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Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com

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Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#61

Post by duaneb »

sneak wrote: post #35
haberman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA reading your mail: Business as usual. According to the first paragraph of the article you linked: "NSLs can only request non-content information, such as transactional records, phone numbers dialed or email addresses mailed to and from." According to the sample NSL from the article you linked: "We are not directing that you provide, and you should not provide, information pursuant to this letter that would disc…

> NSLs can only request non-content information NSLs can't legally request ANYTHING. They are UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The government has NO AUTHORITY to issue them. The fact that they are presently limiting themselves to illegal request x instead of illegal request y is not relevant. Let's skip the abuses of the FBI et al and talk about the government as a whole for a minute. Are you aware that the NSA monitors _all_ traff…

What are you defining legality as? Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's constitutional (and vice-verse).

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#62

Post by duaneb »

sneak wrote: post #35
haberman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USA reading your mail: Business as usual. According to the first paragraph of the article you linked: "NSLs can only request non-content information, such as transactional records, phone numbers dialed or email addresses mailed to and from." According to the sample NSL from the article you linked: "We are not directing that you provide, and you should not provide, information pursuant to this letter that would disc…

> NSLs can only request non-content information NSLs can't legally request ANYTHING. They are UNCONSTITUTIONAL. The government has NO AUTHORITY to issue them. The fact that they are presently limiting themselves to illegal request x instead of illegal request y is not relevant. Let's skip the abuses of the FBI et al and talk about the government as a whole for a minute. Are you aware that the NSA monitors _all_ traff…

What are you defining legality as? Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's constitutional (and vice-verse).

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#63

Post by sneak »

tosseraccount wrote: post #33
sneak wrote: post #21

Too bad they are legally prohibited from doing this when the state-sponsored attack is a PATRIOT NSL from the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter China reading your mail: Big red flag. USA reading your mail: Business as usual.

The difference between rights in America and China are vast. Criticizing legitimate American counter-terrorism and counter espionage and suggesting that it's equivalent to China's suppression of thought of its citizens (and people in occupied zones like Tibet) are disingenuous. Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down. (Q.E.D) Want more relevant wiki…

> Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down.

I think Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Dmitry Sklyarov may disagree with you.

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#64

Post by tosseraccount »

sneak wrote: post #63
tosseraccount wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between rights in America and China are vast. Criticizing legitimate American counter-terrorism and counter espionage and suggesting that it's equivalent to China's suppression of thought of its citizens (and people in occupied zones like Tibet) are disingenuous. Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down. (Q.E.D) Want more relevant wiki…

> Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down. I think Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Dmitry Sklyarov may disagree with you.

Sklyarov - charges dropped. Manning - U.S. soldier deliberately mishandled diplomatic cables. Assange - I'm aware of no official charges or actions by the U.S.

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#65

Post by lotharbot »

sneak wrote: post #63
tosseraccount wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between rights in America and China are vast. Criticizing legitimate American counter-terrorism and counter espionage and suggesting that it's equivalent to China's suppression of thought of its citizens (and people in occupied zones like Tibet) are disingenuous. Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down. (Q.E.D) Want more relevant wiki…

> Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down. I think Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Dmitry Sklyarov may disagree with you.

There's a difference between "dissent" and "passing classified information to unauthorized sources". You can get away with criticizing the government here; you can't get away with espionage.

Playing fast and loose with facts continues to hurt your case.

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#66

Post by dfc »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
jff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State-sponsored attackers have access to much better resources. I do wonder how they determine who gets these things; do they look for keywords in your email, or do they monitor where login attempts are happening, or do they look at phishing messages that arrive at your account?

State-sponsored attackers also likely choose different targets. I'm not afraid to be a victim of such attack, but if I worked eg. as a diplomat, or as a defence contractor, or any government agency, I might actually be worried. There were some examples of attacks lately that targeted US government officials. So I guess Google shows this warning primarily to people who might be probable targets of state-sponsored atta…

I think human rights activists are probably the juiciest target.

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#67

Post by cmelbye »

3pt14159 wrote: post #25

They should have included the words "if at all possible, format your compute and reinstall a new operating system with latest updates immediately . If someone has a keylogger on your computer it is game over anyways. (Since they can "read" the mail you send just by recording the keystrokes)

I think this warning is referring to MITM hijacking attacks and things along those lines, not key loggers.

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#68

Post by groby_b »

tomjen3 wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'haberman's comment includes actual information. Can we not punish people for posting information? I doubt very much that 'haberman approves of NSLs, especially since he said as much. Moreover, your comment may actually be incorrect; a good chunk of all the mail Gmail handles is never on the wire in a format that can be decrypted with any known attack without access to Google's (often pinned) secret keys. The NSA's a…

By making them sound less dangerous he is making it more difficult to oppose them.

So lying is OK if it furthers a cause you believe in?

The facts should be treated as such for all sides of a debate, even if you disagree with the outcome of the debate.

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#69

Post by btilly »

tosseraccount wrote: post #33
sneak wrote: post #21

Too bad they are legally prohibited from doing this when the state-sponsored attack is a PATRIOT NSL from the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter China reading your mail: Big red flag. USA reading your mail: Business as usual.

The difference between rights in America and China are vast. Criticizing legitimate American counter-terrorism and counter espionage and suggesting that it's equivalent to China's suppression of thought of its citizens (and people in occupied zones like Tibet) are disingenuous. Dissent in China will get you a prison sentence or worse. Dissent in America will get your karma modded down. (Q.E.D) Want more relevant wiki…

Actually in the USA we have 5x the prison rate of China.

Of course the official rates ignore people in "administrative detention" which is what China does to a lot of its political dissenters. But even if you add those back in, the USA has 4x the detention rate of China. (We are also ahead of every other country in the world.)

It would seem that if you're afraid of landing in prison, the USA is a much worse country to be in than China. Not slightly, much. (And a brief glance at the jail statistics will convince you that our justice system is not color-blind. For instance I've seen no data indicating that drug use rates are significantly different among whites and blacks. But incarceration rates for drugs are very, very different...)

Re: Gmail security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks

#70

Post by utlanning »

markerdmann wrote: post #40

Live from the scene: my partner just found that she wasn't able to log in to her Gmail account because her password was suddenly invalid. Luckily she was able to reset it quickly and regain control of the account. When she checked the recent activity, though, it showed that all logins in the past 12 hours came from her IP.

Sounds like a setup to a thriller movie, but the relevance to the article is lost on me. Am I just missing something?
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