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How Cisco Is Trying To Prove It Can Keep NSA Spies Out of Its Gear (csoonline.com)
itwbennett writes: A now infamous photo [leaked by Edward Snowden] showed NSA employees around a box labeled Cisco during a so-called 'interdiction' operation, one of the spy agency's most productive programs,' writes Jeremy Kirk. 'Once that genie is out of the bottle, it's a hell of job to put it back in,' said Steve Durbin, managing director of the Information Security Forum in London. Yet that's just what Cisco is trying to do, and early next year, the company plans to open a facility in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina where customers can test and inspect source code in a secure environment. But, considering that a Cisco router might have 30 million lines of code, proving a product hasn't been tampered with by spy agencies is like trying 'to prove the non-existence of god,' says Joe Skorupa, a networking and communications analyst with Gartner.
That is a lot of code, is that a realistic number for a router? I'm genuinely interested in knowing.
More like "the devil", in this case.
The descent of Big Bang Theory into the Friends zone is complete. Sad.
How can they convince anyone that they can keep the NSA out when the Law says they have to let the NSA in?
In a router??? Bullshit. Windows 10 don't have 30 million lines of code.
Yea but a Cisco router actually does work...
This might be useful only if I could bring my own compiler and could keep the resulting binary and I could install that myself on the hardware (never going to happen).
Even than, the Cisco products includes hardware with sophisticated packet processing capabilities they could just built it into that.
Maybe they should first find a way to ship the product in such a way that it can't be tampered with.
New things are always on the horizon
I also call bs. http://www.informationisbeauti...
Although windows 10 probably does have around 30 million lines.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Just like the documents showing Microsoft handing over their customers communication data to the NSA...once you've been fingered as a good "partner" with the U.S. intelligence apparatus your shelf life as a company has been time bombed...ignition is just waiting on an alternative supplier that can be reasonably trusted (IMHO this could take some years, but its coming...the market is too big and valuable...if given a true choice nobody wants to buy gear from companies that were shown to be stooges for government snooping).
It's guaranteed that cisco is compromised by NSLs. Until this law is fixed, no big vendor can be trusted.
The NSA was supposedly loading code onto hardware. Cisco is a pretty closed environment if they pown the bootloader just exactly how are you going to detect this? You can review all the code you want if your can not trust the hardware it does you no good.
No sir I dont like it.
How about stop making and delivering interdicted custom gear for the NSA/CIA?
I know, I have seen the equipment hooked into AT&Ts network.
It isn't a joke what is happening. In the end we all know why this spying is happening and it is not to make you safer.
It really is all about industrial espionage and taxes, all in pursuit of western bogeymen, they create.
As long as they keep the bogeymen well funded expect more countries shredding freedom and liberty, and all of those that died before us to have given their lives in vain.
I mean look at what they are doing, France wants to rewrite it constitution. For what? Why?
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Back in March , in a related story, one of Cisco's VPs for security, John Stewart, was quoted in the press as saying that Cisco would ship to decoy addresses to circumvent interception by the Government. Supposedly, this was at a roundtable discussion during the Cisco-Live conference in Melbourne, but there is no video of the discussion on the Cisco-live website.
I've heard he was misquoted and they don't actually do it. Does anybody have link to actual video of this discussion? Are they still doing this? Has anybody used that service?
The original slashdot article is http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
Seen enough YouTube videos from cameras packed in shipments for the obvious answer...
These boxes are costly enough to justify packaging it with some device that will record GPS, video, and sound. Make sure there is some good cryptographic signature on the device. Attach it to the router, and put a nasty anti-tamper dye spray to boot. (Although might have some regulatory issues with the explosive device for that, hmmm...).
Give the customer a rebate for returning the tracking device. (After unlocking, of course.)
Of course, the tracking device will need solid cryptographic signature/protection, but would have a lot fewer millions of lines of code than the router!
Then the guy you see stumbling out of the FedEx office covered in dye... he's not with FedEx.
The best the spys can do, then, is to "lose" the device in shipment, pay off the carrier's insurance company (otherwise, insurance rates will go sky-high), and then try to sell the router in the black market to spy on somebody other than the original target.
Step 2) Hacker understands how it works and notices a security issue, but does not reveal it.
Step 3) Return to private home where they design an exploit of that issue.
Frankly, their attempts to keep their security secret just make it harder for the white hats to detect the issues, without significantly affecting the black hats.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I read it as "reporter mistakes all Cisco devices in the program sum to 30 million lines of code for a router has 30 million lines of code" If you had multiple different classes of switch, they may have very little code reuse. The old PIX ran of a standard Intel CPU (not sure about the newer ASA), ASICs differ between even different models in the same router line, so lots of code around those. Sum up all the different devices that they are opening up, and 30M lines of code sounds about right, though 30M lines of code for a single router seems a bit much.
Though, if you don't trust Cisco, how does opening the source code in such controlled circumstances help? Unless you can compile it yourself with a compiler you brought, you can never be sure there isn't a backdoor. There could be code swap between display and deployment, or a backdoor programmed into the compilers, to ensure no code review would ever find it. Or it's only in ASIC based systems, hidden in the chip, and the chip schematics aren't on display.
