[HN Gopher] Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain... ___________________________________________________________________ Snowden leak: Cavium networking hardware may contain NSA backdoor Author : moyix Score : 824 points Date : 2023-09-19 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | minzi wrote: | I don't know much about security, especially at the hardware | level. However, I have a question for those of you that do. | | Suppose you were given a healthy budget, a team, and a few years. | Would you be able to build network hardware that did not contain | back doors? How healthy would the budget need to be? How skilled | would the team need to be? I assume you'd have to assume most | external vendors are compromised and rebuild whatever you needed | from them. What would that take? | 6d6b73 wrote: | Impossible. Sooner or later one of the 3 letter agencies would | have somebody on your team and they would introduce multiple | backdoors one way or another. | c7DJTLrn wrote: | I don't think it would be that hard. There's RISC-V SBCs out | there which the schematics are open for. I don't think it's | correct to assume absolutely everything out there is | backdoored/compromised. That would be an very difficult | undertaking and word would get out. NSA target their attacks | very finely. | wnevets wrote: | Snowden also said Russia wasn't going to invade Ukraine in 2022. | robbywashere_ wrote: | cmd+F lawsuit 0 results? | xyst wrote: | Is this only limited to "USG" products? Or safe to assume UDM | also impacted? | | edit: FUCK | | " Quad-core ARM(r) Cortex(r)-A57 at 1.7 GHz" | | https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-unifi-gateway-co... | | People paying premium $$$ for this. UI better redesign and | compensate users. | dna_polymerase wrote: | Cavium provides purpose-built chips used for the ER & USG | products. The UDM line uses ARM chips, most likely built by | Annapurna labs. | whalesalad wrote: | my edgerouter ER4 has a cavium processor =( | tamimio wrote: | Not even surprised, how would it be a surprise? Anyone in | security field knows that hardware backdoors or even server OS | memory injected backdoors are a thing and been for as long as | electronics existed, but some neo-security folks get upset when | you say most of the "secure" software they use isn't really | secure, chats like signal, emails like protonmail, or even VPNs, | assume it's compromised, but will it be worth it to expose that | cover for what you did? | squarefoot wrote: | When I buy something electronic, my approach is "everything that | is closed and goes online will be used to spy on people". It may | seem a stretch, but governments can't exercise power over | something they cannot control, and truly private communications | would take away some of that control. To me there are no | conspiracy theories or other strange reasons for being able to | decrypt any seemingly private information except the will to | preserve the status quo at any cost, which implies knowing in | advance what a potential adversary may think or do. I would | expect every device to be bugged for that reason, including all | cellphones and computers and associated hardware, from CPUs with | closed subsystems down to network chipsets with closed firmware. | There will be no way to ensure private communications until | someone will find a way to make a device which is 100% open and | auditable from the operating system to the CPU, from all chipsets | down to the last screw. | iballing wrote: | "100% open and auditable from the operating system to the cpu" | is the main goal of the Betrusted project: | https://betrusted.io/ | ramesh31 wrote: | >"100% open and auditable from the operating system to the | cpu" is the main goal of the Betrusted project: | https://betrusted.io/ | | Hopefully there's a 4G version coming. This seems too good to | be true. | RF_Savage wrote: | The 4G modem is exceedingly unlikely to be audittable. | Something like srsUE is not welcome on many telcos networks | and requires some decently beefy hardware to run. | 0xCMP wrote: | It's possible to modify it and add a 4G modem, but that | would probably be third-party. | | The creators of the project suggest using your phone's | hotspot if you need connectivity when not connected to Wi- | fi (something I heard in interviews they gave). | Fnoord wrote: | Which seems to be an iteration of the Precursor (Mobile, Open | Hardware, RISC-V System-on-Chip (SoC) Development Kit) by | Bunnie Huang and Sean Cobs | | > Part of the purpose of Precursor is to validate the system- | on-chip (SoC) design we hope eventually to produce as a | custom ASIC for use in future such products. This SoC, which | we call "Betrusted-SoC," is meant to be the central pillar of | security for devices like Precursor. The version of | Betrusted-SoC used in Precursor is based on a Xilinx FPGA and | has the following features [...] [1] | | As for the person who replied to you requesting LTE: won't | happen, there's no completely FOSS stack for LTE. Always | there is closed source firmware due to regulations. Oh, that | wonderful world of transceivers. If you want FOSS, go wired. | Tho it seems Precursor found a way to utilize Wi-Fi with a | FOSS stack? | | [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor | archontes wrote: | It's clear that they feel that way also. The engineer Andreas | Spiess recently appeared in a briefing on dangerous, anarchy- | enabling technologies simply for making a youtube video on an | encrypted messaging protocol over lora mesh networking. | | They're carefully watching and cataloging any communications | technology they can't compromise. | madars wrote: | Which briefing was that? Edit: it appears to be this | https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/NCRI-White- | Pa... ("Network-Enabled Anarchy: How Militant Anarcho- | Socialist Networks Use Social Media to Instigate Widespread | Violence Against Political Opponents and Law Enforcement" via | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAQI2ZSmxPU; thanks to a | sibling comment) | SamPatt wrote: | The guy with the Swiss accent? | | What's your source on this? | dariosalvi78 wrote: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAQI2ZSmxPU | lawlessone wrote: | TBF that same tech would probably be great for them or | militaries to have. | dkqmduems wrote: | Well advertising is a form of psychological warfare. | dfc wrote: | The guy's video was linked to from /r/SocialistRA and a | screenshot of the link was included in a paper about "How | Militant Anarcho-Socialist Networks Use Social Media to | Instigate Widespread Violence Against Political Opponents and | Law Enforcement." The paper never mentioned Spiess or | meshtastic. What are we supposed to infer from that? | s3p wrote: | It's also hard to distinguish between legitimate security | threats and scare tactics designed to make us _think_ we 're | in danger. Remember the Bloomberg Supermicro "bombshell"[0]? | I still don't know if that was ever confirmed true or false, | but to my knowledge Bloomberg never retracted it. | | [0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/12/supermicro_bloombe | rg_... | Lammy wrote: | I still believe it. Wouldn't surprise me if ASPEED were a | "SIGINT enabled" vendor as well. It would be foolish _not_ | to target the most widespread BMC platform. | mk89 wrote: | If that is the case they are doing a pretty s** job spying on | people, considering the amount of harm being done to children | (and people in general). | irreticent wrote: | I wouldn't say they are doing a bad job spying on people for | that reason; I think it's more likely that the reason they | are spying is not to help children/people but rather to | strengthen their control over the people. Knowledge is power | and they want to be more powerful than everyone else. I've | always assumed that the spying wasn't altruistic but more for | selfish reasons. | eastbound wrote: | This. All of this spying, not even being used for security | ever, ie their goal might as well be general insecurity. It | feels like their goal is the stability of the social layers, | no or rare promotion, and maximum impermeability for the | masses. | wombat-man wrote: | For sure, but since a state has basically unlimited resources | to find vulnerabilities, I'd assume it's possible for state | actors to reach a target if they are determined enough. | | Might as well make it difficult though. | tromp wrote: | If I want to do some computation that should not be spied on, I | can still program it in BASIC on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum. If it | doesn't fit in its measly 48KB of RAM, I'm probably still safe | programming it on my Commodore Amiga 500. | | Basically, you can only trust things manufactured before "going | online" became a thing. | fallat wrote: | or you know, just don't connect your computer online. | doublerabbit wrote: | And ensure it's not by any windows, the case HD LED doesn't | blink nor does the FAN make any noise. | tromp wrote: | Both these computers were fan-less, like nearly all hobby | computers at the time (clockspeeds were single digit | Mhz). The Amiga only had a floppy disk drive. | TacticalCoder wrote: | Hardware and software backdoors does scale. | | Data exfiltration through audio / fan speed / LEDs | blinking / power draw / etc. simply doesn't. | | I think that a discussion about metric shitloads of | networking gear being compromised is not the place to | make fun of the few that didn't compromise on security. | | There's a place for offline/airgapped devices and private | keys (PGP keys, seeds, whatever) being generated by | throwing dice. | | If anything all these backdoors do show that | math/cryptography do work. The NSA's budget may be 100% | of the US GDP, they still wouldn't be changing Sun's | gravity or the math behind cryptography. | | The joke today is on those who kept making fun of those | who didn't trade security for convenience. | 13of40 wrote: | "If it's technically possible, they're doing it." | | It's their job. | dizhn wrote: | If it exists, they're buying it. (States) | AndrewKemendo wrote: | This is the right approach IMO. | | Just assume you're being persistently surveilled - if you use a | computer or electronics then the likelihood approaches 100% | over your lifetime. | phito wrote: | I try to have this approach, but I find it so exhausting tbh. | It makes me want to just not use technology. | flangola7 wrote: | If you have to take this approach they have already won | AndrewKemendo wrote: | You are correct, "they" have won so far unfortunately | | Doesn't mean we don't do anything about it, just means we | have to acknowledge reality | mbakke wrote: | I generally hold a similar opinion. However I have two data | points that suggests back-doors are not available _by default_ | (for my government at least), but that they are aggressively | bugging (or auditing, lol) devices: | | * When I ordered the first generation Raspberry Pi, they were | stuck in the toll a long time, and when they arrived all the | warranty seals were broken. Consequently I never really used | them. | | * When I ordered the first generation Google Pixel, before it | was generally available in my country, it was stuck in domestic | mail for almost a week. The person who imported them sold and | sent two phones the same day: the other one arrived after just | two days and travelled a lot further. I used it regardless as I | already considered phones a lost cause... (and could not with | good conscience sell a possibly compromised device). | | At this point I don't trust anything sent by mail. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | You act like the NSA has been caught intercepting Cisco | switches during shipping, and installing backdoored firmware, | or something. Crazy conspiracy theorists... | ilyt wrote: | I just assume I'm not interested enough to be spied upon by | randoms | | > When I ordered the first generation Raspberry Pi, they were | stuck in the toll a long time, and when they arrived all the | warranty seals were broken. Consequently I never really used | them. | | If state have means to bug raspberry pi it has means to re- | seal the box... | backtoyoujim wrote: | unless they wanted you to know and feel threatened by it | phero_cnstrcts wrote: | > I just assume I'm not interested enough to be spied upon | by randoms | | I believe the fewest are. But constant surveillance is an | advantage if you need to monitor general opinions or if | they find you interesting at a later point and want to | check your history. | | So if you talk about burning wood in your stove a lot and | it later becomes illegal you might have a hard time denying | you have a stove if they ask you to pay extra carbon | emission taxes. | | Or if you talk about chest pain a lot and later want to get | a new health insurance you might find that your options are | mysteriously more expensive than others. | mbakke wrote: | > If state have means to bug raspberry pi it has means to | re-seal the box... | | That's a good point that I never made sense of. The most | likely explanation is simply an oversealouz toll agent. It | just left a bad taste in my mouth so I didn't want to play | with them... | | I had largely forgotten about it until the Google Pixel got | stuck. | 31337Logic wrote: | Wow. This is massive!! | I_am_tiberius wrote: | And people still believe Apple is secure because they say | themselves. "Nobody" knows what their devices do in reality. | shoe_meal wrote: | This is a fascinating revelation for those of us NSA-spotters who | enjoy hearing tidbits about what they've been up to. | | I would love to know more about the technical details of this | backdoor and how it was used operationally. Though I doubt any of | us in the general public will ever get to find that out. As | amazing (and necessary!) as the NSA's work is, luckily for our | country's safety and security there have been no further Snowdens | treacherously spilling all the secrets. | | To be honest, I am so impressed and humbled by what this | magnificent agency does that maybe it is time to apply to join | their important mission, at https://nsa.gov/careers. | ech0riginal wrote: | Y'all really need to work on your finesse. | jdblair wrote: | Help me out here: | | if my network hardware is compromised, but all of my | communication is encrypted, that leaves... traffic analysis? | hoovering up the data and storing it to decrypt in the future | when it becomes feasible? using the router as a foothold to | attack the rest of my network? | | The first two are already happening for data that leaves my LAN. | Unencrypted data on my LAN is vulnerable, and there is plenty of | unencrypted traffic on my LAN in practice. Is that the risk? | jdblair wrote: | still thinking... if the three-letter-agency has compromised | the random number generator, then that means all traffic | encrypted by the router may be easier to crack. | | What data is encrypted on the router? VPNs, for one. So a VPN, | and all the plaintext traffic sent over it, could be made | vulnerable. | rwmj wrote: | On a technical level how would this work? Could it be observed by | the router occasionally sending packets unsolicited to nsa.gov? | [joke, obviously it wouldn't send them to a well-known address, | but to some "unexpected" place] Or maybe when the router has to | generate a private key [does it?] it would generate one with a | flaw? | Filligree wrote: | The router is most likely also compromised, and will neglect to | inform you of those packets. | xmodem wrote: | Weak or compromised RNG is enough to make most crypto | algorithms brute-force-able at NSA scale. | Obscurity4340 wrote: | Just want to point out that iMessage makes a lot more sense in | this regard. iMessage is that skeleton key that was requested | years ago in San Beradino | apienx wrote: | "You can't defend. You can't protect. The only thing you can do | is detect and respond." -- Bruce Schneier | convivialdingo wrote: | Looking more closely at this, the backdoor is almost certainly | based on the back-doored random number generator, Dual_EC_DRBG, | which is implemented as NIST SP 800-90A. | | From Wiki: >>> NIST SP 800-90A ("SP" stands for "special | publication") is a publication by the National Institute of | Standards and Technology with the title Recommendation for Random | Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators. The | publication contains the specification for three allegedly | cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generators for use | in cryptography: Hash DRBG (based on hash functions), HMAC DRBG | (based on HMAC), and CTR DRBG (based on block ciphers in counter | mode). Earlier versions included a fourth generator, Dual_EC_DRBG | (based on elliptic curve cryptography). Dual_EC_DRBG