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NSA Patents a Way To Spot Network Snoops
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.'"
Uh oh, someone stole the plans for the NSA Tape Dispenser, it is missing from their Domestic Technology Transfer Program website! http://www.nsa.gov/techtrans/techt00075.cfm
The NSA can not only file for patents, they can do so secretly.
From wikipedia:
The NSA has the ability to file for a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office under gag order. Unlike normal patents, these are not revealed to the public and do not expire. However, if the Patent Office receives an application for an identical patent from a third party, they will reveal the NSA's patent and officially grant it to the NSA for the full term on that date.
Apple has never claimed not to be evil, they're just very stylish about it.
i remember a while back a firend of mine that workd for a college was tasked with trying to find a person who was sniffing peoples logins on the campus wifi.. what he ended up doing was sending out garbled truncated packets - turns out that windows boxes running things like etheral would get the truncated packet and then request the rest of the packet even though it wasn't addressed to them.. very clever way of finding the stupid ones.. luckly the person they where after was stupid
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'