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Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

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Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#171

Post by davidw »

serge2k wrote: post #127
sinak wrote: post #89

I think it's pretty clear that we need both technical and legislative fixes to NSA surveillance. Just one of the two isn't enough: to get be even vaguely confident that surveillance ends, we need both. The technical fixes I can't speak to, but the legislative ones I've been thinking about for a while. In the last week, there have been two prominent bills announced to deal with surveillance: - Bill 1: The FISA Improve…

Try to find a fix for the ridiculously broken system that is the US government?

It definitely won't get fixed if all people do is bitch about how it's totally impossible to fix on internet forums.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#173

Post by walshemj »

frank_boyd wrote: post #44

Well that's ok. But what really needs to happen is this to come from the top management - and most of all, they need to ACT accordingly. Until then, all this "fuck them" exclamations aren't worth a dime.

And rather unprofessional where where these guys when Eric Schmidt was making his creepy uncle statements.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#174

Post by w_t_payne »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #88
ojbyrne wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they could easily have agreements with every chip fab to build back doors into every piece of networking equipment.

This is exactly why Australia is very leery of letting the Chinese telecom hardware manufacturer Huawei have any of the contracts for networking hardware on the nascent National Broadband Network -- they are suspected of having ties to the Chinese government / army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Security_concerns

My sister in law works for Huawei in Kenya. Her job (so far) has largely involved ripping out Siemens made mobile-telephony infrastructure and replacing it with Huawei-made mobile-telephony infrastructure. Such are today's instruments of empire.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#175

Post by xradionut »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #154
serge2k wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to find a fix for the ridiculously broken system that is the US government?

Yes. It's fixable the moment the public realizes that it is within their power to fix.

How? Voting and protesting haven't worked so far.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#176

Post by noir_lord »

poxrud wrote: post #16

The NSA must have somebody working on the inside at google. Otherwise it would be extremely difficult to reverse engineer the RPC protocol that was used by google's servers to communicate between each other. Even on an unencrypted network I can image it would be very difficult to reverse engineer the protocol without any help.

Years and Years ago I reverse engineered the weird binary protocol that Yahoo Messenger used with nothing more than Ethereal and an absolute shit load of packet logs.

I did that for fun and I was (and am) a mediocre programmer at best, the NSA/GCHQ has some of the best talent around I doubt they would find it much of a challenge to this on a bigger more complex protocol.

Unencrypted traffic is (relatively) easy to reverse engineer even without a protocol description (examples, the Samba guys, the Asterix folks) as most protocols are designed to be structured (that is kind of the point of having the protocol).

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#177

Post by noir_lord »

us0r wrote: post #83
cpeterso wrote: post #25

I can understand using unencrypted network within a data center (unless you are doubly paranoid), but why wouldn't they encrypt data between data centers?

They buy the lines in the ground. It is suppose to be 100% private. It is like having a wire from one room of your house to another. Wikileaks has a list of vendors/products who allow these types of things to happen. What I want to know is how they tapped the actual line. I would assume these lines are going directly into Google owned (or controlled) buildings.

You can tap fiber in a non-destructive way ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping ) and in ways that increase attenuation only slightly (and that is contingent on you detecting it and having the equipment to even detect it).

If you know the route the fibre takes (which should be public and certainly government knowledge) you can install the tap anywhere along the length of the cable, roll up with a van the equipment and two guys in high viz vests with a fake work order, who the hell is going to check....(think the Ghostbuster's scene where they close half the road).

The crazy thing is that so many smart people at Google and encrypting the data still wasn't done.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#178

Post by dell1994 »

Oops. What a Hypocrisy? The moral righteous Google. Little People vs Big People? Please stop. Don't do Evil still works for you guys.. I guess.

You have the resources to defend it, if you want to defend. You choose not to in many ways.

So please dont explode in profanity several times a day.

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#179

Post by desas »

gadders wrote: post #157
pessimizer wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I doubt if the USSR funding of left-wing groups was any better. When you say that you doubt it, is that code for having no idea of the impact of Soviet funding in South America, but not being willing to say that you don't know? Or is it just that you know that everything bad that the US did was to counter something even worse that the evil USSR was doing? Missile gap?

It's code for the funding of Right Wing Groups by the US having been publicised more widely than the funding of Left Wing Groups by the USSR. However, Cuba is a repressive dictatorship which will was funded by the USSR for many years.

Previous to that, it was a repressive dictatorship which was funded by the USA for many years...

Re: Google Security Team Member on NSA: "Fuck These Guys"

#180

Post by adestefan »

xradionut wrote: post #175
InclinedPlane wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's fixable the moment the public realizes that it is within their power to fix.

How? Voting and protesting haven't worked so far.

Just because people don't vote the way you want them to doesn't mean it's not working.
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