Have a Privacy-Invasion Wishlist? Peruse NSA's Top Secret Catalog

An anonymous reader writes with a link to Der Spiegel, which describes a Top-Secret spy-agency catalog which reveals that the NSA "has been secretly back dooring equipment from US companies including Dell, Cisco, Juniper, IBM, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and more, risking enormous damage to US tech sector." Der Spiegel also has a wider ranging article about the agency's Tailored Access Operations unit.

Comments

And that ain't all

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

The NSA has been "secretly back-dooring" the American people for years.

And Ultimately

[mrspoonsi]

The NSA will achieve the opposite for the USA, not more security but less, with the rest of the world now keen to do their own thing, the NSA are a loose cannon on a rolling ship.

Re:And Ultimately

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA has already achieve the opposite for the USA

There FTFY... Talking to non IT people, the thing that most people don't seem to have understood is that Snowdon and hundreds of administrators from private contractors like him had uncontrolled access to all of the data. Those people will for 100% sure include some spies from hostile powers like Russia, China and North Korea. Some of those people will have already extracted data. People working for the NSA and DOD wrote the orange book about this. They have no excuse to pretend they didn't know that gathering all this data together would be dangerous.

The real thing that the NSA and GCHQ are trying to hide, is not the spying. It is that they were caught seriously endangering their countries for profit.

Re:And Ultimately

[Anonymous Coward]

Not GP here.

While it's not new to me (thanks to my neurotic love for historical-fiction set in the day of Nelson)...

Yeah. Most people aren't even remotely aware of how many common phrases come from our maritime past, let alone are familiar with metaphors that have widely fallen out of use.

This is literally the first time I've seen "loose cannon on a rolling ship" in about five years. Sure, it's the full-length version of, "loose cannon" - but since the latter part has long been cut off, your average person hears, "loose cannon" and thinks, "Guy who's about to explode. Like a cannon. I dunno what the loose part is about."

Re:And Ultimately

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Since the public record indicates that the vast majority of terrorist attacks that the NSA has helped stopped are overseas, outside the US

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Let it be known that uber-con cold fjord has acknowledged that the NSA's domestic meta-data program (section 215) has stopped zero terrorist attacks inside the US and that the overseas meta-data interception program (section 702) has "helped" to stop one, perhaps two attacks in the US.

215: We Found None

702: Only One, Perhaps Two

Re:And Ultimately

[paiute]

Have we already acquiesced to the NSA's desired reality?
Were these criminal activities which could not have been prevented by old-fashioned police work done within the law or were Orwellian-scale intrusions absolutely necessary?

Re:And Ultimately

[VortexCortex]

A scientist would say: Prove their evidence is real.

They lied to congress, and have a a long history of evil. It would be foolish to trust anything they say. See, that's the thing with secrets and lies: You can never trust anything they say to be true. "Oh we're strengthening security." Prove it -- Could be weakening security instead, we don't know because: Secrets. Oh, so they say these guys are terrorists? Prove it. You'll have to use independent evidence -- not like digital records can't be fabricated, what with all the routers and systems backdoored or exploited. They could have written the damn email from the guy's system themselves at a whim. These spooks are real creeps, tasked with socio-political control, not safety. What they do is target "radicals". They thought the Civil Rights Movement was "radical". The Privacy Rights Movement is considered "radical" too, especially since it requires an end government secrets. Everyone knows the atrocities the CIA gets up to, you think any of theses guys have qualms about silencing "radicals" any way they can?

Anyone think these programs are beneficial? That's an unproven claim. Disprove the null hypothesis: No secret spy organization can be proven to be beneficial. They can't be proven to be telling the truth. A secret oversight committee just moves the problem around.

