoins, what about a million here or there?

    The rich, the strong, the military, the government think it will not impact their lives, but it will change them forever. And it's coming. It's going to happen. On what scale I have no idea, but it will.

    All it will take is one attacker with sufficient motive and means to exploit a single vulnerability. And just like 9-11, all our lives will be changed forever. Again.

    And the bastards will use that as currency, letting no good crisis go to waste, to stamp their boot on our head. Again. Forever.

    We need to be worried about these shitheads. They have us marked as legitimate targets and potential hostile enemies. They are absolutely shitting themselves. Yes, they are laughing about how well their dystopian society has turned out. About how they can do wtf they like and not just get away with it, but be applauded for it too. Just like the rich despise the poor, just for being poor.

    But their system has worked a little too well in controlling us. They are getting cocky now. They are starting to make mistakes as they show their bravado, insulting us, prodding us, monitoring us - seeing what we will and will not accept. How they can fool us with false flag events and outrage. How they can control us by telling us we are being spied on every minute of the day. How they beat us down with economic warfare as well as psychological warfare. It's the only game in town! NO one has a proper job anymore. The only job worth having is a non-job, as they pay the most and carry the least responsibility. The bigger you are, the more you can get away with. Dido Harding is but one of a million examples.

    I fear the great powers that be have already pushed things over. Not they or the general population knows it yet, but the storm is coming. And it will be mighty. There are just too many things that can go wrong already, and instead of righting the system, they weaken it even more.

    If I was a terrorist (apart from saying what I think on the internet using words), and I wanted to do maximum damage, this is where I would be concentrating my efforts. That is what terrorists do. Remember the IRA? The goal is to cause as much confusion and damage as possible, with the least amount of resources and the least amount of risk to yourself. So you can live to fight another day, as you can not face the enemy head on, so you use asymmetrical warfare. It's hardly an unknown concept.

    So after I had done a feasibility study on all of this, I would gather my resources, keep my powder dry, and get all of my ducks in a row before pulling the trigger. Better hope it is a ransomware event when London goes dark for 24. That can be dealt with. By paying. Not ideal, but lives will be saved. However, the nefarious terrorist I have in mind, would take out the national grid in London, perhaps burst a dam or two, a couple of severe train crashes, cripple telecoms so no emergency services could be summoned etc. etc. - in other words a doomsday scenario. Do it all at the same time, just like when the IRA bombed a place and then left another bomb for the emergency services to cause more carnage.

    Do it for no other reason other than you can. And it is the so called 'humans' in power that are exposing us to the risk of this. Fat lot of good your army will do you then. All your fighter jets. Your artillery. Your economic sanctions. Your dirty proxy wars. The time of reckoning will have come.

    I'm not the only person warning against this. I really don't know what I'm talking about with regards to the systems in place. Then again, I'm not a terrorist and just want my health and for my family to have their health, and maybe have a bit of happiness in this short time we have on planet Earth. Fat chance eh, you fuckers!

    I am not the enemy. Stop spying on me. Stop nannying me. Leave me alone.

    Those with power, true power, would be well advised to maybe start taking some anti-psychotic medication for their paranoia. For in their paranoia, they have lost their grip on reality, seeing reds under the bed everywhere. All the while, our shared enemies who would do us real harm, are plotting in dark basements, with an internet connection and the screensaver from the matrix scrolling in the background, as they prepare for the Mother of all battles.

    9-11 was a terrible event, whoever was responsible for it, but there was no need for it to be such a world-changing event as it was. It was used as an excuse. It had to happen to bring in the draconian laws they already had planned. But what will the world be like when a dam is burst and hundreds of thousands of people are killed in an horrific death. Or a nuclear explosion of some kind?

    That is what our dear leaders are setting us up for. A true darkness over our land, the likes of which none of us have seen. Yet.

    Provable criminal insanity. No less. It's only extreme cognitive dissonance keeping the boat afloat for now. The law of unintended consequences will hold sway, such is the Tao...

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      The potential for a world-changing events are massive right now.

      Messages received and understood, A Ghost, and fully deserving of upvoting.

      Not everyone is deaf, dumb and blind to crazy current events and practically helpless and virtually useless in exploiting and expanding them to XSSXXXX success and whatever else that leads to.

      Greater IntelAIgent Games On. Who Dares Win Win Wins All.

  22. Venaax

    Hahaha. Hahahahahaaaa.

    So he's going around and complaining about this shit, while crap in the government is insecure as all hell, and actually has default passwords fucking everywhere? Really?

    And then going and REPRIMANDING people who attempt to change this?

    Fix your fucking culture, US Government.

    (Duck "Malwarejake US Cyber Command" and it should get you what you want.

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