Juniper breach mystery starts to clear with new details on hackers and U.S. role

Post by dylan604 » Mon, Sep 06, 2021, 11:43 PM UTC

sockpuppet_12 wrote: post #170

dylan604 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That so many hidden/secret chips are being placed on mobos that we are suffering a global chip shortage because of it? Do you really need it explained why that's far fetched? I'm going to let you think on that a bit longer. It should have kicked in by now.

I was referring to the Bloomberg article, you can turn off that incredulity-drive now.

Post by cryptonector » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 3:38 AM UTC

indymike wrote: post #26

dannyw wrote: post #3

This is ground breaking. The NSA made Juniper use a backdoored algorithm, and a foreign adversary hacked into Juniper and changed the backdoor key (essentially). That's surreal.

> That's surreal. No, that's expected behavior and will eventually happen approaching the limit of 100% of the time. Even worse, a backdoor is often a greater security risk than normal authorization because the backdoor can often access all the data, not just a single user's data. In short, if you are in government, do not ask for backdoors, if you are in the private sector do not make backdoors. Backdoors are a flaw…

Post by cryptonector » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 4:43 AM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #62

tlb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you can't trust NIST on security. They've certified algorithms they must have known were deliberately weakened in every generation: DES in the 1970s, the Clipper chip in the 80s, "export-grade" RSA in the 90s, and broken RNGs in the 2000s. The deliberate weakening generally comes from the NSA, but NIST is required to work with them on security standards. A number of reputable security researchers claim that NIST'…

> DES in the 1970s To clarify: the deliberate weakening for DES was literally reducing the key size. There was also some suspicious behaviour with the S-boxes, but that turned out not to be a attack. Sadly, but unsurpisingly, it's not as simple as "Do the oppposite of what the nation state adversary recommends.", although these days independent research is doing well enough that "Ignore them[0] unless they have a non…

Post by dmos62 » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 7:46 AM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #169

dmos62 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heck, Microsoft (Longhorn), SecureWorks (Platinum Colony), and Google (GOSSIPGIRL) are the only US companies that have even publicly assigned names to track US linked APT groups. I didn't understand this statement, but it's intrigued me. What are the names for and how do they lead to tracking US-linked APT (advanced, persistent threat a.k.a state sponsored) groups and who's doing the tracking?

The original idea was to assign a name to a unique set of techniques and tools. That way you can collaborate with other organizations and have a common language to describe attackers. Many companies decided to start using their own naming schemes to avoid giving free marketing to the first company to name a group, so you have to do a bit of work to know that all the names I mentioned in my previous post refer to the…

Post by 0x000000001 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

dhanna wrote: post #123

0x000000001 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, JunOS is FreeBSD -- the magic is in their proprietary hardware. I'm not aware of open/whitebox solutions that can compete

There’s nothing special with the asics. Juniper makes it’s own Core and Edge routing chips but Arista competes successfully using Broadcom silicon.