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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."
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.
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.
Apart from going out of business, precisely what do you propose they do? Seriously, once they sell their items to another company, they don't have any control over where they end up.
It remains to be seen if they truly are free of involvement here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't done by an authorized retailer.
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.
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?
I can't believe BlueCoat would go through all this hassle to prevent some Syrians from mining bitcoins.
obvious redundancy is obvious
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.
You misunderstand his complaint. He thinks that there is no place for equipment or software that filters the internet at all, whether it is voluntary or not.
Thats really not accurate, there are many companies who use this type of thing, and that really doesnt qualify as oppression. As it is the company's network, they are perfectly free to mandate what comes in and out of it.
Ah, clearly I did.
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.
IBM sold what was considered a computer in those days to the Nazis, then the Nazis used them to tabulate their kills. Not the same type of computer that you typed your comment in on, but the same basic function; input, compute, output.
Also, many other companies also sold to the Nazis during the WWII period including Standard Oil (Chevron, Amoco, and later BP) and AT&T and many others.
Also, I hope you don't like Volkswagons, Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, Bugattis, Lamborghinis, SEATs, kodas or Scanias.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
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
I interviewed at that company, once. What they told me turned me off so much (privacy and spying issues) that I walked away from a pretty firm job offer.
DPI this and filter that and MITM ssl attacks.
NO THANKS.
They try to explain it as 'helping' but as Jon Stewart says, you are not helping AT ALL.
I had to say no to the job offer. I can't help bad people 'win' like that.
The whole premise is anti-freedom. Sickened me so much.
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
Don't forget Siemens, and Mitsubishi built Japanese fighters...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yeah.. and intel, and any other vendor that sold hardware to Syria is part of the problem too...
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
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
Wait, you interviewed there and you didnt even understand their core business? You do know that filtering is basically what they do right?
Do you start your interviews off by asking, "so....what is your company called, what do you do, and why am I here"?
Its like getting pissed off at Microsoft because you discovered mid-interview that theyre responsible for Windows.
They took Gordon Gekko at his word: Greed is good.
Hitler kept a picture of Henry Ford on his desk; and it wasn't because he liked his cars.
My rights don't need management.