was later | reported to probably contain a kleptographic backdoor inserted by | the United States National Security Agency (NSA). | | From Cavium's NIST FIPS-140-2, Section 3.3 [1] Approved and | Allowed Algorithms: | | The cryptographic module supports the following FIPS Approved | algorithms. | | *SP800-90 CTR DRBG Deterministic random number generation 32 | | 1: https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/projects/cryptographic- | modu... | stephen_g wrote: | That's a very specific module - one of Cavium's dozens and | dozens of products. | | Hard to tell what it is, more information is needed. | convivialdingo wrote: | Well, there's several Cavium devices that support the | deprecated/back-doored Hash_DRBG. | | For example, these devices were validated for the completely | appropriately named "SonicOS 6.2.5 for TZ, SM and NSA". Gotta | appreciate the irony. | | Cavium CN7020 Hash DRBG | | Cavium CN7130 Hash DRBG | | Cavium Octeon Plus CN66XX Family Hash DRBG | | Cavium Octeon Plus CN68XX Family Hash DRBG | | I don't know if that's hardware support or just a software | validation - but it's still interesting that they validated | it. | | https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/Cryptographic-Algorithm- | Valid... | dfox wrote: | Except Hash_DRBG is neither deprecated nor backdoored. See | NIST SP 800-90A Rev. 1 section 10.1.1.1 for description of | the algorithm. | convivialdingo wrote: | Well, true.. the Hash_DRBG hashing algorithm remains. But | it's rather likely that previous FIPS validations | occurred utilizing the actual backdoored and deprecated | algorithm as an input to the Hash_DRBG, rendering it's | security properties suspect. | | In NIST SP 800-90A Rev. 1, the HASH_DRBG section has been | _significantly_ updated to that effect. | | For instance, Appendix E: (Informative) Revisions. | | Section 10: Section 10 now includes a link to the DRBG | test vectors on the NIST website. Sections 10.1, 10.1.1 | and 10.1.2 now include short discussions about selecting | hash functions to support the DRBG's intended security | strength. The Dual_EC_DRBG has been removed, and section | numbers adjusted accordingly. | dfox wrote: | The backdoor in DualEC_DRBG only works if there is some | way for the attacker to directly observe its outputs (eg. | using that for IVs). If you use it as an inner CSPRNG | that seeds other faster algorithms the backdoor is | irrelevant, but well, such a construction is total | nonsense that only ever makes sense in the FIPS | certification framework (DualEC_DRBG is ridiculously slow | and not meaningfully more secure than the other FIPS | CSPRNGs). | | On the other hand, I have the feeling that if you | instantiate Hash_DRBG with certain classes of insecure | hash functions (think MD2) the mechanism that protects | the construction from effects of birthday paradox makes | it simpler to break the underlying hash function, but for | this attack to work the underlying hash function have to | be really bad and this attack is probably impractical | even for instantiations with MD4, much less the SHA | variants in the specification. | [deleted] | nonrandomstring wrote: | Another tragic blow to the environment and economy. | | We treat these stories as if they were simple matters of politics | and tech. But the blast radius is huge. When this happened to | Cisco, and their value dropped to about 7% of the market they | created, I passed massive dumpsters of Cisco gear in the car | park, prematurely torn out of racks and consigned to crushing as | e-waste. | | Has anyone done a serious cost analysis of just how hard this | hits? If a foreign entity sabotaged our industry this way we'd | take the battle right to them. | chillbill wrote: | [dead] | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Where can I find dumpsters of Cisco gears? I guess they are | good targets to hack on. | perihelions wrote: | How the NSA successfully manage to prevent the _Washington Post_ | and friends from discovering and reporting on this malicious | backdoor? They 've been sitting on these documents for a decade. | Are the journalists just that *uncurious* about the deep contents | of the documents they hold exclusive access to? Was this some | kind of organizational failing? | kome wrote: | mainstream journalists are incredibly unreliable. it's | absolutely clear to everyone that you cannot trust nyt and | similar publications. i never read them anyway, and when I do | come across articles on topics I'm knowledgeable about, i'm | appalled by how wrong they are. | bigger_inside wrote: | exactly. When I read things I KNOW about, it's incredibly | obvious that the news entertainment business (which WP and | NYT and CNN and Fox all are) exist to serve the prejudices of | their audience. A few times I made the mistake to let myself | be interviewed by a newspaper who wanted an "expert" on | something (flattering, but meh); something copletely benign | and harmless, nothing political. They twisted my words to | serve up stuff that fit what their "normal reader" already | believed about the world. | colordrops wrote: | It's crazy to me that people pay for access to these outlets. | I wouldn't pay for any content except from individual | journalists and a few very small outlets, and even then, | would immediately stop if things ever turn for the worse. | Workaccount2 wrote: | Modern journalists are just terminally online twitter heads. | | "Why go out or talk to anyone when I can just stay home and | be on twitter all day!?!" | | It's the absolute worst outcome for journalism, and none of | publications seem to care. If I had a publication the first | thing I would do is ban twitter use (and probably go bankrupt | because of it.) | dylan604 wrote: | publications probably encourage it so they can slash the | operating budgets. if people are "staying at home on | twitter all day", then they don't need office space. if | they are willing to stay home to be on twitter all day, | they are probably much younger less | experienced/credentialed employee so they're cheaper too! | dylan604 wrote: | >i never read them anyway, and when I do come across articles | on topics I'm knowledgeable about, i'm appalled by how wrong | they are. | | I never do that, except when I do. What kind of soapbox are | you trying to stand on. It looks more like a cardboard box | collapsing under the weight of your own hubris. | | I get the suspicion of news outlets of any kind. It doesn't | matter what stream the journalists are fished out of, but | they cannot all be subject matter experts in all subjects. | This is also an expectation full of hubris on your part. | pangolinpouch wrote: | Our media companies are rife with intelligence agents. | Corporate / State media has no incentive to make you the wiser. | hangonhn wrote: | It's quite a bit more subtle than that. News organization | have their sources that are in the intelligence community. | They use each other. Sometimes the journalist wants to use | their sources for information. Other times their sources feed | them disinformation disguised as information. Other times | they want a back channel to leak some real information but | can't be seem as coming from a government source. Being a | good journalist is hard and often doesn't pay very well. | | I'm often remind of PG's essay on corporate PR and the media: | http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html | the-dude wrote: | I have no sources at hand, but I understood the FBI/CIA is | embedded within every major news org in the US. | ganoushoreilly wrote: | Wait until you realize their footprints on Wallstreet, | many of which openly admit their former employment.. Once | a company man always a company man.. or something. | throwawayq3423 wrote: | We live in a world where people believe things with no | proof (therefore with no reason), but a little humility | and less certainty might benefit the conversation. | Clubber wrote: | The twitter files showed government agencies were | coercing Twitter into suppressing information. I would | find it hard to believe they don't also coerce at | newspapers, particularly with the cozy relationship they | already have with "anonymous sources" from said agencies. | throwawayq3423 wrote: | > The twitter files showed government agencies were | coercing Twitter into suppressing information. | | They very much did not. Twitter's own lawyers when | pressed in court (the place where there are consequences | for lying) admitted that nothing in the "Twitter Files" | cited by Donald Trump actually show that the social media | platform was a tool of government censorship. | | https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand | .38... | ekianjo wrote: | > Our media companies are run by intelligence agents | | Fixed that for you | rdtsc wrote: | WP is a very close ally to the government agencies in general. | That's where it gets those juicy "anonymous government sources | claim ..." news. If WP all of sudden wanted to prevent | democracy from dying "in darkness" as their motto says, it | would mean to start digging a lot harder going against the | government as a whole. Don't think they are prepared for it. | 0xDEF wrote: | Why are you surprised that backdoors in "boring" non-consumer | facing hardware didn't get much attention? | KaiserPro wrote: | The snowden leak was _huge_ and reverberated for weeks. There | were lots of followups. | | However at the time it was the more sexy things like tapping | google's fibre and backdoors in cisco's kits that were more | interesting. This is because the public could understand those | things and therefore it sold papers. | | The difference between "cisco, dell and many other leading | manufacturers shipped backdoors in their kit" and "cavium the | small provider you've not really heard of" is large. | | Most people reading the snowden stuff will have assumed that | the NSA had put in backdoors to most things. | theropost wrote: | Lack of real journalistic resources - Meta has more | "journalists" then the Washington Post. | erdos4d wrote: | WaPo, NYT, et. al. are tied to DOD and the intel community. | They are the anonymous sources that provide many of their story | ideas as well as quotes and sourcing. That doesn't come for | free. | denton-scratch wrote: | I don't think the journos were lazy, and I don't think there | was an organisational failing. The Guardian, in particular, | evidently fell out with Snowden and his collaborators; they | turned on him. I assume that was coordinated with Washpo and | Spiegel. That is: I think there was a decision made, to stop | publishing information from the Snowden trove. | | I don't know what the reason for the betrayal was. I'm pretty | sure Alan Rusbridger knows though. He resigned as Editor-in- | chief shortly after these events. | | I don't get why whistleblowers rely on newspaper publishers to | unpack their leaks for the public; it's not as if the press are | known for either their honesty or their scruples. | jstarfish wrote: | > I don't get why whistleblowers rely on newspaper publishers | to unpack their leaks for the public | | They have an interest in drama and a platform to publish on. | some_random wrote: | Snowden leaked a shit ton of documents, the vast majority of | which had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of NSA | wrongdoing. Journalists then had to go through and try to | figure out what these documents actually meant (which they | frequently misunderstood). Obviously they're still doing it to | today. | mindslight wrote: | As a general rule when criminal conspiracies are taken to | task, they don't retain a right to privacy for their | communications that aren't about the criminal conspiracy. | Rather it all comes out in court. I understand why Snowden | released the way he did, and given how it kept attention on | the subject for longer than Binney/Klein it was probably the | right call. But there should have also been an escrow/intent | to dump the whole trove raw after some time period. | 0xDEF wrote: | >As a general rule when criminal conspiracies are taken to | task, they don't retain a right to privacy for their | communications that aren't about the criminal conspiracy. | Rather it all comes out in court. | | That doesn't seem to be true. There are many court cases | involving criminal conspiracies where you cannot find | unrelated information about the involved people. | mindslight wrote: | "in court" may have been a bit too strong, but police do | generally have carte blanche to the entirety of someone's | private life. For most people the police show up, | confiscate anything that _might possibly_ be evidence, | damaging it or at least denying its use for several | years. Never mind what happens to people, who often get | arrested first and then sorted out later. | | Due to the severe corruption of our institutions, the | investigators in this case are the public. A time period | of a decade is more than enough time to recall all the | HUMINT assets that might be harmed by such disclosure. | some_random wrote: | Do you really think the entire American IC is a "criminal | conspiracy", or are you just trying to justify the fact | that Snowden is an angry and vindictive sharepoint admin | who simply dumped everything he had access to without | regard for what was actually in those documents? | wnoise wrote: | The only way they're not is by the Nixonian "when the | President does it, that means it's not illegal" standard. | mindslight wrote: | Yes. By the straightforward standards that non- | governmental criminal conspiracies are prosecuted, a | large chunk of the NSA is engaged in a criminal | conspiracy. We don't hold back on prosecuting other | criminal conspiracies just because their associations | produce other results like financially supporting their | communities and coaching their kids' soccer teams. | c7DJTLrn wrote: | >Snowden leaked a shit ton of documents, the vast majority of | which had absolutely nothing to do with any kind of NSA | wrongdoing | | Like how NSA collects a shit ton of data on citizens... the | vast majority of which has absolutely nothing to do with any | kind of wrongdoing. | | I'm only pointing this out because your comment has a | negative tone towards what Snowden did. | freedomben wrote: | I didn't read anything negative in there. GP might have | been negative but I don't think there's enough to tell just | from the post | sheepshear wrote: | Making a strawman argument doesn't point anything out. | 45y54jh45 wrote: | Well yes, why do you think the noise died after the initial | hype of Snowden leaking the docs? Do you honestly believe the | mechanisms of for-profit journalism lets journalists be | journalists? They got to eat and in this world you don't eat by | covering yesterdays news. | | NSA didn't have to lift a finger. Wait a few weeks and people | move on to the next story, this should not be a shocking | revelation to anyone. | ben_w wrote: | The British intelligence agencies forced the Guardian to | literally shred the laptop with the contents while they were | in the swing of running headlines about the things it was | revealing. | | While the USA and the UK are different, I suspect there was a | bit more difficult for the NSA than "didn't have to lift a | finger". | drak0n1c wrote: | Closed orgs can take years to find what takes an open source | crowd mere days. Regardless of organizational competence. | londons_explore wrote: | I personally suspect that security services visited the | newspapers a few days after the leak [1], and ever since then, | every article has been about stuff that wouldn't be a surprise | to rival security services. | | Sure - it was a surprise to the public. But rival security | services I'm sure would expect US controlled backdoors in US | made technology. | | [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/31/footage- | rele... | PKop wrote: | Some of them are deputies for the state. State-run-media, or | Media-run-state, whichever you prefer. | | The FBI and CIA had agents inside Twitter and Facebook. _Of | course_ they have them inside news agencies as well. Part of it | over time is access-media, the ones that play ball get the | stories and info, the others get weeded out. | throwawayq3423 wrote: | The casual nature of stating a completely impossible | conspiracy theory has been common place online for years, HN | news used to be immune. | | It's illegal for FBI or CIA to actively target a US company. | Anyone doing so would be fired for cause. | logicchains wrote: | It's illegal to lie under oath to Congress, did James | Clapper go to jail? It's illegal to sleep with underage | girls, how many people on Epstein's client list went to | jail? | chillbill wrote: | [dead] | luxuryballs wrote: | that moment you realize "democracy dies in darkness" is a | mission statement | syndicatedjelly wrote: | Do you think there was a list in the document neatly titled | "NSA_BACKDOORS_DONT_SHARE" or something? | hammock wrote: | More likely an IC plant in the editorial office that said | "NSA Backdoors Don't Share." | | NSA also pays the owner of the Washington Post upwards of $10 | billion for cloud services | gruez wrote: | >NSA also pays the owner of the Washington Post upwards of | $10 billion for cloud services | | That's not the only publication that had access to the | documents. From wikipedia | | >the first of Snowden's documents were published | simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian. | [...] The disclosure continued throughout 2013, and a small | portion of the estimated full cache of documents was later | published by other media outlets worldwide, most notably | The New York Times (United States), the Canadian | Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting | Corporation, Der Spiegel (Germany), O Globo (Brazil), Le | Monde (France), L'espresso (Italy), NRC Handelsblad (the | Netherlands), Dagbladet (Norway), El Pais (Spain), and | Sveriges Television (Sweden). | dylan604 wrote: | >More likely an IC plant in the editorial office that said | "NSA Backdoors Don't Share." | | Wouldn't be more likely that a plant would actually _not_ | say that, but rather come up with something else? Seems | much more likely that a plant would promote some other | aspect of a leak that would be less damaging as _the_ | story. Or even possibly making part of the document dump | disappear. | [deleted] | Consultant32452 wrote: | Supposed news organizations openly employ spooks as | commentators on things like foreign policy. | | Journalists knowingly report lies, acting as the mouthpiece of | the government. | | We know at least one news organization had the whole Epstein | story locked down and they buried it because they were afraid | they'd lose access to the royal family for future news/puff | pieces. | | You think you hate journalists enough, but you don't. | what-no-tests wrote: | > Was this some kind of organizational failing? | | No...the organization is behaving exactly as intended. