Slashdot Mirror
Saudi Arabian Telecom Pitches to Moxie Marlinspike
An anonymous reader sent in this excerpt from Moxie Marlinspike's weblog:
"Last week I was contacted by an agent of Mobily, one of two telecoms operating in Saudi Arabia, about a surveillance project that they're working on in that country. Having published two reasonably popular MITM tools, it's not uncommon for me to get emails requesting that I help people with their interception projects. I typically don't respond, but this one (an email titled 'Solution for monitoring encrypted data on telecom') caught my eye. ... The requirements are the ability to both monitor and block mobile data communication, and apparently they already have blocking setup. ... When they eventually asked me for a price quote, and I indicated that I wasn't interested in the job for privacy reasons, they responded with this: ' I know that already and I have same thoughts like you freedom and respecting privacy, actually Saudi has a big terrorist problem and they are misusing these services for spreading terrorism and contacting and spreading their cause that's why I took this and I seek your help. If you are not interested than maybe you are on indirectly helping those who curb the freedom with their brutal activities.'"
our officials here have snooped on us in every way possible for years. When they can't figure out how to snoop (old Skype) they simply hire Microsoft to buy the company and add a back-door.
The Saudi's could learn a lot from us.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The ruling al-Saud family will soon have to come with a follow-up for the current king. In the same time, a complete army of foreign experts & technicians is required to keep the entire Saudi infrastructure ( telco, roads, water supply, power generation ) running. Moreover, the Saudi government is continuously spying upon its citizens, as a habit. Women are slowly beginning to protest against the enormous discrimination and contempt they live under.
All of this taken together mixes up quite explosively. Mark my words: 25 years from now, Saudi Arabia as we know it will have gone down
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I think the western governments would be a bit more clever than that. They have the resources to develop their own home grown spying tools. They don't need an outside consultant, which is what this guy would have been. Otherwise you'd be hearing about this kind of stuff all the time.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Actually, let me reverse my own comment... (having read up on Saudi Arabia's human right's record).
The issue is the Saudi's can target terror with these MITM tools -- true. But they also have a track record targeting basic human rights (free press, faith).
Moxie is well within his rights turning down the job. However, its best he did not reveal the name of the Saudi gent (who still seems sincere).
Well I guess that's your view then. I specifically didn't mention any nation, only "the job".
It's about high fucking time people in the western world realise that freedom cannot be passive. You can't just sit back in your armchair and blab. Be offensive, do a number on these scumbags. If he really, really cared about privacy he would have fought for the millions of people who are going to be spied on anyway, just not with his tool. This applies equally to the UK as it does to Saudi Arabia, this story just happens to be set in a country most people around here don't like.
People like the guy in the story makes me fucking sick. You realise that where you are born and the freedoms you enjoy are all PURE LUCK, and one of the few things in your life you have no control over. Why should freedom be restrained to people lucky enough to be born under a constitution? Spread the wealth.
... whatever
I bet if it was the US or UK government or some such that came a-knockin this person wouldn't have blabbed that fact all over the internets. But it's the Saudis and they're evil. Ok, I have no proof whatsoever of any potential double-standards and I'm no saint myself but just sayin.
Then you clearly don't know who Moxie Marlinspike is (which seems kind of odd, as he's an extremely well known security researcher).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
Aside fromt he fact that he's been championing against the certificate authority sytem because it gives the US too much power, there's also the fact that he's an anarchist (he's written anarchist pieces completely unrelated to technology, and founded the Anarchist Yacht Club). That the Saudis contacted him speaks volumes to their incompetence, imho.
Wait... so your conditions for a government being able to intercept all communications consist solely of their "human rights record"? And you see nothing wrong with this?
Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship, they rule by an army inducing terror on a populace, not because the populace chose the leadership.
The problem is that in Muslim countries the political system they chose is invariably worse. Libya is worse than it was under Gaddafi, Egypt is worse now than under Mubarak, Iraq is worse than under Saddam Husain, and Afghanistan is infinitely worse off than it was under Soviet rule.
Yes, Saudi Arabia is bad, but anything that keeps the Muslims under control is better than letting them have their way .... which is not giving them freedom but allowing them to murder, kill, and rape others as well as killing eachother and removing freedoms under sectarian Sharia militias.
instead of doing real work that helps real people.
Are we talking about the same Moxie Marlinspike?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike
Who wrote things like:
http://convergence.io/details.html
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone
https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure/
(aguably the most used encrypted communications apps for Android)
http://tack.io/
http://www.audioanarchy.org/
http://www.blueanarchy.org/
https://www.cloudcracker.com/
I could go on. Hell, I haven't even gotten to the talks he's done and the vulnerabilities he's disclosed.
Seriously, if you're that dismissive of Moxie Marlinspike, you MUST have cured a major disease or something. Please, do tell.
He didn't come running to slash dot he posted it to his blog! Someone else posted it to slash dot so take your foot out of your mouth and shove it back up your arse.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
the participants in the "arab spring" used a variety of tools to facilitate and coordinate their activities
I'm glad you used quotes around "arab spring", in reality it has turned out to be an islamist winter.
No, it is not luck. You got to pick your parents carefully.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I think the western governments would be a bit more clever than that. They have the resources to develop their own home grown spying tools. They don't need an outside consultant, which is what this guy would have been. Otherwise you'd be hearing about this kind of stuff all the time.
Western governments employ a more than a few outside contractors for 'electronic operations'(and quite a few others for other purposes). They just aren't generally foolish enough to contact known, high-profile, security researchers with a history of publicity for sensitive work...
