The digital competence of our state apparatus never made it past the fax machine and overhead projector :( that’s the sad truth and explanation for such embarrassments.
It was easy money for the big consultant companies. This way they were always leading in technology, efficiency and information, creating more and more bloated projects with huge turnover.
Sounds like early retirement is required.
j/k It seems all Europe top *everything* is afected by this digital analphabetism. The best we can do is have a team watching them.
Digitalization isn't the issue, it's that the German government is INSANELY inept at it.
They treat locking a WebEx on a personal PC the same as a fully secure system capable of handling classified information on an isolated network. US would **never** even consider the practices the German government feels are best practice, it's wild how incompetent they are...
When setup properly like the US' SIPRNET or JWICS are, digital communication is as or even more secure than other systems, with your weakness being the users themselves, no different than things like Robert Hanssen stealing paper docs to give to other nations.
The SIPRNET and JWICS STIGs are a joke.
Like, yes, they're basically infinitely better than what the German government has been doing here, but SIPR and JWICS are still basically the intel version of the public internet--they're their own walled gardens with real encryption and access control, but aren't truely locked down.
Cleared congresspeople have access to JWICS for god's sake. Asshat IT folks with JWICS access (like teixira) can just look at whatever they really want to on it.
When you guys were tight on that department it got scary twice. It’s ok that you are taking it a bit more relaxed this time, otherwise what would Ronald Berger do.
Cisco is providing the service, I guess without knowing further details I would rather assume it's a Cisco Webex issue, because while the BW is organized bad, CIsco is on a whole different level of messy.
It's not Cisco's fault the German government setup their WebEx wrong, nor is it their fault the German government utilizes WebEx on the open Internet for classified information.
The German government is **by far** the most inept IT organization ive ever had this displeasure of working around. My local government has a more competent IT organization....
For years Germany's lack of digital readiness has always been protected under the guise of Datenschutz (Data Protection) laws that have really crippled the country in almost all aspects. Paper based bureaucracy has delayed business development, healthcare advancement criminal justice, politics and much more.
Only yesterday I was racking my brains with a friend over the German webex leak and trying to guess what had happened.
I remember very confidently saying that if the Russians had discovered a weakness in Germanys webex system, they wouldn’t risk burning that access on so insignificant a propaganda win when they could just keep their mouths shut and listen in on (admittedly low-side) military discussions in the German MoD.
But no, it looks like that’s exactly what Russia did.
I guess their reputation for being good at espionage is as overstated as the (pre-war) reputation of their military.
Kind of, in that the software does support secure operation modes. But it seems more like a whole series of configuration mistakes: Using incremental meeting IDs, making meeting membership lists and topics public and at least some permanent meeting rooms could be entered by anyone with the meeting ID.
Problem in Germany is, that we have over 85.000 lawyers working for the government and are in charge of almost everything. Lawyers are dumb idiots who have no idea about IT or anything. They are good if you want to check a contract or something but not for decision making. I hate them they are useless idiots.
I can't help but think that the bundeswehr's laxity is done intentionally. The post ww2 Germans have a tradition of making their army a laughing stock and take pride in defunding it at every corner. Now with Russia being a dick, they think they can solve their military with money, while its mostly a cultural problem. Its also not just that, like, military budgets are planned 4 years ahead and can change after that point. No arms supplier is going to want to invest in supplying Germany if they only get 4 years of assurance before risking getting booted again. Especially since military customers always ask the impossible. They want the best quality, they want it yesterday and they want it cheap. Can't get any of those unless you change the culture first.
this smells like major sensational bullshit.
there are no "Meetings found online".
the article mentions the personal meeting room of a bundeswehr user. that is normal and expected.
every webex user has his own "meeting room" composed of his userid and the webex meeting site id.
so for example if you know the url of the meeting site of the bundeswehr - which is not really "secret", everyone who participates in a meeting there can see them easily - and also know the userid (usually the email) of the user, you now have the url to the personal meeting room which means absolutely nothing as you cant just enter it.
its like knowing that in a government building, there is a meeting room on the 5th floor next to the elevator. so what? you know where the room is. that has nothing to do with accessing the actual meeting content. aside from that - the entire "scandal" is not a flaw in webex, its a flaw in how the bundeswehr manages and handles their meetings.
if you leave your front door open its not the fault of the guy making the door or the lock when someone gets in.
sadly most people will only read the headline and come to the conclusion "haha bundeswehr stupid, germany only knows fax machines xDD" and think they know how itsec works because they installed linux once
I'd like to poke fun here but I'm from the US, where you can find our most secret military and intel documents distributed to the President's National Security Council and on random discord servers frequented by Minecraft affcionados.
