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Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
21–30 of 130 posts
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#22I read the entire article with the hopes that company names would be mentioned. Let's see who took cash to weaken encryption. Let's see who helped the government create back doors. That would have made this article stand out. But alas it contained more of the same things we already knew or assumed was going on. Here's hoping for next time.
Why even let the companies know? The NSA should just have very talented people working for those companies. It's not far fetched to think they'd find a great candidate that's patriotic, and help their career any way possible (perhaps even sabotage other employees, if needed). I'd imagine other governments would do the same thing, too. Looking on a decade+ timeframe, it shouldn't be hard to get a few people into key positions. Companies would have to really try hard to avoid this type of compromise. For instance, run multiple, independent build labs, with multiple people comparing outputs. And then, an engineer or pair of engineers in collusion could probably easily slip a difficult to notice security bug into some code somewhere.
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying it's retribution for participating in the global cyber intelligence war? Everybody is hacking everybody. Every major country has a cyberintelligence arm. The NSA is just one actor of dozens.
Right, and I hope nobody thinks Russia or China are saints, because they use their technical abilities to suppress dissent in frightening ways. While there's definitely a cyber war going on, you have to ask, why isn't the NSA actively disseminating knowledge to Americans on how to secure themselves? Why are they instead actively weakening encryption standards? America companies have the most to lose from weak encrypt…
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Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#24I read the entire article with the hopes that company names would be mentioned. Let's see who took cash to weaken encryption. Let's see who helped the government create back doors. That would have made this article stand out. But alas it contained more of the same things we already knew or assumed was going on. Here's hoping for next time.
All large corporations weaken encryption for the government. Some articles. If you want more, I'm sure I can dig up a few.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0006231614.p...
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying it's retribution for participating in the global cyber intelligence war? Everybody is hacking everybody. Every major country has a cyberintelligence arm. The NSA is just one actor of dozens.
I'm not saying it's retribution, I'm saying it's shortsighted to consider it damaging to themselves and be okay with the damage that was detailed in the leaks. I'm not okay with either, but being blind to others' "suffering" doesn't get my sympathy. In this order of events, your sympathy gets mine. In this case, you pointing the finger at others hacking innocents as a justification for hacking innocents makes me enti…
Oh yeah, I get that. And I agree - I really do wish we could all 'just get along'.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Would be awesome if we could just have secure and private computing and communication machines for the masses.
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh nobody thinks they are saints. I hope not. > they use their technical abilities to suppress dissent in frightening ways I'm just going to mention so called "Fusion Centers", which have been used to investigate and disrupt the organization of The Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street but spare my usual rant. No it does not compare to Russia or China. Oh and I'm also going to link this: https://firstlook.org/the…
Thanks for the response. Sorry for editing mine while you were writing yours. > Oh I agree. Actually if you look back Clinton and first term Bush era they kept proclaiming that there was a cyber intelligence war but it never really caught on. Interesting point. Now, in the 90s, wasn't the government trying to prevent encryption from being used by the public though? > When it comes to hacking, the attacker always wins…
> Now, in the 90s, wasn't the government trying to prevent encryption from being used by the public though?
Oh yeah. They did before the 90s, during the 90s and are also doing it now. We won some serious ground in the 90s, allowing us to use stronger algorithms. But companies are still required to keep copies of all of your encryption keys at the ready if they want access to your data. If you haven't seen it the FOIA requested document from the CIA posted here a week or so ago has a pretty good history.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0006231614.p...
> Still, there are a lot of defensive measures the public can take from hackers. For instance, using OTR, Tor/VPNs, and moving sites to HTTPS whenever possible.
These things do help, but minimally. OTR is good if you want some privacy on your chats. Tor is good if you want a little anonymity. Some baseline level of encryption should be standard everywhere. If you look at the extensiveness of the backdoors though these don't really matter. For example take the FBI mass exploitation of Tor this year. In many instances (Apple iPhone/Microsoft Skydrive/etc with PRISM), copies of data are stored directy from a partner's product for inspection, whether it was originally encrypted during transit or no. And computer exploits that target operating systems are able to see everything on your computer that you see.
Re: Schneier:
I love his analogy to Digital Feudalism the most.
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if they're subverting open source encryption software.
Most certainly 100% yes. Here's a pretty swell talk on some of the programs they use to do it. http://mirror.as35701.net/video.fosdem.org//2014/Janson/Sund...
Fascinating.
I'm off to create a few phony shell corporations to get some free NSA money and get paid to surf the web!
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the response. Sorry for editing mine while you were writing yours. > Oh I agree. Actually if you look back Clinton and first term Bush era they kept proclaiming that there was a cyber intelligence war but it never really caught on. Interesting point. Now, in the 90s, wasn't the government trying to prevent encryption from being used by the public though? > When it comes to hacking, the attacker always wins…
> Now, in the 90s, wasn't the government trying to prevent encryption from being used by the public though? Oh yeah. They did before the 90s, during the 90s and are also doing it now. We won some serious ground in the 90s, allowing us to use stronger algorithms. But companies are still required to keep copies of all of your encryption keys at the ready if they want access to your data. If you haven't seen it the FOIA…
Will check that out, thanks
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is really damaging, but that's from a perspective that, as a superpower, they were benefiting from control and domination. The same perspective implies that the target was being damaged by these actions. Targets that are not always adversaries. Targets that could contribute if not being controlled, dominated, and damaged. It's not easy to see, but damaging others denies them the contributions they could bring, ult…
Are you saying it's retribution for participating in the global cyber intelligence war? Everybody is hacking everybody. Every major country has a cyberintelligence arm. The NSA is just one actor of dozens.
No, "everybody" doesn't do it.
It is on the face of it ridiculous to say "everybody has a blue-water navy." It is equally ridiculous to say "everybody runs surveillance comparable to the NSA."
Re: Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now, in the 90s, wasn't the government trying to prevent encryption from being used by the public though? Oh yeah. They did before the 90s, during the 90s and are also doing it now. We won some serious ground in the 90s, allowing us to use stronger algorithms. But companies are still required to keep copies of all of your encryption keys at the ready if they want access to your data. If you haven't seen it the FOIA…
Will check that out, thanks
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