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Schneier: Either Everyone Is Cyber-secure Or No One Is
Presto Vivace sends a new essay from Bruce Schneier called "The Democratization of Cyberattack." Quoting:
When I was working with the Guardian on the Snowden documents, the one top-secret program the NSA desperately did not want us to expose was QUANTUM. This is the NSA's program for what is called packet injection--basically, a technology that allows the agency to hack into computers.Turns out, though, that the NSA was not alone in its use of this technology. The Chinese government uses packet injection to attack computers. The cyberweapons manufacturer Hacking Team sells packet injection technology to any government willing to pay for it. Criminals use it. And there are hacker tools that give the capability to individuals as well. ... We can't choose a world where the U.S. gets to spy but China doesn't, or even a world where governments get to spy and criminals don't. We need to choose, as a matter of policy, communications systems that are secure for all users, or ones that are vulnerable to all attackers. It's security or surveillance.
not sure how packet injection breaks into my computer.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Its always seemed obvious to me that the system that you *know* grants unauthorised access cannot be considered to be secure. I never thought I was saying anything profound or even worthwhile, but apparently this fact is lost on a good number of people.
Right now there's not really an option, we're all insecure. And we will continue to be insecure as long as we favor features over security (which probably won't change).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That won't make you secure. Given how government programmers operate, it will probably be less secure.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're preaching to the choir here... but it'd sure be great if you got a chance to explain this to the President and to Congress, though.
#DeleteChrome
It's already implemented.
The powers that be have chosen "No one is cyber-secure" for you.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This summary ends in a conclusion which seems appropriate for slashdot. But it grew from a questionable source.
We are expected to believe that Mr. Schneier at the Guardian, one of the anointed who had access to Snowden documents ... the NSA contacted him with concerns about exposing QUANTUM? Was this done by telephone, via intermediaries or a personal visit? How did the NSA know the Guardian/Schneier knew about QUANTUM? The logistics, the timeline, the specifics of this meeting have escaped me in this short summary and in TFA. Schneier has a good reputation at slashdot but that doesn't excuse him from documenting his public statements. I think the facts of his NSA communication are important if this allegation has substance. This is not Fox news and readers expect more than accusations and opinions.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Haven't people testing wireless security with aircrack been using packet injection for like... years??
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Taking advantage of broken infrastructure (weakened crypto, for example) is easy. Creating and maintaining ICBM technology is not.
What's with the clickbait headlines? By itself, the headline is total BS. The actual statement made, however, is spot on. The hole in your security doesn't care who exploits it. There's no "good guy" flag in IP headers (though I'm sure some April 1st RFC will soon introduce it).
What worries me most is that we could win this fight, if it weren't for our own governments deciding to betray us. There are vastly more people interested in secure communication and other people not being able to spy on or subvert our computers and mobile devices than there are people interested in compromised communications and systems (basically only criminals and some deluded, criminal-if-the-laws-were-right elements of governments).
There is just one problem to Bruce's argument: The largest and most powerful spy agency in the world disagrees with his fundamental assumption. We often forget that the NSA has two missions, and they are exactly the two things that Bruce argues cannot co-exist: To secure the computing infrastructure of the US against foreign espionage, and to provide espionage on foreign communication.
The NSA believes, and/or is tasked with exactly these two things that Bruce says (and I agree) are mutually exclusive. No surprise they've gone rogue, their very mission statement is a recipe for a mental breakdown through cognitive dissonance.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"... This is the NSA's program for what is called packet injection--basically, a technology that allows the agency to hack into computers.Turns out, though, that the NSA was not alone in its use of this technology. The Chinese government uses packet injection to attack computers." ,,,that ALL the spies have much more in common with each other than they do with civilians.
Towards the end of the Cold War the UK and Russian intelligence services were routinely exchanging data on their activities - the idea being that this enabled each group to justify its budget to its masters by warning of what the other side were doing.