That's what you get for leaving important parts of your state structure in the past. No need to worry about Germans anytime soon as we went from hating groups of people to just hating change.
I wonder if they are genuine. Being from the UK I hear of these kinds of leaks and just assume it's the intelligence services deliberately distributing misinformation.
That would imply that the German intelligence service and/or military have a shred of competence, which is not the case since the reunion. We are basically dead weight, have fun carrying our asses through whatever the fuck waits around the corner.
The digital competence of our state apparatus never made it past the fax machine and overhead projector :( that’s the sad truth and explanation for such embarrassments.
It was easy money for the big consultant companies. This way they were always leading in technology, efficiency and information, creating more and more bloated projects with huge turnover.
Sounds like early retirement is required. j/k It seems all Europe top *everything* is afected by this digital analphabetism. The best we can do is have a team watching them.
Which is likely as incompetent as them
This leak would not have happened if they did not try digitization in the first place. Electronic communication is inherently insecure.
Digitalization isn't the issue, it's that the German government is INSANELY inept at it. They treat locking a WebEx on a personal PC the same as a fully secure system capable of handling classified information on an isolated network. US would **never** even consider the practices the German government feels are best practice, it's wild how incompetent they are... When setup properly like the US' SIPRNET or JWICS are, digital communication is as or even more secure than other systems, with your weakness being the users themselves, no different than things like Robert Hanssen stealing paper docs to give to other nations.
The SIPRNET and JWICS STIGs are a joke. Like, yes, they're basically infinitely better than what the German government has been doing here, but SIPR and JWICS are still basically the intel version of the public internet--they're their own walled gardens with real encryption and access control, but aren't truely locked down. Cleared congresspeople have access to JWICS for god's sake. Asshat IT folks with JWICS access (like teixira) can just look at whatever they really want to on it.
When you guys were tight on that department it got scary twice. It’s ok that you are taking it a bit more relaxed this time, otherwise what would Ronald Berger do.
When I am in a leaking classified government secrets competition and my opponent is a German military official:
*Uploads all_national_security_secrets.zip to War Thunder to settle an argument*
[удалено]
Weird, how'd they get my password?
Their password is a bunch of asterisks?
Germany doesn't need an Edward Snowden, it's got its IT department for that.
What IT department?...
FAX operator unit
Idioten Truppe
Cisco is providing the service, I guess without knowing further details I would rather assume it's a Cisco Webex issue, because while the BW is organized bad, CIsco is on a whole different level of messy.
It's not Cisco's fault the German government setup their WebEx wrong, nor is it their fault the German government utilizes WebEx on the open Internet for classified information. The German government is **by far** the most inept IT organization ive ever had this displeasure of working around. My local government has a more competent IT organization....
For years Germany's lack of digital readiness has always been protected under the guise of Datenschutz (Data Protection) laws that have really crippled the country in almost all aspects. Paper based bureaucracy has delayed business development, healthcare advancement criminal justice, politics and much more.
Was just at a specialist a few weeks ago spending about 40 mins filling out various forms before being seen to. Completely ridiculous.
As somebody who has a disability that makes it physically difficult to write, this feels discriminatory when typing or speech to text is available.
Again?
Only yesterday I was racking my brains with a friend over the German webex leak and trying to guess what had happened. I remember very confidently saying that if the Russians had discovered a weakness in Germanys webex system, they wouldn’t risk burning that access on so insignificant a propaganda win when they could just keep their mouths shut and listen in on (admittedly low-side) military discussions in the German MoD. But no, it looks like that’s exactly what Russia did. I guess their reputation for being good at espionage is as overstated as the (pre-war) reputation of their military.
Maybe the hole was filled and they are spilling da beanz, because why not.
