How did they manage to decrypt the messages, I thought it's very expensive to decrypt a correctly encrypted piece of data?
"About a billion messages were intercepted, about half of which had been decrypted by April 2021—further avenues of inquiry were expected to open as decryption progressed"
In some of the raids they got their hands on SkyECC infrastructure, IIRC. SkyECC claimed "no, that's a fake version of our app" yet they seemingly did have some service disruptions at the same time.
They also suddenly claim all the users that got intercepted were using "elaborate fake" SkyECC apps and services, yet oddly those same "fake" apps could talk with actual SkyECC users, so, y'know. Grains of salt.
There’s a number of ways to take a physical memory dump from a server without taking it offline.
On Linux, there’s for example Lime if you have root.
On windows there’s various other tools, some commercial, some open source. All require admin privs.
If you have access to the hypervisor it’s even easier - just direct the hypervisor to dump the VM’s RAM to a file. Most hypervisor tools have a utility for this.
If you have only physical access it’s a bit trickier, but if there’s an available PCIe slot and you are very careful it’s possible to dump RAM that way on a live system :)
TFA talks a lot about corruption and it's way worse than people think.
Not that long in Belgium, in the port of Antwerp ("Anvers" in french), non-corrupt employees found a container with cocaine.
Before the authorities came to seize the shipment, corrupt cops tried to bribe the port custom employees to gain temporary access to the container (basically to steal part of the shipment before it'd be officially weighted).
I pity these people: when shipment go undetected, it's their fault. Then criminals try to bribe them. Then corrupt cops try to bribe them.
It's a sad state of affair.
Whether cocaine should be legal or not is another topic but it's not legal and there are killings related to cocaine traffic in Europe: consumers of cocaine have their share of responsibility too.
>consumers of cocaine have their share of responsibility too.
consumers of any product. consumers of chocolate are responsible for... consumers of electronics are responsible for... consumers of cotton are responsible for...
there's only so many options consumers really have. there are somethings you cannot vote with your wallet. blaming addicts teeters precariously towards victim blaming.
I already eat bug from a lot of foraging and fruit market waste, not very intentionally, but they are there and they eat the same thing, so can't be bad, extra proteins actually
it costs pollution to grow, transport, stock, plastic-wrap, etc..
it's like saying: "it doesn't cost pollution to buy those avocadoes grown in another continent since they're already there", it's true immediately (above all if very ripe), but in the mid-long term, reducing consumption reduces production & pollution (at all level of the chain)
Sure there are some essential production and distribution costs, but let's remember that cocaine is a minimally processed leaf extract.
You can industrialize its production and get close to sugar level production pricing and distribution. Sugar sourced from Brazil hits my Toronto supermarket shelf bagged at CAD$1.50/kg at 99.9% purity, including retailer markup. Which is like 1/50000th the retail price of cocaine.
Even if it costs 10x as much due to lower volume/weaker extracts/slower growth/additional processing, you're talking a 99.9something% reduction in resource expenditure per dose.
Price of something is a good representation of the resources destroyed ("costs") in its production.
Most sugar today comes from beets and is extracted through an industrial process. Drug cartels rely on things like gasoline because they are commonly available, but if there were not criminal sanctions on the process, then it’s possible some higher-quality means of extraction would be employed.
Most sugar in my own backyard originates from beets, but I see I was wrong about it being most sugar worldwide. Wikipedia[0] gives a figure of 30% of world sugar for 2013.
If crude juice is extracted in Brazil and refined in Canada, I’m surprised that it is viewed as cost-effective to transport so much unneeded liquid by sea.
Are we really arguing about the pollution caused by the cocaine trade instead of the violence and destruction of lives for addicts. What a proposterous contention
Right, let's just sit around in our tents in the dark and try not to move or speak unless absolutely necessary. Moving is not always essential, and has a caloric cost, which means food consumption. Are you sure being on this site right now is actually necessary? In fact, why bother being alive at all?
Yeah, have fun with that. I'm going to enjoy my life!
Humanity can have just 2 modes of operation (3th one is fake path). 1) is to consume less and less, so we end up like living in tents in dark with population 10B and more.. 2) Smart-manage population growth and cut bullshit jobs, so we end up with 200M-300M people living good live.
The choise is yours. I personally would go with (2) option, but its just me.