You're 4 times more likely to die from lightning strike. The flu kills six times more people than a 9/11 scale attack every ear. Cars and cheeseburgers have killed Four Thousand times more lives than a 9/11 scale attack since 9/11. The cost to benefit ratio of the spying programs is ridiculous. Life is dangerous: There are risks that are acceptable. If we're brave enough to drive the kids to get a Happy Meal, then what possible fear can we have of a minuscule in comparison terrorist threat? Even if all 50 of those supposed bombers would have gone off, they'd still wouldn't justify the cost to privacy, freedom, and trust in our governments -- Falling down in the shower is more dangerous than terrorists. Where's the free government bath-mats if terrorists are such a big concern? Mutually assured destruction means big countries are no threat. The cold war didn't end, the military industrial complex just turned on its own people in secret. Everything Eisenhower warned us about came true.

The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
- John F. Kennedy

What a "radical" thought.

Re:And Ultimately

[sumdumass]

I seriously doubt it. Serious terrorist don't really break the law and become subjects of scrutiny by the authorities until after they break the law. In other words, they are meticulous and methodical in setting out to do what they are doing and you often will not know anything about it until after it happens unless some connection is created somewhere that draws attention to them.

Of course this is easier accomplished in some countries then others, but the end result would be the real old fashion type police work where they show up after the fact and look for someone to blame.

Don't buy from US companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use US service providers. It should be obvious by now, but the reason why the US warn about all kinds of subversion and attacks is that they know what they themselves are doing to the rest of the world.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[Desler]

Huawei and Samsung are US companies? Because if you read the article these things are not limited to US companies despite the implication of the summary.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[mikael]

From what I remember, Samsung disk drives didn't implement SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology)
It would tell you useful things like how many times your disk drive had been powered up and down, longest seek time, number of bad sectors, highest temperature, longest spin-up time. Just about everything a sys-admin would ever want to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_S.M.A.R.T._tools

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[fatphil]

OK, the article itself is not wrong. I just didn't want people to jump to the conclusion that because a modern HDD says "Samsung" on it, it's not a US device. (In the context of "Don't buy from US companies", i.e. this sub-thread.)

It was unfortunate that the article mentioned the US-iness of those manufacturers, so I conflated the two sentences and caused confusion.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[noh8rz10]

naive. if US is doing this, then Chinese and Russians are doing it too.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsun's SSD & HDD firmware was written jointly in US & Korea, with US code patches coming from Samsung Information System America (SISA) in Silicon Valley. This ended in 2013 when Seagate bought Samsung's HDD division in 2013 and fired all the HDD engineers at SISA. Samsung's SSD firmware is still a joint effort.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[ebno-10db]

Or at least they're trying to. I wonder how good at it they are. The stuff described in the article seems mostly like sophisticated malware, which requires brains but no sophisticated hardware. That sort of thing is a traditional Russian strength, but I wouldn't be surprised if China is good at it too. It would be interesting if we could compare the capabilities.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[houghi]

The rest of the world does not go around shouting how they are the land of the free and that they are the world police that will bring said freedom to others. (By force other any other means.)

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[Carewolf]

i wonder if many companies were listed from around the world, but spiegel focused on US companies because the anti-american angle works well for them.

It is not the Spiegel that wrote the slashdot summary, it is the Spiegel that wrote the article that includes the non-American companies, and the American Slashdot that only included American companies. So how about rethinking your comment?

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[YumoolaJohn]

It doesn't matter what they go around shouting; if they do similar things, then they too have problems that need to be fixed.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[drkim]

cmon. nobody saying it's right what the NSA did...

Well, one guy did, and he's a U.S. District Court Judge.

"Judge Rules NSA Phone Surveillance Is Legal"
http://www.nationaljournal.com/technology/judge-rules-nsa-phone-surveillance-is-legal-is-a-supreme-court-intervention-inevitable-20131227

We will have to say what the 9 supremes say.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[fatphil]

Much of the US-branded kit is fabbed and manufactured in China, yes. Occasionally ipods (iphones?) ship with MS Windows viruses because of this. However, that was sloppiness rather than malice.

