Putting ethics and legality aside (if you can, and you shouldn't), it's a marvellous technical achievement to be able to take a beam splitter and analyse all the traffic. I assume they must do a lot of early filtering in hardware to select traffic of interest based on IP headers and then some deeper inspection, and then gradually move up to software on the filtered traffic. Do we think they start with dedicated ASICs, perhaps add FPGAs for second line filtering which would give them a degree of adaptability, then software for the rest? What were internet backbone speeds like in the early 2000s?
Room 641A
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Room 641A
#22The NSA has gone way beyond that now. Expand "room" to fortress, and then multiply by 8.
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub...
Re: Room 641A
#23Similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF4EUM8CwT4 "The Secret Behind the Huge, Windowless Skyscraper in NYC" by Half as Interesting And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21555954
Is it a known fact that AT&T is in bed with the NSA, or just a coincidence? Titanpointe and Room 641A are currently or formerly owned by AT&T.
All telecoms are. It's no coincidence that telecom security is crap.
https://www.aftenposten.no/verden/i/Olkl/sources-we-were-pre...?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/06/vodafone-re...
Re: Room 641A
#24Off-topic, but what kind of door lock is shown in this picture? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Room_641...
Looks like rivets are holding a panic bar or stronger bar.
Fun fact: Klein got actually interested in that room because he overheard a janitor that was complaining that he is not allowed to clean that room and that makes him feel he's not doing 100% his job. The initial response from some higher ups was that the room will become a new janitor closet but months went by and then these reinforce bars were installed overnight. That persuaded Klein to continue his research.
PS. The room still exists and continue to serve its purpose.
Re: Room 641A
#25Putting ethics and legality aside (if you can, and you shouldn't), it's a marvellous technical achievement to be able to take a beam splitter and analyse all the traffic. I assume they must do a lot of early filtering in hardware to select traffic of interest based on IP headers and then some deeper inspection, and then gradually move up to software on the filtered traffic. Do we think they start with dedicated ASICs…
IIRC the Narus Insight device was an early attempt at deep packet inspection[1]
Also, TippingPoint had a pretty blazin' 40Gbps ASIC-based packet filter 10 years ago.
1: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/what-...
Re: Room 641A
#26Putting ethics and legality aside (if you can, and you shouldn't), it's a marvellous technical achievement to be able to take a beam splitter and analyse all the traffic. I assume they must do a lot of early filtering in hardware to select traffic of interest based on IP headers and then some deeper inspection, and then gradually move up to software on the filtered traffic. Do we think they start with dedicated ASICs…
I work in an environment where we do super high speed deep packet inspection for commercial customers. We use FPGAs. If all you want to do is split and exfiltrate (send to other servers for analysis) the packets as they come over the wire and maybe send them into different buckets then an FPGA is more than enough. You only need to be as fast as the slower of the two devices you're between.
Re: Room 641A
#27Putting ethics and legality aside (if you can, and you shouldn't), it's a marvellous technical achievement to be able to take a beam splitter and analyse all the traffic. I assume they must do a lot of early filtering in hardware to select traffic of interest based on IP headers and then some deeper inspection, and then gradually move up to software on the filtered traffic. Do we think they start with dedicated ASICs…
>it's a marvellous technical achievement
Not trying to argue for the sake of it here, but _is_ that a huge achievement? I assumed this was a simple device that splits the fiber beam, sending one part on it's way to AT&T and the other to some NSA database for further processing.
Re: Room 641A
#28I've always wondered how many of these rooms exist, but also their geographic location. Are they in every state? Every major city? What about a city like Minneapolis? Or is it just the major cities with the backbone connections?
I'm also surprised I haven't seen more pictures and stories of where these rooms actually located (or maybe I just haven't been paying attention)
Re: Room 641A
#29I remember an article with a title along the lines of "The Room that Copies the Internet", and I think it was in Rolling Stone. I've tried finding it a few times over the last couple years and have been unsuccessful. Does anybody know of the article to which I'm referring and where to find it?
Re: Room 641A
#30I've always wondered how many of these rooms exist, but also their geographic location. Are they in every state? Every major city? What about a city like Minneapolis? Or is it just the major cities with the backbone connections? I'm also surprised I haven't seen more pictures and stories of where these rooms actually located (or maybe I just haven't been paying attention)
Can't discuss many details but supposedly where most of the major backbone interchanges are. So you to your neighbor across the street. Probably not going to be picked up at the packet level. You to some random WordPress blog. More than likely they got that.