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | In the US, we have this passionate fantasy about Woodward and | Bernstein and the Post and the Pulitzer and the movie and | Redford and Hoffman and the Academy Award, about how the Press | played the part of the "fourth estate" as the Founders | intended, and rooted out a corrupt politician, and forced him | to resign. It's all bullshit. The people who broke into the | Watergate Hotel were CIA, Woodward was formerly CIA, and | "Deepthroat" was a Deputy Director of the FBI. It was all a | deep state plot to get rid of Nixon. Any time the deep state | wants to get rid of a politician, the "press" does its "job" by | exposing things. When the deep state likes a politician, the | "press" ALSO does its "job" by covering things up. Look | absolutely no further than Hunter Biden. The hypocrisy is | utterly astounding, even to someone who is deeply cynical at | this point. The rest of the US needs to wake up to the fact | that the press is just another branch of the deep state, and | stop pretending that there's ANYTHING useful being fed to us | through ANY of the large media corporations. | sofixa wrote: | > about how the Press played the part of the "fourth estate" | as the Founders intended | | The rest of your post is quite the bullshit (easily probable | with publicly accessible archives bullshit at that), but this | is also wrong. The mythological god-like creatures that | crafted America as their divine powers ordained it didn't | "intend" for the press to be "the fourth power". That term | was first used after the US revolution, and in the UK. You're | just retconing stuff into your mythology, and everyone knows | that doesn't work and leaves a poor taste. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | I have no idea what you're on about. The Founders of the US | absolutely intended the press to be the last counterbalance | on government overreach. It's literally why it's the First | Amendment. Getting bogged down by terminology is perfect HN | pedantry. Well done, sir! | pakyr wrote: | Wow, the deep state is so powerful that they got Nixon to say | on tape that he was going to try to get the CIA to falsely | use national security as an excuse to stonewall an FBI | investigation. Poor innocent Nixon was no match for their | telepathic powers. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | Whoosh. You went clean over _my_ head, anyway. | michaelt wrote: | I suspect when a trove of documents is big enough, newspaper | readers lose interest before you run out of documents. I mean, | even on this tech forum hardly anyone knows who Cavium are, let | alone your average Washington Post reader. | [deleted] | ormax3 wrote: | sounds like something LLMs can help with, sift through huge | amounts of documents to summarize and highlight the | interesting ones | jstarfish wrote: | If only. The biggest problems right now are limited context | size and basic security, including having to share such | documents with God-knows-how-many third parties. | | Tangent, but we use Azure instead of OpenAI due to data- | retention concerns. To ensure nobody's inputting anything | classified or proprietary, Legal demanded implementation of | an "AI safety" tool...so we demoed one that ships all | prompts to a third party's regex-retraction API. | | So you never know who ends up the recipient of your LLM | prompt, where it's getting logged to, who's reviewing those | logs, etc. Even some local models require execution of | arbitrary code, and Gradio ships telemetry data. Uploading | Snowden's docs into a black box is a good way to catch a | ride in a black van. | ormax3 wrote: | Nowadays even consumer-level hardware can run some decent | local LLMs, completely offline. | | You might want to browse /r/LocalLLaMA/ if "security" is | an issue for you. | akira2501 wrote: | > newspaper readers lose interest before you run out of | documents | | So.. what's your case here? It would be so expensive to host | and publish the documents that they would be unable to recoup | their investment based upon lack of interest? | | > hardly anyone knows who Cavium are, let alone your average | Washington Post reader. | | Oh.. I don't know.. maybe that's because no one has reported | on it and explained why it would be important? | | There's a lot of circular reasoning present to create excuses | for an entity that really doesn't need or deserve it. | elif wrote: | Maybe the moral of the story is that future snowdens should | leak to selected law firms instead of selected journalists? | If there's one organization designed to comb through large | documents for details and understand the impacts to potential | parties, it is law organizations. Put 2-3 in time competition | to make cases out of the documents and it will be a scramble | race for justice. | hcurtiss wrote: | Law firms aren't terribly entrepreneurial. Absent somebody | paying them their hourly rate, I suspect not a single | document would be read. Newspapers regularly take risks | deploying humans to investigate issues without any | assurance there will be a story at the bottom, but even the | newspaper business has less appetite for that these days | (as an aside, I suspect it's that margin that the financial | investors have exploited -- at the expense of high quality | reporting). | hammock wrote: | >Law firms aren't terribly entrepreneurial. | | Personal injury guys are the most entrepreneurial people | I know... | [deleted] | thewildginger wrote: | That's why other lawyers call them ambulance chasers. | Their ethics are notoriously questionable. | iinnPP wrote: | We're such a weird society when it comes to enforcing | laws on business. It's all "scummy" behavior. | | For examples: Accessibility laws, consumer protection | laws, and privacy laws. | | It's a trivial matter to determine which websites don't | comply with the easy targets of accessibility. Yet the | concept of running such a scanner, automatically, and | charging for corrections, is seen as predatory behavior. | | There was an article about grocery pricing with obvious | collusion, dark practices, and misinformation yet nothing | is done. Business as usual, people need to understand it | and work around it. Problem is, it's clearly outside the | realm of the average intellectual ability. | | Predatory behavior is everywhere. I don't feel compelled | to list even a single example. | | If the lawyer chasing the ambulance results in a law | being followed instead of ignored, that is a positive | thing. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | ...and patent trolls... | | Just Sayin'... | asveikau wrote: | More importantly, there's money out the other end for | them. The payoff is more questionable for information | from Snowden leaks. Yes, I guess a journalistic outlet | can get a big scoop and that drives eyeballs which leads | to advertisers... But that's pretty different from the | ambulance-chaser payout. | kube-system wrote: | And they make money by going after low-hanging fruit. | Ever wonder why they advertise 90%+ success rates and | work on contingency? Because if your case isn't easy, you | aren't their customer. | hammock wrote: | If you are injured in a car accident and the insurance | company is trying to screw you over, they seem like an | important advocate | shortrounddev2 wrote: | I can't imagine there's any money in it for them | cbsmith wrote: | You'd be surprised. Top journalism organizations do this | kind of thing with tremendous efficiency. The Pandora | Papers were impressive for exactly that reason. | yieldcrv wrote: | All the big leaks should be done this way | | The Ashley Madison leaks should have been one name a week | and making it a big spectacle till this very day! | | Same for the Snowden leaks | | you can also get bigger bidders for the data by drumming up | interest and suspense | | hackers really suck at marketing, so far. | ipaddr wrote: | Then your risk identifying yourself in the Ashley Madison | leak. You run the risk of not getting your message out in | the Snowden case. The biggest threat is future publishing | which is why so many countries broke laws made up charges | going after Wikileaks. | | A wikileak revival scares the most powerful | yieldcrv wrote: | It would also be allot of fun | dr-detroit wrote: | [dead] | garba_dlm wrote: | > Was this some kind of organizational failing? | | sure, why not. and while we're on this deluded train: Julian | Assange's legal problems are not political persecution | ramesh31 wrote: | >How the NSA successfully manage to prevent the Washington Post | and friends from discovering and reporting on this malicious | backdoor? They've been sitting on these documents for a decade. | | Washington Post -> Bezos -> AWS -> Cavium | | Pretty simple to understand, really. | miguelazo wrote: | Are you kidding? WaPo _serves_ the intelligence community. | | >After creation of the CIA in 1947, it enjoyed direct | collaboration with many U.S. news organizations. But the agency | faced a major challenge in October 1977, when--soon after | leaving the Washington Post--famed Watergate reporter Carl | Bernstein provided an extensive expose in Rolling Stone. | | Citing CIA documents, Bernstein wrote that during the previous | 25 years "more than 400 American journalists...have secretly | carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency." | He added: "The history of the CIA's involvement with the | American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy | of obfuscation and deception." | | Bernstein's story tarnished the reputations of many journalists | and media institutions, including the Washington Post and New | York Times. While the CIA's mission was widely assumed to | involve "obfuscation and deception," the mission of the | nation's finest newspapers was ostensibly the opposite. | | https://www.guernicamag.com/normon-solomon-why-the-washingto... | pxc wrote: | The WaPo is relentlessly pro-US and pro-'intelligence | community' in its writings today, too. It's transparent. Idk | how it could be missed, even without knowing the history. | Just read a couple articles about contemporary whistleblowers | or US involvement in the Syrian civil war or the war in | Ukraine or whatever. | mcpackieh wrote: | > _It 's transparent. Idk how it could be missed,_ | | Support or criticism for the intelligence community became | very partisan during Trump's campaign and presidency. Once | something like this becomes partisan, the average political | creature loses some degree of rationality for it. The IC | becomes patriotic good guys, stalwart defenders of American | democracy standing up to fascism; their past and present | malfeasance goes unnoticed, forgotten, or simply ignored. | This is how the WaPo's relentless pro-IC stance could be | missed; they've been telling a lot of people what they want | to hear and all people are less critical and suspicious of | things that support their biases and prejudices. | wsc981 wrote: | There was also a German ex-journalist (dr. Udo Ulfkotte) who | wrote a book about how journalists (in Germany and EU I | suppose) are "bought" by intelligence agencies like the CIA: | | https://www.amazon.in/Journalists-Hire-How-Buys- | News/dp/1944... | orangepurple wrote: | Operation Mockingbird never ended. Full stop. | | (2010) https://weirdshit.blog/2010/07/23/cointelpro-operation- | mocki... | BlueTemplar wrote: | Well, COINTELPRO certainly didn't : we've got recent examples | about how the FBI monitored the Parler group discussions that | were planning the January 6 2021 United States Capitol rally | - including convincing some of the most risky elements to not | participate, and (supposedly) warned Washington law | enforcement about it well in advance. | | Which is fine I guess, as long as it doesn't go into the more | abusive examples listed. | | One thing that jumped at me when (re-?)reading the letter to | MLK from the FBI : first you have some very informal speech : | | "look into your heart", "you are done", "you are [] an evil, | abnormal beast", "there is only one thing for you left to do" | | Then SUDDENLY : "You have just 34 days in which to do it | (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, | it has definite practical significance)." | | Lol, talk about a change in tone, I wonder if MLK noticed it | ? (The specific reason being Christmas, but still...) | throwawayq3423 wrote: | Cold war history really broke people's brains. Yes this took | place in the 1970s, no such thing happens today. | rdtsc wrote: | They are now part of Marvell Technology | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavium | | Wonder if agreeing to enable NSA backdoors they agreed to be | compensated when eventually that fact is leaked. "If nobody | starts buying your chips, don't worry, we will! ... and then | promptly throw them into the recycling bin" | | Also interesting is if Marvell knew their acquired tech had this | "cool feature". | [deleted] | KingLancelot wrote: | [dead] | rvnx wrote: | The agreement with the NSA is more likely like this: "if you | don't comply, you will get arrested / fined for whatever reason | (crypto exports issues or failure to comply with the law), | maybe even by another authority, or journalists may discover | your little things about X. | | If you comply we may help you with some tips occasionally to | make sure our partnership is working well, or just not reveal | your trade secrets to your competitors" | delfinom wrote: | Yea, people forget we literally have a secret kangaroo FISA | court being abused to issue "national security letters" with | rubber stamp that demanded compliance and threatened to throw | you in jail for resisting and/or talking about it. The | Patriot Act largely was responsible for it, but even now | they've wiggled to other avenues since the Patriot Act | expired. | bananapub wrote: | er...what? why do you think any of that has happened? | | we already saw this happen in public once with Qwest: | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa- | punished... | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | Happened to Yahoo as well, IIRC: | | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa- | laws... | [deleted] | hedora wrote: | It's happened at least three times. They got Yahoo's CEO to | [bypass SOX compliance and] hand over access to 500 million | email accounts. Last I heard, she said they convinced her | she wasn't allowed to ask corporate lawyers for guidance. | | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/yahoo- | sec... | | Both she and Yahoo's shareholders suffered greatly for | complying. | | There's also Crypto AG, which was a foreign-owned CIA