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How NSA Spies Stole the Keys To the Encryption Castle
Advocatus Diaboli writes with this excerpt from The Intercept's explanation of just how it is the NSA weaseled its way into one important part of our communications: AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world's cellular communications, including both voice and data.
We're not even over the NSA hard drive hacks and now this?
Next you're gonna tell me Americans shove food up people's ass for freedom. Oh wait they do.
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Remarkable feat! Guys from Bletchley Park — who also intercepted and decrypted everything they possibly could — would've been proud...
These are the "guys from Bletchley Park" -- in the sense that it's the same government organisation.
"During the Second World War, GC&CS was based largely at Bletchley Park ... GC&CS was renamed the "Government Communications Headquarters" in June 1946"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Gemalto is in the Netherlands. It's entirely legal for the NSA and GCHQ to do anything they want outside of their home countries. They were both chartered 60+ years ago to spy on foreign communications. You can certainly argue that this attack was unethical, or a bad idea, and it was definitely illegal under Dutch law- but it was legal under British and American law.
What exactly is your statement based on? The NSA actively recruits math and CS majors with high GPAs (source: I've been approached and I have friends that were as well) and/or unique talents. I'm sure they do have some flunkies working for them, probably mostly among its military population, but your statement is totally out of line.
Hardly, this is their fucking job. I'm glad they did it, and sad that it got publicized.
Re "If he was sitting on this information, then why wait so long to release it? "
All the material is now in the hands of the press. The press can release the material in any way it wants or needs to.
Re "Could someone explain where Edward Snowden is getting these kind of leaks and infos from, so long after he fled the NSA?"
The material released by the press is long term generational projects staff get read into as they need to work on the same projects or with staff who do.
Re the how http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... "Edward Snowden: I was a high-tech spy for the CIA and NSA" (28 May 2014)
"...he said he had worked for the CIA and NSA undercover, overseas, and lectured at the Defense Intelligence Agency."
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
But on a smart card, asymmetric cryptography can be used. The private key is generated by the chip on user request. It is not supposed to leak outside of the device.
As I understand, this SIM debacle is only possible because the cryptography used here is symmetric, which means the telephone operator must have a copy of the SIM key.