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Comment by ggggtez | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but probably not in your computer. I'm sure that there are daily attempts to breach into government networks around the world.

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I am not sure that it makes a big difference to me that a private vs state sponsored hacker breaches me but it only takes looking at the logs of any of my personal servers to see that multiple breach attempts a day is an understatement. My smtp server has logon attempts from 5 to 20 distinct IPs a day, and I blacklist those IPs automatically, so it’s different IPs every day. This is just a random server on the internet, no particular reason to be targetted.

If the marginal cost of doing so is effectively zero, why not?

Exactly. Instead of putting backdoor in only the computer going to China, why not just install back door in ALL the chips. Cheaper too. At this point, it won't surprise if all the computer has a hard ware level backdoor such as spectr/meldown. Not to mention encryption backdoor. Even state level player doesn't have the resources to take all that out. Remember when Snowden leak came out, Russian gov switched all internal memo to typewriters that shall give you an idea.

And all phones have a modem, a closed source chip that likely provides numerous ways to get into your phone.

Ira Hunt (CIA chief technology officer) said in 2014 something like "we like the fitbit because it doesn't have a ... it doesn't ... well I can't say but we like the fitbit."

Because the average person isn't running a server on their laptop? It makes no sense to think that multiple foreign nations are currently connected to random individual's computers, and actively fighting each other in your silicon without anyone noticing widespread network connections.

Let's not talk about fantasy of what could happen, but whether it actually is happening right now on everyone's personal computers. No. It's not.

There is the cost of getting caught, and having their zero day no longer being NOBUS.

And sinking the reputation of a national company.

Reputation shmeputation. Everybody has their zero days.

Though it's unlikely multiple state actors are actively targeting your computer, that doesn't mean they aren't fighting over breaching it or that you shouldn't assume a breach has occurred.

Perhaps not your personal computer, but your employer's systems is a different issue - the majority of attacks (both for-profit criminal attaks and state actor attacks) target private companies, not government networks. For example, in the recent SolarWinds case government networks were targeted as well, but the majority of victims were non-government entities.

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