front | that spied on US allies: | | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag- | ci... | | The Washington Post article is now bullshit-walled, but | goes into more details. | | One of my favorite parts of the story is that the | intelligence agency handlers needed to make sure they only | hired incompetent / mediocre engineers and mathematicians | at the actual company (algorithm and backdoor design was | done at a US government agency that employed competent | people). | | One day, a brilliant woman applied for a job. She aced the | interview, and there were concerns she might be too smart, | but upper management hired her on the grounds that the | interview results were probably spurious. She was just a | woman, after all. | | She ended up exposing and fixing their backdoors pretty | quickly, which caused a huge containment problem for them. | dylan604 wrote: | > Last I heard, she said they convinced her she wasn't | allowed to ask corporate lawyers for guidance. | | To me, anyone purporting to be an official government | employee advising you that you cannot speak to an | attorney throws up so many red flags, that I just can't | imagine it being anything but sinister. | hedora wrote: | If an official government employee is already apparently | breaking the law and also threatening you personally, you | need to ask yourself whether they'll worry about | continuing to break the law in order to make good on | their threats. | | Note that none of the people that coerced Mayer into | breaking the law have been disciplined or even named, so | I guess they didn't need to worry about such things after | all. | | I've heard EFF and corporate lawyers advise people to | never speak to law enforcement under any circumstances. | The reason is that the police are allowed to lie about | their intentions and the facts of the case, and if you | say something that is incorrect, you can be prosecuted | for lying to them. | | So, for example, they can spew a bunch of lies and trick | you into incorrectly speculating ("Since Jim was waving | that gun at you, then I guess he really did buy it after | all"), and then later, you need to prove (probably | without the benefit of a recording) that it should have | been clear to the officers that it was just speculation, | or you go to jail. | | Their advice boiled down to politely and repeatedly | respond with "I want my lawyer". At least one court has | ruled that failing to respond at all to a question (even | after repeatedly asking for a lawyer) means that you're | now responding (perhaps with body language) and the | interrogation is therefore admissible. | zzo38computer wrote: | It is they will need to make the police not so bad. | | Make it illegal for police to lie about their intentions | and the facts of the case (although perhaps they should | be permitted to hide some of the facts of the case | (although they cannot hide what you are actually accused | of, or anything like that, if they are actually arresting | you (since otherwise they should have no authority to | arrest anyone)), and anyone (whether police or not) | should always be permitted to claim "I don't know"). | | If you lie (or make a mistake) to the police while you | are being interrogated, that should not be illegal | (although making a false police report (while you are not | being interrogated) would still be illegal). | | Furthermore, any claim they make that, if valid, would | not authorize them to do what they are doing to you, | makes what they are doing illegal in that instance. For | example, if you ask them if they are police and they say | they are not police then they have no authority to arrest | you (although they can still make a citizen's arrest (for | situations where that is permitted, so, not necessarily | all of the things that the police might arrest you for), | or to call some of the police other than themself (using | the methods that ordinary people would use, not the ones | reserved for police), etc. | | This isn't even half of enough to fix the problems with | police, but it is a start. | halyconWays wrote: | If it's sold in a Western nation, the NSA has a backdoor in it, | and probably everyone in the Five Eyes. If it's sold anywhere | else, China has a backdoor in it. | keyme wrote: | China *also has a backdoor in to. FTFY | one_shilling wrote: | Very impressive work by the NSA, if true. Both from a political | and technical perspective. It's good to know that our | intelligence services are doing what they're supposed to, and | doing it well. | | However, as interesting as this revelation is, it's unfortunate | that Snowden decided to defect to the Russians and share his | stolen cache of top secret documents with them and China, using | Western journalists as ideological cover. I look forward to the | day when he is brought to justice for treason. | oaththrowaway wrote: | I see a spot on the boot you forgot to lick... | Freestyler_3 wrote: | You can't hold it against someone that they don't want to be | tortured/killed. | empath-nirvana wrote: | Nobody was going to torture or kill snowden. His risk was | prison, no more. | wnoise wrote: | After Guantanamo, that's not a risk I'd like to take. | oaththrowaway wrote: | Nobody gets tortured or killed in prison? | | Regardless of your thoughts on the guy, nobody deserves | what Assange has gone through in custody. Same with | Manning. | mullingitover wrote: | This is the thing that rubs me the wrong way about Snowden - | had he stayed and faced the music as a true whistleblower, he | would've earned my respect for sticking to principles and | acting as a loyal citizen acting in the interest of the | country, even in the face of persecution. | | He did not do that. Instead, he's living a comfortable life in | the bowels of a country that is committing vicious, daily war | crimes. I don't hear him make a peep about kidnapped Ukrainian | children, or the civilians that Russia tortures and kills. He's | not a principled activist who's suffering for the cause of | freedom at any cost, he's now just a loyal Russian citizen who | opportunistically committed a massive act of espionage a long | time ago. | xcdzvyn wrote: | I think this is _incredibly_ rich. Snowden is undoubtedly on | the US ' "really, really naughty" list -- would you, | personally, sit back and be imprisoned for the rest of your | life (and possibly be tortured), or live comparatively freely | elsewhere? | | > I don't hear him make a peep about kidnapped Ukrainian | children, or the civilians that Russia tortures and kills. | | Can you really not see why that would be a bad idea? He's | kind of tied up here, if he doesn't want to end up dead by | _somebody 's_ hands. | | > opportunistically committed a massive act of espionage a | long time ago | | How exactly do his past actions go from heroic to a "massive | opportunistic act of espionage" because of his actions in the | present? | agent_788365 wrote: | Snowden's past actions were never heroic, that is just spin | manufactured by journalists with a vested interest in | constructing a narrative. | | He's been arrogantly self-serving from the start, and it's | rather disappointing that some people still haven't grown | out of their juvenile phase of blind hero worship. | oaththrowaway wrote: | > He's been arrogantly self-serving from the start | | Maybe if he was as self-serving as you thought he'd | continue to live a comfortable life while destroying the | rule of law that we pretend to have instead of having to | abandon his home and never again be able to see his | country or friends again? | oaththrowaway wrote: | Was he not living a comfortable life in the bowels of a | country that was committing vicious, daily war crimes when he | lived in the USA? We kill/displaced over a million civilians | in Iraq, not to mention the mess we left in Afghanistan. The | carnage we've unleashed with drone warfare, CIA black sites, | Guantanamo Bay, ect... | | Yes, Russia are the bad guys, but we have done some truly | heinous things as well. Snowden revealed a little of the | crimes we commit and you're ready to wash him away because it | hurts your position that we are somehow morally superior to | other countries? | monocasa wrote: | As a contractor he didn't qualify for whistleblower | protections at the time. | | He would just be in solitary confinement for the rest of his | life, and there's a much better chance the leak to the public | would have never been completed in the first. | mullingitover wrote: | I see no evidence that merely being convicted of treason is | enough to get you thrown in a solitary cell forever. | There's a long list of plain old convicted spies[1], and | they just went to regular, run of the mill prison. I would | like to see the evidence that Snowden would be treated any | differently. | | And again, I'm not saying he would've been protected as a | whistleblower, just that he had to choose one or the other: | take his chances as a martyr for freedom, or escape all | consequences and with them, his legacy as a respectable | historical figure. He chose the latter. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies | jklinger410 wrote: | Shilling indeed. | miguelazo wrote: | Being stranded in Moscow because the State Department cancels | your passport while you're en route to Ecuador = "defection"? | Cute. | phatfish wrote: | I doubt Russia cared much about a cancelled US passport. If | they felt he was not worth something to them they would have | made sure he was out of Russia. | | Personally I don't think it was intentional on his part to | get stuck in Russia, just a bad error. But he is certainly | living there by their "good will" now, and it shows in his | public behaviour. | miguelazo wrote: | Russia may not care (doubtful), but _the airline will not | even let you board_. | | Not trashing your host is probably wise, but given his | experience with the US government, he probably no longer | subscribes to the naive worldview that Putin (or Xi) are | uniquely bad, just bad in their own ways and responding to | the world with their nation's interests (and their | legacies) in mind. | CodeArtisan wrote: | Also this | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident | hammock wrote: | Earlier this year, a man was sentenced to prison for six years | for stealing Ubiquiti data that the NSA also apparently can | steal. | | https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-employee-technol... | acdha wrote: | Leaving out the extortion part makes it very hard to read your | comment as being made in good faith. | hammock wrote: | Learn about Qwest if you think NSA doesn't also extort to get | what they want: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest- | ceo-nsa-punished... | RecycledEle wrote: | It all contains back doors. | andy_ppp wrote: | Presumably the NSA are in and out of everything in ways people | haven't even thought of yet. Back doors are great but I'm not | convinced they need them! | dr-detroit wrote: | [dead] | colatkinson wrote: | Mastodon link for those so inclined: | https://ioc.exchange/@matthew_d_green/111091979256440306 | JanSolo wrote: | The tweet seems to imply that the entire Ubiquiti Networks line | of network hardware could be compromised. That's a shame; I was | thinking of installing some in my house. I'm sure that Ubiquiti's | customers will not be happy if they find out that the US Govt can | access their private data. | hedora wrote: | So, Marvell bought the company that backdoored all my Ubiquiti | gear. | | Since it was never working as advertised, do I contact them or | Ubiquiti to get my refund / warranty replacements? | snoman wrote: | It's an interesting thought experiment to wonder if consumer | protections extend to defects from state sponsored acts of | espionage. | some_random wrote: | In a world where local PD can kick my door in, shoot me in the | face, and the news will report that I had it coming because I | own a gun, I find it hard to care that the IC can burn a | technical access backdoor to access my private data. | Aachen wrote: | Integrated circuit? | davikr wrote: | Intelligence community | sneak wrote: | Ubiquiti is all cloud based. If the government wants in to your | auto-updating ubnt hardware, it's just a simple court order | away. They don't need a backdoor. | anderiv wrote: | It may be auto-updating by default, but that can be trivially | disabled. Likewise, their cloud connectivity/management is | optional. I'm running without issue multiple air-gapped Ubnt | networks using their self-hosted controller software. | fyloraspit wrote: | Yeh but it is still closed source, no? I guess if it is air | gapped that could be fine, but we are talking mid level | network gear here, so for 99% of its use, it isn't air | gapped. It is enabling broader connectivity. So you would | have to trust the closed source software at some point. | sneak wrote: | If it's airgapped, what do you care about it being | backdoored? | blueridge wrote: | I was also going to move to Ubiquiti but decided to go with | Peplink instead based on recommendations from: | https://routersecurity.org/ | | https://www.peplink.com/products/balance-20x/ | Astronaut3315 wrote: | Some specific Ubiquiti gear uses Cavium SOCs, but certainly not | all. The UDM Pro uses an Annapurna Labs SOC and my old | EdgeRouter-X was Mediatek. | sneak wrote: | Unifi stuff auto updates from the vendor, which is subject to | US law. | | The SoC manufacturer is irrelevant. | | If the USG wants in, it's just a click away in any case. | drexlspivey wrote: | Trying to understand what crypto is the network hardware itself | performing? TLS is end to end, even if you run a VPN on the | router the keys were not generated there probably | slt2021 wrote: | crypto doesn't matter if chip itself has backdoor that will | grant root access on some "magic" packet | dna_polymerase wrote: | Crypto matters for exactly this reason. All my internet | traffic passes through unsafe middle-boxes, it is TLS and | DH that make sure I can pass through untrusted middlemen | without them knowing what is going on. | slt2021 wrote: | Cavium chips are installed on security appliances (lol): | think Palo alto firewall, fortinet firewall, F5 Big-IP | etc. | | they will see your traffic in plain text by design | irreticent wrote: | If everything is encrypted then you're safe... until you | decrypt the data on a machine with a backdoored CPU. | RationPhantoms wrote: | If you're not under the threat cone of nation state | surveillance (like trying to exfiltrate the radar-asborbing | paint formula on the F35) then I wouldn't be too concerned. | | "That's not the point! It's about privacy!" | | Sure. I'll choose it ignore the fact that our civilization is | somehow still functioning in a post-nuclear world. | tinco wrote: | It's not about privacy, it's about security. If there's a | backdoor in a HSM or network interface, that backdoor can be | used by others as well. That might start with foreign nation | states, but might eventually leak to regular private persons | or entities as well. | | A backdoor is an extra attack vector with often very | unfavorable properties that you as a user are unaware of. | jimkoen wrote: | > If you're not under the threat cone of nation state | surveillance | | The average reader may be surprised by how far this cone can | extend in some circumstances. | | It has been established that the NSA conducts industrial | espionage [0], under the cover of national security [1]. To | what degree the term "national security" narrows down the | scope of any surveillance measures is likely unfamiliar to | the laymen, but an NSA representative gave a short | description on the agencies views to that regard in 2013: | | "The intelligence community's efforts to understand economic | systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic | activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the | information they need to make informed decisions that are in | the best interest of our national security." [1] | | While it affirms that it does not steal trade secrets, the | NSA reserves the right to pass on critical information about | economic developments towards policy makers, who then can use | this knowledge in their decision making. | | Notable examples of industrial espionage conducted by the NSA | consisted of spying on EU antitrust regulators investigating | Google for antitrust violations [1], alleged espionage of | business conducted by brazilian oil giant Petrobas [2], | international credit card transactions [3], SWIFT [4], and | the infamous allegations of espionage against european | defense company EADS [5]. | | It's noteworthy that this short list only comprises cases | that got attention of the media, the actual list of targets | in europe was much higher, about 2000 companies in europe, | many of them defense contractors.