This week reminds me a bit of the Airplane! scenes “a bad week to have quit […]” where it starts off with smoking and then escalates from there.
Not sure which came out first, but on the same night I stayed up late reading the Cyber Safety Review Board’s report on their investigation and recommendations on the Microsoft Exchange Online intrusion I stumbled on the opensource xz backdoor attack while trying to find out more about the Microsoft incident.
So given that both events are not really too serious in that the Microsoft report was a hack that happened back in June and the xz thing is actually a positive in that it was a foiled attempt to plant a backdoor, why did this make an airplane bad week to have quit moment? Well, good question, and it comes down to the fact that since staying up late reading the report and then reading about the xz I have not stopped looping back to both events and questioning the bigger implications. Kinda like a movie or book that you watch, and then spend the next few days looking at it from multiple angles, and seeing things from those new angles.
So let’s first give a high level overview of both for those who have not heard about them, then let’s enumerate those new angles and pondering in attempt to organize my thoughts!
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