The reason I'd be interested in a Loongson Lemote box is that it does have a remarkably open design at almost all levels. You could create your own version of the processor on an FPGA if you so desired. The same isn't true of intel, AMD, NVidia, Freescale, TI, Samsung (or any ARM SoC vendors) etc. I think several generations of Sparc are equally open too, you'd have to check opencores. The layer above the hardware - the BIOS - is also open in Lemote (Loongson) devices. And of course you can run your own (open) OS on top of that. I don't know of any more open device. It's the best way to go if you're Richard Stallman, certainly (it's what he's used and recommended for half a decade). For anyone else, YMMV.

If I was the NSA and I wanted to make sure there was a way to get into a Loongsn device - I'd aim at the AMD chipset that it uses. If you control the flow of all data, you effectively control everything.

Nothing's 100% trustworthy. I like strength through depth though.

I appreciate that this doesn't answer your question particularly well, but it just some closely related thoughts.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[93 Escort Wagon]

READ THE ARTICLE.

These aren't pre-installed back doors - the NSA is hacking their way in. And it's not just American equipment (and, interestingly, there's no mention of Apple).

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[Guy Harris]

Thank heavens no German tech. companies were implicated.

No tech companies were explicitly implicated at all; the article says

A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry -- including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.

Huawei is not at the top of my list of companies that would put in back doors for US access. ANT, from the Der Spiegel article, appear to be breaking into systems not necessarily designed to be broken into by the NSA.

Perhaps some of the tools exploit back doors put in deliberately for the benefit of the NSA. Perhaps some of them exploit back doors put in deliberately for the benefit of other agencies, including agencies that do not view the NSA as friendly. And perhaps some of those other agencies are exploiting back doors put in for the benefit of the NSA....

And perhaps other tools exploit security bugs not put in deliberately.

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[VortexCortex]

Get a clue, its not just the US/NSA that does this. They are just the ones that are getting beat up in the press.

Yep, it's too bad the NSA doesn't actually protect national security, and is instead just ensuring all the other state sponsored enemy spies can get at more info than a contractor like Snowed did.

Imagine what it would be like if the government wasn't allowed any secrets or wiretaps. Our public policy would be the same policy we actually furthered around the world -- We wouldn't have to worry about diplomats making secret arms deals behind our backs; If such things were actually required to save lives then we'd understand the circumstance. The only reason we can't trust their actions is because secrets mask their motives, even when they are on the up and up.

We have amazing spy satellites launched via the biggest rockets in the world already. They would simply have more funds to split with NASA and be more benefit to actual security, science, disasters relief, while ensuring no force can make a move against us without us knowing instantly. They could even map submarines from space with ground/water penetrating radar. Better space collaboration would ensure decommissioned tech helps the space exploration initiative. No spies can threaten a government without secrets.

If the NSA were actually protecting the national security of America then they could be tasked with finding all the backdoors in the hardware and software. No one could put backdoors in for fear the NSA would find out, publish it, and ruin their business. Today they stay silent and let the public purchase systems the NSA likely knows have been compromised by enemy spies -- This saves the NSA time: They can just use the existing backdoor instead of put their own in. If the NSA weren't allowed secrets, they'd be eliminating exploits instead of leveraging them and our hardware, firmware, and OS's would be more secure. Eventually other governments would have to start up their own programs of outing intentional exploits just to ensure their people they weren't compromising public security. In addition to the Space Race, we'd have a Privacy Race, where competition would be in building the most secure systems. Public and private sector security experts could be assisted with new tools to show where flaws lie. Security would be a selling point and methods of provable security would be devised (I have done so myself on small scales). Computers and programs have finite state, so provable security is not impossible: Instead of spying the data centers and supercomputers could be tasked with hardening all the hardware and software. People would buy the USA security endorsed systems with pride. We'd have less identity fraud -- one of the most prevalent crimes. Conspiracies could be silenced through truth not ignorance. If we outlawed government secrets and required scientific evidence that their programs were helpful not harmful then we could trust our governments more than any citizens ever could before.

