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The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

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Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#21

Post by Intermernet »

IBM wrote: post #18
Intermernet wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must have missed that release, do you have any links?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9176630

You may have posted the wrong link there. It seems to be a link to @okasaki's comment, which doesn't seem to pertain to the issue you mentioned, and contains no links of it's own.

I assume copypasta error? I'd still appreciate it if you have any links, as I'm trying to map out the various accusations and counter-accusations in the Snowden case. It's a good study in information warfare :-)

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#24

Post by littletimmy »

I don't buy it. I really don't.

We know about the incredibly close ties between silicon valley and the military. We know that the US government collects anything and everything, and that US corporations are complicit (or made to be complicit) in the act.

It is most likely that Greenwald was leaked these documents to create a facade of government-corporate animosity to revive trust in US corporations, all the while there existing a backdoor to facilitate snooping.

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#25

Post by Intermernet »

onion2k wrote: post #3

The implication of the article is that this is some sort of specific attack against Apple. Surely the reality is that the CIA, and pretty much all 3-letter agencies globally, in a concerted and organised way try to break the security of all secure devices. That's a big part of their job - you can't gather intelligence if you can't read it. The good things in the article are two-fold: firstly, Apple haven't just capit…

I think the point of The Intercept releasing this Apple specific info (mostly, there's a bit about Microsoft being targeted as well) is to try to appeal to the large number of Apple customers. I'd love to see some of the other line items in the leaked CBJ document, as there are probably some other targeted attacks documented.

Regarding Apple not capitulating, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that they're telling the truth, but wouldn't the NSL system mean that Tim Cook couldn't reveal if Apple had been forced to release data?

I'm hoping that he has a personal warrant canary policy, and would just remain silent if asked about something he can't talk about.

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#26

Post by higherpurpose »

SagelyGuru wrote: post #13
okasaki wrote: post #5

The cynic in me feels that this might be part of a PR campaign coordinated between the US govt and US tech companies to try to give the impression of an adversarial relationship between the two. The article quotes Steven Bellovin: “Their attitude is basically amoral: whatever works is OK.” If you forgot the article, could you tell who this is talking about? The government or the corporations? It seems like it fits bo…

It is certainly in the interests of the government and its spying agencies for the big monopolies to be successful. It must be a comforting thought to them to know that if they bug just Apple and Microsoft, at a stroke they have over 90% of the population under effective surveillance.

It's a shame Apple became so cooperative with the government recently. They agreed to "share cyberthreat info" which could mean zero-days, and maybe much more, which we know how the government will want to use first (hint: not for security).

My guess is Tim Cook agreed for the same reason Microsoft agreed to do the same thing long ago, and now again with the new program - to get government contracts, such as the one where Apple Pay will be used to get federal services and with the plan to use Passbook or whatever as driver license in the future. Apple actually announced this in the very same day they announced it will share cyber info with the government, so it's not even trying to hide it.

I doubt Steve Jobs would've compromised the same way. As we've seen from the leaked Snowden charts, Apple only entered PRISM after Steve Jobs died.

As for Microsoft, I won't even waste my breath. They would sellout anyone for an extra million dollars. They only fight against this stuff when it seems to be publicly damaging them, because they don't want to lose billions of dollars in revenue from abroad because of this issue. So they would have no problem giving US authorities data from abroad, as long as it's still secret. Once it gets public they will "fight hard" against the practice.

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#27

Post by TillE »

littletimmy wrote: post #24

I don't buy it. I really don't. We know about the incredibly close ties between silicon valley and the military. We know that the US government collects anything and everything, and that US corporations are complicit (or made to be complicit) in the act. It is most likely that Greenwald was leaked these documents to create a facade of government-corporate animosity to revive trust in US corporations, all the while th…

The article explains that these are all documents from Snowden. So they're simply taken from the full set that Greenwald has had since 2013, not any kind of new leak.

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#28

Post by IBM »

Intermernet wrote: post #21
IBM wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9176630

You may have posted the wrong link there. It seems to be a link to @okasaki's comment, which doesn't seem to pertain to the issue you mentioned, and contains no links of it's own. I assume copypasta error? I'd still appreciate it if you have any links, as I'm trying to map out the various accusations and counter-accusations in the Snowden case. It's a good study in information warfare :-)

It's no error.

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#29

Post by belorn »

p01926 wrote: post #15

How much longer can this continue? We have American agencies attacking American companies "because terrorism". It's been 13 years since our trauma, maybe now's the time to remove the razor blade from our wrists, look ourselves in the mirror and just carry on. Bad stuff is always going to be in our future — stuff that will increasingly appear preventable between the Internet and a lot of hindsight — but our current so…

Unofficially, politicians has surrendered the "because terrorism" excuse for a while now, as they simply want access to everyones private information in order to see where the problem are going to be. Having the data helps plan and run successful elections, makes it easier to plan ahead, and gives them power over any department which doesn't has similar access.

Imagine being in a political party while private intelligence contractor give you access to all the emails from the other side. You can know where all the activists are at any moment, and what the internal conflicts are, and what areas is focused. What would be your reaction if phones suddenly started to get encrypted?

Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets

#30

Post by r0h1n »

What strikes me after this revelation is how unique the United States is, because:

(a) it has dozens of companies that create technology the rest of the world uses, and (b) it has a govt. that secretly works to undermine the technology developed by those companies.

You're not going to hear about many foreign govt's actively hacking their country's software products, simply because they could easily/secretly armtwist cos. into installing backdoors at the beginning. Take China for instance - do we think it needs to hack into, say, Huawei phones or Wechat? I don't think so.

As a foreigner, that is why this "fight" between US software cos. and its govt. is so fascinating. It's made possible through a unique combination of capital, freedom and history. And I hope it remains that way, for the sake of the rest of the world too.

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