News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under constant surveillance. Parent comment

Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by ptero on Monday December 02, 2019 @09:32AM (#21682595)
> Monitoring internet access on school devices? That's been standard in every single school and workplace for decades.

What country are you talking about? Honest question, just curious. I am in the US, but even today many small and medium sized companies do not monitor internet (block parts, sure, but not monitor) and 10 years ago even large companies did not do it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by goatinaboat on Monday December 02, 2019 @10:08AM (#21682968)
am in the US, but even today many small and medium sized companies do not monitor internet

Every URL accessed via a proxy will be logged, even no one is actively reviewing those logs regularly

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by icedchai on Monday December 02, 2019 @12:05PM (#21684294)
In the early 2000's, I used to work at a medium size public company and managed the firewalls and proxy servers. I would regularly tail the logs for my own amusement. The amount of pornography streaming into that place was extraordinary.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by asdff on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @03:30AM (#21690793)
When I was in high school, the admin regularly blacklisted new flash game sites as we started discovering and using them regularly on the school network.

Monitoring is done everywhere and has been done for a long time. Whether or not they check it depends on how lazy IT is.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by jedieaston on Monday December 02, 2019 @09:45AM (#21682710)
I know for a fact BofA was doing it 10 years ago, because a family member tried to show me a YouTube video on their work laptop and it was blocked by the BofA firewall, even though they were at home. I doubt that there was a reprimand or anything, but I bet it was logged somewhere “just in case”.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by markus92 on Monday December 02, 2019 @09:58AM (#21682843)
That's still blocking, not actively monitoring. Probably because it runs all network traffic through their VPN.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by tyingq on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:07AM (#21683655)
Software like Forcepoint/Websense logs blocked attempts by default and can be configured to log all traffic. I don't believe there's a reliable source on what companies do.

The Levandowski incident at Google revealed that they had VERY extensive logs. They appear not to look at them routinely, but the logs are there when needed.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by TurkishPoptart on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:22AM (#21683835)
Was that the IP incident between Google and Uber? can you say more about the evidence here or post a source? just curious.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by tyingq on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:52AM (#21684166)
Yes. Here's the indictment: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by chrisseaton on Monday December 02, 2019 @10:20AM (#21683099)
How do you block specific websites without monitoring which website is being visited? That doesn’t make any sense.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by ameister14 on Monday December 02, 2019 @10:53AM (#21683458)
You can do it a couple of ways. You can whitelist sites, where all sites not on the list are automatically blocked, or you can blacklist them, where sites matching certain characteristics or on a particular list are blocked. Neither way necessitates logs or monitoring.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by saiya-jin on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:02AM (#21683582)
Hmm, what about this approach - monitoring adds a certain action on top of that blocked (or not) website you try to access. It gets reported, your credit/social/whatever score goes down. As a kid, you might have a talk with counselor, or your parents with principal. As working adult, you might get a warning or get fired. Your access to foreign travel, sim card, voting etc. might get altered.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by chrisseaton on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:26AM (#21683878)
That's both monitoring and blocking. I'm not sure you can block without monitoring.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by raincom on Monday December 02, 2019 @12:33PM (#21684566)
Banks are strict on their work laptops. - Everything is tunneled through VPN

- 2 FA

- geofencing at VPN level (you can't take work laptop to Russia, India, China, etc)

- everything is whitelisted. Some employees can only access x.theirBank.com, everything is else blocked. This is the case with tellers, folks in the retail banking

- even for IT/dev, one should get explicit permission to get access to youtube, github

- every work laptop comes with an agent like ZScalar, which enforces these policies by coordinating with a central server.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by chrisseaton on Monday December 02, 2019 @01:51PM (#21685467)
...but that sounds like monitoring?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by jakelazaroff on Monday December 02, 2019 @10:39AM (#21683294)
For example, downloading a list of prohibited domains to your device and running a local firewall. “Monitoring” in this context implies that someone will be able to later review the websites you’ve visited or tried to visit.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by tssva on Monday December 02, 2019 @11:03AM (#21683596)
Every enterprises local firewall I know of can report back to a central system for logging.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Clear backpacks, monitored emails: U.S. students under co... by jakelazaroff on Monday December 02, 2019 @01:35PM (#21685292)
I don’t have any special knowledge of enterprise firewalls; parent just asked how it was possible.
[ Parent | on HN ]