Before anyone hit the downvote button, think about it in math. You only have limited amount of resources and energy. How you distribute it, is up to you.
This is bullshit. Many cocaine users are not addicts but are just people with money partying.
They are not victims and even the addicts are not absolved of responsibility for their actions.
If an alcoholic drives drunk and kills someone, they don’t get an exemption.
If you buy cocaine from dealers known to be violent, you don’t get an exemption either. More generally, if you buy cocaine that comes from a violent cartel (most of it), you’re supporting the cartel.
It’s a party drug, you have a choice. Check yourself into rehab if you don’t.
I'm sure most buyers would looooooove to buy organic artisanal cocaine direct from the farmer shipped by DHL. But various governments make that impossible, so I'd pin the blame solely on governments.
You are the one suggesting its okay to buy a non-essential good from an enterprise which murders and tortures and thieves and rapes as part of their business strategy because "fuck you" its the only business selling.
That is pure unadulturated selfishness.
By the way, ive done the same thing, I just didnt fucking lie to myself about it to make me feel good about my decision.
> there are killings related to cocaine traffic in Europe
Which is a problem created by the stupid “war on drugs”. If you make it impossible for parties to access the legal system to resolve any disputes, you’re forcing them to resolve them via extrajudicial means.
You don’t generally hear about killings within the traffic of any other commodity such as vegetables or IT goods. In fact we don’t even call it “traffic” but just trade.
Avocado farms in New Zealand get robbed when prices start approaching $8NZD a a avocado, :'(. I feel sorry for the farmers. We have no avocados on our farms.
> You don’t generally hear about killings within the traffic of any other commodity such as vegetables
Of course you do, especially if you’re in Mexico where the cartels have now expanded beyond drugs. A web search for "mexican cartels avocados" might do you well.
Another example is vanilla in Madagascar, where dozens of murders have occurred. Beyond local turf fights, Russian and Chinese organized crime has been involved in Madagascar’s spice and hardwood sectors for many years now.
The only correct solution here is to recognize cocaine is a commodity that people want, and legalizing it and funding support systems etc etc with the taxes is a great way to go.
that is literally not true lol. No other drug gives you cancer in various area of your body. No other drug makes you more of it in less than an hour, except maybe heroin. And heroin should never be tried.
Yeah sounds like youve no idea what youre talking about. First off heroin last longer than an hour. Second, many drugs make you want more within an hour (cocaine, benzos, sometimes amphetamines, alcohol)
and many drugs can can increase your cancer risk because many of them do damage to your organ tissue cause they are caustic.
well idk what to tell ya then. People do coke and benzos until theres no more coke and benzos and the frequency just depends on how much you can handle, or in the case of benzos, how quick it takes you to forget your last dose.
Even if you don't think it's a large issue morally or whatever, the money we spend policing them, the drugs they do, and the immense wealth of black market dealers should all show you it is a major problem, even if only a financially ridiculous decision for any state to make. Waste money impotently pretending to police drugs instead of generating tax revenue selling them. It's absolutely brain dead how we operate.
Freely? Without any limitations? Of course not man.
25+ for hard drugs, daily limits, mandate taxes go to facilities for treatment and rehabilitation. Take the hundreds of billions from the global black market for drugs and the tens of billions we spend impotently pretending to stop drug dealers with idiotic agencies like the DEA and all of the sudden we turn a GIGANTIC minus in our budget in to a GIGANTIC increase in funding.
for most drugs I agree but if we were going to be serious about legal heroin and coke and meth and the heavy shit to me it makes sense to say 18 for most shit then 25 plus a license to get the heavy shit
So we can start with prescription drugs I assume? Unlimited access to OxyContin for everyone 25+. It's much safer than any illegally consumed opioids after all so what could go wrong? Oh wait..
> GIGANTIC increase in funding.
That's a silly claim unless you tax them to such an extent that black marker drugs become more competitive.
You did. Daily limits is a silly idea that's trivial to workaround (effectively users will just end up paying markup on anything above the 'daily limit').
>That's a silly claim unless you tax them to such an extent that black marker drugs become more competitive.
Not at all. First off, all the money we spend on the dea and other drug enforcement could be instantly recouped. Billions for those d.a.r.e clowns ALONE. Plus, I'd wager to say cost of legal production would be a lot lower than illegal production + illicit shipment to end users. That leaves plenty of room to make a decent buck on taxes. But yeah a big portion of money would come from all the idiotic shit we no longer would have to do with drugs legal.