Sadly, we're too primitive and politically oppressed to apply the simple Scientific Method to governance. None can have assured trust or security from prying eyes because we allow the government to have secrets. That the priority of secrets is valued above security by the spies is obvious and evidenced by the way they compromise security and do not inform the world that we are buying insecure products. They risk spies accessing more than Snowden ever dreamed due to the priority they place on secrecy over security in their digital spying programs. These secret programs aren't getting beat up nearly as bad as they should be in the p

Re:Don't buy from US companies

[rtb61]

When the leading target is political extortion, I don't want anyone to have the keys except the voting public. The reality here is the NSA was actively seeking to target as many foreign politicians as possible in order to extort compliance in favour of US military industrial complex partners, creating as many traitors as possible in order to cripple any country that competes in any way with US for profit interests, screwing over those countries citizens, regardless of the harm produced, in favour of US partner profits.

They have long since stopped being a US security organisation whose main focus was meant to be to secure US IT infrastructure and have become an all out criminal organisation who goals where more power for the organisation and it's partners and who declared war on other countries economies and democracy. They have become the enemy far worse than the terrorists they pretend target.

Dell

[mfh]

I own a Dell system and since purchase, once in a while, the hard drive starts churning. Perhaps this is why.

Jokes on them, though. I use the system for work and often read the news -- and that's about all I do.

Re:Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised you couldn't come up with at least some possibilities on your own, K. S. Kyosuke. I always thought that you were a smart cookie.

One obvious one is that the disk's firmware is updated to detect and modify critical Windows executables, DLLs or drivers with some additional code to send out information to remote servers once a network connection is detected, or perhaps to introduce flaws that can be exploited easily. The same could be done for Linux kernel binaries or modules, too, of course.

Another pretty obvious one is that the disk's firmware alters log files to remove any traces of intrusions, making it appear as though no intrusion has occurred.

I'm sure there are many, many other ways that I haven't thought of.

Re:Dell

[ColdWetDog]

My 2009 macbook randomly wakes up and processes some data for about 5 seconds and shuts off.

two reinstalls, and I still can't track it down.

Just watching a little TV while you sleep. You have a problem with that? It works hard for you all day and you're hassling it for getting a little R&R?

Re:Dell

[gweihir]

It can do any number of things, but they have to be pre-arranged, as the disk cannot access main memory. It can, for example, inject code into the boot-loader or compromise known executables. The firmware compromise is not really necessary, but it can help disguising things. For example, with a firmware compromise you can do things like boot-code compromise only if the power went up less than a minute ago or if there was a reset shortly before. Then anybody reading the bootloader to verify it will not see the compromise. A BIOS-attack would be doing something similar, but without the possibility to hide so easily. (If these things become widespread, I will start to verify my BIOS regularly with an SPI adapter. No way to hide from that.

Full disk encryption with boot from a non-writable medium (kernel and initrd on CD in a non-burner drive, for example) will neutralize a compromised disk firmware pretty effectively or alternatively protect the boot-loader against manipulation. Of course "they" could then try to compromise the CD drive...

Still, the NSA is not magic. They do not even have the best hackers, just those with the biggest egos ans smallest morals. These tend to be rather mediocre. No, the problem is that PC security sucks badly and that you can break into almost any standard installation if you throw enough money at the problem. My guess would be that even a restrictive firewall configuration on a Linux firewall keeps them out reliably. Of course, if you use Windows, they can just get past that with the update mechanism and with active help from Microsoft...

Re:Dell

[Bert64]

You sure this isn't an Apple feature called "power nap", the system wakes up and downloads updates, checks for new email etc, then goes back to sleep.

Re:Dell

[deconfliction]

fortunately I just turn off the wifi when I put the machine to sleep. it still does it, but at least I know it isn't sending anything to anyone.

And you are 'turning off' the wifi exactly how? Disconnecting the antenna, or trusting the software switch? (as opposed to a hardware switch interrupting the power or antenna, wouldn't that be a nice feature...)

Re:Dell

[Conqas]

Someone has actually done this: http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack The article describes (in great detail) how the author modified the firmware of a harddrive to monitor for certain data, which essentially works as a key. Once it receives that key, it starts to do nasty stuff.

