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How NSA Spies Stole the Keys To the Encryption Castle

Posted by timothy on from the thanks-fellas-really-you've-done-enough dept.

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.

2 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Every company should release their private data by CQDX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    on every US and UK government employee. Let them become life-time victims of identity theft. Let the Chinese and Russian intelligence agencies have a field day. It's the only hope we have that they'll learn.

  2. Snowden fatigue by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This should either be the biggest news story on the planet, or the biggest lie of the year, but the public response seems to be "meh". The problem is, Snowden stole too much. Or claims to have stolen too much. There have been so *many* earthshattering Snowden revelations that both the outrage and the fact-checking seems to have evaporated.

    This is a big problem either way.