> all the money we spend on the dea and other drug enforcement could be instantly recouped. Billions for those d.a.r.e clowns ALONE.
No. That can't happen unless the tax are extremely high which makes black market drugs more competitive. Also it should be perfectly obvious that full legalization would also significantly decrease costs for illegal producers as well.
> But yeah a big portion of money would come from all the idiotic shit we no longer would have to do with drugs legal.
Hard to believe since you don't actually have any figures to show.
> Before the authorities came to seize the shipment, corrupt cops tried to bribe the port custom employees to gain temporary access to the container (basically to steal part of the shipment before it'd be officially weighted).
Link please.
> consumers of cocaine have their share of responsibility too
Arguably the gov't does also for creating the market by outlawing the stuff. But that's never discussed by anti-drugs people (BTW I'm not pro-drugs, before you assume)
Cocaine was always easily available in Antwerp from my experience (~1995-2010). More so than weed which was always a little surprising given it’s not far to the Dutch border.
Friends of mine worked at customs both for the Belgian authorities and the US ones.
Antwerp did have a reputation for corruption. There’s too much money involved.
Can’t corrupt cops just go in and grab whatever they want without anyone stopping them? They are corrupt and they are cops after all. Who is going to do anything about it?
The port would report them to the part of the police that’s not corrupt, which as a Belgian, I like to think is most of the Antwerp police.
I have a hard time believing this story to be honest, most police corruption here would probably be a lot more covert, e.g. in the form of providing information or turning a blind eye at the right time.
Someone else already asked for a source and it’s yet to show up.
>Whether cocaine should be legal or not is another topic
How? It should be THE topic. Fucking stop all this bullshit waste of time and money and lives trying to police what fucking adults consume in their own home. How can anyone with a brain look at all the inane war on drugs and come to any other conclusion than all drugs should be legalized?
Let them buy it in a legal, controlled, licensed, tax paying store, like the adults they are.
Absolutely childish and the one of the biggest most consistently stupid thing we as a society do is prohibition of drugs. How many people will die, how many billions will we waste on the "war on drugs" (read, war on minorities and the poor) before we wisen the fuck up? It is actually insane that we continue to play this ridiculous game and pretend we can't ALL see what the solution is.
I had the pleasure to deal with both authorities and the business side of securing platforms that handle the container checks & harbour access.
The forces who are, let's call it "not happy" with any form of security (access control, logging, monitoring, malware, RATs etc.) is insane.
At times I felt nearly half of all involved parties were corrupt. Top to bottom. Commercial and governmental.
Sold absolutely zero solutions and decided to never again deal with the whole industry.
Edit: for completeness I should add that many did not want any additional security measures since this might leave the traffickers no other choice but to get more physical.
But no one feels the need to get defensive about nationality if "just bribe some American congressmen" is stated instead of "Dutch or Belgian official".
Can you clarify what exactly is meant by "the culture of corruption' in US congress"? I assume you're talking about campaign contributions and the associated quasi-quid pro quo dealings, but most Americans don't receive campaign contributions nor do they meet up with lobbyists, so there's very little opportunity for them to commit such acts of corruption.
The dutch think it’s embedded within one’s race - in europe they even make studies showing the inferiority of east europeans. Even covid was somehow “proven” by dutch universities to affect east europeans differently. Truly a one of a kind nation the netherlands. Yet dutch ports are main drug weapon and people smuggling ports.
The remote access to the system was achieved via bribery - they bribed a port employee to run something from a provided USB stick so they could directly manipulate the system.
It's common practice of journalists in The Netherlands to not publish family names of suspects in the media. There are exceptions for 'famous' criminals. So it was striking for me to read full names in the article.
If you're into 'real crime' and all this cocaine smuggling and all the accompanying banditry is of interest to you, I can recommend some channels on Youtube. Just search for 'Holland Crime Boulevard' or 'mocro mafia', etc.
There has been an ongoing feud since 2012 over a missing shipment of 200kg cocaine with a lot of murders. Even murders of the family of a crown witness, lawyer and a famous crime journalist. Pretty recently there was a discovery of underground containers setup to torture people. Ridouan Taghi and his organisation worked together with Italian and Irish mobsters. Well, I wasn't there, but that's what the media portrays. Also, this is probably not one group, but there were all kinds of groups working together once in a while.