Misleading Summary

[the eric conspiracy]

If you actually go to the referenced article and read it you will see that these are exploits, not backdoors, and they apply to equipment from non-US manufacturers as well as from US manufacturers, for example Samsung and Huawei.

Good job slashdot. NOT. A nice raspberry for Der Spiegel too.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Desler]

A mix of US manufacturers and non-US manufacturers makes it all 'fine' in some way?

Well except that the GP made no such implication that either was 'fine'. They were simply correcting the summary because the article mentions the exploits cover equipment from non-US companies.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Desler]

No the summary had: "US companies including" and failed to mention any of the non-US companies that the article explicitly called out.

Re:Misleading Summary

[the eric conspiracy]

Do you think the NSA is somehow unique in possessing tapping and forensic tools for IT equipment?

Every police agency in the world will have some of this stuff. Heck, when I accidentally repartitioned a hard drive a couple of years ago I used some software to recover files by carving them. One of the items listed in the article was a splitter cable for crying out loud.

Backdoors are seriously different from exploits. One implies collusion between a national security agency and a manufacturer. An exploit is the work of somebody independent of the manufacturer.

The NSA is seriously a problem. However this summary states US equipment manufacturers are in collusion with them. Without presenting any evidence, and filters out information that contradicts that statement from the reference it cites.

This is not journalism. It's a troll.

Re:Misleading Summary

[Desler]

How dare you point out that difference! It clearly means you're trying to excuse the NSA!!! At least that's what AHuxley and his AC sockpuppet would have people believe.

What it means that is a catalog

[gmuslera]

Even the delusionals that thinks of this is ok because "it is the NSA after all", it means that more people and agencies have access to those backdoors too, and more chances that it end in the hands of the guys with bad intentions, wherever they are or work for, using them for fun, profit or whatever.

I wonder what will do companies where their first line of "protection" is tools and hardware from cisco, juniper, dell or IBM (or engineers certified on them), now that is official that they are remote access tools for others, bury their heads on the sand or try something else.

A good example to the lawmakers needs to be given

[Anonymous Coward]

At earlier convenience we need to tell to IT non-savy senators and congressmen. The backdoor is like an all purpose key. Now all the criminals and agencies will exploit this.

Such a simple explanation and analogy should be adequate to deliver the point.

This will be a boon to other countries

[sandbagger]

I was working for a software company specializing in network security back in the post 2001 period. I recall that we had more than a few discussions with the unskilled egomaniac in charge of the marketing of that firm that many competitors were using their Canadian branch office addresses 'front and centre' in their marketing to the European market.

Why? Because one doesn't always want to be perceived as an American.

The myth of Americans with Canadian flag stickers on their passports is not completely false.

Well, he was horrified at the notion. In fact, if you want to see how existential angst can be suddenly manifest in someone's behaviour in an unexpected setting, try this. I expect that we'll see more of the same in the next year. Ultimately, countries will roll their own code, and have their own Silicon Valleys because of the national security issue. A few years ago I remember seeing an ad from I believe a Swedish firm selling routers and switches that were 'designed and built' in Europe with each unit only delivered to a physical address in Europe. Does anyone else remember this outfit?

Re:This will be a boon to other countries

[davecb]

Because US companies are in greater danger of subversion by the NSA than foreign ones.

BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like this is a loud and clear call for more intensive open source BIOS development.

Re:BIOS

[couchslug]

That and for UVPROM BIOS or other flashing method which cannot be done by the PCs own software.

Remote management = remote exploitation.

Re:BIOS

[gweihir]

You can easily get rid of it, just re-flash. In an advanced compromise, that may need use of an SPI adapter, like the bus-pirate, but is it hardly difficult. Took me about 4 hours to re-flash an Intel NIC recently (same EEPROM as most mainboards), and that was only because I was very careful and wanted it to look nice for a possible show-and-tell with a customer that believes the MAC addresses are a security feature and hard or impossible to change. The most effort would likely go into removing and re-installing the mainboard. (If this ever becomes a real threat, I will just install an adapter...)

