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Comment by paultopia | Hacker News Reader

airgapped systems that never touch the internet, such as: [...] SCIFs, or other secure/offline data processing facilities

It seems to me that if you were buying hardware for a totally airgapped system for a SCIF or something, you wouldn't buy a computer with built-in wifi or bluetooth at all. I mean, really? Does the NSA buy consumer hardware with network interfaces they don't intend to use?

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No, in fact you cannot have device that does radio transmission in a SCIF.

Ugh. That gig I did. Had to be on-site (10h travel). Had to leave facility to get Internet, get my phone out of a cubby and leave the building to text my wife. Big Security is inconvenient.

>text my wife. Big Security is inconvenient.

Depends on ones wife...

I would think air gapped networks probably ran Linux. But I know I heard once some nuclear power uses Windows, looks like that's in Japan. Kind of doubt people are using Macs in that sort of environment, other than maybe a client machine. Feel like it's either going to be Windows or Linux for more industrial stuff.

Air gapped computers run whatever. I've not personally seen MacOS though I wouldn't be surprised. There is a fair bit of secret mobile development, and that requires MacOS.

Nuclear subs run (or ran) Windows XP.

Plenty of exploit dev systems running in SCIFs! You would want you exploit accidentally collected by the manufacturer, and you certainly don't want binary hashes linked to a device.

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