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Comment by skywhopper | Hacker News Reader

it immediately began to install files, a “very out-of-the-ordinary” event that he had never seen happen before during this kind of analysis. The agent had to immediately stop the analysis to halt any further corruption of his computer

This makes it sound like plugging USB sticks guests are carrying into a computer is standard procedure for the Secret Service. That might make sense if they have some sandboxed computer designed for this purpose, as suggested by other commenters. But then the rest of the quote makes it sound like the agents were unprepared for files to be copied and they panicked and aborted the "analysis" to prevent "corruption". Which makes it sound like, no, they just plug it into their own computers...

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The Secret Service as an organization has sophisticated cyber capabilities. That a specific agent within the president's detail didn't is less surprising. Still, I'd expect more from the organization, and I bet that the specific agents involved are getting disciplined and trained.

Well, the head of USSS was fired today. Unclear if it's related.

He was also fired after the Secret Service criticised security at Mar a Lago, so we've got a few candidates to choose from in working out the real reason.

The Secret Service reports to DHS. Mr. Alles was an ally of Ms. Nielsen, who just resigned/got the boot. Stephen Miller reportedly got the go-ahead to clean house at DHS, so all the leadership that isn't in line will get cleared out.

I'm of the opinion that a POTUS that carries a unsecured iPhone against the recommendations of his staff (and overrules their security clearance decisions for his son-in-law) isn't going to fire anyone due to quibbles over OPSEC.

That's -3 points for a +3 opinion

Generally agree. One thing can nevertheless be used as an excuse for the others, as certain little aides carry out their certain little agendas.

According to the Times:

>Mr. Alles was told to develop an exit plan before the arrest of a Chinese woman carrying a malware-laced device at Mar-a-Lago, exposing holes in the security of the private club.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/us/politics/randolph-alle...

Well, they are supposed to.

"The Secret Service agent who questioned Ms. Zhang after her arrest, Samuel Ivanovich, said during testimony... [h]is four-and-a-half hour interrogation of Ms. Zhang was recorded by video... but it lacked sound because he didn’t realize that the agency’s office in Palm Beach didn’t have that capability." [0]

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/us/chinese-woman-mar-a-la... ¶12

Outside the Silicon Valley bubble, cybersecurity means Windows antivirus products, password policies, caution around unsolicited email, etc. Maybe the most sophisticated users of the term have a dim idea of what encryption means. When a government agency has "sophisticated cyber capabilities" I would generally take that to mean reams of paperwork asserting that Norton is properly installed on every desktop.

The whole dimension of vulnerabilities and exploits, protocol flaws, trust boundaries, techniques for selecting or creating less vulnerable software, getting crypto implementation details right, principle of least privilege... none of that stuff even registers. I briefly worked in an IT consulting company that sold security and PCI compliance services; nobody was talking about any of that stuff. It was all password policies, antivirus products, phishing awareness campaigns.

The government definitely has real computer security engineering work happening in the NSA, NIST (FIPS 140-2 in particular is no joke), and other very high end defense-related areas. But I would not generally expect people using the word "cyber" to have a fighting chance against a nation-state-level evil USB stick.

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