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FBI Wiretapping Audit Secrets Uncovered Via Ctrl+C
mytrip notes a story in Wired's Threat Level blog on the latest boneheaded government moves with redaction. (We've been discussing redaction follies here for years.) This time it's an FBI report (PDF) on implementing CALEA — you can select text from redacted areas, copy it, and paste into a text editor, as University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze discovered. From Wired: "Once again, supposedly sensitive information blacked out from a government report turns out to be visible by computer experts armed with the Ctrl+C keys — and that information turns out to be not very sensitive after all... [Among] the tidbits considered too sensitive to be aired publicly: The FBI paid Verizon $2,500 apiece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches. Oddly the report didn't redact the total amount paid to the telecom — slightly more than $2.9 million dollars — but somehow the bad guys will win if they knew the number of switches and the cost paid."
If they were running a website, they would use:
<FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: black">Top Secret!</FONT>
The meme is dead, long live the meme!
The headline and summary made took a minute for me to grasp, I just couldn't understand how you could get data out of something by halting execution.
Then my brain woke up and I realized they were thinking of the Windows command Ctrl+C which copies the marked text..
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Washington Irving at it again!
Apparently you have never worked for a government department.
Otherwise it's like having a flu vaccine released by managers that went nowhere near an immunologist or virologist.
or in the pharmaceutical industry. It's not lack of knowledge, it's optimism. Don't pop the pink bubble.
The official method is:
1 - Print the document.
2 - Cut the private parts away with a cutter.
3 - If you've not castrated yourself, you should have a paper with holes. Put it in a wooden table.
4 - Make a photo of said table.
5 - Load the photo in a power point.
6 - publish the ppt file.
lol, they might as well publish everything with lorem ipsum on it...
---TOP SECRET--- "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Right, I had one moment where I thought that hitting Ctrl+C would somehow reveal that the FBI is auditing you, too.
I'm also inept. Now where might this farm be located?
this is reverse psychology! Hide some nonsense behind CRTL+C and the people point at you laughing about hiding such nonsense. Give 'em nothing but black bars and they will be afraid what terrible things are behind them and shout for more transparency.
Can you geeks only complain? First you complain that we try to keep information secret, then, when we're too dumb to do it right and the info gets out, you complain again.
Is there a way to satisfy you? Jeesh...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.