[5] | | So, to summarize, it may be much easier to fall into this | cone, than one would assume. The agency is also at odds with | it's own claims as this this excerpt from a Guardian article | [2] clearly shows: | | "The department does not engage in economic espionage in any | domain, including cyber," the agency said in an emailed | response to a Washington Post story on the subject last | month. [...] "We collect this information for many important | reasons: for one, it could provide the United States and our | allies early warning of international financial crises which | could negatively impact the global economy. It also could | provide insight into other countries' economic policy or | behavior which could affect global markets." | | But he again denied this amounted to industrial espionage. | "What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our | foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets | of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we | collect to - US companies to enhance their international | competitiveness or increase their bottom line." [2] | | To me these statements are mutually exclusive: How is | providing policy makers with insights from foreign politics | and possible industrial espionage (i.e. not necessarily | actual technologies, but research objectives of foreign | companies) not giving an advantage to domestic companies, if | those policy makers act appropriately? | | [0]https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans- | use... [1]https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/nsa-spied- | on-eu-anti... | [2]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying- | bra... [3]https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel- | exclusive... [4] | https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/nsa-spying- | europ... [5] https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/30/airbus_us | _german_inte... | p337 wrote: | > How is providing policy makers with insights from foreign | politics and possible industrial espionage not giving an | advantage to domestic companies, if those policy makers act | appropriately? | | Let's imagine OpenAI was a Russian company operating mostly | in secret. This RU OpenAI _secretly_ discover and use | GPT-4-like technology, and show promise that they are not | done innovating. While these LLMs are often overhyped, | these recent innovations no doubt present a policy issue, | right? I 'd say there are legitimate national security | reasons to know about that technology, not just about | making money or making a better product for cheap. | | The distinction being made is that the NSA may steal data | related to this, but they aren't just giving it to Google | to make Bard better. They are getting intel and giving | lawmakers the tools to fund research, write policy, or | whatever else our elected representatives deem beneficial. | Any side action or under the table dealings would make this | distinction meaningless of course. So, for the example | above, if we started funding departments to research the | threat of LLMs/AI, inform the public of the issue, and | inform companies that their data is being pillaged to train | AI... that is all very different from just stealing a cool | new widget design and getting it to market first. | | I think there's no debating that this is morally gray, but | I think it's a few steps off of what other nation states | are doing by stealing tech and implementing it in "private" | companies. It's certainly worthy of criticism, but I think | it's unhelpful to bucket it with the other type. | | If the LLM example isn't your thing, it also makes a lot of | sense for the NSA to steal information related to | weapon/defense tech, even if developed by a private | company, and even if we use what we stole to implement | countermeasures. I can't honestly be morally outraged about | invading the privacy of someone developing tools of war | against you. Fwiw, I wouldn't blame Russia or China for | trying this against the US gov or defense contractors | either, but it's not like I'd be happy about it. My point | is that that is not so much economic espionage or corporate | espionage as much as it is just plain old espionage. It | saves lives and protects American hegemony - which I | recognize may be counter to many people's ideal situation. | | It's a nuanced thing. When you take two morally | questionable things and reduce them down to both just being | bad, the ones doing the worse things benefit. E.g. "all | politicians lie" is a handy phrase for truly corrupt | politicians because the ones who make small mistakes or | half-truths are in the same bucket as them, and the outcome | is apathy for the issue rather than being upset at all of | it. Kinda the classic whataboutism trope - not to imply you | are doing that, but just to say that's where it often | leads. | jimkoen wrote: | So we're evaluating the US policy on international | espionage on constructed examples now? | | > Let's imagine OpenAI was a Russian company | | Nevermind that they're not and that Russia can't | currently develop these models, due to lack of silicon. | All targets I mentioned, with the exception of the | brazillian oil company we're in european states, at the | time (and still!) closely allied with the US. | | > The distinction being made is that the NSA may steal | data related to this, but they aren't just giving it to | Google to make Bard better. | | How would you even know at this point? Who controls the | NSA? There haven't been any leaks since the Snowden | revelations and there likely won't ever be any again, | since Snowden could only make his move due to some | misconfigured/outdated network quota control software. | | Hell you can't even FOIA information about these | policies, and agencies will go so far to withhold | evidence in court when it concerns espionage! And soon as | a court case involves this information, the court recedes | from the public and is held in secret. | | My hostility against US policy is by no means anywhere | above the european average, but when it comes to public | statements about surveillance, I have no reason to trust | the US Government. The Bush administration has proven | that it is possible to flout the US constitution on a | massive scale with just 10-12 people. At this point I | can't blame people putting forward some crazy conspiracy | theories about the deep state or qanon, because the US | gov has given no indication to be believably concerned | about compliance with their own laws. | irreticent wrote: | The NSA has been caught lying before (see: the Snowden | leaks) so I wouldn't trust them to be forthcoming about | their industrial espionage, if they are engaging in it. Of | course they'd deny it. | slackfan wrote: | Sure. See you in the gulag, comerade | RationPhantoms wrote: | Oh please, the United States is so incredibly armed, my | death will likely come at the hands of some misplaced | right-wing militarized fascist group performing mass | murders under the guise of "Freedom" and "A return to the | constitutional purity of the US". | digging wrote: | I mean, that more or less describes most police | departments in the country. And they are spying on you. | slackfan wrote: | I've been promised that that was going to happen any day | now since the wrong person got elected back in 2000. | Nearly a quarter century on I am beginning to suspect | that somebody was overstating something, I can't quite | put my finger on what though... | cpursley wrote: | Comrade is of Latin origin. In Russian, tovarisch is the | correct term. At least get it right if you're trying to be | edgy. | slackfan wrote: | Sounds like I hit a nerve? | MSFT_Edging wrote: | Gulag is just Russian for prison. | | The US currently has about 1.2M people in their gulags, | comrade* | slackfan wrote: | Gulag (gulag) is the acronym for "Glavnoe upravlenie | ispravitel'no-trudovykh lagerei" which translates to | "Head management office of correctional work camps". And | if you're going to go for all incarcerated, the number is | actually somewhere in the 2.1mil range in the US, because | hey, jails are a thing. | | Sorry that you're wrong on all three points. | runeofdoom wrote: | And if you are in a position where nation-states are a likely | adversary, you'd best assume that _all_ commerically | available hardware is compromised. | isykt wrote: | 100% agreed. If you're concerned about privacy, being tracked | online by corporations is a bigger concern than the the NSA. | If you're the target of an NSA investigation, you're already | fucked. Changing your network equipment is not going to help. | Minor49er wrote: | On the contrary, changing equipment may actually help quite | a bit when dealing with the NSA. The 2016 documentary "Zero | Days" which was centered around the creation of Stuxnet | showed that the NSA targeted specific hardware models to | look for security holes. They had to buy matching hardware | themselves and rigorously try to break it which took time | and wasn't trivial to do | sschueller wrote: | A Mann is being executed in Saudia Arabia for tweeting a | negative tweet about the government to his tiny following. | Not exactly someone who thinks they are a target of a nation | state. | | [1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/08/29/saudi-arabia-man- | sentenc... | RationPhantoms wrote: | Not sure if this a joke but SA is the exact country I would | expect to utilize spyware against its citizens. | MSFT_Edging wrote: | With how good of friends SA is with the US, its likely | all they need to do is ask nicely for some dirt on an | alleged dissident. | tltimeline2 wrote: | wasn't ubiquiti totally compromised in that breach a couple of | years ago? | stephen_g wrote: | That was an insider trying to extort the company by | pretending to be an outside hacker. He then posed as a | whistleblower to try and throw investigators off the trail. | [deleted] | tristor wrote: | No. It turns out that breach was faked, effectively. It was | done by manipulating Brian Krebs. He's since issued a mea | culpa (although a somewhat weak one): | https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/08/final-thoughts-on- | ubiqui... | stephen_g wrote: | Pretty sure only the EdgeRouter and some of the older Unifi | Security Gateways use Cavium chips. Most of the newer stuff | (like the Dream Machine line) I don't think are anymore. None | of the Unifi APs did either I don't think (the U6 ones have | Mediatek chips in them) | slau wrote: | Annoyingly, the ER4 uses the Cavium Octeon III. I have a few | of those in production. | stephen_g wrote: | Yeah, I have one at home too, so I really want more detail | on what the exploit is (I wonder if if is perhaps IPSEC | specific, like an RNG flaw since they talk about VPN and | encryption appliances, or it could be something to do with | Cavium HSMs and unrelated to the network processors). | inferiorhuman wrote: | Some of the EdgeRouter stuff (ER-Lite, ER-4) use Cavium SoCs. | The ER-X uses a MediaTek SoC. | colordrops wrote: | Ubiquiti has many other problems besides this. The worst is | their vendor lockin, where even basic network operations are | not possible if you happen to have any non-ubiquiti hardware in | your network. You should stay away. | georgebashi wrote: | Can you provide an example of this issue? This has not been | my experience. | colordrops wrote: | People are misinterpreting me, thinking I mean that it's | not even possible to intermingle equipment. That is not the | case. | | The specific issue I ran into was that I had a non-ubuiqiti | router and AP on my network, and there was absolutely no | way to set firewall rules on the Ubiquiti gateway for any | clients connected through the non-ubiquiti equipment. This | should obviously not be a problem. The gateway provided | those clients IP addresses through DHCP and they are in its | ARP table, so it should be supported. | Freestyler_3 wrote: | I ran UBQT hardware with mikrotik router and third party | firewall. UBQT replaced old frankenstein hardware that had | the worst channel management etc. Everything got so much | better, customers issues dropped to almost zero (sometimes | was hundreds of issues a day) We always had other vendor for | part of the network, and that had no impact. | tssva wrote: | I have a mix of Ubiquity and non-Ubiquity equipment and have | no problem achieving not only basic but fairly complex | networking operations. | ricktdotorg wrote: | okay, so assuming the US gov can access my private LAN data due | to my use of the Ubiquiti USG as router/firewall, USG wifi APs | etc, of what form would this data exfiltration take? can we | please explore/explain how this "compromise" would happen in | real-life. | | if i were sniffing for outbound WAN traffic as root on the | unix-like that the USG run, would i see the exfiltration | traffic? or is this [supposedly/apparently] happening at a | lower layer that an OS can't see i.e. some kind of BMC or BIOS | layer? | | wouldn't such traffic also have to navigate the | varieties/restrictions of DOCSIS etc? or are they also | compromised? | | is the worst-case scenario here some kind of giant C2 network | with _waves hands_ tons of compromised lower-than-OS mini | pieces of firmware exfiltrating data over _waves hands_ | compromised network providers hardware into the giant NSA AWS | cloud? | mrweasel wrote: | I'm currently replacing my network equipment with Mikrotik, not | because I believe it to be safer than Ubiquity, but because | then at least it's made in the EU. | | But now I'm thinking: Is it better that the US is spying on me | in Europe, vs. having EU governments do it? I feel like I'd be | somewhat more safe from the US, compared to if my own | government decides to spy on me. Maybe I should look into | Chilean network equipment, I can't imaging that they'd have | much interest in my online activities. | manmal wrote: | Europe doesn't make that many chips (unfortunately), chances | are high there's US/Chinese components in there too. Since | your network hopefully sees mostly encrypted traffic anyway | (even if you're running Plex on the LAN, that should use | SSL), I'd be more concerned about HW in desktops, notebooks | and tablets. | Freestyler_3 wrote: | Other countries spy on you and sell it to your own country. | BlueTemplar wrote: | In democratic countries we also have rights against | (unjustified) spying by our governments. Sounds like a better | long-term plan for everyone is to make them work. Especially | when even the ideal equipment won't do much against metadata | spying by ISPs and cellphone carriers... | isykt wrote: | I think in order to address this question, we need to know | more about your threat model. | | Are you a journalist working in a sensitive/dangerous area? | | Do you often participate in discussions with dissident | groups? | | Do you frequently access content that is illegal in your | jurisdiction? | owenmarshall wrote: | > But now I'm thinking: Is it better that the US is spying on | me in Europe, vs. having EU governments do it? I feel like | I'd be somewhat more safe from the US, compared to if my own | government decides to spy on me. