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NSA OSS Technologies

nationalsecurityagency.github.io

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Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#41

Post by zby »

forgottenacc57 wrote: post #37

Why are people so welcoming to the filthy spies invading citizen privacy?

Army is created to do arguably worse things than spies. There are people who completely reject the idea of military - but the bulk of society tend to accept it as a unavoidable and tries to control it and make it least evil possible.

Some spying is probably unavoidable in the current world - and just like with the army we need to think how to control it and make it civilized. Getting on a high moral horse only makes the matters worse.

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#42

Post by Tepix »

rdtsc wrote: post #12

This caught my eye: > https://github.com/apache/incubator-pirk > Employing homomorphic encryption techniques, PIR enables datasets to remain resident in their native locations while giving the ability to query the datasets with sensitive terms. I can imagine a few scenarios there. One perhaps is when db admin should not find out what someone, possibly working on a classified project is querying. Or say one compartmen…

Intriguing indeed. Could this tech also be used to query a database or service to plot a route (say for navigating with your car) without revealing the route?

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#45

Post by lawless123 »

sneak wrote: post #20
blazespin wrote: post #19

I suspect there are a lot of very incredible computer programmers at the NSA and they're probably using just regular open source non security related tools every day. It's good to see that they're contributing back to the OS community what they can.

Let's not forget: these people may be skilled, but they are working against every principle of our community. https://www-androidauthority-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/www.an...

one of their links is to a security enhanced linux android.

https://source.android.com/security/selinux/

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#46

Post by Spearchucker »

rdtsc wrote: post #12

This caught my eye: > https://github.com/apache/incubator-pirk > Employing homomorphic encryption techniques, PIR enables datasets to remain resident in their native locations while giving the ability to query the datasets with sensitive terms. I can imagine a few scenarios there. One perhaps is when db admin should not find out what someone, possibly working on a classified project is querying. Or say one compartmen…

This is pretty common in the commercial world too, and something I've done more than once myself. The obvious use case is storing medical records.

In the UK personal medical records are often stored by systems integrators in datacentres with nebulous locations, and need to be accessed by third parties for things like underwriting life insurance policies.

To protect the data (compliance with the EU data protection act) it's encrypted in transit AND at rest. Access to data by third parties is managed through AMRAs (access medical record authorisation), which are completed by the third party, authorised by the data owner (private individual) and given to the data owner's general/dental practitioner or pharmacist, who is able to access and decrypt and appropriately share the sensitive data.

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#47

Post by skynode »

qeternity wrote: post #30
mtgx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal government is required to open source at least 20 percent of its code now: https://sourcecode.cio.gov/

The cynic in me wonders which 20% we'll get. The repo linked here is pretty impressive, so I may have to eat crow. I would have expected to get every html template and vba macro ever written, instead of the value add stuff.

My thoughts exactly. That 20% will probably provide you with a map of Russia while you're​ flying over the Swiss Alps. Some things are better not learned (or known) at all than learned (or known) the wrong way.

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#48

Post by r3bl »

Fun sidenote: I was the very first civilian to contribute to their GitHub project back in July 2015, when SIMP was the only project they had up on GitHub.

It was literally a one letter change in the README file, but I still have the privilege to call myself the very first civilian to contribute to the NSA's open source project: https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/SIMP/pull/1

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#49

Post by annnnd »

digitalzombie wrote: post #14
voltagex_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share any other info?

reddit have a comment thread about this. Once comment described it as a "shit show". Apparently its terrible and they tried to get the company to rebuild it and they made it the same. Another comment comment on how "buggy" it was. Or that the only dev that willing to work with it are contractors that want money.

> Or that the only dev that willing to work with it are contractors that want money.

Greedy b*stards!

Re: NSA OSS Technologies

#50

Post by ArneBab »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #9

There's a lot of neat things there. (This one looks interesting: https://iadgov.github.io/goSecure/ ) Also interesting is splitting the repos: that the NSA and IAD have different repos, and that one seems focused on defensive tech while the other is publishing analysis tools. I know there's a lot of people who aren't fans of the NSA (or what they do), but I think most of us can see a need for a military-grade organiz…

A danger is that if you use their tech, you might become dependent on their tools.
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