site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   33231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The crowdstrike incident report is up

As far as documents go it shows that Crowdstrikes competence is... horrific.

Finding 1.

This means that when the sensor wanted to make a detection decision based on the IPC Template Type, the sensor code would supply 20 different input sources to the Content Interpreter. However, the definition of the IPC Template Type in the Template Type Definitions file stated that it expected 21 input fields. This definition resulted in Template Instances in Channel File 291 that expected to operate on 21 inputs. This mismatch was not detected during development of the IPC Template Type. The test cases and Rapid Response Content used to test the IPC Template Type did not trigger a fault during feature development or during testing of the sensor 7.11 release

What this says is that they did not test supplying IPC template type to the sensor at all or how many parameters the IPC template type produces? what kind of nonsense is thais.

\2. A runtime array bounds check was missing for Content Interpreter input fields on Channel File 291 Findings: The Rapid Response Content for Channel File 291 instructed the Content Interpreter to read the 21st entry of the input pointer array. However, the IPC Template Type only generates 20 inputs. As a result, once Rapid Response Content was delivered that used a non-wildcard matching criterion for the 21st input, the Content Interpreter performed an out-of-bounds read of the input array. This is not an arbitrary memory write issue and has been independently reviewed.

(hey can you prevent autoformatting for quotes it's really annoying that I can't exactly quote the doc)

So they didn't do the 1 liner test of checking array's inputs? I know in C you can't do this because array's do not contain their own length as a variable, but a c++ vector would have found this error (I guess in the kernel it's C or bust?). Congrats on using the root of all evil the regex So the regex created some interesting behavior on the (invalid) 21st input because of an OUT OF BOUNDS ARRAY access, oh boy.

  1. Template Type testing should cover a wider variety of matching criteria Findings: Both manual and automated testing were performed during the development of the IPC Template Type. This testing was focused on functional validation of the Template Type including the correct flow of security-relevant data through it, and evaluation of that data to generate appropriate detection alerts based on criteria created in development test cases. Automated testing leveraged internal and external tooling to create the required security- relevant data needed to exercise the IPC Template Type under all supported Windows versions within a broad subset of the expected operational use cases. For automated testing, a static set of 12 test cases was selected to be representative of broader operational expectations and to validate the creation of telemetry and detection alerts. Part of this testing included defining a channel file for use within the test cases. The selection of data in the channel file was done manually and included a regex wildcard matching criterion in the 21st field for all Template Instances, meaning that execution of these tests during development and release builds did not expose the latent out-of-bounds read in the Content Interpreter when provided with 20 rather than 21 inputs.

Automated testing somehow doesnt' include having 21 valid inputs in your 21 parameter funciton? Man now that's some brainpower ChatGPT can write tests better than that.

12 test cases which didn't seem to include any invalid inputs? where's your input validation? Where's the array bounds checking?

  1. The Content Validator contained a logic error Findings: The Content Validator evaluated the new Template Instances. However, it based its assessment on the expectation that the IPC Template Type would be provided with 21 inputs. This resulted in the problematic Template Instance being sent to the Content Interpreter

as expected NO INPUT VALIDATION

CLOWNSTRIKE indeed.

  1. Template Instance validation should expand to include testing within the Content Interpreter Findings: Newly released Template Types are stress tested across many aspects, such as resource utilization, system performance impact and detection volume. For many Template Types, including the IPC Template Type, a specific Template Instance is used to stress test the Template Type by matching against any possible value of the associated data fields to identify adverse system interactions. A stress test of the IPC Template Type with a test Template Instance was executed in our test environment, which consists of a variety of operating systems and workloads. The IPC Template Type passed the stress test and was validated for use, and a Template Instance was released to production as part of a Rapid Response Content update. However, the Content Validator-tested Template Instance did not observe that the mismatched number of inputs would cause a system crash when provided to the Content Interpreter by the IPC Template Type

Basically they didn't do integration testing.

Somethign like

IPCtemplatetype a= IPCtemplatetype.new(1,2,3,4,5,6,7) contentInterpreter b = Functionthatbreaks(IPCtemplatetype)

literally would have instant crashed.

They tested by having each thing be intependently tested by making a fake template type for the content interpreter but not using a real generated one.

Ok I know integration testing is hard, and get's exponentially complicated quickly but you can do basic tests by generating a single instance and then checking.

Or here's a billion dollar idea, just turn on a goddamn windows machine locally with your patch before sending it out. This patch broke ~100% of windows machines it came across, so you just needed to have done 1 manual patch of 1 fucking machine locally to have discovered this bug.

  1. Template Instances should have staged deployment Findings: Each Template Instance should be deployed in a staged rollout.

Basic procedure for every large org, and it wasn't followed at something this big? CLOWNSTRIKE continues

I understand when you have 100 customers, a delayed rollout literally does nothing, but at around 1000 customers it does and at the scale crowdstrike was operating at delayed rollouts are basically mandatory

ok the rest of the doc is mostly corporate jargon and meaningless, but boy this wasn't your normal fuckup this was a fuckup of epicly stupid programming oversight. Multiple errors that an absolute novice should have figured out which the most basic of tests would have found.

what the fuck is wrong with clownstrike

I want naming and shaming. If you fail this badly, there need to be very serious consequences for you personally. Fines, public humiliation, prison sentence, corporal punishment... Otherwise why would anyone bother doing things correctly in future?

What if a selection of Crowdstrike executives, coders and management had to have 'moron' tattooed on their foreheads?

Put it in the queue. I'm still waiting the Wuhan lab staff to get drawn and quartered. Or at the least get 10 years hard labor.

Containing viruses is hard. I'd consider a lab leak to be within the normal range of human screw ups. In light of that fact, everybody up and down the chain of command who thought it was a good idea to do gain-of-function research on coronaviruses should be tried on 10 million counts of manslaughter.

I know I'm not getting everyone up to Gorbatchev, they are the real culprits but it's not reasonable to expect. But give me a Dyatlov at least.

I'll settle for putting Fauci in a box for however long he has left to live. Let us maintain the illusion that there are any consequences whatsoever to mass death.

What did Fauci do that was "mass death"? Did he sign off on US funding for the Chinese GoF research?

Yes. Also conspired with other "researchers" to cover it up, also lied under oath to congress about it.

Why the scare quotes around "researchers"? Are you talking about political hangers-on who were trying to squash the story because Beijing money or in case it gave racists ammo or whatever, or are you talking about GoF researchers themselves? (I wouldn't scare-quote in the latter case; GoF is mad science, but science nonetheless.)

Fauci aporoved bat coronavirus research conducted by EcoHealth Alliance at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. So yes, that's specifically what he did. Fauci has denied that what they were doing matches the academic definition of gain of function; but he quibbled really hard trying to justify that.

I haven't researched this deeply, but I believe this is the case having heard some of Fauci's testimony regarding EcoHealth Alliance and his actions pre-pandemic.

That's not all, he's also behind the Lancet letter trying to actively prevent people from discussing the biolab origin theory. There's emails of him specifically making it happen.

That's enough for me, whatever he decides to call it he was ashamed enough of it to try and hide it by suppressing genuine scientific inquiry into something that was actively killing people.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats