Thread

1. 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2015_Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;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&#x27;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. galangalalgol · 1790121986 · focus · HN ↗

         Air gaps are not magical, they will not stop the flood. The electrical grid has to communicate with itself to load balance, so you can run dedicated wires with giant cut-me signs pointing at it, or you can use symmetrical key encryptors to route it over the intenet. You needed to use the encryptors anyway, so why not. If bad software gets in via thumb drives music disks etc (and it will of the flood is pointed at you) it can still do bad things. But so can a hunting rifle pointed at a transformer station. That nearly blacked out all of socal once.

         1. mike_hearn · 1790158740 · focus · HN ↗

            The electrical grid self balances, it doesn&#x27;t require any IT systems to do that.

            1. galangalalgol · 1790161248 · focus · HN ↗

               If you look at my sibling post I explain that is how they used to do control, but they outgrew it. The spinnup times made it act like a spring damper system and it had bad control states even then.

               1. mike_hearn · 1790188884 · focus · HN ↗

                  Yes, there&#x27;s always been people phoning power plants and asking them to make bigger changes than the small automatic self balancing changes, but at the micro level the grid drags thermal power plants along with it via governers.

                  Most control still works this way. See the postmortem on the Iberia black start. Renewables that were trying to do frequency following drifted out of sync and injected misaligned power into the grid. They couldn&#x27;t even figure out where it was coming from their telemetry is so bad. Then they were asking the gas plants to spin up to add inertia but it was too late as the boilers were cold. IT and other smart grid ideas were conspicuously absent.

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