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Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

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Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#51

Post by Jon_Lowtek »

cm2187 wrote: post #42
Jon_Lowtek wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We kill people based on metadata" ~~ General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA

Yeah but he was referring to direct phone contacts. You connecting to a Skype or Facebook server doesn’t tell you anything.

Well the article focuses on backbone cable tapping, but they collect metadata of "who talks to whom" from facebook and microsoft, too.

Lets say someone is using a northern european vpn-server to connect to facebook and that vpn-server is not cooperating. Decloaking is statistical analysis against timing and rough size of packages, so tapping the cables on both ends of the vpn-server and recording metadata for all its connections is key, even if they can't break the encryption.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#52

Post by lgl »

yur3i__ wrote: post #18

Didn't the NSA say they shut down XKEYSCORE after Snowden or am I misremembering?

Let's not get naive here. I don't know if they did say that, but even if they did, would you actually believe an espionage organization's "word"? They've clearly spent a lot of money and man hours developing it and reaped a lot of benefits from that system and it's not like they can uninvent the thing.

They might have renamed it or bumped up the clearance level to tighten up the circle of people in the know, but are most likely still running it and constantly improving it to keep up and make use of most new technological, bandwidth and storage developments. They certainly won't stop collecting everything they can, that's just how things work, for better or worse.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#53

Post by goto11 »

Havoc wrote: post #35

The fact that Danish intel has access to me just emphasizes how much of a free for all this is on that level. (nothing against the Danish - but think about what that implies about "trusted" relationships like five eyes)

Danish intelligence have access to cables running through Denmark. This is what you should expect.

This whole debacle is about Danish intelligence giving US intelligence access to the Danish cables - not the other way around!

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#55

Post by seniorivn »

pastrami_panda wrote: post #54
iconara wrote: post #34

It's very important that we keep Huawei out of our 5G networks! (what if they discovered things like this and told the citizens about it?)

Please stop equating totalitarian regimes with democracies.

in terms of domestic espionage on private citizens they are pretty similar now days

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#56

Post by Threeve303 »

gaius_baltar wrote: post #44
jtchang wrote: post #24

All these comments about metadata not being useful are missing the point. Metadata is incredible valuable and sometimes just as valuable as the decrypted data itself. Knowing what sites a target visits, access patterns, changes in behavior: all this can be fed into ML algorithms to come up with fingerprints. You don't need to be able decrypt the data in transit if you know the endpoints and can somehow compromise the…

> Metadata is incredible valuable and sometimes just as valuable as the decrypted data itself. Just adding an example for the people who don't see the value of metadata: WhatsApp is still a viable revenue source for Facebook even as they have no access to the text of the messages due to E2EE. Knowing who talks to who, at what times, the type and approximate size of messages, the members of groups, and the contents of…

Every so often I like to go back and read Using Metadata to find Paul Revere [0].

[0] https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#57

Post by e12e »

pfortuny wrote: post #41
jtchang wrote: post #24

All these comments about metadata not being useful are missing the point. Metadata is incredible valuable and sometimes just as valuable as the decrypted data itself. Knowing what sites a target visits, access patterns, changes in behavior: all this can be fed into ML algorithms to come up with fingerprints. You don't need to be able decrypt the data in transit if you know the endpoints and can somehow compromise the…

People have gone to jail for metadata. That is exactly what you are saying. That is its importance. And that is only speaking of something within the Rule of Law (accessing metadata with a warrant)... Outside of the Rule of Law, people have been killed for metadata.

Ed: > Outside of the Rule of Law, people have been killed for metadata.

Indeed:

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

> According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#58

Post by bayindirh »

iconara wrote: post #34

It's very important that we keep Huawei out of our 5G networks! (what if they discovered things like this and told the citizens about it?)

As a non-US citizen, how can I be sure that all non-Huawei equipment is free of back doors, data-exfiltration and forwarding capabilities excluding the lawful interception feature set?

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#59

Post by just-ok »

gaius_baltar wrote: post #44
jtchang wrote: post #24

All these comments about metadata not being useful are missing the point. Metadata is incredible valuable and sometimes just as valuable as the decrypted data itself. Knowing what sites a target visits, access patterns, changes in behavior: all this can be fed into ML algorithms to come up with fingerprints. You don't need to be able decrypt the data in transit if you know the endpoints and can somehow compromise the…

> Metadata is incredible valuable and sometimes just as valuable as the decrypted data itself. Just adding an example for the people who don't see the value of metadata: WhatsApp is still a viable revenue source for Facebook even as they have no access to the text of the messages due to E2EE. Knowing who talks to who, at what times, the type and approximate size of messages, the members of groups, and the contents of…

> they have no access to the text of the messages due to E2EE.

Correction: they might not have access to the message text. It's entirely possible (if not plausible: FB doesn't exactly have a good track record) for FB to just self-MitM the E2EE and see everything that passes through their servers.

From their site:

> The verification process is optional for end-to-end encrypted chats, and only used to confirm that the messages and calls you send are end-to-end encrypted.

Even this process--which I'm sure very few people do--is fallible given the lack of authenticity: there's no way to confirm that the given keys are what's actually used for encryption.

Yes, this may come across as very "tinfoil-hat-y," but do you really trust FB to not be exploring every possible avenue to increase their data streams?

Re: Danish military intelligence uses XKEYSCORE to tap cables in co-op with the NSA

#60

Post by unionpivo »

cm2187 wrote: post #21

According to google, about 90% of the web traffic on chrome is now encrypted [1]. Does it matter that they are tapping a cable? The metadata can’t be that useful. [1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/https/overview?hl=en_G...

At scale metadata is MORE usefull than the specifics of the communication (web, phone, messages, videostreeams, ...)

Who talks to whom, When do they talk, how longm from where. What sites do they access, ...

It enables you to pick a person, find his friends, where do they meet(online and offline), where do they keep money, where do they spend it. What news do they read, what music, what their political leanings are etc.

It enables you to see the big picture. (of either a single individual or entire group of people) The content only becomes useful, once you have general idea what is going on.

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