Linked List: December 23, 2020

Wednesday, 23 December 2020

Senator Ron Wyden on the SolarWinds Hack ★

Shawna Chen, reporting for Axios:

Hackers who infiltrated government networks in the SolarWinds cyberattack compromised “dozens of email accounts” in the Treasury, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Monday.

“Finally, after years of government officials advocating for encryption backdoors, and ignoring warnings from cybersecurity experts who said that that encryption keys become irresistible targets for hackers, the USG has now suffered a breach that seems to involve skilled hackers stealing encryption keys from USG servers,” Wyden said.

This hack should be Exhibit A in the response to every future dummy in the government who advocates for mandatory encryption backdoors on the grounds that you can trust the government with the keys.

First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber ★

Kristen Romey, writing for National Geographic:

The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology.

Update: This is four-year-old news that was news to me. Whoops. (I mistakenly assume old or even just old-ish news is new news about as frequently as I bite my lip. And in both cases, when it happens, I think, “I can’t believe I did that. That’s the last time.” And then I pay attention to the date on each item I link to or each bite I chew for about six months or so, before I lose that attentive focus.)