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes | | > In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they | are intentionally spying on one another's citizens and | sharing the collected information with each other, although | the FVEYs countries claim that all intelligence sharing was | done legally, according to the domestic law of the respective | nations. | | So in practice, it's entirely irrelevant: your data will end | up Hoovered up by someone, coated with a veneer of legality, | and provided back to your government to act on (or not). | | Don't be too interesting to your government, I guess? | BlueTemplar wrote: | None of these are EUropean countries. | andreasley wrote: | I think at this point it's pretty safe to assume that all of | the well-known network hardware is compromised. | kome wrote: | a good reason to buy huawei stuff ahaha | tristor wrote: | Huawei stuff is proven to be compromised, just not by NSA, | instead by China. | throwaway67743 wrote: | It was never proven to be compromised though. GCHQ | concluded after many years that they were sloppy, not | malicious. All of the fear mongering by the US is what | gave everyone the impression they were compromised. | tristor wrote: | I'm getting downvoted for saying something negative about | China... as you do. :waves: Howdy wumao! | | Here's a link to one such article proving that Huawei | networks are backdoored: | https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/us-finds-huawei-has- | backdoo... | | And an original source article in WSJ: | https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-officials-say-huawei- | can-co... | NorwegianDude wrote: | That's not proof, that's just an accusation. Huawei even | offered up source access to customers as a way to prove | that they didn't do that. | | Not saying they don't do such things, but the evidence is | lacking. | RockRobotRock wrote: | People who disagree with me must be paid actors! I don't | even disagree with you, it's just really cringe-worthy. | tristor wrote: | I'd usually agree, except when it comes to saying | anything critical of China on the Internet, my statement | is very true. The wumao is a real thing, and they're | pervasive within online tech. | RockRobotRock wrote: | Well your comment isn't greyed out or flagged, so they | must be on vacation today :) | Aachen wrote: | The first link depends on the second. The second requires | some sort of sign up to read, but archive.is works as | proxy https://archive.ph/Dov1N | | The proof amounts to essentially one sentence spoken by | an unnamed source | | > U.S. officials said Huawei has built equipment that | secretly preserves its ability to access networks through | [lawful intercept interfaces] | | but I understand that source confidentiality is useful so | if WSJ trusts that, perhaps so should I. Not sure I'd | then go so far as to independently say it has been | "proven" when all that I truly know is that someone else | believes someone else who has a commercial interest in | saying this. It's probably true but that's not the same | thing | NorwegianDude wrote: | Isn't that just the US speaking in order to get more | control? How is it proven? I've never seen any evidence | of that, but there has been much evidence that the US | does what they blames others of doing, like this and | Cisco. | | At this point it seems the US is accusing others for | doing bad things because that's what they themselves do. | | Huawei was growing really fast, threatening both Apple | and Google. Then the US said it was not safe while trying | to sabotage both smart phone sales and mobile networks | sales. The US pressured allied countries to not choose | Huawei for 5G, and didn't let companies work with them. | | Huawei was also willing to compromise by giving network | operators acces to source code. | | Is Huawei bad? I don't know, and I've yet to see any | evidence. Does the US do exactly what they are accusing | other for? Yes, that has been proven multiple times. | | We live in a day where we talk about privacy and | security, while giving large corporations full control | over our iOS and Android devices. How useful is e.g. E2E | encryption really when the os itself has a direct | connection to the mothership? | BlueTemplar wrote: | China has a LOT to gain from industrial espionage, is | extremely well known for its industrial espionage, and | also happens to effectively own EU telecoms (the 5G thing | was like a decade too late). | | It would be _astounding_ if they didn 't take advantage | of this. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | To my knowledge, no proof has actually been publicly | presented for this claim. There have been a few stories | that didn't pan out (like the one that boiled down to, | "Huawei devices have telnet installed"), but no actual | evidence of backdoors has come to light yet. | | This is despite the fact that Huawei has been under an | extraordinary level of scrutiny for years. British | intelligence was given extensive access to Huawei's | hardware and code, as a condition of Huawei equipment | being installed in the UK. We know from Snowden that the | NSA hacked into Huawei HQ, but there's no indication that | they found any evidence of backdoors. And despite running | a global campaign to convince/pressure other countries | not to use Huawei, the US hasn't publicly unveiled any | evidence of Huawei backdoors. British officials have even | admitted that the UK's decision to ban Huawei was based | on pressure from the US, not evidence of wrongdoing.[0,1] | This all makes me think that the US, UK et al. don't | actually have proof of backdoors. | | 0. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pre | ssure-... | | 1. | https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/uk- | bann... | bigger_inside wrote: | a CIA claim isn't "proof". I've never seen anything to | prove it, just imperialist hysterics | bhouston wrote: | It is fair to think that if the CIA is compromising US | companies, then China is likely doing the same to Chinese | companies. To assume otherwise is wishful thinking. | rakoo wrote: | China is way less dangerous to me than the NSA | Aaronstotle wrote: | How is the NSA personally dangerous to you? | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | Compared to any TLAs in China, the NSA is far more likely | to take action against a US citizen for a thing that | citizen chose to say. It's likely there's a low amount of | actual danger but it's greater than that of what China | poses. | MSFT_Edging wrote: | If you live in the US, you're under US federal | jurisdiction. | | Unless you're regularly traveling to China or unearthing | info that can seriously harm China, they're not going to | send anyone after you. | | I rather be spied on by a foreign government than my own. | [deleted] | MaKey wrote: | Where is the proof? | kube-system wrote: | Chinese law requires Huawei to cooperate with their | intelligence agencies. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | That doesn't prove anything. You're just saying that | Huawei could theoretically be compromised, but the above | commenter asked for evidence. | kube-system wrote: | They are compromised in terms of governance, and their | legal environment _is_ the proof of this. | | Nobody has ever claimed that Huawei devices have | backdoors. The issue is that the supply chain is | compromised by legal means, not the hardware or software | currently being shipped has technical vulnerabilities. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | > Nobody has ever claimed that Huawei devices have | backdoors. | | Just a few comments up in this thread, someone claimed | definitively that Huawei equipment has been proven to be | compromised, meaning backdoored. | | > They are compromised in terms of governance | | We don't have any known examples of Huawei being forced | by the Chinese government to compromise its equipment. | This is still a wholly theoretical discussion. In | contrast, we know that the US government has inserted | backdoors into American (and not just American) | equipment, and is able to secretly compel companies to | comply with US spying. | Aachen wrote: | As does the USA, so we shouldn't be using Windows or | Yubico either, or virtually any other software/hardware | from any other vendor because there's few countries that | let you do illegal-over-there things without having a | mechanism to force you | | It's a "pick your poison" situation, not a "they've got | national security letters and so you can't trust them" | one | kube-system wrote: | This is why security is not a "one size fits all" | exercise. The first thing you must do is define your | threat model. | | The reason the Chinese government doesn't want to build | their telecom system on Cisco hardware is the same exact | reason the USG doesn't want to do the same with Huawei | hardware. Because neither government is delusional enough | to think that parts/service/updates wouldn't be | immediately sanctioned in times of war. | | The US and China are already sanctioning each other's | tech. The risk of building critical infrastructure on it | is obvious. | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | > The US and China are already sanctioning each other's | tech. | | It's not symmetrical. Since Trump, the US has been | extraordinarily aggressive in its use of sanctions | against Chinese companies, whereas China has been very | reluctant to retaliate directly. | | The US has sanctioned hundreds of Chinese tech companies. | China has only recently begun to retaliate in kind, but | has so far only sanctioned a few US companies (Micron is | the only prominent example that comes to mind). | HideousKojima wrote: | Since the Snowden leaks (and honestly since long before) | it's been safe to assume that if a nation state has the | means and motive to commit <insert form of illegal | surveillance here>, then they will. | ElectricalUnion wrote: | If anything, you probably need several layers of | different, non-aligned country vendors to have some Swiss | cheese model security. So some Huawei stuff, somewhere, | as long as it isn't only Huawei stuff. | slt2021 wrote: | checkpoint firewall (Israel), PAN/fortinet firewall (US), | and huawei firewall (china) daisy chained - should keep | each other in sync and provide defense in depth :D | J_Shelby_J wrote: | lmao it's like using a multi-hop VPN to hop through | multiple jurisdictions, but in your own home! | phatfish wrote: | Network designs i have seen often include this for much | the same reason. A perimeter firewall is from one vendor | and an internal firewall is from another. If there is a | security issue with one device the other should not be | effected in the same way. | arecurrence wrote: | This is a great idea in that they'll likely also patch | their stuff when they discover the other team has | exploited it. | tekeous wrote: | I wonder if MikroTik would be compromised- they're Latvian | and don't necessarily have to bow to the NSA. | ElectricalUnion wrote: | Several MikroTik routers use marvel hardware underneath. So | marvel might be compelled to backdoor the hardware for the | NSA. | chinathrow wrote: | > have to bow to the NSA | | You don't have to bow in order to be compromised. You can | be compromised without even knowing it. | HideousKojima wrote: | I assume by default that any hardware from any NATO nation | is compromised by the NSA and other Western intelligence | agencies. I also assume that any Chinese or Russian | hardware is compromised by their respective intelligence | agencies. And I assume that the NSA and other Western | agencies are constantly trying to get backdoors into | Chinese hardware (and I assume the Chinese are trying the | do the same to ours). You're basically screwed no matter | what. | ok123456 wrote: | Buy products that are compromised by both, and let them | battle it out. Sort of like the inverse of the plot of | the movie hackers. | some_random wrote: | Why would the NSA need to strong arm MikroTik to implement | a backdoor when they can pay ~10k for an 0-day to do the | exact same thing? | irreticent wrote: | Because zero day vulnerabilities are usually patched when | discovered by the vendor. They're completely different | than an intentional backdoor. | pizzalife wrote: | There's been plenty of remote 0days in MikroTik's products. | At one point people were paying a pretty penny for them. | somehnguy wrote: | I think it's worth noting that these vulnerabilities | affected devices which had their management page open to | the internet, which is universally known as a bad idea. | At least the ones I've seen. | | There is a big difference between an exploit affecting | _all devices_ vs a subset which requires a specific not- | best-practice configuration. Regardless, still good to be | aware they exist. | lowkeyoptimist wrote: | Joking? LOL | | https://thehackernews.com/2023/07/critical-mikrotik- | routeros... | [deleted] | smolder wrote: | MikroTik has come up in their slides before, yes... | paganel wrote: | > they're Latvian and don't necessarily have to bow to the | NSA. reply | | The majority (I'd say all) of the Eastern-European | countries that are also NATO members do in fact bow to the | US, and thus to the NSA/FBI/the Secret Service. | greenie_beans wrote: | i've always assumed they were the least secure of all my | networking hardware | [deleted] | ilyt wrote: | Flashing openWRT on some boxes is probably your best bet; | | Or, alternatively, treat your LAN/WiFI like public internet and | don't send anything unencrypted thru it | WhereIsTheTruth wrote: | Why now? Looks like Snowden is being weaponized, wich might | indicate that he is still part of the group he is denouncing, is | he a psyop? What's the goal? | r721 wrote: | From one of Twitter replies: | | >... this is not new... It states in the article that this | thesis from Jacob R. Appelbaum was released March 25, 2022. The | only thing that makes these 'new' (?) is that electrospaces | discussed September 14th | | https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1703995620250325405 | | Electrospaces article discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37562225 | WhereIsTheTruth wrote: | My question was why is it relevant today, specially after Arm | going public, is the Mi6 trying to cover himself by | denouncing the NSA? | r721 wrote: | Matthew Green is a well-known cryptographer, apparently he | read Electrospaces piece, and noticed a thing which is | interesting from a cryptography angle. So he posted a | thread on Twitter, moyix submitted it here and people | upvoted it to #1. Where is the supposed conspiracy? | azinman2 wrote: | If your threat model is Nation states, then you probably have a | lot more to worry about than this chip, including compromising | employees which is way easier, cheaper, and more effective. | Havoc wrote: | The risk impact isn't just nation states though. Intentionally | weakened hardware makes you more vulnerable across the entire | threat actor spectrum. Any of them could stumble across it | whether through skill or luck. | fidotron wrote: | On a technical level this wouldn't be too surprising. Cavium | hardware has things like configurable/programmable in hardware | hashing of packets which can then be used by the (much slower, | but in the Cavium case numerous) CPUs to decide how to handle it. | Their SoCs contain enough that hiding something on there would | not be impossible, and using the hashing/routing etc. that | enabled performance requires trusting blobs from Cavium. | declan_roberts wrote: | The intelligence agency enjoyed a supremely underserved SURGE in | popularity during the Trump era because they were seen as an | enemy of Trump. | | Let's all get back to reality now. They LIE and influence US | politics to preserve their operations (not political, it's self- | preservation). | | If you see something like "100 former intelligence agents sign | letter saying ..." then run, RUN! | ChrisArchitect wrote: | [dupe] | ChrisArchitect wrote: | More discussion earlier over here: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37562225 | moyix wrote: | Thanks, I missed that! It looks like the previous discussion | didn't touch on the Cavium news, though. | [deleted] | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Do we need to do this every day? | ReactiveJelly wrote: | Every fucking day until democracy kicks in. | codexb wrote: | Democracy gave us the NSA | [deleted] | miguelazo wrote: | No. Allen Dulles and the rest of the fascists gave us NSA. | [deleted] | NelsonMinar wrote: | For anyone wondering "what's the big deal" it's worth remembering | the NSA has a bad track record of keeping their own hacking tools | secure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_Brokers | | It infuriates me the NSA actively works to undermine American | security. Their brief is to protect us, not plant backdoors and | then lose the keys. | auntie_sam wrote: | An extraordinary and superb act of commercial infiltration. | Hearing news like this makes me proud to be an American - thank | you, NSA! | throwfaraway398 wrote: | Original source from march 2022 : | https://pure.tue.