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The NSA Furby Documents

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Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#51

Post by patrickmay »

yorwba wrote: post #21
refulgentis wrote: post #3

Context: Furbys were the toy for a year or two, and were actively marketed as learning from speech, had an active mic, and did adjust their speech based on what they heard, "learning" to speak English from Furbish. [^1] It's not so different from the fundamental fear of Alexa/Assistant/microphones that's fairly well diffused now. Except the Furby actively claimed to learn how to speak based on your speech, and had a…

Of course some people really wanted to teach it to say new things, and figured out how to swap out the audio files (among other modifications): https://github.com/Jeija/bluefluff Fun fact: If you mess up and need to reset the furby, the procedure is to turn it upside down and hold down the tongue while pulling the tail for ten seconds.

Instructions unclear. Toddler still not speaking clearly, but appears upset.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#52

Post by kotaKat »

Pwntastic wrote: post #13

The FOIA documents are up on archive.org now: https://archive.org/details/nsa-furby-memo/ I'm amused at page 8 of the listserve doc, in which someone points out that the ongoing discussion may at some point be released to the public under FOIA and to consider how it might look after showing up on the front page of a news site

Yep. Who would have guessed 25 years later I'd be bored and then a year later this packet showed up at my doorstep? It's oddly perfect timing, around all the AI discourse. :)

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#53

Post by hwillis »

tylerflick wrote: post #18
alistairSH wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any SCIF or SCIF-like office space, they're all prohibited. You leave your cell phone at the front door of the secured area. Internet access is via SIPRNet (for classified) or NIPRNet (non-classified, but secured). Phones are through dedicated secure switchboards. The above is common in the DC area (lots of DoD contractors).

A relative of mine used to work in this space 20 years ago. Seems policies haven’t changed at all. Tangental story about how serious the Gov takes OpSec. When I was in Iraq, a Marine in my unit found a roll of red Classified tape. He thought it would be cool to put a strip on his personal laptop, which was confiscated almost immediately. It was very clearly a personal machine, but policy is policy, and he never got t…

> Seems policies haven’t changed at all.

Yes and no.

CUI was created: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Unclassified_Inform...

The number of SCIFs increased a ton, especially in contractors being allowed to have their own SCSI rooms. The number of clearances also went up a lot, and the cycle time on granting a clearance got much faster. Overall some things got relaxed, other things got stricter, scale increased everywhere.

IMO the biggest factor in the increase is just the ever-increasing DoD budget

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#54

Post by CrazyStat »

sandworm101 wrote: post #47
dTal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hack? The entire point of encryption is to permit messages to be sent over insecure channels, no?

The hack is getting the unsecure system not to damage your encrypted signal, to carry even though it is expecting plain voice talking rather than a stream of binary digits.

We’ve been doing that for dialup internet for decades.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#55

Post by 0xEF »

kotaKat wrote: post #52
Pwntastic wrote: post #13

The FOIA documents are up on archive.org now: https://archive.org/details/nsa-furby-memo/ I'm amused at page 8 of the listserve doc, in which someone points out that the ongoing discussion may at some point be released to the public under FOIA and to consider how it might look after showing up on the front page of a news site

Yep. Who would have guessed 25 years later I'd be bored and then a year later this packet showed up at my doorstep? It's oddly perfect timing, around all the AI discourse. :)

I'm surprised it only took them a year. Would you care to share more about your experience on filing FOIA? The circles I run in seem to view it as a clunky, bloated process, but I feel like it has gotten better than when it was introduced. I have zero first-hand experience, though.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#56

Post by pnw »

duskwuff wrote: post #32
kube-system wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many voice assistants do record your voice and send those recordings elsewhere: e.g. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeI...

The Furby came out in 1998. Less than 50% of US homes even owned a computer at the time, let alone had Internet access (and that was usually dialup if they did). Cellular networks were largely voice-only and quite expensive. In short: even if Furbies had some way to record data (which they didn't), there would have been no practical way for them to exfiltrate it.

Practicality has never been an issue for spies. Look at the lengths the Soviets went to for surveillance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#57

Post by pastword »

alistairSH wrote: post #9
swozey wrote: post #5

Whats gov policy around Alexas and like half the IOT market? My botvac even has a microphone. I'm sure it's "don't ever speak about outside of this room" sort of thing. I guess phone calls would be over a secure line. Are there secure cell phone towers/whatever? I'm curious how gov phones are hardened.

