As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother The British government's computer security gurus have announced they will stop using the terms whitelisting and blacklisting in their online documentation. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ, said on Friday it would, following a request from a customer, eliminate the terms when describing including and …
This is pathetic. There's over a hundred and fifty comments on here, most of them badly thought out "polictical correctness gone mad" screeds heavy on "what if I think the allow list is things I'm allowed to deny" bullshit.
Allow list is a list of allowed things. That is clearer than calling it a white list.
Deny list is a list of denied things. That is clearer than calling it a black list.
Dont think anyone cares about white list, black list just needs a vowel swap to block list, then everyone who cares more about touchy feely imagined everyones a winner nonsense can bugger off out of the way of real security discussions, i wonder how many got pwned while the oh so important discussion of what to call black and white lists went on, suppose a grey list should now be a delay list.
white and black hat are irrelevant as no one refers to them selves as such as its all shades of grey and choice of application, criminals are criminals, no need for a cute cyber prefix, end of the day there aint much difference between a banker with granted access to a system fiddling the books, to a non skiddy gaining access and emptying accounts, other than a massive bonus vs a short jail stint and a black deny mark on your cv...
Are rainbow tables next incase it hurts a homophobes feelings? Or are they beneath consideration due to having incorrect points of view??
This is pathetic. There's over a hundred and fifty comments on here, most of them badly thought out "polictical correctness gone mad" screeds heavy on "what if I think the allow list is things I'm allowed to deny" bullshit.
Pathetic? What's pathetic is the endless newspeak being spewed out by those championing offense politics.
This change is pointless and counterproductive, and it smacks of people talking utter nonsense just to have an excuse to take offence on someone elses behalf. It's the same utter stupidity as "the singular they". Define yourself however you choose, just don't expect me to play along with the pretense.
Offence is taken and cannot be given, therefore it is your choice if you choose to be offended. I'm all done worrying about that and I'm done playing your word games, because the sort of things you get offended by are unending and increasingly silly. [Not "you" Sabroni, "you" generically]
white lists generally permit access/bypass of a system, where as a blacklist prohibits access/triggers additional scrutiny
But its VERY subjective and contextual, if your edge security stance is block everything and permit only from inside to out connections, then your white list would only contain known exemptions of permitted inbound connections.
So anyway explianed without prohibited words.
That said this is nonsense especially as its actually useful to visualise your ACL's and trusts defined by them as a strata/gradient i.e. (grey lists trusted with supervision/observation of behaviour) and thats a level of intuitive nuance missing from allow and deny, i suppose supervised might work in some context's but not many i.e. when its something like spam greylisting where what your really doing is verifying that the sender has a SMTP relay that follows the rules and behaves in an expected manner, i.e. retries after 5 mins, a delay list would be a better name, but doesnt really indicate any connotations of trust like white/grey/black list does to my mind.
@sabroni: has there ever in history been a case where using "whitelist" and "blacklist" has cause confusion? If yes, your point has merit - if no, then you are being picky for the sake of it. (Personally, I'm torn. I think things should be made as clear as possible to aid understanding, so I like your argument. On the other hand, if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it is a really good maxim for everyday life.)
Being "in the black" is seen as a positive thing when it comes to debt. Will they get rid of that term? Possibly those of fairly red skin (eczema?) may become upset.
So now that shades don't exist; do I pay the ransom money to the BlackHat or the WhiteHat hackers? Both charge large amounts.
Is the bank using it international?
As for software, it often is, and colour (though sometimes international) is a local and social, traditional option for reference.
So it can cause confusion, or be a buzzword. Where as "allow list" and "deny list" are easier to translate and implement.
Also see time, clocks, calendars and just about anything human being way way more complex once you decide to try and program it! :D
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Using correct, descriptive names for functions and variables usually helps with comments. ...... Benson's Cycle
Apparently, and as I have oft found and been told, such is not always the case whenever new descriptive names for functions and variables are thought unbelievable and/or too good to be true and nonsensical.
It is easily enough resolved though with the virtuous application of a bit of patience and as much extra information as is needed for an advancing intelligence to paint an accurate picture for fuller presentation and deeper comprehension.
While I’m all for meaningful variable and function names, the only thing that helps with comments is actually writing comments.
And please don’t go down the “self commenting” argument - it’s bollocks and perpetrated by lazy people who can’t be arsed to document the (usually crappy) software they write
Explain to me again how comments get tested? I prove every line i write with tests. How do you alert your users when your comments go out of date?
Oh, you don't? You allow a description that doesn't match the functionality to live in the code? Now that really is bollocks perpetrated by lazy people.
The problem is that colours are usually non-ordinal until you give some, often subjective, meaning to it. Red, yellow and green make sense but only if you already know the colours from how they were once agreed on traffic lights. Red as a colour for danger makes some sense but green as a colour for the opposite much less so. In many countries the middle light isn't yellow but orange (and they call it orange too).
