How the CIA used Crypto AG encryption devices to spy on countries for decades

Post by Forgivenessizer » Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 4:18 AM UTC

shostack wrote: post #86

fanatic2pope wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When this stuff is used against you, it is FAR more likely going to be from a domestic group hostile to a political opinion you might have. Imagine if an outfit like Cambridge Analytica had the resources of a nation state helping it collect and process information about who might support any given policy (and be given the carrot) and who might oppose it (and be given the stick). That's the scale of threat we face. Wh…

I'm not clear if your post was implying this was the case or not, but this is an interesting, well-sourced article on the links between Cambridge Analytica and Russia [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-ana...

Post by _-___________-_ » Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #2

Reading between the lines on this, it's plainly apparent why there's been repeated attacks on encrpytion by the US government. From this, through RSA's Dual_EC_DRBG, to the present day, it's obvious that the US highly values rigging the deck to aid their decryption, and that the current democratisation of encrpytion protocols is a threat to them. I mean, you only need to read their repeated admissions that without MI…

Post by judge2020 » Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

_-___________-_ wrote: post #284

dmix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference is that decrypting something would likely need to be targeted and on a case-by-case basis, as it would take specialized work, as opposed to these sorts of attacks (much like tapping all of the pipes which transit data underseas or elsewhere, which still goes on in every country or working directly with the ISPs and mobile operators which happens in most countries) which allows mass dragnet surveill…

> WhatsApp and iMessage Don't both of these have default/recommended configurations that back up your chats to cloud services?

Post by sailfast » Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 5:09 AM UTC

johnflan wrote: post #212

wycy wrote: post #4

Two parts of interest that jumped out to me: > The overlapping accounts expose frictions between the two partners over money, control and ethical limits, with the West Germans frequently aghast at the enthusiasm with which U.S. spies often targeted allies. > Hagelin had once hoped to turn control over to his son, Bo. But U.S. intelligence officials regarded him as a “wild card” and worked to conceal the partnership f…

> There were no indications of foul play. Yup

Post by glitchdigger » Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

_-___________-_ wrote: post #283

NamTaf wrote: post #2

Reading between the lines on this, it's plainly apparent why there's been repeated attacks on encrpytion by the US government. From this, through RSA's Dual_EC_DRBG, to the present day, it's obvious that the US highly values rigging the deck to aid their decryption, and that the current democratisation of encrpytion protocols is a threat to them. I mean, you only need to read their repeated admissions that without MI…

Given that the US has operations aiming to capture large amounts of Internet traffic, and given that most interesting Internet traffic is encrypted nowadays, doesn't it follow that they probably have a way to decrypt at least some of it? Capturing DNS queries and HTTP requests to aging websites that still haven't enabled TLS seems not worth the trouble.