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Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

reuters.com

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Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#321

Post by MacsHeadroom »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #12
salient wrote: post #6

The end of RSA (the company)? I find it absurd that a security company no less, would hear many veteran cryptographers say this is backdoored a decade ago, and still going ahead and using it - as the default! Who stakes the whole reputation of their company in the field for a meager $10 million (I assume RSA was pretty big back then, too)? It's insane. RSA, much like NIST, can not, and should not be trusted any longe…

Serious question: Is there an alternative? I've never seen a secure fob that wasn't from RSA.

One of the original developers behind OpenSSH (Dug Song) started a competitor to RSA called Duo Security just a few years ago.

They sell Gemalto IDProve 100 tokens and support Yubikey, but advise using their patent pending push based 2FA authentication because: "Login requests are signed with an asymmetric PKCS#1 v1.5 key pair, which provides a stronger identity assertion than passcodes and prevents “RSA-style” breaches." From https://www.duosecurity.com/duo-push

They're used by companies like Facebook, Twitter, Sony, Arbor Networks, MIT, etc.

So yes, RSA has some strong competition.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#322

Post by nitrogen »

snowwrestler wrote: post #297
nitrogen wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As part of the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54), signed on January 8, 2008 by President Bush, the NSA became the lead agency to monitor and protect all of the federal government's computer networks from cyber-terrorism." [Emphasis added] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA#Mission

Yes but their funding is not dependent on how secure RSA tokens are. NSA did this to advance their mission, not to make a few extra bucks.

The point is that it advanced the intelligence gathering half of their mission while seriously compromising the protective half of their mission.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#323

Post by [deleted] »

pizza234 wrote: post #315
ihsw wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best defence is a good offence.

We're not talking about fistfights here. The best solution is to prevent the problems; I hope you understand while reading this article (which went here on HN some time ago): http://news.yahoo.com/german-police-used-only-85-bullets-aga...

[deleted]

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#324

Post by smsm42 »

krapp wrote: post #320
smsm42 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how oil was running out in the 70s and still running out 40 years later. I'd imagine it will be running out pretty much the same way in 40 years, and 40 years after that. Besides that, that Iran doesn't exist anymore.

>I'd imagine it will be running out pretty much the same way in 40 years, and 40 years after that. It will run out, though. The only questions are when, and what the contingencies will be once it does.

Or it won't, since technology will replace the need for it long before that. We don't use horses to drive our cars not because we've run out of horses.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#325

Post by smsm42 »

caf wrote: post #302
bananacurve wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your contortions, while amusing, rewrite history in order to maintain your unhealthy obsession with America's alleged wickedness. Sure, Europe won the war and the US tagged along. Right. Whatever you need to believe to try to hold your precious worldview together, reality be damned.

The reality is probably that neither the US nor Russia could have defeated Germany alone. The GP is wrong that the US joined the "winning side" though - they joined the losing side, because a Europe united under one hostile power would be a fundamental security threat to the US.

They could have. If they have started early. Longer they waited, harder it got to achieve.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#326

Post by smsm42 »

atmosx wrote: post #304
aioprisan wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wrong. We do know that they had been trying to develop nuclear weapons for years. The first reactor was bought from France in the 70s and the Israelis bombed Iraq a few times to stop them from developing nuclear weapons. The same will happen with Iran if they do not stop enriching uranium above energy-related levels. Back to Iraq, there was evidence that was presented to Congress, and if you ask most of the pe…

If you explain to me why Iran can not have nuclear weapons while USA and Israel (and France and the UK and Russia and Korea and China) can I'll give it a second thought. My personal view is that the USA was interested in the oil sitting there. End of story. Same thing with Ghadafi. The rest is politics to justify a war that doesn't make any sense. Indeed the Iraq war was Blair's political destruction in the UK. Why d…

Your personal view is wrong, and, even worse, not very smart. It does not make any sense to spend this much money on getting Iranian oil - it could be just bought much cheaper (if all sanctions and impediments were removed), and US has plenty of oil that is not being developed anyway.

>>> Why do you think no one wants to attack Syria?

Because attack presumes you need to achieve something. There's nothing in Syria that can be achieved right now that would be a desirable target. Assad is evil, islamic fundamentalists that battle him are evil too, US has no power and no political will to reform Syria and make anything good out of that mess. Neither does anybody else. That's why Assad is not being removed - because after removing him nobody knows how to clean up the mess.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#327

Post by brdrak »

paulnechifor wrote: post #268
crazytony wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement which allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia at the end of September 1938. World War 2 started when Germany decided to invade Poland in late 1939. Germany was never given Poland. You get even the most basic history wrong and then proceed to say that Bush and Obama are historically equivalent to Stalin and Hitler? Never let facts get in the way of a good dogma.

> World War 2 started when Germany decided to invade Poland in late 1939. Germany and the Soviet Union. Sure, the Soviets attacked after the Germans, but they split Poland between them before the invasion.

Not just Poland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#328

Post by abalashov »

smsm42 wrote: post #324
krapp wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd imagine it will be running out pretty much the same way in 40 years, and 40 years after that. It will run out, though. The only questions are when, and what the contingencies will be once it does.

Or it won't, since technology will replace the need for it long before that. We don't use horses to drive our cars not because we've run out of horses.

Well, there's some unsubstantiated optimism if I've ever seen it. Let's hope you're right, but right now the physics and economics do not support your exuberance.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#329

Post by abalashov »

javert wrote: post #311
caf wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also why my generation (I'm 27) will eventually have to fight a nuclear war that pits Iran against Israel and possibly the US. No, we won't. There is simply no geopolitical logic to Iran and Israel going to war.

Umm, Iran is run by a council of religious fanatics. There is no logic to Iran.

That may be (although it amounts to a gross oversimplification), but it's still a functional government and a self-interested bureaucracy. Daily life goes on in Iran much as anywhere else. Council of religious fanatics notwithstanding, and its occasional grandiloquent pronouncements also notwithstanding, Iran's government is mostly full of administrators and workers that implement things like water treatment, motor vehicle registration, low-income housing, zoning, meat inspection, and energy. There is most definitely logic to Iran, much as to any other actually-existing government.

There's even logic to its foreign relations, underneath the ideological veneer. Imagine if someone thought US policy actually worked literally as presidential speeches suggest; you'd think they're an ignorant tool. "Everyone knows that speeches are just speeches," you'd say, with no connection to the actual practice of governance. It may surprise you to learn that it's like that in any state, including Iran.

Disclaimer: US citizen living in Armenia, NW of Iran. None of the very numerous Iranians here leave one with the impression that they are from a place with "no logic". Turn off Fox News.

Re: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer

#330

Post by brdrak »

ye wrote: post #94
InclinedPlane wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren't the only options. Anyone with any smarts can figure out how to quietly and anonymously leak a lot of these details. The fact is that they were too cowardly to do even that though.

As somebody who has been in IT for almost two decades, I can't think of a safe way to get a file off our corporate LAN without leaving a trail leading to me. I realize it's an argument from ignorance fallacy, and maybe there are such ways, but I'm not aware of them.

With sufficient level of access, it should be possible to erase trails and to create false ones.
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