Black has always been an ambiguous colour (or technically, the absence of colour). As you say, when it comes to financial figures 'black' is a positive thing, though 'black money' is money before it is laundered. Meanwhile, in branding 'black' is often the highest, best, or most expensive tier, think 'black label'. For that reason I've always found the 'black hat' and 'white hat' terminology ambiguous too.
I think this makes a lot of sense, 'Allow' and 'Deny' are unambiguous.
And not forgetting, of course, those cultures which don't differentiate between green and blue other than as shades of the what they see as the same colour. Or those where red is seen as propitious rather than danger. Or those like the UK whose middle traffic light is amber and called such, not yellow or orange.
give up calling people black or white
Been there, done that.
Many many years ago when I hadn't been at school too long we had a couple of black girls in my year, except we weren't allowed to call them black as that was then a pejorative term. I clearly remember the teacher saying if you look closely they aren't black but dark brown, and as easily as that we all accepted it and stopped using that term. The teacher also pointed out that we weren't white but more of a pink colour but that didn't go down so well as the boys all saw pink as a "girly" colour............ You can't win them all.
In a previous US Census I was visited by a Census taker who insisted on checking the box "white" for my race.
Not only did I tell her that I go by "human", I also put my hand on the questionnaire and challenged her to define the color of my skin.
Compared to the obviously white sheet of paper it was quite impossible to refer to me as white. Red, maybe brown. But even our toddler could see it wasn't white.
Should really have been red and blue, but blue was an awkward shade to create a filter for, works poorer in fog and much less bright than green.
Port is red, because it is and is to the left facing towards the pointy bit because it was called Larboard in English for awhile, There may also have been a convention to use a steering oar on the starboard side and tie up to the pier in port on the port side, but I'm sceptical, The changing of larboard to port was obviously needed for shouted orders more than black -> deny.
Red and Green are still often used on machinery for stop and start, though often with differently shaped buttons. Red for an emergency stop may be a Western thing? As is red on gauges and meters for danger or empty. Possibly from typewriter ribbons. Though red, green and black ink was used for dip pens. Curiously commercial "fountain pens" with a nib rather than fine tube come after typewriters and large ballpoint pens for carton marking.
Thing is, its nothing to do with race. It derives from christian view of "good" being depicted as white hues such as angels etc and their representations being in alabaster and marble vs demons, witches etc being draped in black
A customer - so that will be a committee with a permanently offended MP or a civil service dept headed by someone who thought that "ba ba black sheep" was racist (despite black sheep existing and being uncommon vs white sheep) and thought "ba ba happy sheep" was a much better choice.....it is politically correct virtue signalling at its worst and pushed out during a pandemic to avoid the justified pushback.
REALLY good to see they have so little to do, perhaps long overdue to cut their funding as they clearly are overfunded and overstaffed if they have time for this nonsense
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Awww snowflake, it ends with calling a list of things to be denied a "deny list" and a list of things to be allowed an "allow list". Using this as a cue to blindly replace all instances of white with allow and black with deny is a very silly straw man argument.
Maybe you should take some time to reflect on why you can be triggered so easily, eh?
It's my understanding that 'Red Hat' got its name because in certain countries (like maybe China) the 'Red Hat' is the good guy, and the 'White Hat' is the bad guy. Or something like that. And KKK members wear white hats. And I own a black hat (I'll be wearing it with my recently obtained Guy Fawkes mask).
So next is what, traffic lights? Can't use 'Red' for 'Stop' because it offends "Red People" ? Or 'Yellow' for "Caution" because it offends "Yellow People" ? Or maybe 'Green List' vs 'Red List' because they're already used for traffic lights? Except in some places they use Cyan rather than Green.
Oh hell let's just use the ENTIRE RAINBOW. for EVERYTHING and just CONFUSE EVERYBODY! And then we'll offend the LGBTQ{rest of the alphabet} people because they use rainbows to represent their "community"... [seriously dividing ourselves up like this using 'identity' is completely _BOGUS_, and then people get to pretend they care about PETTY CRAP like 'offensive' color-related terms]
I have a better idea: STOP caring about PETTY CRAP like this, and care about things that MATTER instead. [yeah nothing BLATANTLY OBVIOUS comes to mind at the moment...]
icon, because, facepalm
Not really, unless your wet behind the ears, nearly everyone knows what blacklisted means i.e. banned / blocked from entry as in the blacklist run by various large construction firms up till very recently in the UK i.e. NG Bailey for one, same as blackballed
Ditto for "Black affronted"
Someone is burning taxpayers money on a meaningless virtue signalling exercise and are forgetting who pays their wages i.e. the general public, who are generally sick to the back teeth of this relentless (and very expensive) politically correct driven rebranding/naming exercises. Then again I see the same nonsense from local councils from both elected members and salaried managers spraying public funds about like water
Hmm, tying yourself in knots here jake. The allow list is the list of allowed things. The deny list is the list of denied things.
Confused? Only if you try really really hard to be.
YourDearOldMum can work it out, don't pretend it's tricky.
