Everyone loves a good conspiracy. It distracts us from the real world of carelessness, incompetence, laziness, and lowpriorityness.
If I was trying to hide my presence, I wouldn't name something after myself. $0.02
_NSAKEY
51–60 of 118 posts
Re: _NSAKEY
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that case, why was it the backup key that was named after the NSA, and not the key that was actually used for this purpose in practice?
Have you never given your code variables tongue-in-cheek names?
Sure, but Microsoft didn't argue that it was tongue-in-cheek.
Re: _NSAKEY
#53"Microsoft said that the key's symbol was '_NSAKEY' because the NSA is the technical review authority for U.S. crypography export controls, and the key ensures compliance with U.S. export laws" Occam's Razor.
I'm trying to understand what it means - does it mean your code have to have a symbol called `_NSAKEY`? Or how does it affect compliance?
The entire signing system, of which these keys were part, was required to comply with US export controls.
Re: _NSAKEY
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normally, I'd agree with you, but this seems a bit too on-the-nose for me. When people have to talk about a shady or immoral activity or put mentions of it in writing, they usually get very creative in finding an inconspicuous name for it. As such, if this were really a backdoor, I'd expect it's identifiers to look maximally boring and no direct reference to the NSA given anywhere.
Conspiracy theories tend to hinge on the idea that the conspirators are simultaneously 5-dimensional chess playing lizard people from the future and , at the end of the day, dumb as a rock.
Coincidence theories tend to hinge on the idea that everyone is incompetent and that nobody could ever collude together in secret for any sort of malicious or self interested purpose.
Re: _NSAKEY
#55Everyone loves a good conspiracy. It distracts us from the real world of carelessness, incompetence, laziness, and lowpriorityness.
The real world is far more complicated than simply carelessness, incompetence, laziness, and lowpriorityness.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/11/nsa_microsof...
Re: _NSAKEY
#56I remember that part of the Windows 2000 source code leaked years ago. I'm presuming people looked at it for dubious keys.
Re: _NSAKEY
#57Even if this _NSAKEY thing is not to do with an actual NSA backdoor(s) into Windows, does anyone here really believe the NSA hasn't leveraged their position to suggest Microsoft (and others) give them ways to access things (or else)? If not it suggests that through software defects they have complete access anyway?
This is sort of circular, or tautological: “I believe in it because it’s so believable “ FWIW, I am rather skeptic. And I even have reasons: if the NSA has the power to coerce, Apple wouldn’t repeatedly gotten into fights with the US government to unlock iPhones. Cooperating with the NSA is also clearly not in the companies’ interests. If (when) it comes out, they’d be at risk to lose a lot of business in other count…
I'm making an educated guess rather than saying it's 100% true. As others have stated from the PRISM leaks and so on it's not like these companies are not already complicit in supplying data.
Re: _NSAKEY
#58Even if this _NSAKEY thing is not to do with an actual NSA backdoor(s) into Windows, does anyone here really believe the NSA hasn't leveraged their position to suggest Microsoft (and others) give them ways to access things (or else)? If not it suggests that through software defects they have complete access anyway?
This is sort of circular, or tautological: “I believe in it because it’s so believable “ FWIW, I am rather skeptic. And I even have reasons: if the NSA has the power to coerce, Apple wouldn’t repeatedly gotten into fights with the US government to unlock iPhones. Cooperating with the NSA is also clearly not in the companies’ interests. If (when) it comes out, they’d be at risk to lose a lot of business in other count…
>if the NSA has the power to coerce, Apple wouldn’t repeatedly gotten into fights with the US government to unlock iPhones.
The fights that we know about can be nothing more than a marketing stunt. They were what Apple wanted public to know; when leaks happen that Apple doesn't want public to know, Apple's "commitment to privacy" rather pales. Apple was listed as a PRISM data provider, they were accused in using their employee's message data against them. Now they also admit to looking into iCloud photos.
Re: _NSAKEY
#59Re: _NSAKEY
#60Everyone loves a good conspiracy. It distracts us from the real world of carelessness, incompetence, laziness, and lowpriorityness.
Yes because the NSA snooping in everyone's data turned out to be a conspiracy...