Verifying the BIOS should usually be possible with anything that is hard to compromise, e.g. a polymorphic boot-CD made for this or one it just does not know how to compromise. (Nice project, BTW. Any bright student looking for a master's thesis in IT security?) The BIOS is very limited in what it can do to the boot-process, just boot something it does not recognize and you are safe to diagnose the hell out of it.

Re:BIOS

[Agripa]

PCs and other devices used to include a hardware jumper which had to be switched to allow updating the Flash memory.

coin, sides, same

[PopeRatzo]

Don't think for a second that these back-doors that companies put in at the behest of the NSA aren't also being used to the benefit of those companies.

So, if the NSA were shuttered tomorrow, what makes you think those back-doors are going to go away? How much is it worth to those tech companies to know exactly what their customers are doing? How much is it worth to their institutional shareholders?

See, the ugliest part of this is that it's a two-headed monster. Fight one head and the other one will come around and bite you. Both government and corporations have come to believe that they are beyond our reach, above reproach and entitled to everything you have.

Re:coin, sides, same

[PPH]

How much is it worth to those tech companies to know exactly what their customers are doing?

And to the Chinese? Or Russians?

Snowden may have a guest pass in any one of these countries just to keep information surrounding these capabilities quiet. Russia did say he could stay so long as he quit spilling secrets.

It might be a mistake to think in terms of a 'them vs us' race. If the NSA says, "Backdoor the chips" to US companies and then shares that information with our 'enemies' in return for their backdoor exploits, that is worth more to all then trying to keep the capabilities to ourselves. They know we do it, we know they do it. But its still useful technology for keeping our respective populations under control. And that's what each of these governments fears more than an attack from the outside. The FBI/CIA/NSA might miss the occasional 9/11 or Boston bombing. But get on Twitter and try to amass public support for a "throw the bums out" movement and see how long that lasts.

Re:coin, sides, same

[93 Escort Wagon]

Don't think for a second that these back-doors that companies put in at the behest of the NSA aren't also being used to the benefit of those companies.

Read the article please. The companies didn't do anything (really, you seriously think Huawei or Samsung is providing back doors to the NSA?). The NSA is compromising them the same way other bad guys get in - by finding and exploiting flaws in the OS.

The few mentions of hardware in the article are things like special monitor cables which would have to be added to a targeted computer by an agent.

Re:coin, sides, same

[WaffleMonster]

Don't think for a second that these back-doors that companies put in at the behest of the NSA aren't also being used to the benefit of those companies.

There is no evidence from the article we are talking about intentional backdoors created at the request of NSA. Rather the kind of backdoors created by unintentional programming errors where once exploited allows foothold to be maintained by patching firmware of various hardware subsystems.

So, if the NSA were shuttered tomorrow, what makes you think those back-doors are going to go away? How much is it worth to those tech companies to know exactly what their customers are doing? How much is it worth to their institutional shareholders?

How much is legal trouble, bad publicity and resulting loss of customers worth to shareholders?

A (un)intentional backdoor actively exploited to gain market intelligence is a backdoor with high probability of discovery. Likewise any use of covert capability erodes that capability.

Coreboot BIOS

[chill]

Unfortunately I don't have the skill set and there doesn't seem to be any other way to support them.

If you have a machine that supports it, Coreboot could be a very interesting solution.

Re:Coreboot BIOS

[VortexCortex]

Agreed. I use coreboot on all my systems. I put my /boot/ on the firmware, and used a saved configuration so there's no searching for IDEs, etc. at boot. I boot to the login in less than a second.

I do a little firmware / OS dev of my own. Coreboot is far superior than "Secure Boot". Here's why: An OS must kick off its own crypto chain to verify executables and maintain the security provided by signed boot loader. Instead of having to go into the BIOS and enter some long hex code that you and your users WILL mess up for UEFI, I just put the crypto stub of my OS in the firmware. The BIOS just needs an option to say:
[x] Allow OS install on next boot. Then the BIOS can load a stub of the OS into firmware.
That's far simpler, and just as secure -- I mean, if the (possibly PW protected) BIOS can be exploited beyond boot-time then Secure Boot isn't secure either. Bonus: You don't have to implement a FAT32 file system and risk getting sued by MS, like you do with UEFI.

