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Blue Coat Denies Its Devices Helping Syrian Gov't
First time accepted submitter drmemnoch writes with a follow-up to a report last week that Internet proxy / filtering / logging devices made by Sunnyvale, CA based Blue Coat Systems have been used by the Syrian government to monitor and censor Syrian's Internet usage. drmemnoch notes that "Sales to restricted countries can often occur through 3rd party resellers. Blue Coat has yet to provide any information other than denial." Specifically, the company denies direct sales, but in the linked ZDnet report kept mum on how third-party resellers might be involved. I requested comment from the company about how their products might have ended up in Syria; Steve Schick of Blue Coat has responded to that request with a more detailed denial (included below) of the company's involvement, and says that there is "no firm evidence" in the logs leaked by Telecomix that Syria has any Blue Coat equipment at all; dissection of that response is invited.
Schick writes: "Blue Coat does not sell to Syria and neither do we provide any kind of technical support, professional services or software maintenance. To our knowledge, we do not have any customers in Syria.
U.S. companies are prohibited from selling to Syria. In addition, we do not allow any of our resellers, regardless of their location in the world, to sell to an embargoed country, such as Syria.
We have seen logs posted that are allegedly from a Blue Coat appliance in use in Syria. From these logs, we see no firm evidence that would determine there is Blue Coat equipment in Syria; in fact, it appears that these logs came from an appliance in a country where there are no trade restrictions. In addition, the log files appear to have come from a third party server that was storing log files uploaded from one of our appliances. The allegation that an organization penetrated one of our appliances through a security hole is flatly not true. There are no known vulnerabilities of our appliance that would allow such an action."
U.S. companies are prohibited from selling to Syria. In addition, we do not allow any of our resellers, regardless of their location in the world, to sell to an embargoed country, such as Syria.
We have seen logs posted that are allegedly from a Blue Coat appliance in use in Syria. From these logs, we see no firm evidence that would determine there is Blue Coat equipment in Syria; in fact, it appears that these logs came from an appliance in a country where there are no trade restrictions. In addition, the log files appear to have come from a third party server that was storing log files uploaded from one of our appliances. The allegation that an organization penetrated one of our appliances through a security hole is flatly not true. There are no known vulnerabilities of our appliance that would allow such an action."
It doesn't matter if they sell to Syria. They're a part of the problem.
Seriously, what's the deal with that "first time accepted submitter" thing? What does it bring to the story? Why do we care?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
A likely story.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
This story is bogus. Bluecoat is one of the biggest players in the content filtering space. Why would they break the law to sell a couple of boxes to Syria?
See, right here, we sold this equipment to "Totally Not a Front Company for Syria's Government, Inc" in some town called Syria, which I think was in Texas or somewhere.
They did pay a lot for the shipping, though.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
So, there is Blue Coat equipment logging Syrian connectivity, but it's not physically located in Syria. It doesn't belong to the Syrians, it belongs to a non-Syrian orgamization. Nobody (not even our hypothetical Syrians :) actually penetrated the security of said machine, quite plausibly because they were authorized to use it.
There are so many loopholes in those details it's pretty sad. On a par with "The US doesn't torture. The US doesn't send people to other countries to be tortured. The US just happens to have someone hanging around when some other countries (ironically, Syria's probably one of those countries :) as their police conduct aggressive interrogations of people they suspect of doing bad things."
Maybe Blue Coat's completely innocent here. But the more details they add, the more they make this appear like a non-denial-denial. Whether they have plausible (or even implausible :) deniability or not, they would probably do better PR for themselves if they just issued a flat "we comply with US law, and where applicable, to the laws of all other jurisdictions, and have no further comment".
french website that conducted their own investigation of the logs and determined that because they saw a bluecoat header, it was obviously bluecoat. they then reminded their audience they had no concrete evidence bluecoat had sold directly to syria any product. furthermore from a very generic, single header line, the exact model of the product was determined.
id be way more inclined to believe the article as well, had it not been ended with the line "This is year 2011, states and private companies are here to protect you feel safe."
http://reflets.info/bluecoats-role-in-syrian-censorship-and-nationwide-monitoring-system/
Good people go to bed earlier.
