In 2013/2014, I don't think anybody who had read all of James Bamford's books was in any way surprised by the Snowden revelations.
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q=james+bamford+nsa
NSA Owns Everything (2015)
11–20 of 265 posts
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#12Yet somehow Russian / China are hacking the US left and right. If the NSA is so good, then at some point dont they have the responsibility to actively defend?
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
More scary is how people in tech circles still call you paranoid when you call Intel ME/AMD PSP a backdoor. >We are also always open for ideas but our focus is on firmware, BIOS, BUS or driver level attacks. Anyone on WiFi AC or up are backdoored right now by NSA. All of them are compromised, no doubt in my mind. All the LTE. All the x86 hardware on the market. All of it. If you aren't running fully free software, yo…
How does "running fully free software" helps alleviate "compromised x86"?
If you're running fully free software, you're not running x86, since it can't boot without backdoored binary blobs.
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#14Yet somehow Russian / China are hacking the US left and right. If the NSA is so good, then at some point dont they have the responsibility to actively defend?
But are they really though?
Could well be a threat there but I want actual evidence when the threat bogeyman is invoked in the name of more power. I believed the WMD lie. I hope I have learned from that.
If we believe the NSA then your question is exactly the right one to ask and has some obvious implications.
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#15The basic premise is false. > "Why did we never see it coming?" Many people saw it coming. I was warning about the possibility of dragnet surveillance, the existence of ECHELON, the use of the American security apparatus to steal trade secrets, the surveillance of non-American politicians, et al... For many, many years before Snowden. And I'm just some rando on the internet who follows the mainstream news! We were ca…
Yep. Remember the "carnivore" boxes installed at ISPs?
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet, still as scary and relevant today.
More scary is how people in tech circles still call you paranoid when you call Intel ME/AMD PSP a backdoor. >We are also always open for ideas but our focus is on firmware, BIOS, BUS or driver level attacks. Anyone on WiFi AC or up are backdoored right now by NSA. All of them are compromised, no doubt in my mind. All the LTE. All the x86 hardware on the market. All of it. If you aren't running fully free software, yo…
Can you provide some evidence for these claims?
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#17The basic premise is false. > "Why did we never see it coming?" Many people saw it coming. I was warning about the possibility of dragnet surveillance, the existence of ECHELON, the use of the American security apparatus to steal trade secrets, the surveillance of non-American politicians, et al... For many, many years before Snowden. And I'm just some rando on the internet who follows the mainstream news! We were ca…
It's not that nobody saw them coming it's that nobody cared enough to produce better technology. When a few key entities are central points of information distribution it is very simple to monitor everything. End-to-end encryption is helpful, but it isn't enough, becaues no effort is required to know where to find everything. If you really want to lower the probability of state monitoring you need end-to-end encrypti…
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Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#182. You thought they were someone else
Attribution in the cyberspace is still pretty shaky, even though there have been some high profile accusations flying around lately. Sometimes you see links being drawn to GRU on the basis of things like some executable having a compile time matching to a Russian time zone or a file being last modified by a user called "Dmitry."
Seeing as the IC cyber business is already murky as hell, who knows which party is actually doing what. I think only the PLA plays with slightly more open cards, mostly because they just don't give a damn about being caught.
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does "running fully free software" helps alleviate "compromised x86"?
If you're running fully free software, you're not running x86, since it can't boot without backdoored binary blobs.
What about Libreboot? Doesn't that allow booting x86 without binary blobs?
Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet, still as scary and relevant today.
More scary is how people in tech circles still call you paranoid when you call Intel ME/AMD PSP a backdoor. >We are also always open for ideas but our focus is on firmware, BIOS, BUS or driver level attacks. Anyone on WiFi AC or up are backdoored right now by NSA. All of them are compromised, no doubt in my mind. All the LTE. All the x86 hardware on the market. All of it. If you aren't running fully free software, yo…
I can’t wait for those ME/PSP program to become declassified, because I have zero doubt it’s an op and someone’s going to do it. It’ll be exciting just as A-12/SR-71 docs!