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New Snowden Leaks Show NSA Attacked Anti-Virus Software
New submitter Patricbranson writes: The NSA, along with its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), spent years reverse-engineering popular computer security software in order to spy on email and other electronic communications, according to the classified documents published by the online news site The Intercept. With various countries' spy agencies trying to make sure computers aren't secure (from their own intrusions, at least), it's no wonder that Kaspersky doesn't want to talk about who hacked them.
Yet another excerpt from the Snowden documents that has nothing to do whatsoever with domestic surveillance.
In fact, I can't remember the last time it did.
1) Get full copy of file to scan in memory
2) Check file for viruses
3) Send complete copy to national HQ, er, I mean, check the AV database
4) Open file
Basically the NSA and its Stasi partners are directly compromising / attacking U.S. citizens (and other world citizens) computer security software. This is significant as it shows just how much at direct odds with the general interests of the U.S. citizenry (to have secure computers and internet infrastructure) the U.S. surveillance state has secretly chosen - a direct contradiction to the population's general interests.
If you dive into the article you'll see that all AntiVirus vendors are listed as "targets" except for the few that are U.S. and British based - presumably because they've already co-opted them into the Five Eyes Stasi population surveillance business group. This also shows the direct betrayal the NSA and Co. made years ago for the U.S. population (after the U.S. citizenry democratically said No to the Clipper Chip and U.S. government surveillance of their communications / computing related equipment). The NSA etc. betrayed that democratic choice in secret and deliberately kept hidden and has / is working for absolutely wide open computer / backbone equipment access for them & their Five Eyes partners with back doors in everything (even in your anti-virus software as this article shows) so they can spy on whomever, whenever, wherever they want (and we know that include lots of domestic surveillance). That also means the NSA chose this everything is vulnerable environment for the "bad guys" too - as back doors are open for everyone - another direct betrayal of the main computer related interest of the U.S. citizenry. JMHO...
The NSA and GCHQ were doing their jobs!
That was essentially my thought. These organizations' charters include being able to attack adversaries if necessary, and they were looking into methods of attack. Where is the surprise? The technical arm of every other country's spy agencies are doing the exact same thing, though perhaps with less ability, so explain to me what about this is news?
Um yeah... You might want to check your facts Fanboi.
http://www.gfi.com/blog/most-vulnerable-operating-systems-and-applications-in-2014/
They were reverse engineering software. I didn't see anything in here about cracking AV vendor networks or anything like that. I'm sure there are plenty of other people trying to reverse engineer software. Wouldn't it be reasonable to say this is within the security agency's baliwick? I didn't see anything about misusing whatever they found. Very interesting though that domestic producers were not listed. Maybe because they didn't need a warrant to do the reverse engineering, or as suggested by others they might already be compromised.
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NSA Attacked Anti-Virus Software
And ya'll laughed at John McAfee and called him crazy!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They are intentionally weakening the protections we use to keep ourselves safe.
No, the weaknesses were created by the AV vendors, not the NSA and GCHQ. Do you also object to other security researchers looking though code for weaknesses, and when they find something say they are weakening the software's security? (Unfortunately there are some companies that have tried that). The difference here is mainly in what is done with the knowledge once found, and what these organizations are doing with it is consistent with their missions. In the industry it is called equities, namely deciding what is in the nation's best interest, whether to reveal a flaw so it can be fixed, or keep it secret so it can be used against an adversary.
'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it'