Groups working together is fairly common. The importers handle logistics into the country. Another group handles distribution within a country. Others may handle distribution within towns/cities.
They all have a mutual benefit of clear division of responsibilities in the journey - and thus will reduce the inter-group feuds from trying to branch out.
The underground market can be incredibly efficient.
There were some job ads from german state company on who’s hiring thread another day. And what can I say… the salaries there are bad joke. One must love the country very much to join such place. I guess, mafia will not save on salaries here.
Yes, also in cybersecurity you can earn a lot of money discovering vulnerabilities in popular apps and devices no matter who is on the other side: a state or a criminal entity.
> One must love the country very much to join such place
Or be too bad to get any other job. This in turn breeds a terrible environment of mediocrity which immediately extinguishes any promising talent that may (accidentally) join.
The section on PIN code fraud really highlights the need to move away from code/password matching to cryptographic verification:
> The large number of port and transport personnel who are able to view these reference numbers — in some cases up to 10,000 people in a single shipping company — provides traffickers with many targets.
This is equivalent to storing passwords in plaintext. A code that is needed to actually access the goods (i.e. used as a password) should be stored as a cryptographic hash or signature, and then only the right parties can verify that signature, with middle men having no access to it.
No, it won't solve all forms of corruption, but it will take thousands of people out of the "bribable" (or worse, "intimidatable", as the article explains) category.
The aforementioned example shows nefarious exploitation of the vulnerability, but the same vulnerability is likely also "exploited" day to day by authorized users as a shortcut or workaround against system failures, missing features or bad user experience.
For example, in a perfectly-secure system, how hard would it be to delegate access to someone (we assume the reason for delegation is legitimate)? If it's harder than writing down the access code and/or texting them then it's a downgrade. Is there a contingency process to keep working if your (obviously outsourced) SSO provider is down, or your machine is applying updates, or your browser is pestering you to leave feedback and trying to convince you to switch to their search engine before it'll let you access the system's access control page? Etc.
116 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 188 ms ] thread> breaking into the encrypted chat platform SkyECC
Psychical access to a device or something more technical…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_Sky_Global
"About a billion messages were intercepted, about half of which had been decrypted by April 2021—further avenues of inquiry were expected to open as decryption progressed"
They also suddenly claim all the users that got intercepted were using "elaborate fake" SkyECC apps and services, yet oddly those same "fake" apps could talk with actual SkyECC users, so, y'know. Grains of salt.
It is unclear how the decryption was made, but it talks about how the servers were tapped into including RAM access!
Teasing! I wonder how.
Thanks for sharing.
On Linux, there’s for example Lime if you have root.
On windows there’s various other tools, some commercial, some open source. All require admin privs.
If you have access to the hypervisor it’s even easier - just direct the hypervisor to dump the VM’s RAM to a file. Most hypervisor tools have a utility for this.
If you have only physical access it’s a bit trickier, but if there’s an available PCIe slot and you are very careful it’s possible to dump RAM that way on a live system :)
Not that long in Belgium, in the port of Antwerp ("Anvers" in french), non-corrupt employees found a container with cocaine.
Before the authorities came to seize the shipment, corrupt cops tried to bribe the port custom employees to gain temporary access to the container (basically to steal part of the shipment before it'd be officially weighted).
I pity these people: when shipment go undetected, it's their fault. Then criminals try to bribe them. Then corrupt cops try to bribe them.
It's a sad state of affair.
Whether cocaine should be legal or not is another topic but it's not legal and there are killings related to cocaine traffic in Europe: consumers of cocaine have their share of responsibility too.
consumers of any product. consumers of chocolate are responsible for... consumers of electronics are responsible for... consumers of cotton are responsible for...
there's only so many options consumers really have. there are somethings you cannot vote with your wallet. blaming addicts teeters precariously towards victim blaming.
