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Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

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Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#13

How the NSA successfully manage to prevent the Washington Post and friends from discovering and reporting on this malicious backdoor? They've been sitting on these documents for a decade. Are the journalists just that *uncurious* about the deep contents of the documents they hold exclusive access to? Was this some kind of organizational failing?

I suspect when a trove of documents is big enough, newspaper readers lose interest before you run out of documents. I mean, even on this tech forum hardly anyone knows who Cavium are, let alone your average Washington Post reader.

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#14
post #3

They are now part of Marvell Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavium Wonder if agreeing to enable NSA backdoors they agreed to be compensated when eventually that fact is leaked. "If nobody starts buying your chips, don't worry, we will! ... and then promptly throw them into the recycling bin" Also interesting is if Marvell knew their acquired tech had this "cool feature".

[dead]

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#15
post #3

They are now part of Marvell Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavium Wonder if agreeing to enable NSA backdoors they agreed to be compensated when eventually that fact is leaked. "If nobody starts buying your chips, don't worry, we will! ... and then promptly throw them into the recycling bin" Also interesting is if Marvell knew their acquired tech had this "cool feature".

The agreement with the NSA is more likely like this: "if you don't comply, you will get arrested / fined for whatever reason (crypto exports issues or failure to comply with the law), maybe even by another authority, or journalists may discover your little things about X.

If you comply we may help you with some tips occasionally to make sure our partnership is working well, or just not reveal your trade secrets to your competitors"

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#16
post #6

The tweet seems to imply that the entire Ubiquiti Networks line of network hardware could be compromised. That's a shame; I was thinking of installing some in my house. I'm sure that Ubiquiti's customers will not be happy if they find out that the US Govt can access their private data.

I think at this point it's pretty safe to assume that all of the well-known network hardware is compromised.

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#17
post #15
post #3

They are now part of Marvell Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavium Wonder if agreeing to enable NSA backdoors they agreed to be compensated when eventually that fact is leaked. "If nobody starts buying your chips, don't worry, we will! ... and then promptly throw them into the recycling bin" Also interesting is if Marvell knew their acquired tech had this "cool feature".

The agreement with the NSA is more likely like this: "if you don't comply, you will get arrested / fined for whatever reason (crypto exports issues or failure to comply with the law), maybe even by another authority, or journalists may discover your little things about X. If you comply we may help you with some tips occasionally to make sure our partnership is working well, or just not reveal your trade secrets to yo…

Yea, people forget we literally have a secret kangaroo FISA court being abused to issue "national security letters" with rubber stamp that demanded compliance and threatened to throw you in jail for resisting and/or talking about it. The Patriot Act largely was responsible for it, but even now they've wiggled to other avenues since the Patriot Act expired.

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#18

How the NSA successfully manage to prevent the Washington Post and friends from discovering and reporting on this malicious backdoor? They've been sitting on these documents for a decade. Are the journalists just that *uncurious* about the deep contents of the documents they hold exclusive access to? Was this some kind of organizational failing?

Operation Mockingbird never ended. Full stop.

(2010) https://weirdshit.blog/2010/07/23/cointelpro-operation-mocki...

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#19

How the NSA successfully manage to prevent the Washington Post and friends from discovering and reporting on this malicious backdoor? They've been sitting on these documents for a decade. Are the journalists just that *uncurious* about the deep contents of the documents they hold exclusive access to? Was this some kind of organizational failing?

I suspect when a trove of documents is big enough, newspaper readers lose interest before you run out of documents. I mean, even on this tech forum hardly anyone knows who Cavium are, let alone your average Washington Post reader.

Maybe the moral of the story is that future snowdens should leak to selected law firms instead of selected journalists? If there's one organization designed to comb through large documents for details and understand the impacts to potential parties, it is law organizations. Put 2-3 in time competition to make cases out of the documents and it will be a scramble race for justice.

Re: Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor

#20
post #15
post #3

They are now part of Marvell Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavium Wonder if agreeing to enable NSA backdoors they agreed to be compensated when eventually that fact is leaked. "If nobody starts buying your chips, don't worry, we will! ... and then promptly throw them into the recycling bin" Also interesting is if Marvell knew their acquired tech had this "cool feature".

The agreement with the NSA is more likely like this: "if you don't comply, you will get arrested / fined for whatever reason (crypto exports issues or failure to comply with the law), maybe even by another authority, or journalists may discover your little things about X. If you comply we may help you with some tips occasionally to make sure our partnership is working well, or just not reveal your trade secrets to yo…

er...what? why do you think any of that has happened?

we already saw this happen in public once with Qwest: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-punished...

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