Public key crypto means my OS stub in firmware doesn't have to change every time the kernel does. It can just validate the OS image signature. The benefit is that you don't have to pay the Microsoft tax to get the security features of secured boot sectors. Additionally, if your OS boot payload is small enough then you can deliver the whole thing, and use it as a fall-back if the up to date kernel is missing or corrupt. Let me tell you, today's firmware has space enough for a full OS already -- Complete with animated graphics, backgrounds, and sound effects on many systems. If an OS stub in firmware isn't enough then a second stage loader or data file can be loaded from storage and verified (especially useful for between-boot configuration stuff, to select what OS to multi-boot by default, etc. -- If missing, use sane defaults from firmware install).

An OS stub firmware loader far simpler, more flexible, has no vendor lock-in, and is just as secure (or more secure) than UEFI Secure Boot. Unfortunately, Coreboot isn't going to help if the HDD, GPU, etc firmware or chip microcode has been exploited by the Ken Thompson Hack. The answer is to demand the end of government secrecy -- We have no expectation of privacy outdoors, so we don't need wiretap spies -- Without it we still have more than enough spying. A government without secrets is immune to spies.

Re:The summary is not wrong.

[Desler]

Didn't say the summary was wrong. What it said was perfectly correct, but leaving out the fact that the article didn't just talk about US companies made it misleading.

Damn, the movies have been right all along

[QuantumRiff]

So all those shows we have mocked, like 24, csi, etc, because their tech "hacks the firewall" in 15 seconds were actually accurate? Crap. That changes some things..

Re:Damn, the movies have been right all along

[gweihir]

The NSA has a lot less power than the Stasi. The Stasi could directly go out and arrest or vanish people as it was the enforcement arm of a totalitarian regime. While the US is on the way to a classical totalitarian regime, it is not there yet (but it will get there unless stopped very soon). For example, secret executions of US citizens are really not something the NSA can do, while the Stasi routinely executed citizens it did not like. All completely legal, incidentally.

But yes, I agree that totalitarianism is making a comeback and the masses are cheering it on. Just like the last time. Last time, it took a war with 60 Million dead (just over 2.5% of the world population) to stop it. The catastrophe will be a bit bigger this time though and last much longer.

 

De- & Redamaged

[Rotworm]

I'm not sure if the NSA seeking to exploit technology is particularly damaging to US firms. The NSA is seeking to exploit all technologies, not just American-based ones.
I think the part that does damage American firms, was the end of the second article. It read that the NSA has been redirecting the shipping of some computers to their address, installing software or hardware, repacking the device, and shipping it to the purchaser.

Re: De- & Redamaged

[Rotworm]

It would be resource consuming for the NSA to redirect a computer assembled in Britain and shipped to a Brit, but it would be trivial for the NSA to redirect a computer shipping from America. Therefore, this news is more damaging to US firms.

Re:What are you going to do about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you put it that way... it certainly sounds easier to just let the government keep fucking me up the ass.
By now I'm used to it. And your way sounds like work. Yuck.

Re:What are you going to do about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's compromise. How about every now and then we turn over and let the government look us in the face while they fuck us?

Link to the source

[anorlunda]

TFA does not give a link to this so-called catalog. Does anyone here have the link?

Re:Fedora Linux Question

[gweihir]

SELinux is not under suspicion. Putting backdoors in it would be glaringly obvious to anybody halfway competent doing an analysis, as it is just an access control layer and hence rather simple. Being hard to find is a critical characteristic of any professionally placed backdoor, and hence a backdoor in SELinux is very unlikely. You are barking up the wrong tree.

Bullshit

[pablo_max]

"loose cannon"? Bullshit.
Don't you think for one damn minute that the NSA is "off the ranch" with their programs. They were implemented at the behest of our beloved and benevolent leaders.
The "justice" branch (haha) just declared everything is just fine after all. The executive branch and legislative branch has already said time and time again that the NSA is doing useful and important work.

