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NSA Patents a Way To Spot Network Snoops

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the welcome-to-the-holidays dept.

narramissic writes "The National Security Agency has patented a technique for figuring out whether someone is messing with your network by measuring the amount of time it takes to send different types of data and sounding an alert if something takes too long. 'The neat thing about this particular patent is that they look at the differences between the network layers,' said Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Washington. But IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky wasn't so impressed: 'Think of it as — if your network gets a little slower, maybe a bad guy has physically inserted a device that is intercepting and retransmitting packets. Sure, that's possible. Or perhaps you're routing through a slower path for one of a billion reasons.'"

6 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. NSA patenting it because... by ATestR · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They don't want any of US to have access to such technology when THEY slap the monitoring devices on our network.

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    âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
    1. Re:NSA patenting it because... by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was thinking the same thing...But in this world, it's more likely that they patented it so that some stupid patent troll won't get the opportunity to sue the gov't.

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      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    2. Re:NSA patenting it because... by gnick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Two people/companies eventually coming to a solution that is sufficiently similar to violate patents is a long way from "obvious to someone who works in the field". And, assuming that the two people who identified the solution are the leaders in their field (because they reached the idea before the other 6.7 billion of us), they could be described as having "extraordinary skill in the art".

      There are a number of patents for designs that multiple developers reached independently and were awarded to the person who managed to file first (Edison seemed to have extraordinary luck in beating his competitors to the patent office). That doesn't necessarily make the solution obvious, just non-unique.

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      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  2. Gov't patents by Rinisari · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is another example of the broken patent system. No government should be able to patent something--that technology was funded by the taxpayer and should thus be owned by the taxpayer, meaning that it is public and thus not patentable.

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    Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
    1. Re:Gov't patents by JCSoRocks · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was actually confused by that when I first saw the headline. I didn't even know that the government could patent something. It's just so completely broken and silly that I never even considered it.

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      You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
  3. Prior art: L0pht antisniff from 1999? by Hobart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Looking at the article, (and having skimmed but not read all of the patent), isn't AntiSniff (released by DilDog of L0pht in 1999) using this technique? (Slashdot article, Aug '99)

    Original tech paper was on l0pht.com (now defunct) - looks like archive.org doesn't have a mirror, here's the best copy I could find in Google: http://servv89pn0aj.sn.sourcedns.com/~gbpprorg/l0pht/antisniff/tech-paper.html

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