So the best is to minimize consumption, and obviously things like drugs, travel, and many things are not essential products
If legalized, the cost of distribution would crater to that of other products, just a few dollars per kg.
it's like saying: "it doesn't cost pollution to buy those avocadoes grown in another continent since they're already there", it's true immediately (above all if very ripe), but in the mid-long term, reducing consumption reduces production & pollution (at all level of the chain)
You can industrialize its production and get close to sugar level production pricing and distribution. Sugar sourced from Brazil hits my Toronto supermarket shelf bagged at CAD$1.50/kg at 99.9% purity, including retailer markup. Which is like 1/50000th the retail price of cocaine.
Even if it costs 10x as much due to lower volume/weaker extracts/slower growth/additional processing, you're talking a 99.9something% reduction in resource expenditure per dose.
Price of something is a good representation of the resources destroyed ("costs") in its production.
You can chew out the sugar or cocaine if you like.
(I think coca needs an acid base extraction to get a crystalline form, but that’s straightforward chemistry at scale)
If crude juice is extracted in Brazil and refined in Canada, I’m surprised that it is viewed as cost-effective to transport so much unneeded liquid by sea.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet
Sea transit is cheap, sugarcane grows better in the tropics than beets in cooler places. Harder to harvest below-ground stuff.
Canada used to subsidize/protect sugar beet producers (to keep them competitive), but largely got out of it.
Maybe that’s why we still refine it: because the plants still exist.
Nope it's not possible and it's more than obvious way.
The cocaine content in coca leaves is 0.23% to 0.96%. Sugarcane has a magnitude or so higher sugar content.
Cocaine is not a synthetic drug. Been around long before any human was walking around.
Yeah, have fun with that. I'm going to enjoy my life!
The choise is yours. I personally would go with (2) option, but its just me.
Before anyone hit the downvote button, think about it in math. You only have limited amount of resources and energy. How you distribute it, is up to you.
They are not victims and even the addicts are not absolved of responsibility for their actions.
If an alcoholic drives drunk and kills someone, they don’t get an exemption.
If you buy cocaine from dealers known to be violent, you don’t get an exemption either. More generally, if you buy cocaine that comes from a violent cartel (most of it), you’re supporting the cartel.
It’s a party drug, you have a choice. Check yourself into rehab if you don’t.
I don't know what to make of you, you are either 12 years old, east Asian, or mentally ill
Also many drugs are caustic so Idk what your problem is with that. And I've never defended creationism.
Also super cool of you to be openly racist.
I don't understand why you are being hostile.
You are the one suggesting its okay to buy a non-essential good from an enterprise which murders and tortures and thieves and rapes as part of their business strategy because "fuck you" its the only business selling.
That is pure unadulturated selfishness.
By the way, ive done the same thing, I just didnt fucking lie to myself about it to make me feel good about my decision.
Which is a problem created by the stupid “war on drugs”. If you make it impossible for parties to access the legal system to resolve any disputes, you’re forcing them to resolve them via extrajudicial means.
You don’t generally hear about killings within the traffic of any other commodity such as vegetables or IT goods. In fact we don’t even call it “traffic” but just trade.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spanish-police-seize-74....
Of course you do, especially if you’re in Mexico where the cartels have now expanded beyond drugs. A web search for "mexican cartels avocados" might do you well.
Another example is vanilla in Madagascar, where dozens of murders have occurred. Beyond local turf fights, Russian and Chinese organized crime has been involved in Madagascar’s spice and hardwood sectors for many years now.
Legalize drugs and the violence will end
Also unnecessary/avoidable deaths are only an issue if they are an outcome of violence or government restrictions if I understand correctly?
Technically we already have that with cigarettes and alcohol, so maybe it's time to drop the double-standards?
Uh, how many years of smoking or after how many years the cancer appears on average?
10? 20? 30?
Other drugs like cocaine/heroin will destroy your life way, way faster than that.
rofl, yea, addiction aint huge issue, huh?
25+ for hard drugs, daily limits, mandate taxes go to facilities for treatment and rehabilitation. Take the hundreds of billions from the global black market for drugs and the tens of billions we spend impotently pretending to stop drug dealers with idiotic agencies like the DEA and all of the sudden we turn a GIGANTIC minus in our budget in to a GIGANTIC increase in funding.
It's not uncommon for people to "grow out" of a supposed "addiction"
So we can start with prescription drugs I assume? Unlimited access to OxyContin for everyone 25+. It's much safer than any illegally consumed opioids after all so what could go wrong? Oh wait..
> GIGANTIC increase in funding.
