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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

#591

Post by miguelazo »

mardifoufs wrote: post #583
phatfish wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fun narrative that the US is just the same as the Russian or Chinese governments, i wonder who could benefit from pushing that... The fact Snowden is still alive pushing anti-US propaganda shows the difference, if the roles were reversed he would have been assassinated long ago.

Oh no, not anti us government propaganda. That's a capital sin. Everyone who disagrees with the US government is obviously a sovi-i mean a Russian plant.

Yup! It's amazing how often you see this pathetic red-baiting even on HN where you expect people to be more thoughtful.

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

#592

Post by djangelic »

stephen_g wrote: post #79
JanSolo wrote: 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.

Pretty sure only the EdgeRouter and some of the older Unifi Security Gateways use Cavium chips. Most of the newer stuff (like the Dream Machine line) I don't think are anymore. None of the Unifi APs did either I don't think (the U6 ones have Mediatek chips in them)

I recently upgraded my USG for a dream machine, glad it seems the upgrade was worth it.

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

#593

Post by miguelazo »

phatfish wrote: post #558
miguelazo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia may not care (doubtful), but the airline will not even let you board . Not trashing your host is probably wise, but given his experience with the US government, he probably no longer subscribes to the naive worldview that Putin (or Xi) are uniquely bad, just bad in their own ways and responding to the world with their nation's interests (and their legacies) in mind.

This is a fun narrative that the US is just the same as the Russian or Chinese governments, i wonder who could benefit from pushing that... The fact Snowden is still alive pushing anti-US propaganda shows the difference, if the roles were reversed he would have been assassinated long ago.

You mean the way the US/UK is slowly assassinating Julian via the torture of extended solitary confinement (and only because it was too hard for them to do it in one fell swoop)?

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

#594

Post by Minor49er »

isykt wrote: post #569
Minor49er wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, changing equipment may actually help quite a bit when dealing with the NSA. The 2016 documentary "Zero Days" which was centered around the creation of Stuxnet showed that the NSA targeted specific hardware models to look for security holes. They had to buy matching hardware themselves and rigorously try to break it which took time and wasn't trivial to do

So you’re saying that no matter what hardware you have, the NSA will buy that specific hardware and take the time to break it.

That's right. And I'm also saying that switching hardware will make the break attempts take longer

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

#595

Post by mcpackieh »

jacquesm wrote: post #545
mcpackieh wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old men persuade the would-be suicide bomber that educating women will liberate and liberalize them, and that this is counter to the interests of those who prefer the traditional order of society. Are they even lying?

Yes, they're lying. The 'traditional order of society' is a society run by psycho pathological individuals and benefits nobody except for those individuals. But you already knew that, didn't you?

You're deeply mistaken if you think there aren't men who don't genuinely prefer the traditional order of women being subjugated by men.

1. Not everybody shares your values.

2. People who don't share your values are not necessarily brainwashed.

3. People may do things that are irrational under your system of values, but rational under their own.

And BTW, there is no a single fighting force in the world that doesn't have old men persuading young men to sign up and risk throwing away their lives. There's not a whole lot of difference between regular soldiers persuaded to participate in a forlorn hope or banzai charge attacking a defended position and a suicide bomber or kamikaze.

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

#596

Post by gunapologist99 »

amluto wrote: post #458
jhallenworld wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IBM one for z was level 4 I think.. Yes: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cryptocards?topic=4768-overview

This is so weird. The idea of an adversary covertly walking off with an IBM Mainframe or covertly bringing an electronics lab, a microscope, logic analyzers, glitching hardware, etc to the aforementioned mainframe is rather strange. Whereas someone doing that to a phone or a laptop or a game console is very likely. If I wanted to store an important long term key in a secure facility, I would worry, first and foremost…

It's not weird.

The adversary will show up and badge in just like everyone else. They might have worked there for 20 years, or they might be an outside repair person or external consultant.

They will definitely fit in. They're supposed to be there.

It will be the most normal thing in the world. And you may never know their real purpose.

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

#597

Post by throwawayq3423 »

Clubber wrote: post #566
throwawayq3423 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The twitter files showed government agencies were coercing Twitter into suppressing information. They very much did not. Twitter's own lawyers when pressed in court (the place where there are consequences for lying) admitted that nothing in the "Twitter Files" cited by Donald Trump actually show that the social media platform was a tool of government censorship. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.…

The 5th circuit court of appeals found that there was coercion. Read the first 5 or so pages and the last 5 or so pages, specifically that it upheld the unconstitutionality of provision 6 and at the end it lists the offending agencies. https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd...

