CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
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Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#2This doesn't seem terribly surprising to me. There are still companies that use them, so if you need to spy on one, a device like this would be useful.
The weirdest part is that the CIA uses agile-type user stories when developing its spy gear.
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#3I imagine this is to target old manufacturing or scada equipment. If you want to sabotage an industrial target then you're going to be seeing a lot of legacy equipment. /r/sysadmin posts from manufacturing and industrial sysadmins are fascinating as they are scary.
Also it may reveal that the target is using old methods for security purposes. Imagine an office where no one has any sort of user accessible networking (ethernet would be just for updates, security, auditing, etc), just a 1980s style set of workstations each accessing things from the floppy drive. If you want to see a file on a certain topic then you'd walk up the librarian who would check your ID and give you the disk. If you wanted to sneak that data out, then you'd have to physically copy the disk or steal it. The latter being much more risky as the librarian knows you had it last. Perhaps there's enough empty space in the floppy case to put in some kind of tracker as well.
You also don't need to worry about USB vulnerabilities with USB sticks nor the worry that someone will show up with the right cable, mount the USB drive to their phone, and copy the data. Nor the write limits and versioning exploits on writable CD media. You could also set off a EM burst that'll wipe a room full of floppies in a millisecond if need be.
If you deal with text data files then the 3.5" space limitation is not an issue, what's the average word file size? 80k? Imagine an intelligence service that keeps its state secrets like this. You'd be hard pressed to hack them. This isn't a hypothetical as we have data that suggests some intelligence services have moved to typewriters to avoid hacking[1]. Seems to me, I'd much rather just use 3.5" disks on a linux box with no networking attached to a printer than a typewriter. Even spies can't live without WYSIWG editors. Perhaps the great typewriter experiment has failed and sneakernet is a better compromise between security and convenience.
[1]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/15/germany-typewr...
edit (as it wont let me reply) in regards to exploits here:
Your attack surface has now changed from "Anastasia in accounting clicking on resume.js" to now dragging TEMPEST equipment into the basement of the Lubyanka building undetected.
Or a mole now trying to sneak in a bulky 3.5" copy device instead of right-click > encrypt > email.
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#4To me an interesting piece is the systemd / Linux references. The protocol to talk to floppy drives is not all that complex. If battery life is a concern, dedicated embedded code (not using Linux) seems likes a better option and not all that much more difficult to implement.
Then again, I suppose embedded Linux keeps getting lighter / better.
That requirement strikes me as classic non-/semi-technical product owner trying to suggest to the engineers how to do their job.
As for people using floppy disks in 2013... actually not surprised at all. They have a little bit of security through obscurity now and they can be easily cleared with a magnet and some scissors or open flame. And as another poster pointed out, it might be for legacy systems like industrial control.
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#5On the face this seems ridiculous. It's a big stretch, but we do know that some US adversaries use portable media (usually thumb drives) to currior data. Maybe they had a target that was using floppies? Maybe Iran's centrifuges or N. Korea still uses really old tech?
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#6This doesn't seem terribly surprising to me. There are still companies that use them, so if you need to spy on one, a device like this would be useful. The weirdest part is that the CIA uses agile-type user stories when developing its spy gear.
In fact, this is an excellent requirements document. Clear user stories with prioritization and notes. I also appreciate the Questions section at the bottom.
Good requirements documents are a rare find in my experience.
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#7On the face this seems ridiculous. It's a big stretch, but we do know that some US adversaries use portable media (usually thumb drives) to currior data. Maybe they had a target that was using floppies? Maybe Iran's centrifuges or N. Korea still uses really old tech?
Doesn't sound too far fetched to me, I'm actually using floppies at work to move data from old equipment (mainly old oscilloscopes and other measurement systems). If it ain't broke...
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#8On the face this seems ridiculous. It's a big stretch, but we do know that some US adversaries use portable media (usually thumb drives) to currior data. Maybe they had a target that was using floppies? Maybe Iran's centrifuges or N. Korea still uses really old tech?
"Really old tech" is everywhere. For example Germany's high speed trains' reservation system runs on floppy disks.
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#9To me an interesting piece is the systemd / Linux references. The protocol to talk to floppy drives is not all that complex. If battery life is a concern, dedicated embedded code (not using Linux) seems likes a better option and not all that much more difficult to implement. Then again, I suppose embedded Linux keeps getting lighter / better. That requirement strikes me as classic non-/semi-technical product owner tr…
I think most storage mediums are amenable to easy clearing with an open flame.
Re: CIA wanted a way to copy 3.5“ floppy disks ”in a covert manner“ in 2013
#10I imagine this is to target old manufacturing or scada equipment. If you want to sabotage an industrial target then you're going to be seeing a lot of legacy equipment. /r/sysadmin posts from manufacturing and industrial sysadmins are fascinating as they are scary. Also it may reveal that the target is using old methods for security purposes. Imagine an office where no one has any sort of user accessible networking (…
Typerwriters won't help. Soviets could bug them in 1976: https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/how-soviets-used-ib...
I bet that now, CIA can do it much more stealthily.
And I also think that it is pretty hard to make these 1980's workstations secure -- that old DOS software was full of vulnerabilities, and it has no modern protections at all (usernames, kernel mode). I remember back at high school we had "1980s style set of workstations each accessing things from the floppy drive." and they were full of viruses. And once you have your code on target computers, you can exfiltrate data pretty easily (emit right patterns with pc speaker, memory access, display, etc..)