Posted by speckx 1 day ago
Permissions inside the database should be segregated. The credential used by the webserver should not have enough permissions to DROP DATABASE. Just the appropriate selects/updates/inserts.
Likewise, if you are storing backups on the same network (as opposed to a tape backup), network permissions should allow writes/creates but not deletes.
Why does full access include the ability to delete read only data that should never ever be deleted for the rest of time?
It's like building a self destruct button that ignites the physical records. It's an unnecessary risk to make such a dangerous thing.
News at 11.
There's a growing (retarded) perspective, not only here in Romania but in most of the EU, that we must digitalize at all costs; this itself is obviously not a problem, but it usually comes with the removal of the "traditional" options too. The same goes for payments (removal of cash) and basically every aspect of the administration/society where this could be applied. The most recent concrete example for Romania is the mandatory digital signature by ANAF (IRS equivalent) for all companies.
Unlike other regions of the West: NA/WE/rest of the West (SK, JP, etc.), in EE, people (*younger generations, explained below) don't often think about the aspects of confidentiality that much, or if they do, they usually apply it incorrectly (either IRL [filming in public] or online ["I've accepted a draconian TOS that gives the company rights to all of my data, but I haven't actually read any of it, and now I'm invoking my "GDPR rights" against said company."]).
It does not take a genius or a historian to observe that while the older generations do not have this "problem" (they're very skeptical of the gov. [at least in certain aspects], in an almost american fashion — explained by the fact that they've experienced communism), younger generations position themselves in the extreme opposite; they despise the older generations ("boomers") for being luddites and somehow blame them for the gap in civilizational progress between WE and EE. There is a legitimate point here, of course, but it should be noted that the argument is almost always presented in an emotional, overwhelmingly irrational fashion, and almost never includes comparisons between the centralization done by the state in the past [communists] and the new one attempted by current govs [but digitalized]. (This delves into a broader socio-cultural divide between the generations that includes other aspects like religion, traditions, etc.)
The biggest portion of the so-called "IT people" who call for this "digitalization wave" are midwits, "inverse luddites" (they don't care about the implications), and, in smaller numbers, grifters and second-order beneficiaries (on the "digitalization" gov. projects). Obviously, it should be mentioned that, despite progress, nepotism and corruption are still present, and there are cases where gov. contracts are not given to the best candidate.
As a person who's both working in the IT sector and not a boomer (despite the impression of my comment), "we" should be careful about enabling totalitarians in our endeavors."Hackers" is just one reason out of a multitude of other reasons for not abandoning the sacred paper (see the ES+PT incident one year ago).
My own problem with the top-level comment wasn't that it claimed fault on the part of the victims, it's that it didn't substantiate why that claim of fault was applicable in this case.
Multiple use of weak passwords in a critical system isn't acceptable in 2026 (nor has it been for many decades), and yet there's credible evidence (as my own follow-ups in this subthread and my own top-level comments should indicate) that the victims here did contribute significantly to their own harm. For that they should be found accountable. Hosting inherently insecure data systems is gross negligence, quite arguably criminal.
You somehow twisted that into "incompetence should just be ignored because blaming people for lack of common sense will hurt their feelings" which is such a ridiculous strawman that you're either arguing in bad faith or you've completely lost all ability to do even the most basic of reading and reasoning.
If so, point to references. Otherwise your original comment reads as unsubstantive. Tropes and cliches may have value because they're often true, but if true, in this case, then share that fact and not the trope alone.
and click on the links in the article - they are screenshots from inside the system.
Like this one for example: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iZc93XfViOk7izusgIG1ni7Kmsx...
To answer your question: yes, in this specific case, documented.
Your initial comment would have been far more substantial, and probably much better received, with these additions.
In an ideal world, even before you crash your motorcycle and hit your head somewhere, forcing you to start wearing it
Then a city bus passes them far too close. The passenger side mirror of the bus catches the rider's helmet and speeds off...carrying the cyclist off of their bike and dangling by their helmet at speed...
If you crashed so hard, the belt broke your ribs, without the seatbelt, you'd be dead right now, head first through the windshield. I mean sure, you wouldn't be complaining about broken ribs, but yeah...
If someone wants to win a Darwin award, let them. Because you can just as easily do all the right things and get taken out regardless.
You should take a closer look at the screenshots posted by the hacker: entire systems and network devices with the password P@ssw0rd for the admin user. Now you tell me.
Take a closer look at the screenshots posted by the hacker: entire systems and network devices with the password P@ssw0rd for the admin user.
Linking those would be bonus.
<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
It is a poor idea to use blockchain for government registries. If you want transparency, simply publish signed daily updates and that's enough. Just use simple DB with backups, and optionally, a printer printing changes on a paper.
Also, SQL database is much more convenient to use, it has query language and indices unlike a blockchain.
Yes, if you have a centralized model you don't need it. Just saying that this incident is the exact risk a blockchain is meant to mitigate through redundancy. You can say you don't care about this risk, but it doesn't change the truth of the statement.
Now you may argue "that is a blockchain, not every blockchain is associated with a shitcoin" but to be frank that ship has sailed, if you wanted to defend that you'd have had to do a lot more work over the past decade.
What do you mean by "More Work" here?
There were plenty of tests and pilots of systems like that described. Dual goals of reducing the cost of transferring property and publicly attesting all current ownership. Real lawyers and real lawmakers developed proposals to integrate these sort of services with current public land registries.
The issue as far as I see it isnt the "work" its the "antiwork". If you want to learn about land sale nft pilots you literally have to put -metaverse into the google search to weed out the metaverse nonsense. Theres just too much noise around blockchain for even the best signal to penetrate. The stupid monkey nft guys really fucked the whole space. Probably take another decade to dig out all the toxic waste from blockchains reputation.
A blockchain is essentially that, just with the daily update that's being signed also including the signature and hash of the previous day.
Blockchain as a technology is actually useful here. It does not mean automatically that blocks have to be mined by third parties, although pseudocurrencies have gone that route for decentralization reasons.
depends on configuration, you can make any traditional web service replicated (replication is one and only thing that protects data in decentralized ledger, same as DNA is stored in every cell) using something like CometBFT on top. Mining/PoS or VM - all optional.
Blockchain doesn't have anything esp. to do with data loss. It solves exactly one problem which is distributed double spending in accounting ledgers.
What's wrong with paper records backup up a digital record and audit trail. This all seems like a solution for a non-problem to me.
It's not. Blockchains are only eventually consistent among nodes. They're designed for synced backups among adversarial peers.
There's no reason for a government agency to use one internally. There are better ways to sync backups when the people with access to make updates are also authorized to do so.
A git repo with cryptographically signed commits solves all the same problems without the headache.
If your proposal is 'something like git, with a few modifications to make it suitable for this use case', then that's exactly what I'm proposing. What you will need, once you've considered all requirements to the best extent feasible, will be a blockchain. Eg you do need the ability to make protocol updates, no matter the time scale of transactions.
Firstly, git does not use MD5. It uses SHA1.
Secondly, since 2017 git has shipped with an implementation of SHA1 (sha1dc) that detects the collision attack you describe, which for this use case renders it a non-issue.
Thirdly, git supports `git init --object-format=sha256` which removes the whole issue for anyone who cares to do so.
I think git as-is solves the problem nicely. The only additional value blockchain provides is the ability for someone to point at it and say "look! A use for blockchain exists!" which isn't worth the downsides it'll bring.
Not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse here but this isn't an issue with the cadence of real estate transactions. Real estate ledgers do not need to support HFT.