Effectively, this whole field is a self-perpetuating blot on humanity. Spies justify their ever-increasing budgets by claiming that they are 'saving' their country from unspecified secret threats which do not really exist. And then they recommend that the military undertake destabilising activities in an attempt to make these threats exist. Why do you think that we went into the Middle East, Russia went into the Ukraine, or China is moving into the islands around Japan?
It's already implemented.
The powers that be have chosen "No one is cyber-secure" for you.
Granted, nothing is perfect. But I'd like to see any demonstration of hacking a system like this.
Or, rather, I'd like to see them try.
Real network security is defined by the quality of its endpoints. And to have secure endpoints we need a personal computing culture that values openness as the first step to better security.
For those that don't know or have forgotten. The British PM made a statement that he wants to ban communication which cannot be intercepted and deciphered by the government. We may as well just send all our communication in plain text ascii.
1 Companies that sell software... better have all code open sourced (not same as free) or should be labelled "NOT TO BE TRUSTED".
No way to tell whether the provided source code matches the provided firmware
Code (including scripts and updates) is then compiled locally and before first execution hash checked automatically against non-centralized database (p2p technology similar to bitcoin block chain)
1) binary code will vary depending on the specific architecture, optimizations, and libraries during compilation. 2) a hash can be falsified as easily as a binary.
3. All hardware sold with precise technical diagrams... or should be labelled "NOT TO BE TRUSTED"
At least an order of magnitude less effective than open source, and we've seen that even "important" OSS like openssl can go decades without independent code review.
4. All encryption always on client side.
Quite sensible, although I suspect that people will rapidly become frustrated when they forget their pass phrase, or lose their private key, and 5 years of family snapshots disappear. Or when grandma dies, taking access to her archive of family history with her.
5. Get rid of centralized authorities for security (looking at you SSL) Centralized servers have big fat sign that say "NOT TO BE TRUSTED". P2P.
Because you'd rather trust 1000 amateurs to secure all of their systems than one professional to secure his server?
7. Shaming lists on NGOs (applause to EFF). Any politician that votes for mass surveillance or doesn't adhere to above principles. put on NGO lists as "HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS"
Yeah, ranks right up there with executing journalists and kidnapping babies. Among the most certain ways to get people to ignore you is to blow your cause completely out of proportion. If you use the same words to describe digital surveillance as other people use to describe the Khmer Rouge or Stalin, then people are going to think you're a nutcase.
If you use the same words to describe digital surveillance as other people use to describe the Khmer Rouge or Stalin, then you're a nutcase.
FTFY. I dont even think Stallman is nuts enough to make that comparison.
Its also hillarious that GP is saying that no closed-source hardware should be used. Remind me-- how many "open-source" processors, hard drives, SSDs, and SoCs do we have out there? Who do you trust to build your chips? You gonna label Intel's fabs "not to be trusted"? And if so-- which "FOSS Fab" do you plan to use?
The problem with asking geeks to implement policy is that a vast majority of them think they have very good ideas, which are totally disconnected from reality. Its called "Ivory tower thinking"
I'd have to disagree given how many countries now have long range rocket technology. It's merely a matter of scale after that. The biggest issue most have is guidance technology. Apparently that's still a big problem, much like the V1/V2s in WWII, they weren't good for eliminating a target, but they were excellent for demoralizing the populace.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Either we're all safe, or we all get destroyed.
I don't have a sig.
We choose security for our homes but why don't we all live in bank vaults? cost? aesthetics?
There are some types of security that the average person simply can't have. Most of us have no choice but to use a commercial provider for our internet access and as long as we can't own and control every point between us and our target node and the development and manufacturer of every critical component in our devices - our governments will always be able to subvert our trust and spy on us anyway.
You're expecting companies that only care about making money to care about our security. They only care so far - to the point that people are satisfied enough to buy the service. For enough money or with threats of their profits or ability to do business being affected - There's very few businesses that won't comply and those that don't suddenly find themselves restricted in such a way as to lose out to their competitors. The shareholders won't be happy and they're more important to businesses than morality - or you.