So the show is merely symbolic, so let's see how it goes.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't know what those particular routers are running. Here is just me listing a few packages off the top of my head that could be in there:
There are 12 million LOC in the kernel alone (linux?)
Another million for libc
2 millions for web server
2 millions for php or whatever they use.
6 million for java.
I have not even included anything cisco might write themselves.
As you can see, it would not be too hard to get to the 30 million LOC mark. The backdoors can be installed in any of these packages not only in the stuff Cisco wrote.
I seriously doubt cisco wrote 30 million LOC for their routers, but once you start counting all the 3rd party software that runs inside those routers 30 million does not seem too far fetched.
I suspect that DD-WRT is in the same ballpark, if only for the linux kernel (the latest release is nearly 20 million lines of code).
And DD-WRT is for home routers.
What good is checking the source code when the NSA is shown to be modifying the gear after it leaves Cisco? You're checking the code that ships from Cisco before the NSA gets it, not what you receive. And what if the NSA isn't touching something in the code but putting in a piece of their own hardware?
Which means that they will be subject to all sorts of pressures to be 'helpful' about it. Let's be clear ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, trusting any US produced hardware or software is a mistake if you want to be SECURE. That the tech firms haven't used this as excuse to move their domicile to somewhere with lower taxes as the real excuse for moving remains a surprise...
Did they move their operations from the US and fire all their US developers and only hire ones from countries with the strongest data protection laws and the weakest spy agencies?
No? Then they are NSA compromised. Here is a letter from the DOJ ordering you to cooperate with the NSA or go to jail. You can't show the letter to anyone or you go to jail. If you want to contest it you will first go to jail and then you will have to contest it in a special court where you can't get any evidence that is in your favour. So you stay in jail.
If companies like Siemens are using Cisco equipment then they are fools.
Thank your government for the fact that no one in their right mind is ever going to trust any hardware coming out of the U.S. ever again. Ain't no putting that genie back in the bottle.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
...Interdiction is where it's at: https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Or maybe use IPSec / SSH with DH Group 19 - that's not looking too clever either: https://weakdh.org/imperfect-f...
All in all, if your threat model includes the NSA then reviewing 30m LOC may seem like a good place to start but in practice.....
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
And I wonder if the NSA root kit will wipe out the Chinese one?
http://saveie6.com/
No.
Look, an out of control surveillance regime which can't even stop terrorists from getting 1000 weapons in the US will spy because they can, no matter what they say.
There's your budget deficit.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The CIA and NSA specialize in intercepting items in transit, modifying them, carefully repacking them to hide any sign of tampering and sending them on to the end recipient.
None of that is impacted in the slightest bit if customers are coming to a warehouse in NC to test it. So it tests clean and they sign off on it. And what happens next? It gets shipped. And if they want to intercept it, they will. And what has been accomplished? Nothing.
And of course this is separate from the OTHER big Cisco issue of counterfeit fake Cisco products dropping into the channel from unclear origins in China. Nobody knows for sure what the hell is in that gear. Is it firmware with malware in it, or malware made to act like firmware? Keyloggers or full blown remote access? Nobody knows. But a lot of businesses have bought that stuff as genuine and installed it and trusted it. The truth is, all bets are off.
Sig for hire.
We already have "did this package get dropped" sensors. So take that to the next level.
Vacume seal an interior bag. Place a module inside the bag with:
1. Internal Battery
2. Sensor package including light and air pressure/composition sensors
3. A small amount of memory
4. A running program which will erase the memory if any of the sensors detect a change
5. a small transmitter, capable of answering a challenge.
Customer/Cisco generate a key using a key exchange protocol, key is loaded into box gaurdian module. Box is shipped. Customer uses an RF device to query the package to see if it has been tampered with, customer informs cisco for an immediate RMA, but accepts delivery, so as to be sure the box can be returned in tact for analysis.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Yes, this is the flaw in a source code only audit. But just compile it yourself and use those binaries. Now, good luck finding a compiler that you know is clean. Even an OSS one can have code in it that recognizes when it is compiling itself and adds the back door to the newly compiled version of the compiler. So while the code is clean, you also have to know that the compiler that compiled the compiler was clean. and not the current version of its source but the binary.
Even an OSS one can have code in it that recognizes when it is compiling itself and adds the back door to the newly compiled version of the compiler.
You're referring to the "Ken Thompson hack," but it's not a real threat. You would have to solve the halting problem for a compiler to know whether or not it is compiling itself, or a version of itself. That is to say, a compiler could recognize a copy of its source code. It could also recognize familiar strings that it can find, or worse (from a false negative standpoint) hashes of that code, or parts thereof ("signatures"), and as we (should) all know, signatures are easy to defeat, which is why antivirus software is great for detecting known threats, but not so useful for preventing future threats. A program cannot identify another program based on what the program actually does -- say, compile source code and output a binary -- else we would have solved the halting problem, and we would have bug-free code, and perfect antivirus, which would render the Ken Thompson hack ineffective anyway. Yay!
Moreover, regardless of the attack vector, even a compromised binary can't hide from disassembly and human inspection. And if you're incredibly paranoid, then you could use side-channel analysis to see if anything is happening that's not supposed to be happening, unless you think the NSA has also hacked physics, then nothing I can say matters anyway.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere