Una lectura interesante en What I Learned Trying To Secure Congressional Campaigns donde Maciej Cegłowski nos cuenta su trabajo en la campaña de las elecciones en EEUU y su trabajo para tratar de llevar la seguridad informática a diferentes colectivos implicados con esta campaña. En particular, los candidatos, sus equipos y familias.
Todos tenemos más o menos clara la idea de lo que hay que aconsejar en términos de segurida informática a una persona de la calle. Sin embargo, no todo el mundo se ha puesto a trabajar de la mano con gente real para ver cómo podrían aplicar esos consejos. Y el autor tiene esa experiencia y nos la cuenta.
This article is specifically about campaign security, or how to keep candidates and their staff and families safe from people trying to break into social media, read their email, or wire their campaign war chest to Nauru. There are a lot of even more hopeless problems, like election security, but as you will see there is plenty to lose hope about just in this corner of the problem space.
Se trata de preocuparse de los aspectos técnicos, pero no sólo de ellos.
I fear that by fixating on the technical content of the briefings, we are missing an opportunity for a much richer, more satisfying nerdfight about process.
Y es difícil hasta conseguir la atención de estas personas, cuyo tiempo es escaso y tiene otras prioridades:
… is the hard part. Like Mike Tyson says, “everybody has a plan until they’re punched in the face.” Everyone has security checklist for campaigns until they try to schedule a meeting.
Por supuesto, tener en cuenta que no se tiene el mejor equipamiento, ni los mejores programas ni, por supuesto, el dinero necesario para esta parte.
You have to accept the fact that computers are broken, software is terrible, campaign finance is evil, …
Ofrecer ayuda en seguridad informática cuando no hemos tenido ningún incidente es como ofrecer una limpieza dental: todo el mundo entiende que es interesante, pero pueden dejarlo de lado con un pequeño sentimiento de culpa.
Offering security training is like being a dentist offering a teeth cleaning. Everyone understands in the abstract that this is something they need. They feel guilty about putting it off. Maybe if you are really persuasive and can talk in scary terms about gum disease, they will agree to do it. But they will not enjoy it, and however much they promise, they are never going to floss.
Yendo a los aspectos más prácticos, conviene centrarse en lo que realmente necesitan:
Collect information about what devices people are using, their email provider, whether they have two-factor authentication, how they share documents in the campaign, how they keep track of passwords, and so on. Explain that you are not a Russian spy. Make them do all their overdue software updates in front of you while you start part 2 (10 minutes).
Aconsejar sobre el uso del doble factor de autentificación.
Introduce U2F security keys and explain how they prevent the kind of attack that ensnared John Podesta. Demonstrate how to use them and what to do if you lose them. Have everyone open their laptop and walk them through the setup, then demo a trial login, with the key and with a backup method. (30 minutes)
Hablar del correo y los adjuntos y ayudar con estrategias para mejorar un poco la seguridad.
Talk about email and attachments. This part is almost like sex education: you preach abstinence, but you know the moment you leave the room, they’ll be double-clicking on whatever Excel spreadsheet the DCCC forwarded them that day. Explain high-risk behaviors, low-risk behaviors, and how to open stuff more safely in GDrive. Try to push the campaign towards shared Google Docs and Signal instead of email. (20 minutes)
Finalmente recomienda hablar de los dispositivos y buenas costumbres sobre contraseñas.
If additional time is available, talk about devices and password habits.
Mucha gente muy productiva parece tener muy malas costumbres.
Sometimes the most productive people on a campaign are volunteers with unfixable bad technology habits.
Es mejor dar consejos concretos y sencillos que muy amplios y difíciles de aplicar.
Nobody acts on the DNC/Belfer Center Cybersecurity Campaign Playboook recommendations, because they are too vague. I found it best to treat the Belfer document as a revered holy text that required exegesis to be understood by the faithful.
También puede ser una buena idea hablar de niveles de seguridad y facilitar el camino para ir mejorándola poco a poco.
Talking about degrees of safety, and giving people an incremental path to secure behavior. For example, we told campaigns it was best to have a password manager, okay to have a written list of random passwords, dangerous to have a password pattern you would modify across sites, and unacceptable to re-use a single password across sites .
También evitar avergonzar a la gente o maltratarla: su trabajo no es asegurar sus herramientas de trabajo ni solucionar los problemas que otros están creando continuamente.
Shame reduction. I tried to emphasize to people that there was an entire security community rooting for them, and that it shouldn’t be their job to have to get all these broken technologies right. I learned if you refrain from shaming people, they will eventually confess some horrific sins, and snitch on others.
Las analogías relacionadas con la salud pública pueden funcionar: porque el mensaje de la salud ya está en nuestro ideario, porque son aplicables, hacen que la gente esté más segura y no están dirigidas a público especializado.
Using public health analogies. It was tricky at first to figure out how to convince people the threat was real without scaring them into apathy. The analogy to public health did the job. I told people they were getting the ‘wash your hands, boil your water’ version of security advice, which communicated several ideas: that the guidelines were practical, that they made people safer, and that they weren’t targeted at “tech” people.
Los gestores de contraseñas son un buen consejo, pero no es sencillo empezar a utilizarlos.
Password managers. I was never able to find a way to set people up on a password manager in the time available. Let me be very clear: I would like all people to use a password manager. Every night, I dream of a world where people use password managers.
But I never found a way to get people onto 1password in a single training session.
Si no se puede usar un gestor de contraseñas, no está mal aprender a generar una contraseña larga y única y apuntarla en la aplicación de notas del teléfono.
In the end, I told candidates to generate unique passwords and save them in the notes app on their phone, or write them down on a card they kept in their wallet. And I’d do it again!
Creo que es una buena lectura.
En los últimos tiempos es frecuente oir recomendar (yo mismo lo hago a veces) usar un gestor de contraseñas y activar el doble factor de autentificación (esto no tanto). En Before You Use a Password Manager nos recuerdan algunas cuestiones intersantes sobre el tema.
No voy a seleccionar todos los temas que trata, pero si algunos que me llaman más la atención.