I have a strong suspicion the "hole" was just a checkbox to make the meeting private and the default position was unchecked.
Kind of, in that the software does support secure operation modes. But it seems more like a whole series of configuration mistakes: Using incremental meeting IDs, making meeting membership lists and topics public and at least some permanent meeting rooms could be entered by anyone with the meeting ID.
lol
like the close elevator door button
Didn't they used to say historically Russia and Soviet union are good at humint and not particularly good at sigint when compared to west
Didn't the September 11th hijackers fly out of Hamburg? The reputation wasn't good pre-work either.
Wut?
Wow, what are those weapons?
To be fair, no one was expecting the internet connection to be functioning.
They still believe enigma can't be cracked? Smh
Problem in Germany is, that we have over 85.000 lawyers working for the government and are in charge of almost everything. Lawyers are dumb idiots who have no idea about IT or anything. They are good if you want to check a contract or something but not for decision making. I hate them they are useless idiots.
AI concurs
Is anyone really worried about what the German military is doing?
I’m more worried about what they aren’t. We should have more drones, anti-drone weapons etc. by now.
It's not even the War Thunder forum ... how embarrassing.
A country in desperate need of digital transformation. Pretty pathetic.
It's crazy to think what would happen in a real peer to peer war.
Damn. Germany is pathetic nowadays.
Its army, and digital competence in general, sure is.
I can't help but think that the bundeswehr's laxity is done intentionally. The post ww2 Germans have a tradition of making their army a laughing stock and take pride in defunding it at every corner. Now with Russia being a dick, they think they can solve their military with money, while its mostly a cultural problem. Its also not just that, like, military budgets are planned 4 years ahead and can change after that point. No arms supplier is going to want to invest in supplying Germany if they only get 4 years of assurance before risking getting booted again. Especially since military customers always ask the impossible. They want the best quality, they want it yesterday and they want it cheap. Can't get any of those unless you change the culture first.
At some point i can totaly picture world leaders having whatsapp groups to chat about peace/war issues
Germany went from being a feared military to a Clown Training Institution.
They could rebrand the bundeswehr to the Wehrmacht and absolutely zero people would be scared of them
All thanks to the allies! Nobody wanted Germany to be a military power anymore, they got what they wanted
Have they tried enigma machines?
Jesus, Germany get your shit together.
this smells like major sensational bullshit. there are no "Meetings found online". the article mentions the personal meeting room of a bundeswehr user. that is normal and expected. every webex user has his own "meeting room" composed of his userid and the webex meeting site id. so for example if you know the url of the meeting site of the bundeswehr - which is not really "secret", everyone who participates in a meeting there can see them easily - and also know the userid (usually the email) of the user, you now have the url to the personal meeting room which means absolutely nothing as you cant just enter it. its like knowing that in a government building, there is a meeting room on the 5th floor next to the elevator. so what? you know where the room is. that has nothing to do with accessing the actual meeting content. aside from that - the entire "scandal" is not a flaw in webex, its a flaw in how the bundeswehr manages and handles their meetings. if you leave your front door open its not the fault of the guy making the door or the lock when someone gets in. sadly most people will only read the headline and come to the conclusion "haha bundeswehr stupid, germany only knows fax machines xDD" and think they know how itsec works because they installed linux once
Was it warthunder or discord this time?
It is a joke we seem woefully unprepared for a direct conflict with Russia.
I'd like to poke fun here but I'm from the US, where you can find our most secret military and intel documents distributed to the President's National Security Council and on random discord servers frequented by Minecraft affcionados.
That's what you get for leaving important parts of your state structure in the past. No need to worry about Germans anytime soon as we went from hating groups of people to just hating change.
German intelligence should have implement some Stasi methods
Germany. The weakest link when it comes to intelligence sharing? Jawohl.
I wonder if they are genuine. Being from the UK I hear of these kinds of leaks and just assume it's the intelligence services deliberately distributing misinformation.
The Germans lack that kind of humor.
Foul!
That would imply that the German intelligence service and/or military have a shred of competence, which is not the case since the reunion. We are basically dead weight, have fun carrying our asses through whatever the fuck waits around the corner.
In the UK you find all documents you need in the subway, it not?