There is nothing that anybody can do or say that will represent undeniable evidence that at some point in the chain, be it in your chips or your wires; security has not been compromised.
Remember - they're not protecting us, they're protecting themselves. It's not your elected officials that are making these decisions, it's unelected heads of powerful branches of government that are unaffected by elections.
Vote for whoever you like but the true power lies with agencies such as the NSA, CIA, GHCQ, MI5, MI6, Mossad.
No vote you cast will topple those pyramids and they live for control and power over you, foreign states and each other.
You want true security? fire every last single person from the top to the bottom in every last government connected office and replace them with randomly selected, suitable candidates. It's the only way you'll weed out the corruption that's the true heart of all the decisions that are made on 'our behalf'.
This way, you can only get security by obscurity. Not much. You also get all the expenses of in-house development. A LOT.
Another huge problem with all this data gathering is that the amount of data is impossible to process by humans, so the agencies will have to rely on algorithms to find the "bad guys". Who can defend themself against accusations or persecution that falls out of such algorithms? It quickly becomes a case of everybody have to prove their own innocense (which of course is impossible). Add injection of false data and corruption of databases, and we are all doomed.
is the enemy of good.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Dont forget, there are two types of people - those who separate everyone into two types, and those who don't
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Given the devastating effects of a nuclear or biological airburst, there's a lot of situations where actually hitting the target might not even be desirable. Still, there's a world of difference between a rocket that can go hundreds of miles, and one that can go ten thousand - and you *really* don't want that super-secret, never-been-tested ICBM to blow up on the launch pad or while it's still over friendly territory. A nuclear warhead probably wouldn't detonate, but a chemical or biological warhead would quite likely be effectively dispersed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Because mass surveillance doesn't exist in other economic and political systems.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's a difference in hitting LA or the Galapagos, which is the type of error margin you can get with ICBMs.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Actually, discussions on Slashdot have never been well informed; they were bad back then, and they are worse now. "Well informed" died in september 1995, it existed on USENET prior to that.
... everyone has access to the same tools.
By way of example, it's damn near impossible for me to buy a grenade, but the military has lots.
The way cyber warfare is developing, it's more of a level playing field.
The major difference between capabilities of governments and civilians, on the cyber warfare stage, is money.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
also uses DPI (packet injection) and is supposed to be the state-of-the-art full-spectrum intelligence platform: it will allow one to intercept an email, alter and forward it unknown to either the addressor or addressee, with a new meeting time and place, and then dispatch either an extreme rendition, or kill team, to the rendezvous point. Ain't life grand?
https://www.wikileaks.org/spyf...
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
http://www.allgov.com/news/us-...
http://securityaffairs.co/word...
Commenter claims: . We often forget that the NSA has two missions, and they are exactly the two things that Bruce argues cannot co-exist: To secure the computing infrastructure of the US against foreign espionage, and to provide espionage on foreign communication.
Had you ever worked at the NSA, or served in military intelligence, you would know better, as their two missions are financial intelligence acquisition for the money masters, and command-and-control of the populace. Sometime you might study the history of who founded the American intelligence establishment, or else peruse the three chapters on the Kennedy administration in Richard Parker's outstanding biography of John Kenneth Galbraith.
If the intermediaries matter, you're doing it wrong.
But Our Country is better than this, said all my grade school teachers (yes, I was schooled in an inner-city school district).
Only I can judge you.
"Remind me-- how many "open-source" processors, hard drives, SSDs, and SoCs do we have out there? Who do you trust to build your chips? You gonna label Intel's fabs "not to be trusted"? And if so-- which "FOSS Fab" do you plan to use?" You are speaking in terms of pragmatic reality in present. Pragmatism is precisely why systems are insecure today. I am speaking in terms of principles to get us where we want to be.. real security.