Messing with national governments can be a very dangerous game. If they found out he was planting a backdoor halfway through the project things could go south in a real hurry, and they'd have to be very incompetent not to have some sort of double blind checks in place. Even if he never entered the country he'd have to avoid it and everywhere it has an extradition treaty with (like India) forever. And what gain? Evidence that they are suppressing dissent, persecuting women? We already know that.
There are less risky ways to bring the fight to them.
Do tell me more about how he could have fought to bring freedom to the suffering Saudi masses...
Was he supposed to take the job, then use his access to covertly haxx0r the mainframe and destroy the Master Control Computer?
(For those who didn't want to read the linked article, the tl;dr version is that Wahhabism is the Saudi-founded brand of Islam that Al-Qaeda et al espouse; if you've ever heard the term "Islamo-fascism", Wahhabism is the interpretation of Islam it's most likely referring to).
In other words, the Saudi regime is in the position of having to be blatantly two-faced about this; claiming to be cracking down on terrorism to their Western allies, while at the same time being one of the largest supporters of it.
Of course, the West knows this, but likes to pretend otherwise, because there's the inconvenient fact that they have lots of oil which we want. Regarding Western attitudes towards extremist Islamic terrorism, Saudi Arabia isn't merely the elephant in the room in the sense that it's a major factor- as the home and the heart of Wahhabism, it's arguably *the* central factor. Modern Saudi Arabia was *founded* on an agreement between Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab (the founder of Wahhabism) and the house of Saud to spread his teachings while the latter retained power. From Wikipedia:-
Upon arriving in Diriyya, a pact was made between Ibn Saud and Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab, by which Ibn Saud pledged to implement and enforce Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab's teachings, while Ibn Saud and his family would remain the temporal "leaders" of the movement.
Many of the alleged grievances of terrorists supporting Wahhabist organisations such as Al-Qaeda revolve around the supposed US "occupation" of Saudi Arabia. Yet, despite all this, you'll rarely hear Western politicians attack the Saudi regime for their covert tolerance of extremist elements. Why? See the start of this paragraph.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Aside from the fact that he's been championing against the certificate authority system...
Yes! I was wondering when someone would mention this! Anyone who's curious can glance at Moxie's repositories on Github. It is exactly as you described, about his efforts to make a better certificate authority system. I don't know if it was because it gave the U.S. too much power, or because it was not especially reliable (I think DigiNotar or Digi something cert auth break happened around then), many other issues.
I have mixed feelings about Moxie. He's very much the Anarchist, rebel hax00r. But he isn't insufferably arrogant like some of his peers are. He's a good sailor (not yachts!); sometimes I like what he has to say. And he looks sweet, handsome in the one photo I've seen of him, not overstated or hipster-odious. Anyway, the last time I checked, Moxie was a Twitter employee.
Good point too about the oddity that "agents of a foreign power", whether Saudi Arabia or any other, would approach Moxie for such work. It is unlikely that Saudi Arabia would be less informed than you and I. Moxie has a hefty entry in Wikipedia. I even wrote a post on my hobby blog about one of his projects a few years ago! I have no doubt that retaining Moxie's services would be worthwhile. But there are many less visible, less vocal alternatives.
I wish I could say "thank you" to whomever submitted the original post here. Good find!
tempus fugit
This is perfectly right. The reason al Qaeda exists is Wahabism, and the Wahabis came to power in the first place as a part of the partnership with the Sauds. At any rate, the root cause of terrorism is Islam, which at its heart preaches all the things that the Wahabis practice. Sure, implementations vary across the Muslim empire, but the bottom line - encourage terror against Infidels until they accept Islamic supremacy - is pretty much common from Morocco to Mindanao.
If one visits Saudi Arabia, one notes how rigid that country is about being Islamic. During Ramadan, non-Muslims have to eat privately, and similarly, any non-Muslim religious activities have to be clandestine. In Saudi offices, during the Muezzin (call to prayer, which is 5 times a day), it is mandatory for all Muslims (practicing or nominal) to take prayer breaks. It's illegal to build churches, synagogues or any temples of other religions in KSA. But before atheists here get all excited about that, note that Atheism is not the official religion of KSA - Islam is, and it's NEVER illegal to build mosques anywhere. And of course, as is well known, Mecca & Medina are off-limits to non-Muslims - something unparalleled today in other religions: non-Catholics can very much visit the Vatican, non-Jews can visit Jerusalem, non-Hindus can visit Varanasi and so on. Not so in Islam.
Not just that - in Saudi Arabia, any material that has nothing about religion but is judged by their equivalent of the KGB as being 'un-Islamic' has a good chance of being impounded. I've heard horror stories of people on ships that were just in transit in Saudi ports who got their books impounded for that very reason. If al Qaeda ever did take over in Riyadh and establish their Caliphate, how much worse could they conceivably be? There is already no religious freedom in that country, and those troglodytes are just offering more Islam.
In short, just like in Syria, there is no right side to pick in Saudi Arabia - they are all Islamic fanatics who want to perfect a theocracy and export Jihad worldwide. The Saudis actively do it - Aramco, which is wholly owned by the Saudi government, funds dawa (Islamic proselytization) worldwide, and also funds Jihadi groups, like the Sunni rebels in Syria. Those Sunni rebels are directly allied with the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda, so it would make no difference who runs Riyadh. (Of course, with the US itself supporting al Qaeda in Syria, it loses any rationale to speak against terror, especially when it steadfastly refuses to recognize the link between jihad terror and Islam)