What really chaps my ass, is not that the government tells people these programs are for the so-called "war on terror" or that certainly, the government would never use it against non-terrorist, but the that nearly every poll indicates that most 'mericans fucking believe them!
I know they have done their best over the last 40 years to indoctrinate kids starting in kindergartener, but it is sad that so many folks just close their eyes and refuse to ask hard questions.
Think about it...forcing children to pledge allegiance to a government... It is fucking crazy. We are brainwashed never to question our masters, and it is working. Fuck, look at the shit your facebook friends post! That is a representation of America.
Disclosure, I feel I have the right to bitch. I did my 4 years in the services and about half that was in the shitty hotspots of the world keeping and eye on brown people.

Hardware IS compromised - it's sold as a "feature"

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Modern laptops and desktops come with remote administration tools built into the chips on the board. (The vendors tout this as a feature, simplifying administration of a large company's workstations. It's easier and cheaper to build it into everything than to be selective, so it's in the machines sold to individuals, too.)

One example: Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) and its standard Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), the latter standardized in 1998 and supported by "over 200 hardware vendors". This is built into the northbridge (or, in early models, the Ethernet) chip).

Just TRY to get a "modern laptop" (or desktop), using an Intel chipset, without this feature.

You can't disable it: Dumping the credentials or reverting to factory settings just makes it think it hasn't been configured yet and accept the first connection (ethernet or WiFi, whether powered up or down) claiming to be the new owner's sysadmins.

If the NSA doesn't know how to use this to spy on, or take over, a target computer, they aren't doing their jobs.

Some of the things this can do (from the Wikipedia articles - see them for the footnotes):

Hardware-based AMT features include:

Encrypted, remote communication channel for network traffic between the IT console and Intel AMT.

Ability for a wired PC (physically connected to the network) outside the company's firewall on an open LAN to establish a secure communication tunnel (via AMT) back to the IT console. Examples of an open LAN include a wired laptop at home or at an SMB site that does not have a proxy server.

Remote power up / power down / power cycle through encrypted WOL.

Remote boot, via integrated device electronics redirect (IDE-R).

Console redirection, via serial over LAN (SOL).

Keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) over network.

Hardware-based filters for monitoring packet headers in inbound and outbound network traffic for known threats (based on programmable timers), and for monitoring known / unknown threats based on time-based heuristics. Laptops and desktop PCs have filters to monitor packet headers. Desktop PCs have packet-header filters and time-based filters.

Isolation circuitry (previously and unofficially called "circuit breaker" by Intel) to port-block, rate-limit, or fully isolate a PC that might be compromised or infected.

Agent presence checking, via hardware-based, policy-based programmable timers. A "miss" generates an event; you can specify that the event generate an alert.

OOB alerting.

Persistent event log, stored in protected memory (not on the hard drive).

Access (preboot) the PC's universal unique identifier (UUID).

Access (preboot) hardware asset information, such as a component's manufacturer and model, which is updated every time the system goes through power-on self-test (POST).

Access (preboot) to third-party data store (TPDS), a protected memory area that software vendors can use, in which to version information, .DAT files, and other information.

Remote configuration opt

Totally missing a chance to improve their image

[Applehu Akbar]

One item on every computer user's wishlist would be to use some of that Internet metadata to identify the gang behind the Cyptolocker virus and have them rendered to some regime that will torture them to death live on Al Jazeera while the whole world applauds.

Open router project

[Hyperhaplo]

Time to support the open router project! If we want to change the world we will need to rebuilt the internet from the ground up.. starting with the devices in our homes.

http://orp1.com/

A trustworthy, open-source software & hardware router

ORP1 is a high performance networking router that allows you to run a firewall, IPSec VPN (virtual private network), and a TOR server for your home network. Its easy-to-use web interface will make encrypted and anonymised communications for your entire network easier to set up and manage. Now you don’t need to be a geek to be able to ensure that every device you use at home uses the internet with privacy, whether it’s your home PC, smartphone or tablet.