Thread

'We hacked the FBI:' Hackers say they have data on all FBI employees

817 points · 614 comments · spenvo

jacobgold · 1790110395 · focus · HN ↗
At this point, no one seems capable of keeping a large database safe. I assume all medical and biographical information that exists is in the hands of the major state actors.
China hacked 22.1 million records of US government employees:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Office_of_Personnel_Manag...
1. coldpie · 1790111715 · focus · HN ↗
  It is unthinkable to me that anyone believes there is such a thing as computer security after so many years of nonstop hacks and leaks. If you have a computer and it is connected to a network with access to the Internet, assume that computer is semi-public. Meaning, if someone was interested enough in accessing your computer, they could do it. Do not hook any computer with access to anything that would be devastating if it was made public to the Internet. Do not put anything that would be devastating if it was made public onto someone else's Internet-connected computers.
  For example, do not hook your goddamn water or traffic or electricity infrastructure up to the goddamn Internet, and then, do fire the guy who suggested it.
  The correct analogy for computer security is not locks and keys and doors and gates. It is a house in a floodplain. Your house will not survive the flood of it hits you. Do not store anything critical or irreplaceable in that house.
  1. sippingabonedry · 1790112393 · focus · HN ↗
    A generation of coders who can't/are scared to write "Hello world" in C without Claude doing it for them has not helped.
    passwordoops · 1790112578 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you're exaggerating a bit.
    Does this answer your question?
    /s
    sippingabonedry · 1790112905 · focus · HN ↗
    I've seen it.
    People flaunting their credentials in multiple languages, then sweating bullets and apologizing profusely when they see
    int t = 4;
    You can either code or you can't; the language is merely a vehicle.
    BoxwoodSeed · 1790114211 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree, but then learning to code isn't much of a hurdle. It's a similar effort to learning vim. The difficult part is getting to know the language. I never coded in Haskell for example and learning to use that language would take effort. On the other hand, it would be pretty easy with an LLM at hand.
    It might even help in figuring out whether Haskell would be a good fit. Something I couldn't do, as I do not know the language. Then again, it's not a question that really gets asked much in a corporate setting. Most things are just solved in a few popular languages, whether that makes the most sense or not.
    autoexec · 1790115755 · focus · HN ↗
    > learning to code isn't much of a hurdle... The difficult part is getting to know the language.
    I agree. The people who depend on chatbots to write their code for them won't have either of those skills though. They don't know (or are in the process of forgetting) how to code, and they're missing out on the opportunity to really learn the language by turning off their brain and letting a bot spoon-feed them code
    lovich · 1790117355 · focus · HN ↗
    We’re like 6-7 tiers deep on that aren’t we? Does every c developer understand the instruction set on the cpus their code is executing against? Does every c#/java/other managed memory language deeply understand their garbage collector?
    It’s abstractions all the way down and most people aren’t going to have an intimate understanding of every layer, and it’s not economically worth it for the vast majority to even try
    autoexec · 1790117855 · focus · HN ↗
    Abstractions are very different from having a bot regurgitate code for you. Abstractions are a part of the language you're using. LLMs just give you results (of highly variable quality) and if you lack a solid understanding of the language being used that result gets blindly accepted as valid (especially if it manages to 'do the thing' when you test it). Learning how to type a prompt is not the same as coding or learning a language.
    fn-mote · 1790128412 · focus · HN ↗
    > learning to code isn't much of a hurdle
    Huh? I wish…
    Actually, if by “learning to code” you mean “writing good usable code”, my experience is that many people struggle to code. Especially when you consider planning a (human-level) complex project.
    Maybe you don’t know those people. I work with them every day.
    sneak · 1790118524 · focus · HN ↗
    Two things:
    Claude hasn’t been around for a generation yet.
    It’s a good thing that people are scared to hand write memory-unsafe languages. 50 years of exploitation has finally sunk in…
    mysterydip · 1790119238 · focus · HN ↗
    How do we know the models are writing memory-safe code? How will people who haven’t written it audit the output?

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