> So, the district court reasoned, the Plaintiffs were “likely to succeed” on their claim because when the platforms moderated content, they were acting under the coercion (or significant encouragement) of government officials, in violation of the First Amendment, at the expense of both private and governmental actors.

You are moving the goalposts. First it was "gov policing speech" which there was no proof of. Now it's "gov coercion/encouragement" which is entirely up to how you subjectively interrupt what interactions occured.

Which fine, lets go over the facts. Any exchanges of information were voluntary, at times set up under the initiative of social media companies themselves, and the vast majority of instances of mis/disinfo flagged by the gov were not acted upon by platforms. Social media companies could have stopped talking to the gov at any time (a few did), and they didn't have to act on anything.

Not exactly the picture of an authoritarian government policing speech. The Twitter Files were set up as an exercise in confirmation bias for people that believe gov was censoring speech (and targeting them), which is why they disappeared so quickly when a lack of proof was highlighted in court. It served its purpose.

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

#598

Post by sim7c00 »

Proziam wrote: post #563
sim7c00 wrote: post #559

Didn't read all the leaks but it seems a bit wild to conclude a vendor implemented a backdoor purposefully. There's some been found ofcourse, but simply being SIGINT capable, why does that imply 'backdoor'.? If they have a nice exploit for the device it would also make it SIGINT capable no? without the vendor's cooperation (apart perhaps from a buggy implementation.) If you have the chip, you can find the backdoor...…

[1] Everyone gets asked to implement backdoors in this game. This includes games companies like [2] Riot Games and the popularly recognized cases of apps like [3] TikTok and [4] Snapchat. It's also worth noting, people assume (wrongly) that only China wants access to this data, the Feds are more than happy to strong arm people via [5] NSA letters (or other means as in [3]). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRYyWn…

thanks for the background info thats some insightful reads. theres a defcon talk about chip decapping which us alsl very telling on this matter. even if they dont get asked companies also get infiltrated actively and are victimised. the difference is sometimes really hard to tell with the lacking inside info. its a weird game going on for sure. thanks

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

#599

Post by throwawayq3423 »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #597
Clubber wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5th circuit court of appeals found that there was coercion. Read the first 5 or so pages and the last 5 or so pages, specifically that it upheld the unconstitutionality of provision 6 and at the end it lists the offending agencies. https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-30445-CV0.pd...

> So, the district court reasoned, the Plaintiffs were “likely to succeed” on their claim because when the platforms moderated content, they were acting under the coercion (or significant encouragement) of government officials, in violation of the First Amendment, at the expense of both private and governmental actors. You are moving the goalposts. First it was "gov policing speech" which there was no proof of. Now i…

Reading this document, it's in extremely bad faith:

> We start with coercion. On multiple occasions, the officials coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests— they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP”

The ASAP was in reference to a case of revenge porn, something not only against the Twitter TOS, but illegal.

> When the platforms did not comply, officials followed up by asking why posts were “still up,” stating (1) “how does something like [this] happen,” (2) “what good is” flagging if it did not result in content moderation, (3) “I don’t know why you guys can’t figure this out,” and (4) “you are hiding the ball,”

Again, this was in reference to illegal content (iirc an OFAC sanctioned entity not only posting content but making money off it). Using such language when a private company isn't following the law isn't "coercion for censorship".

This reads like a political document by partisan lawyers. This document makes no attempt to distinguish between actually illegal content and suggested violations of TOS (such as when spreading COVID disinfo was against Twitter's rules, which it no longer is). It provides no context for how this "coercion" was mostly civil servants either pointing out violations of Twitter's own rules, or federal crimes. Either way, inaction was baffling, as communicated.

But, again, the mere fact that Twitter ignored so much of this, so often, proves they clearly didn't feel the need to respond to gov requests as if they had to.

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

#600

Post by monocasa »

mullingitover wrote: post #301
monocasa wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor he didn't qualify for whistleblower protections at the time. He would just be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life, and there's a much better chance the leak to the public would have never been completed in the first.

I see no evidence that merely being convicted of treason is enough to get you thrown in a solitary cell forever. There's a long list of plain old convicted spies[1], and they just went to regular, run of the mill prison. I would like to see the evidence that Snowden would be treated any differently. And again, I'm not saying he would've been protected as a whistleblower, just that he had to choose one or the other: t…

Regular, run of the mill prisons have solitary. It's not a special prison.

Manning spent most of her time in solitary, and it's not listed in your citation.

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