Monday, December 30, 2013

"I'll be available until I'm assassinated to answer questions."

Another security guru comes out against the NSA.  Der Spiegal journalist (and cryptographer/coder on the TOR project) Jacob Applebaum gave a talk at the 30th annual Chaos Computer Club* conference in which he detailed all of the systems that NSA can hack.  Cliff's Notes version: basically everything:
The best-selling servers of Dell are among a swathe of IT products released by US companies that have been compromised by the National Security Agency, information security enthusiasts were told at a conference overnight.

...

Applebaum, a cryptography expert, was yesterday named as an author of an explosive article in Der Spiegel listing the names and details of several NSA exploits. The Germany magazine published NSA documents that boasted of the agency's ability to use zero-day exploits to spy on communications passing through the switches and routers of the world’s largest networking vendors, Cisco, Juniper Networks and Huawei, among others.

Today, he detailed previously unreported exploits targeting the most popular lines of servers manufactured by Dell and HP, as well as smartphones of Apple and Samsung.

Applebaum made no apologies for naming the companies in his presentation.

“F### them for collaborating, and for leaving us vulnerable,” he said.
Ah, trust.  It's basically gone now, and this may be a Very Good Thing.  Everyone now knows that they have to check everything for themselves.  Tech companies are increasingly realizing that cooperating with the NSA is the express lane to lower earnings per share.

Markets in everything FTW!



"Free Software: free as in freedom."

The toothpaste isn't going back into that tube.

* The CCC is completely above boards, and has been around for so long that it can only be termed "venerable".  These are teh Good Guys sitting in the audience.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Tech companies are increasingly realizing that cooperating with the NSA is the express lane to lower earnings per share.

Perhaps this will lead to boards of directors deciding against further collaboration. I guess we will see which is stronger, government largesse and/or force or the fiduciary responsibility they have to their shareholders.

Anonymous said...

Well to be even more paranoid what if this is all deliberate with the intent of destroying the IT sector of the US economy. They have gutted manufacturing and off shored even lots of white collar jobs so what's left to do. All you have to do is find some very rich greedy useful idiots leading the IT industry to get the job done.
Forward komrades unto the new peoples socialist banananananananana Republik.

Anonymous said...

That implies Snowden is working for the bad people.

Matt W said...

Interesting that he thanks Obama and Holder for their "material" support. I can't decide if he was being sarcastic or genuine.

The stuff at the very end is the only that really revealed my shocked face.

In the face of so much scary information, it is hard not to just resign and take the blue pill...

Phil said...

As someone who is as dumb as a box of rusty hammers when it comes to how computers work and especially computer security, a great deal of this went right over my head.

That being said, I did manage to grasp enough to scare the piss out of me.

Myself as an individual, without having any idea of how to even begin to try and find out if any of this stuff is being used against me personally , find myself feeling that "resistance is futile".

I'm not overly susceptible to tinfoil hat stuff but the evidence provided here is incontrovertible.

I will just go forward with the expectation that there is no such thing as computer security for people like me and continue my war of words against such tyrannical actions without thought of my own personal security.

If indeed as reported in this video that the government is retaining everything I have ever said and every single activity I have ever done on the internet for the last fifteen years then fuck them and the snake they crawled in under anyway.

In my old fashioned way I will continue to fight the tyranny until I am silenced permanently.

I thank you for helping to inform clueless idiots like myself Borepatch and I wish you a Happy New Year and my sincere hopes that folks like you keep trying to open the eyes of folks like me.

Philip Paul

Borepatch said...

Phil, I've been doing this for 30 years and it scares the everlovin' out of me.