In capitalism you sell your mother if there is a good bidder. Or if you cant sell a tree for example, you cut it down so noone will use it for free and reduce the price of other trees you are wanting to sell. so asking a corporation to justify their shit is pointless. they will just lie.
Read radical news here
Tim, you implied that the vendor's denial was half-assed mumble-wamble, but the response you produced seem pretty categorical.
What are you trying to get at? Is there more to the background you have failed to note? Cuz, as it is, it appears you're grasping the straws to smear the outfit.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
In a world where Iran has nuclear centrifuges, Mexican drug lords have military weapons, Columbian drug cartels have submarines, how could Bluecoat stop some reseller from selling something to Syria?
Next July 4th when you're drunk on patriotism and shedding tears while looking at old glory remember that we, the US, are one of the worlds biggest exporters of oppression. Disgusting.
After reading TFA.. i found:
"The evidence we have collected proves that there is a ban on secured authentications for communication tools, such as MSN, Yahoo Messenger, or the Facebook Chat. Syrian people who use these services should be aware that local authorities already stoled their passwords and that all their communications are being intercepted."
And as someone who has been implementing & supporting Proxy solutions for top 500 level companies in Latin America (yea, including Blue Coat & Squid).
I can tell that at least with Blue Coat the "MSN" Interception was possible with really old versions of MSN, Blue Coat Stopped selling and even supporting the IM interception product years ago, why ? because it was really difficult to keep up with the new versions of MSN..
So:
1.- The article is misleading
2.- All the Syrian country uses MSN v 1.0
Unix its simple, but sometimes it takes a geniuos to understand the simplicity -- Dennis Ritchie
Simple: Until you can prove it, we deny it.
ever wonder why the jews,polocks,gays all had numerical tattoos?
The bigger question is why do people make this kind of equipment, it is ONLY used to repress people.
coats of blue.
What's next, giving the author of nmap the 3rd degree because someone did something bad with it?
I wrote about the matter this morning:
"It would appear that all of Syria’s BlueCoat hardware calls home to update its ability to filter and monitor new objects that it has not encountered. Equally importantly, the Syrian logs are filled with queries related to BlueCoat systems, such as ‘bluecoat data collector,’ something that a general home user would have little interest in."
http://b.averysmallbird.com/entries/bluecoat-and-syria-indicators-and-culpability
There is currently a BlueCoat appliance located in Syria at 82.137.200.42; if the company needs any more of the dozen or so identified addresses of their hardware, I or Telecomix would be happy to oblige.
forget it.
Bluecoat is not just a box, it's a service. If Bluecoat is serious about not wanting to be used by Syria they should blackhole Syria's IP ranges. No this can't shut off the service as the syrians could use a proxy server outside their IP ranges but it would show that Bluecoat has made an effort...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Sure, using IT infra in this ways is purely evil. And no, companies should not provide any tools for oppressive regimes.
But when will see the first complaints that Open Source tools allow governments to do largely the same things?
I'm nos saying that OS is bad, but is there anyway that OS projects can ensure that their products are used for oppressive means? /jussi
Illicit gambling was reported in Casablanca tonight. Local official Captain Renault was quoted as "being shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in here!".
Just like Cisco, Lucent and others ethics or morals do not pad bonuses.
As I recall my first year chemistry, Litmus paper turns bLue in aLkaline solutions, and reD in aciDic solutions. But that was not in the USA where colors are different from colours.
In the rest of the world,Blue is the colour of the right-wing, more conservative political party, and Red is the colour of the left-wing more socialist party.
However in the USA, Red is the color of the Republicans (right wing comservative) and Blue is the color of the Democrats (left-wing progressive
The government of Myanmar (Burma) also uses Bluecoat devices to censor what their citizens can see on the internet...
If you have a user behind this proxy willing to run Netalyzr and send us the results link either direct to netalyzr-help@icsi.berkeley.edu or to you, I'd be very interested in seeing if we can see the BlueCoat proxy in our Netalyzr testing.
Test your net with Netalyzr
...as lunch to (pick your antagonist).
So someone sells something that is used as intended to someone you don't like... You gotta get them in line behind arms dealers. The "so what" factor here is huge.