I couldn’t tweet a better description than the headline for this piece: After SolarWinds breach, lawmakers ask NSA for help in cracking Juniper cold case.

For those who haven’t heard this story, the context here is back in 2015 hackers broke into the source code repository of Juniper’s NetScreen firewalls and introduced serious vulnerabilities. 1/
Everyone has heard of the SolarWinds supply chain attack, but almost nobody outside our little community remembers Juniper. We don’t even know who the ultimate victim was. And there’s a reason for that. 2/
The reason is simple: following the Juniper hack, the FBI and Juniper put a tight lid on everything. Nobody, including members of Congress, were able to get straight answers about who did it or what the target was. So it vanished from our collective memory. 3/
This has real consequences. To some extent our lack of preparedness for SolarWinds is a direct result of our government’s decision to pretend that the previous major supply-chain attacks didn’t happen. 4/
Why has the Juniper attack been buried by secrecy? There are two possible answers. One has to do with the nature of the hack, which very likely repurposed an existing backdoor in NetScreen firewalls. The other has to do with the ultimate target. 5/
Regarding the first, we know that Juniper included a *likely* crypto backdoor based on an NSA algorithm called Dual_EC_DRBG even before the hack. We also know that the attackers repurposed that code to use new public keys of their choosing. This is very embarrassing. 6/
(We know this because people on Twitter and co-authors of mine were able to reverse engineer the details from the published firmware images. See here for a nice explanation. https://t.co/CPHw8oA6zA)
The second answer to “why was this buried” is much more speculative. It has to do with the identity of the actual target(s) that were attacked using the NetScreen vulnerabilities. We don’t know who they are, and they might be important. 8/
I continue to harbor the conspiracy theory that the Office of Personnel Management hack was in some way related to Juniper, based solely on the timing and some equipment manifests from that agency. I’m probably wrong, but that would be a hell of a reason to cover things up. 9/
The point here is that with attacks like this and a secrecy response, we’re screwed. Until we know what happened in these cases, we can’t learn from it. This makes us defenseless, and you can bet our adversaries prefer it that way. 10/
It’s as though the US government decided to react to Pearl Harbor by covering things up. You have to imagine that history would look a lot different. Hopefully we’ll stop making this mistake. //fin

More from Law

We are live tweeting from the preliminary hearing of the Employment Tribunal case in which #AllisonBailey is suing Stonewall and Garden Court chambers.


The judge has ruled that for this hearing only, the names should remain redacted.

It is a Rule 50 Order. These particular individuals are members of Stonewall’s Trans Advisory Group and their names may well be known elsewhere. What is relevant is the messages from the group to Garden Court.

The judge states she would not make the same decision at the full hearing. This is only for the preliminary hearing.

Having dealt with the anonymity issue we now move to the main submissions in the case.
A Call for Help!
1. we have a petition/open letter for the WHO
https://t.co/Bie8pUy7WJ
2. 372 people signed it but we want to boost it
3. I post link ascomment on related YT videos
Tks @KevinMcH3 for the tip
4. You can help by liking the comments
5. That will increase visibility!


6. Links for YT videos with comments are here
1. China curtails hunt for virus origins
https://t.co/NhcYdtsd2Y
2. China: nearly 500,000 may have been infected in Wuhan
https://t.co/KRUQ5hFrii
3. WHO becomes US-China battleground | DW Documentary
https://t.co/8ah8M8bpiB


4. Gravitas: The 'hidden hunt' for COVID-19 origins
https://t.co/hHhhUqgPYt
5. Seeking the invisible: hunt for origins of deadly Covid-19 coronavirus will take scientists to Wuhan
https://t.co/tCPQqjUZF3
6. WHO team to probe COVID-19 origins in

7. How forensic researchers track down origins of SARS-CoV2
https://t.co/r7A1lkr5li
8. Bats, roadblocks & the origins of coronavirus - BBC
https://t.co/Kh9jacC54t
9. New coronavirus strain is far more infectious and spreading among young - BBC

10. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
11. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
12. https://t.co/OcpAZ9nrl3
13. https://t.co/PhmoSfvbD8
14. https://t.co/TsvB7SYN2c
15. https://t.co/0o5YbmiUbJ
16. https://t.co/ir7QiwmlWt
17. https://t.co/PTT3KZDi8F
18.
Hot take: Courts might be able to review the legality of this impeachment, even under current political-question doctrine. Here’s why and how the issue might arise:


Suppose Senate convicts and disqualifies Trump from ever holding federal office. Trump files paperwork to run anyway, but state officials deny his application, citing his Senate impeachment judgment. Trump sues, arguing that the judgment is void.

Normally a legal dispute about a prospective candidates eligibility to run would certainly present a justiciable case or controversy. But are courts bound to accept the Senate impeachment judgment as valid? Maybe not. Here’s why:

According to Article I, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” This is a small amount of judicial power vested in Congress. When trying impeachments, the Senate sits as a court.

The Senate’s judicial power includes the power to decide relevant legal questions that arise, such as what procedures are sufficient to constitute a “trial” w/in the Constitution’s meaning. Such legal determinations are conclusive, as SCOTUS held in Nixon v. United States (1993).

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Characteristics of a personal moat below:


2/ Like a company moat, you want to build career capital while you sleep.

As Andrew Chen noted:


3/ You don’t want to build a competitive advantage that is fleeting or that will get commoditized

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After recorded music, the music itself became abundant and what became scarce was curation, distribution, and self space.

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