In any SCIF or SCIF-like office space, they're all prohibited. You leave your cell phone at the front door of the secured area. Internet access is via SIPRNet (for classified) or NIPRNet (non-classified, but secured). Phones are through dedicated secure switchboards. The above is common in the DC area (lots of DoD contractors).

From a friend who worked in IT work at DIA c. 2000: there were an absurd, non-zero number of researchers with clearances who surfed for porn while on [SN]IPRNet, networks they knew were monitored, and unsurprisingly were caught and lost their careers. Nonzero. I'd posit the reason it continued for so long was the real reasons for termination were kept secret to avoid organizational and political embarrassment but at the expense of not setting an example.

If individuals in this particular demographic are hired but lack self-control and are sexually frustrated, then they're potentially huge liabilities to being recruited by adversaries (MICE). It would seem that before issuing clearances, these factors should be assessed rather than going through a standard clipboard audit by the FBI. And, while holding clearances, positive socialization opportunities should be encouraged if not artfully arranged. Who's ever going to leave a job or be disloyal when your boss or some coworkers expedite the love lives of those who aren't already full in that regard? This implies fostering a layer of socially astute managers. It would be a radical departure for government culture perhaps, but a necessary one to ensure the integrity and stability of a clandestine community. Happiness isn't just recognition or sufficient autonomy, but total happiness beyond work. (Throw away the "work-life balance" cliche that is tired and paid lip-service to.)

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#58

Post by kotaKat »

0xEF wrote: post #55
kotaKat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Who would have guessed 25 years later I'd be bored and then a year later this packet showed up at my doorstep? It's oddly perfect timing, around all the AI discourse. :)

I'm surprised it only took them a year. Would you care to share more about your experience on filing FOIA? The circles I run in seem to view it as a clunky, bloated process, but I feel like it has gotten better than when it was introduced. I have zero first-hand experience, though.

No problem to help, but bad news: Every government agency has different processes. You'll have to go through their own FOIA office.

The NSA FOIA form is actually really easy: https://www.nsa.gov/about/contact-us/Submit-a-FOIA-Request/

I simply asked for what I wanted (information about policy memos about 'Furby Alerts' and recording devices at the NSA from late 1998 to early 1999) and submitted the form. About a month later I got a response back from the NSA acknowledging they got my request, and located records that were part of another FOIA request being processed as well, so I'd get those documents as well once released.

And then... yesterday afternoon I got the message "hey what did you get from the DoD?" - bewildered, sending me a photo of the cover (in the full article). They finally delivered, and I hastily scanned my spoils for everyone. :)

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#59

Post by masswerk »

bragr wrote: post #6
itishappy wrote: post #2

Now I'm curious if there's any evidence of Furbies actually being used for espionage.

Furbies just have a simple microcontroller and the code has been released [1]. It's a clever bit of code to give the impression of intelligence, but it doesn't have anything like the abilities in urban legends. You could put other hardware in them of course, they'd be prime targets for that kind of thing. [1] https://archive.org/details/furby-source/mode/2up

OMG, it's 6502 code! (Or for some variant of the 6502.)

Marginally interesting, the source uses standard MOS assembler syntax, but Intel-like xxH notation for hex values, rather than $xx.

---

[Edit] According to Wikipedia, actually a Sunplus SPC81A microcontroller using the 6502 instruction set, but lacking the Y register:

> The first Furby model was based around a 6502-style Sunplus SPC81A microcontroller, which had 80 KiB of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM. Its core differed from the original 6502 in the lack of the Y index register. The TSP50C04 chip from Texas Instruments, implementing the linear predictive coding codec, was used for voice synthesis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furby

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#60

Post by jabyess »

pnw wrote: post #56
duskwuff wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Furby came out in 1998. Less than 50% of US homes even owned a computer at the time, let alone had Internet access (and that was usually dialup if they did). Cellular networks were largely voice-only and quite expensive. In short: even if Furbies had some way to record data (which they didn't), there would have been no practical way for them to exfiltrate it.

Practicality has never been an issue for spies. Look at the lengths the Soviets went to for surveillance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

the craziest thing about this is:

> The Thing was designed by Soviet Russian inventor Leon Theremin,[7] best known for his invention of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument.

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