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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."
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.
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.
I resent that...
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?
No, actually, you're supposed to be quite dead, I'm afraid:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/rest-in-peace-roland-piquepaille/11430
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
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
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.
There's a well known correlation between your body's acidity and your intelligence, not to mention your relevancy.
I've submitted several times, and never been accepted, but I'm not bitter.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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