That's a silly claim unless you tax them to such an extent that black marker drugs become more competitive.
>unlimited access to oxycontin
Did you even read what you quoted? Who said Unlimited?
Not at all. First off, all the money we spend on the dea and other drug enforcement could be instantly recouped. Billions for those d.a.r.e clowns ALONE. Plus, I'd wager to say cost of legal production would be a lot lower than illegal production + illicit shipment to end users. That leaves plenty of room to make a decent buck on taxes. But yeah a big portion of money would come from all the idiotic shit we no longer would have to do with drugs legal.
No. That can't happen unless the tax are extremely high which makes black market drugs more competitive. Also it should be perfectly obvious that full legalization would also significantly decrease costs for illegal producers as well.
> But yeah a big portion of money would come from all the idiotic shit we no longer would have to do with drugs legal.
Hard to believe since you don't actually have any figures to show.
Link please.
> consumers of cocaine have their share of responsibility too
Arguably the gov't does also for creating the market by outlawing the stuff. But that's never discussed by anti-drugs people (BTW I'm not pro-drugs, before you assume)
Friends of mine worked at customs both for the Belgian authorities and the US ones.
Antwerp did have a reputation for corruption. There’s too much money involved.
almost like those two are related
I have a hard time believing this story to be honest, most police corruption here would probably be a lot more covert, e.g. in the form of providing information or turning a blind eye at the right time.
Someone else already asked for a source and it’s yet to show up.
How? It should be THE topic. Fucking stop all this bullshit waste of time and money and lives trying to police what fucking adults consume in their own home. How can anyone with a brain look at all the inane war on drugs and come to any other conclusion than all drugs should be legalized?
Let them buy it in a legal, controlled, licensed, tax paying store, like the adults they are.
Absolutely childish and the one of the biggest most consistently stupid thing we as a society do is prohibition of drugs. How many people will die, how many billions will we waste on the "war on drugs" (read, war on minorities and the poor) before we wisen the fuck up? It is actually insane that we continue to play this ridiculous game and pretend we can't ALL see what the solution is.
The forces who are, let's call it "not happy" with any form of security (access control, logging, monitoring, malware, RATs etc.) is insane.
At times I felt nearly half of all involved parties were corrupt. Top to bottom. Commercial and governmental.
Sold absolutely zero solutions and decided to never again deal with the whole industry.
Edit: for completeness I should add that many did not want any additional security measures since this might leave the traffickers no other choice but to get more physical.
If you're into 'real crime' and all this cocaine smuggling and all the accompanying banditry is of interest to you, I can recommend some channels on Youtube. Just search for 'Holland Crime Boulevard' or 'mocro mafia', etc.
There has been an ongoing feud since 2012 over a missing shipment of 200kg cocaine with a lot of murders. Even murders of the family of a crown witness, lawyer and a famous crime journalist. Pretty recently there was a discovery of underground containers setup to torture people. Ridouan Taghi and his organisation worked together with Italian and Irish mobsters. Well, I wasn't there, but that's what the media portrays. Also, this is probably not one group, but there were all kinds of groups working together once in a while.
They all have a mutual benefit of clear division of responsibilities in the journey - and thus will reduce the inter-group feuds from trying to branch out.
The underground market can be incredibly efficient.
Or be too bad to get any other job. This in turn breeds a terrible environment of mediocrity which immediately extinguishes any promising talent that may (accidentally) join.
> The large number of port and transport personnel who are able to view these reference numbers — in some cases up to 10,000 people in a single shipping company — provides traffickers with many targets.
This is equivalent to storing passwords in plaintext. A code that is needed to actually access the goods (i.e. used as a password) should be stored as a cryptographic hash or signature, and then only the right parties can verify that signature, with middle men having no access to it.
No, it won't solve all forms of corruption, but it will take thousands of people out of the "bribable" (or worse, "intimidatable", as the article explains) category.
For example, in a perfectly-secure system, how hard would it be to delegate access to someone (we assume the reason for delegation is legitimate)? If it's harder than writing down the access code and/or texting them then it's a downgrade. Is there a contingency process to keep working if your (obviously outsourced) SSO provider is down, or your machine is applying updates, or your browser is pestering you to leave feedback and trying to convince you to switch to their search engine before it'll let you access the system's access control page? Etc.