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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.
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."
Zero day vulnerability even if you don't visit an infected website.
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?
The guardian team has spoken before, they raise all of their publications to the Department of Defense and NSA for comment before releasing to the public. This is why some of the information coming from the Guardian is still redacted. They're trying to make sure they're not putting anyone's lives at risk in the process of disclosure.
It's not the idea that was top secret. It's the specific implementation and the fact that they were using it and what for that was secret.
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
not sure how packet injection breaks into my computer.
It's not about hacking into your computer. It's about the fact that the govt spy agencies had quite sophisticated spying infrastructure installed into key parts of the internet. Why this is a surprise to anybody is beyond me. Other than the negative PR value (which I'm sure some 'we're protecting you from pedophiles rhetoric' would fix I don't even know why the govt particularly cared if people found out.
Sounds like an argument for IPSec for anything that matters - as long as you're Doing It Right you get message integrity and authenticity. That's the whole point.
Now, if someone's cracked IKEv2, SHA, or AES all bets are off.
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