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/197416841/20220325... | page 71, thanks to wikipedia | zimmerfrei wrote: | More interestingly, Cavium (now Marvell) also designed and | manufactured the HSMs which are used by the top cloud providers | (such as AWS, GCP, possibly Azure too), to hold the most critical | private keys: | | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/caviums-liquidsecur... | BlueTemplar wrote: | [flagged] | amluto wrote: | ...which is really weird. At least Google and Microsoft are | quite outspoken about their in-house secure element technology. | | If nothing else, at Google/Amazon scale, I'd be concerned about | a third-party HSM losing data. | teepo wrote: | Time to leverage IBM Cloud KYOK model. You need level 4 | especially if you're using 3rd party: FIPS 140-2 Level 4 | certified HSM | | https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/hs-crypto?topic=hs-crypto-faq- | bas... | jhallenworld wrote: | It's not surprising because who wants to make their own FIPS | 140-2 level 3 compliant key store device? | | Also, the Cavium one was the fastest one on the market the | last time I looked at this. Thales, Safenet and IBM also had | them.. | bbarnett wrote: | Gotta be better than Utimaco HSM cards. I've worked with | them, and have issues with them throwing false low power | alarms, and wiping for no reason. | | And tech support is horrible, incompetent. | amluto wrote: | Google? Titan appears to meet FIPS 140-2 level 1. | | I find the levels bizarre. Chromebooks are highly exposed | to physical attack. Keys in the cloud are not nearly as | exposed. Yet people seem okay with level 1 for chromebooks | but apparently want level 3 in the cloud? | | I'd rather see a level 1 or level 2 _auditable_ cloud | solution, with at least source available. | fireflash38 wrote: | Level 1 is pretty easy to meet IIRC. It's 2-4 that are | hard, with pretty much no Level 4 certified ones on | market I believe? | jhallenworld wrote: | The IBM one for z was level 4 I think.. | | Yes: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/cryptocards?topic=4768-o | verview | joezydeco wrote: | Ayup. We use AWS CloudHSM to hold our private signing keys for | deploying field upgrades to our hardware. And when we break the | CI scripts I see Cavium in the AWS logs. | | Now I gotta take this to our security team and figure out what | to do. | d-161 wrote: | The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the | motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer | is turned off. This issue can be mitigated with | deployment of a hardware device, which is able to disconnect | mains power. Intel's main competitor AMD has | incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology | (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually | all of its post-2013 CPUs. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine | Ylian Saint-Hilaire, principal Engineer working on remote | management software including hardware manageability: | | https://youtu.be/1seNMSamtxM?feature=shared | | https://github.com/Ylianst | supriyo-biswas wrote: | I'd be surprised if you get anything more than generic | statements about how they take security very seriously and | they are open to suggestions, but avoid addressing the | mentioned concerns directly (and this applies to all cloud | providers out there, not just AWS). | | I'm sure a few others here would like to see their response | as well. | DyslexicAtheist wrote: | wouldnt such a backdoor invalidate all promises made by | external audits e.g. | https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/offerings and | more importantly wouldn't it violate safe harbor agreement | with the EU or whatever sham this safe-harbor was replaced | with? | joezydeco wrote: | We've had other issues with our CloudHSM instance, | especially with the PKCS1.5 deprecation on January 1. And | their support has been pretty dismal. Not expecting much | from them at this point. | baz00 wrote: | AWS support is pretty fucking terrible generally. We're a | very high rolling enterprise customer and it's pretty | obvious that some of their shit is being managed by two | guys in a shed somewhere who don't talk to each other. | ta988 wrote: | The famous one poke bowl team. Saved costs on pizzas. | tormeh wrote: | Another satisfied user of AWS Glue, I see. On a scale of | 10 to "I have no mouth and I must scream" how much do you | hate their error messages? | IntelMiner wrote: | As someone who was IN AWS premium support, I got the | distinct impression they had no idea what they're doing | | I was a Linux Sysadmin for a decade. They initially hired | me to work on the "BigData" support team | | Then after hiring threw me into CI/CD instead. I told | them I don't know python or ruby and would be a terrible | fit | | I asked if I can join the Linux team. EC2 is bread and | butter, that's easy stuff | | "Oh we're actually shutting that team down soon. I'll | move you into containers instead" | | Spoiler: they didn't "shut down" the Linux group | baz00 wrote: | Thank you for this. Next time AWS try and tempt me over | to them I'll tell them literally fuck off. Not up for | those games. | wdb wrote: | Using AWS Greengrass? | robertlagrant wrote: | Hate Greengrass; Love joy. | hhh wrote: | Greengrass was so bad we built an entire edge platform. | baz00 wrote: | Never even heard of that one! | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | It's a cloud to edge system. Like hosting some of your | stuff on the edge, think like a cloud that lives inside | your factory. | | It confused me when researching it. | wdb wrote: | Imagine doing a job interview they ask do you know AWS. | Sure, I know AWS, and explain what you built with | Greengrass, Lambda's, RDS etc. and then get rejected for | not knowing AWS lol | amaccuish wrote: | AWS Client VPN and Ubuntu 22.04... Need I say more? | OBFUSCATED wrote: | What issues are you having? | TavsiE9s wrote: | Have you had the pleasure of working with Azure? I'll | take AWS any day over that dumpster fire. | PcChip wrote: | We work with Azure and don't have any major complaints | about it - what were your issues? | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | We selected AWS for very modest needs, but sometimes I | glance over at Azure and wonder if the grass is greener. | I'll take your word on it though. | seadan83 wrote: | As someone that is deciding between AWS, Google and Azure | - could give an outline of some of the Azure painpoints? | Are there any blogs or other articles that outlines what | your concerns would be? | | I'm pretty aware of how painful it can be to configure | AWS well, IAM roles, the overly large eco-system that we | won't need and unmitigated complexity to configure it | all. It's not comforting to think Azure is worse yet. | Sylamore wrote: | I work on and off with both, AWS may be more feature | complete in some areas but Azure is frankly easier to | work with for me, I can actually get support on issues I | have from Microsoft. And while I've generally only done | so from the large enterprise account perspective, | Microsoft is way more open to feature | requests/enhancements than Amazon is. I don't have any | experience with GCP so I can't speak on that. | jiggawatts wrote: | They're just different. People like the devil they know. | | The Azure Resource Manager system is much easier to use | than the fragmented mess that is AWS. | | The problem with Azure is that they're still catching up | to AWS. They have fewer products and the quality is | worse. | | Really basic issues will remain unaddressed for years. | theamk wrote: | Nothing? | | I mean, you are already in US-based cloud, so if NSA is | interested, they will just request information directly, no | backdoors needed. | | (This is a good test for your security team, btw: if they say | anything other that "we do nothing", you know its all | security theater) | joezydeco wrote: | Very good point. That was the consensus from our team, so I | think we're okay. | | Ironically, the data we're securing is _because_ of US | government requirements. So if the government wants to spy | on itself, who are we to say? | garfieldnate wrote: | But being able to request it and having a built-in backdoor | for anyone with a key are different things. It has happened | before that the Chinese government figured out network | equipment backdoors that were put in for the US government. | All your company secrets are there for the taking for | anyone with the resources to figure out that backdoor. | Especially now that people know it exists. Shouldn't this | at least start the clock on expiring this hardware? | datavirtue wrote: | Nobody cares. If caring gets in the way of easy money. | Spoiler...it does. | catchnear4321 wrote: | more accurately, nobody (with sufficient agency to act) | cares. | | you wouldn't be cynical if you didn't care, or felt able to | do anything about it. | milesward wrote: | Not Google.. | zimmerfrei wrote: | Certainly Google (and Oracle and AWS): | | https://www.marvell.com/company/newsroom/marvell-enables- | ent... | progbits wrote: | I'm not saying you are wrong but I can make a website which | claims some cloud provider uses my hardware too. Their | website is irrelevant. Do we have a Google (or AWS/...) | page regarding this? | iancarroll wrote: | > Note: Currently, all Cloud HSM devices are manufactured | by Marvell (formerly Cavium). "Cavium" and "HSM | manufacturer" are currently interchangeable in this | topic. | | https://cloud.google.com/kms/docs/attest-key | progbits wrote: | Thanks. | | Also, not great, hope the hyperscalers can diversify | this. | api wrote: | Is there anyone here who actually thought cloud provider HSMs | were secure against the provider itself or whatever nation | state(s) have jurisdiction over it? | | It would never occur to me to even suspect that. I assume that | anything I do in the cloud is absolutely transparent to the | cloud provider unless it's running homomorphic encryption, | which is still too slow and limited to do much that is useful. | | I would trust them to be secure against the average "hacker" | though, so they do serve some purpose. If your threat model | includes nation states then you should not be trusting cloud | providers at all. | jacquesm wrote: | Lots of people believe that. They believe truthfully you can | get to the level of AWS, MS, Google, Facebook or Apple whilst | standing up to the nations that host those companies. I've | walked into government employees in the hallways of tiny | ISPs, I see no reason to believe at all that larger companies | are any different _except_ for when easier backdoors have | been installed. | BlueTemplar wrote: | The really concerning part is to be STILL believing that | after the Snowden scandal, after everybody has seen the | slides that explain in detail how the NSA sends an FBI team | to gather data from (then, in 2013) Microsoft, Yahoo, | Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, Apple (and | Dropbox being planned). | | Also how Yahoo first refused but was forced to comply by | the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. | | https://www.electrospaces.net/2014/04/what-is-known-about- | ns... | | (Note that supposedly, "the companies prefer installing | their own monitoring capabilities to their networks and | servers, instead of allowing the FBI to plug in government- | controlled equipment.") | mobilio wrote: | And for Yahoo this was reason why Alex Stamos resign: | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/report-fbi- | andor... | luxuryballs wrote: | I always just tell people to lookup "Lavabit" to learn | everything you need to know. | byteknight wrote: | To save others a goog: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit | | > Lavabit is an open-source encrypted webmail service, | founded in 2004. The service suspended its operations on | August 8, 2013 after the U.S. Federal Government ordered | it to turn over its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) private | keys, in order to allow the government to spy on Edward | Snowden's email | rvba wrote: | > He also wrote that in addition to being denied a | hearing about the warrant to obtain Lavabit's user | information, he was held in contempt of court. The | appellate court denied his appeal due to no objection, | however, he wrote that because there had been no hearing, | no objection could have been raised. His contempt of | court charge was also upheld on the ground that it was | not disputed; similarly, he was unable to dispute the | charge because there had been no hearing to do it in. | | Land of the free... | eightysixfour wrote: | I don't know how many believe it and how much is willful | ignorance. The big cloud providers make big mistakes but | how many trust their organizations to do better against a | nation state level actor? | | The underlying architectures of our systems are not secure | and much of the abstractions built on top of them make that | insecurity worse, not better. | | For nation state level issues, the solution likely isn't | technical, that is a game of whack-a-mole, it will take a | nation deciding that digital intrusions are as or more | dangerous than physical ones and to draw a line in the | sand. The issue is every nation is doing it and doesn't | want to cut off their own access. | enkid wrote: | If your threat model includes the nation state where you | physical infrastructure is, you're hosed. | vasco wrote: | I mean in the end everything is people just like Logan Roy | said in Succession. Cryptography or any software | protections are the same. It's a great quote that is very | true: | | > "Oh, yes... The law? The law is people. And people is | politics. And I can handle of people." | jhugo wrote: | "I can handle of people"? Cannot parse. | dralley wrote: | I think that was a mobile typo. The quote is just "I can | handle people" | vasco wrote: | That's exactly what happened! | PeterStuer wrote: | Addendum: if your threat model includes any nation state | that has significant ties to the nation state that hosts | your physical or transit infrastructure, you're hosed. | Obscurity4340 wrote: | How might this apply or what are the implications of | Signal given its US jurisdiction? | Natanael_L wrote: | Signal relies on the client program to not be compromised | to keep conversations secret | outworlder wrote: | > If your threat model includes the nation state where you | physical infrastructure is, you're hosed. | | True. But even if you trust your nation state 100%, having | a backdoor means you now have to worry about it falling | into the wrong hands. | jacquesm wrote: | Even if you trust your nation state 100% having a | backdoor means it has already fallen into the wrong | hands. That's because 'nation state' is not synonymous | with 'people running the nation state'. | api wrote: | Literally hosed. There's a funny jargon term "rubber hose | cryptography" that's used to refer to the cryptanalysis | method where you beat someone with a rubber hose until they | give you the key. It's 100% effective against all forms of | cryptography including even post-quantum algorithms. | ipaddr wrote: | You would be surprised that for a percent this would not | work. Some even like it. Some have a deathwish and want | to be a martyr. Some people blow themselves up to further | a cause. Also put under heavy stress memories of keys | cannot be recalled at times. | | It's probably slightly less effective than threatening to | kill family members but probably more than threat of jail | time. | | Either way you require someone alive and with mental | awareness. The mind reading tools found in science | fiction hasn't been developed yet. | jacquesm wrote: | We're talking about normal people, not psychopaths. | l33t7332273 wrote: | Terrorists are generally highly altruistic, not | psychopaths. | | It's a lot easier to blow yourself up(or to spread | ideology which encourages it)for a cause that you believe | is helping people, in particular _your_ people. | jacquesm wrote: | The terrorists that blow themselves up and that blow | other people up are usually misguided brainwashed angry | young men. It's nothing to do with ideology, everything | to do with power. Or did you think blowing up schools | full of girls is something people genuinely believe helps | their people, to give just one example? | | Ordinary people just want to be left alone. Old guys | wishing for more power will use anything to get it, | including sacrificing the younger generations. | l33t7332273 wrote: | > did you think blowing up schools full of girls is | something people genuinely believe helps their people | | It absolutely is something that they think helps their | people, yes. | jacquesm wrote: | No, it's something that a bunch of old guys with issues | told them helps their people. | | Beliefs stop when they are no longer about yourself but | about how _other_ people should live. Especially when | those other people loudly protest that this is how you | think they should be living. Killing them is just murder, | not the spreading of ideas. | | But hey, those human rights are just for decoration | anyway. | l33t7332273 wrote: | > it's something that a bunch of old guys with issues | told them helps their people | | I don't understand why you said "no" before this; I | believe this agreed with what I'm saying. | rangerelf wrote: | It doesn't matter, something will be found that will | coerce them into talking. Nobody is an island. Everyone | has a breaking point, if it's not rubber hoses, it's | socks full of rocks, or it's bottles of mineral water, or | any number of methods. Don't think for a second that | someone hasn't thought of a better way to get information | out of somebody else. | aborsy wrote: | This would not work well, because you can't do it in a | secret manner. Overuse of the rubber hose cryptography | will become known, and there will be public backlash. | eastbound wrote: | Seems like the NSA is threatening everyone of arrest | (=state-organized violence) if they don't secretly give | them keys, and Snowden revealed it, and there is no | public backlash. | dmayle wrote: | That's actually not true. It can do nothing about M of N | cryptography. (That's when a key is broken up such that | there are N parts, and at least M (less than N) are | required to decrypt. It doesn't matter how many rubber | hoses you have, one person can fully divulge or give | access to their key and it's still safe. | jacquesm wrote: | Sure, so you hit all of the people that have all of the | pieces. Problem solved. | saalweachter wrote: | Or you publicly announce you're hitting 1 of the N people | with the rubber hose until M-1 of the other people send | you their key fragments. | | It's not like these keys are shared among disinterested | strangers who have no attachment to each other. | kyleplum wrote: | That situation just requires a longer hose | gabereiser wrote: | and more beatings. | snoman wrote: | Or M hoses. | hn_version_0023 wrote: | I always giggle a little when really smart people forget | _thugs_ exist and do what they're told. If that includes | breaking the knees of M people to get what they're after, | then M pairs of knees are gonna get destroyed. | | This isn't hard to understand, but it's easy to forget | our civilization hangs by a thread more often than any of | us care to admit. | MichaelZuo wrote: | Any organization that is really really serious about | security will obviously keep at least N-M +1 folks, along | with their family, in other countries. | | Which is a much much higher bar to clear for any would be | rubber hose attackers. | solardev wrote: | Your secrets aren't really safe unless Xi and Putin each | have part of your key personally memorized. | __alexs wrote: | I think you can probably get away with only breaking one | pair of knees and sending a video of it to the other | people. | solardev wrote: | Youtube would delist that before they could all see it | though. | sofixa wrote: | You know there are other ways to have a video and send it | to people than YouTube, right? You can just email a link | from dropbox or gdrive, or an attachment, or send a | WhatsApp/Telegram/etc. message, send a letter with a USB | drive, etc. | solardev wrote: | Yes. It was just a dumb joke :/ | actionfromafar wrote: | Are we deep enough in the thread for the customary | reminder that each measure makes it incrementally harder | to attack a system? | | (Including a system of people.) | | Even nation state adversaries don't have infinite | resources to allocate for all opponents. | ibejoeb wrote: | I don't remember the provenance of the quip, but | somewhere at a def con or a hope, I heard, "The point of | cryptography is to force the government to torture you." | jacquesm wrote: | They're perfectly ok with that, and depending on where | you live this may happen in more or less overt ways. If | the government wants your information, they will get your | information. Your very best outcome is to simply rot in | detention until you cough up your keys. | ibejoeb wrote: | Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a | session about root zone security, and Adam Langley was in | the room. I was thinking, damn, kinda sucks to be the guy | that holds Google's private keys. They want _someone 's_ | information, so they let you rot... | jazzyjackson wrote: | power in numbers | | can't torture us all! | Randomizer42 wrote: | That's hyperbole | LinuxBender wrote: | This probably works if each person has a cyanide+happy | drug pill or a grenade and is willing to sacrifice | themselves and the rubber-hoser(s). I think that requires | a rare level of devotion. This process must also disable | a simple and fragile signalling device to let the others | know what's coming. | pixl97 wrote: | Lets say for example | | Bob, Jon, and Tom have pieces of the key. Bob and Jon are | in the US and arrested over and commanded by a court to | give up the key. Tom is the holdout. The US will issue an | international arrest warrant, and now Tom can never | safely fly again or the plane will be diverted to the | nearest US friendly airport where they will be | extradited. So, yea, "safe" is very situational here. | BurningFrog wrote: | Doesn't Tom's key fragment have to be on a disk somewhere | for things to work? | | That's the actual weak link to attack. | wsc981 wrote: | I feel the same and Snowden kinda said as much regarding | phones. To assume each phone is compromised by state level | actors. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | I mean, there's a reason that the government was involved | with setting up the first cell networks. No assumptions | need to be involved. They ARE all compromised. | RF_Savage wrote: | Lawful intercept has always existed in phone networks. | Just that one cannot use that in non-allied nations. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | You're missing the point. It was designed to be | transparent to interception efforts up front, so you | can't tell if you're being surveilled, lawfully or not. | johnklos wrote: | It's interesting to consider the people who, with the very | same set of facts, come to completely opposite conclusions | about security. | | For instance, Amazon has a staff of thousands or tens of | thousands. To me, that means they can't possibly have a good | grasp on internal security, that there's no way to know if | and when data has been accessed improperly, et cetera. To | others, the fact that they're a mega-huge company means they | have security people, security processes and procedures, and | they are therefore even more secure than smaller companies. | | For one of the two groups, the generalized uncertainty of the | small company is greater than the generalized uncertainty of | the large. For the other, the size of the large makes certain | things inevitable, where the security of smaller companies | obviously depends on which companies we're talking about and | the people involved. More often than not, people want to | generalize about small companies but wouldn't apply the same | criteria to larger companies like Amazon. | | There's a huge emotional component in this, which I think | salespeople excel at exploiting. | | It fascinates me, even though it's a never-ending source of | frustration. | bowmessage wrote: | See the Cryptographic Control Over Data Access [0] section | here for one answer to this problem. | | [0] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity- | security/new... | BlueTemplar wrote: | That's nice, but the only reasons that public clients would | use a well known bad actor from a rogue state is laziness / | incompetence. | numbsafari wrote: | I believe this is why the government of Singapore appears to | fund a lot of work on homomorphic encryption. | | Even when you are a nation state, you still have to worry | about other nation states. | arter4 wrote: | Especially when you are a nation state. | lokar wrote: | Cloud HSM services have always been understood as a | convenience with limited real world security, without even | considering nation state threats. | dclowd9901 wrote: | I think there's such a thing as plausible deniability here. | We didn't know for certain so we weren't culpable, but now | that it's public record, we really have to do something about | it or risk liability with our customer data. | ipaddr wrote: | The cloud act ensures this | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | > If your threat model includes... | | At my Fortune 250, our threat model apparently includes -- | rather conveniently and coincidentally -- everything! Well, | everything they make an off-the-shelf product for, anyway. It | makes new purchasing decisions easy: | | "Does your product make any thing, in any way, more secure?" | | "Uh... Yes?" | | "You son of a bitch. We're in. Roll it out everywhere. Now." | Macha wrote: | Ahh, I've been there. I'm sure no concern is given for | usability of the result. | | Welding your vault shut may make it harder for thieves to | break in, but if your business model requires making | deposits and withdrawals, it's somewhat less helpful. | lazide wrote: | Luckily, all but tiny portion of security products have a | door you can open if you ask support nicely enough you | didn't know about before. So you can still get your stuff | after you weld the door shut. | calgoo wrote: | And then when there is a security issue you ask them share | the log files from all their spyware and suddenly half the | stuff needed is not there because we did not get that | module. | lazide wrote: | Or 'oh, that feature hasn't been rolled out yet, expect | it in 6 quarters.'. | jdwithit wrote: | This reminds me of our own security team, who as far as I | can tell do nothing but run POC's of new security tools. | And then maybe once a year actually buy one, generating a | ton of work (for others) to replace the very similar tool | they bought last year. Seems like a good gig. | Bluecobra wrote: | And the sad/funny thing is that said tool would probably | do diddly squat if one employee falls for a social | engineering/phishing attack. | hiatus wrote: | There's no thought given to if the cost to secure the thing | outweighs the risk of exposure? | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | I'm not privy to those discussions, but it certainly | doesn't feel like they're happening. We implement every | security "best practice," for every project, no matter | how big or small. We have committees to review, but not | to assess scope, only to make sure everything is applied | to everything. Also, we have multiple overlapping | security products on the corporate desktop image. It | feels EXACTLY like no one has ever tried to gauge what a | compromise might cost. | [deleted] | amenghra wrote: | You don't need to think about this in a binary fashion. You | can split your trust across multiple entities. Different | clouds, different countries, or a mix of cloud and data | centers you own. | w7 wrote: | Is this not just related to the Dual_EC_DRBG and other tainted | RNG issues we've known about, and mitigated, for years? | | You can see discussion on this going on as far back as 2015, | explicitly in regards to what "SIGINT enabled" means and Cavium: | https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2015-Decembe... | | Am I missing something here? People are talking as if there is | some new backdoor that's somehow avoided detection. Did everyone | just miss this discussion in 2015? | | Discussion of the "Sigint Enabling Project" goes as far back as | 2013 on HN itself. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | Genuinely, at this point you should just assume 100% of your | electronics are compromised by someone. If it's not a government | (yours or otherwise) then a corporation will fill the gaps (while | in most cases also giving it to those governments) | | You should assume you have no privacy anywhere in your life. | eimrine wrote: | I have a laptop with no communications functioning and I'm sure | it is not compromised. The proof of it is openly stored the | wallet.dat file with no any password. | AndrewKemendo wrote: | Is the idea to challenge someone to prove you wrong? | | Or are you suggesting that there no way for one of the | aforementioned groups to recover your data remotely should | they have a focused desire to recover it? | ZoomerCretin wrote: | I'm looking forward to someone explaining to me why Chinese | telecom equipment should continue to be off limits. Is the | problem that we are afraid of possible Chinese backdoors, or that | Chinese telecom equipment isn't backdoored by the NSA? | | An interesting question I'd like answered: Are the TPM 2.0 | modules that Microsoft is requiring for Windows 11 installs | similarly backdoored? | | https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/6/4403868/nsa-fbi-mine-data-... | | I think it's a safe assumption that all American microprocessors | have backdoors. | | What does this mean for OpSec? If I am a dissident (or garden- | variety cyber criminal), how do I evade my online activities | being tracked by a sufficiently determined team at the NSA? We've | known (or have assumed to know) for years that CPUs produced by | AMD, Intel, and Apple have backdoors. If my machine lacks any | personally identifying information, only interacts through the | internet through a network device that uses a VPN and encrypted | tunneling, then I should be fine in spite of CPU/OS backdoors. | However, using a VPN with encrypted tunneling doesn't seem to be | enough if my router also has a backdoor, and the data or | encryption keys can be intercepted and tied to the personal | information I've given my ISP. | | Where do we go from here? Do I need a Loongson-based PC and a | Chinese router on top of an encrypted VPN? Obviously we have to | assume that these are all backdoored as well, but that shouldn't | matter as my activities don't likely won't make me a target of | the PRC. | jacknews wrote: | I'm extremely sure it's far from the only one, and the practice | is not limited to the US govt. | AtNightWeCode wrote: | At the end of the day. We need cryptography that is | understandable. There is absolutely zero need for the complexity | in this field that exists today. | | And we need something better than just private keys. | belter wrote: | Ok the claim is the CPU was compromised and they were using ARM | based tech. Is then ARM compromised? Cavium is now Marvell | Technology. | Fnoord wrote: | > Ok the claim is the CPU was compromised and they using ARM | based tech. | | MIPS and ARM. | | And Linux MIPS doesn't even have DEP and ASLR. | monocasa wrote: | Or other elements of an SoC. Biased RNG would be a good bet. | moyix wrote: | ARM just licenses the ISA and provides some reference designs. | Individual manufacturers can (and often do) add their own | extensions and design the actual chips. | greatNespresso wrote: | I wonder, how would one find out such backdoors at the CPU level? | And also, are Snowden's leaked documents archived somewhere? | pwarner wrote: | Maybe there's something sinister here, or maybe Cavium and other | similar network chips can be used for sigint, as well as many | other things. Basically these are chips designed to look at every | packet and can be programmed to take action on them. One could | program a chip like this to find all the packages from user X and | send an extra copy over to user Y (NSA). It's possible all this | tweet means is that these NP chips are powerful and flexible | enough to perform sigint. I wonder if this is like saying Intel | CPUs can be used to evil things. Or C. Of course it's possible | there is a back door, but that seems like the less likely | scenario. | samgranieri wrote: | So in real life terms, what does this mean for people that own | USG3s? If you're so inclined, replace it? Or not use the VPN | feature in the Unifi admin console? | | Personally, I just forward all WireGuard traffic to another | computer on my network and use https://github.com/burghardt/easy- | wg-quick to setup a simple VPN. | stephen_g wrote: | We don't know which types of Cavium products may have | vulnerabilities, which models or what the nature of it is | (could be only applicable to certain features, sounds like | possibly related to VPN acceleration). | | So absolutely no way to know whether anything _needs_ to be | done or not, unless you expect you're at risk of a nation state | actor having a reason to specifically target you, in which case | it'd be wise to stop using it. | BlueTemplar wrote: | What kind of people ? Your average person can't do squat if | targeted by a state actor anyway (except complaining to their | own state about it, and let them sort it out). | | It's another thing when it comes to resisting surveillance | capitalism : | | https://web.archive.org/web/20180919021829/https://www.alexr... | | It's completely disproportionate that Hollywood is making | people lose control of their own computers because they are | worried about _copyright infringement_ !! | | That a boycott of Intel and Ryzen CPUs, "Trusted" Platform | Modules, and Windows (8+) also probably makes the job of | NSA/CIA/FBI harder (because they have likely backdoored them) | is just a bonus. | | (Of course there's also a potential failure mode that some much | more hostile actors might get their hands on some of these | backdoors, but it doesn't seem worth worrying about it until we | get a high profile example of that happening ?) | | Of course if you have the responsibility of, say, protecting | your non-US company from industrial espionage, the situation is | very different. | einvolk wrote: | I feel so proud to be part of a nation that goes to such | remarkable lengths to protect its citizens! Go go USA! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-09-19 23:00 UTC)