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FBI Software For Analyzing Fingerprints Contains Russian-Made Code, Whistleblowers Say (buzzfeed.com)
schwit1 shares an exclusive report via BuzzFeed: The fingerprint-analysis software used by the FBI and more than 18,000 other U.S. law enforcement agencies contains code created by a Russian firm with close ties to the Kremlin, according to documents and two whistleblowers. The allegations raise concerns that Russian hackers could gain backdoor access to sensitive biometric information on millions of Americans, or even compromise wider national security and law enforcement computer systems. The Russian code was inserted into the fingerprint-analysis software by a French company, said the two whistleblowers, who are former employees of that company. The firm -- then a subsidiary of the massive Paris-based conglomerate Safran -- deliberately concealed from the FBI the fact that it had purchased the Russian code in a secret deal, they said. The Russian company whose code ended up in the FBI's fingerprint-analysis software has Kremlin connections that should raise similar national security concerns, said the whistleblowers, both French nationals who worked in Russia. The Russian company, Papillon AO, boasts in its own publications about its close cooperation with various Russian ministries as well as the Federal Security Service -- the intelligence agency known as the FSB that is a successor of the Soviet-era KGB and has been implicated in other hacks of U.S. targets.
Cybersecurity experts said the danger of using the Russian-made code couldn't be assessed without examining the code itself. But "the fact that there were connections to the FSB would make me nervous to use this software," said Tim Evans, who worked as director of operational policy for the National Security Agency's elite cyberintelligence unit known as Tailored Access Operations and now helps run the cybersecurity firm Adlumin. The FBI's overhaul of its fingerprint-recognition technology, unveiled in 2011, was part of a larger initiative known as Next Generation Identification to expand the bureau's use of biometrics, including face- and iris-recognition technology. The TSA also relies on the FBI fingerprint database.
Cybersecurity experts said the danger of using the Russian-made code couldn't be assessed without examining the code itself. But "the fact that there were connections to the FSB would make me nervous to use this software," said Tim Evans, who worked as director of operational policy for the National Security Agency's elite cyberintelligence unit known as Tailored Access Operations and now helps run the cybersecurity firm Adlumin. The FBI's overhaul of its fingerprint-recognition technology, unveiled in 2011, was part of a larger initiative known as Next Generation Identification to expand the bureau's use of biometrics, including face- and iris-recognition technology. The TSA also relies on the FBI fingerprint database.
This anti-Russia hysteria is really jumping the shark about now. A Russian company makes biometric software. Naturally, being Russian, they have 'close ties to the Kremlin', and are no doubt putting in nefarious backdoors to purloin the biometric data of unsuspecting Americans. Because, you know, Russia.
This is worse than the Kaspersky stupidity, which is saying something.
But all closed source software is nefarious and could easily have a backdoor. Three letter agency from any nation state already knows this.
You'd think slashdotters would also...
Enough with this red-bating McCarthyism.
is not a issue if the code is audited. If the code has not been audited then the FBI et al should be ashamed. The people who are/were in charge of this 10 years ago should be forced to retire if there was no audit. And no pension or parachute.
I thought that architecture and the base code in the Linux networking protocol stack was mostly written by some guy in Russia. Can anyone here confirm that?
If true, it therefore must follow that Putin has my browser history. And yours. Also everything we ever did online.
That seems to be about the standard for panic being followed. here.
Can nobody with skills be found in the USA to be trusted to work on US computer systems for US law enforcement?
Do people in the US private sector get invited to work on US law enforcement sensitive software?
Does the FBI not trust US experts with security clearances to write quality code on time for the FBI?
Has the FBI had some bad past experiences software created and supported domestiaclly?
Did the US workers sell or copy code from law enfacement for another nations/criminal groups/their own use so it was time to trust something different?
What do programmers in other nations like France have that the FBI cannot find in security cleared graduates and engineers domestically?
What did the French do better in the math and science education that they can out smart everyone in the US that could have completed a US law enforcement sensitive project?
What did the French do that so that impressed the FBI during the procurement that locked out people from the USA?
Did the French software do calculations on US hardware faster? Was the GUI more pretty and more ready for law enforcement needs? Did it work with other US law enforcement databases in better ways?
What can loyal, hardworking US brands do to win back the trust of the FBI and once again sell quality US designed software to the US government again?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
npm deploy tinfoil-hat --save-dev There's no Russian code on github, is there?
..all roads lead to russia
(about time we start a new meme dont you think?)
And all of the FBI's computers use chips made in China. Considering the relative sizes of their economies and populations, it seems that China presents the greater strategic threat. No one seems to mention that, though.
When you outsource everything there is not much more left Made in USA. The only choice you have left is if you want a code from Russia, post-Russian countries, China, or India.
How many pulls from Russians???
How much US agency code runs in foreign systems in benefit of US intelligence collection?
Face it, its Putin that's the problem here, blaming this to a wider Russian problem is not correct. Putin fears elections because he jails his opponents, so he isn't representative of the whole of Russia.
What's needed is regime change in Russia.
It's Putin that ordered the attack on the US elections, it's Putin that is cocky enough to threaten the major democracies around the world, it's *Putin*, it's Putin's paymaster that Erick Prince met in the Seychelles, again and again it's Putin and his little circle of helpers that are the problem here.
The reason this code cannot be trusted is because its from companies in Putin's little circle of helpers in the FSB. You can't have network accessible code from the Russian FSB in the FBI's code base. That's fooking dumb.
"This is worse than the Kaspersky stupidity,"
Kaspersky scans code for signatures and UPLOADS the code it doesn't have a signature for to their own servers for analysis. FFS, every company has exposed their corporate software to Kaspersky unknowingly. You can kid yourself they're benign about it, but are you really that naive? Do you lock your office door when you go out??
Go fuck yourself, you damn dirty ape.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Burn, karma, burn!
Have fun at -1!
Hey man, you are good.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
We may have "elected" a Russian puppet "president" but he's the traitor, not me.
All you fucking traitors and retards can serve as Vladimir Putin's cockholster like Moscow Donald but I'm a loyal American and I don't take kindly to treasonous faggots like you.
Made in America by Pakistanis and Chinese! Is that safer than made in Russia? Only Hillary Clinton can say for sure!
Code is code is code... stop trying to spread fair and hatred
"Shut up its good money, no its not a PAC because we are not specificly tryign to get anyone elected, just get Russian Installed Trump out of office and play musical chairs with Hillary so she can finish up the rest of the term, plain tech news is boring and you should go to (M)ARS if you dont like it. We have a quoata on Russian stories or else we get fired" - by BeauHD (1) A FUCKING SCUMBAG LIKE WHIPSLASH ( 5161731 ) on Wednesday December 27, 2017 @10:59PM (#55819673)
See my subject: You're on the fucking take betraying our nation! I always knew whipslash was no good & you prove it!
* Trustfund baby whipdouche & you are trash! The fucking worst kind...
"SENIOR EDITOR"? Big FUCKING DEAL you punk douchebag - any fuckwad can do that bullshit you no good shitbag fuck!
APK
P.S.=> No wonder this site went to shit - shit bags like you & the owner took over it... apk
Just because code is written by russians with connections to the FSB doesn't mean it's necessarily bad...
The fact that russians wrote or at some point had access to the code doesn't automatically give them access to data that the code is later processing, unless there are backdoor in the code allowing them to gain access and there aren't some other mitigating factors (network filters, airgap etc) which prevent them from accessing the backdoor.
Considering that the code analyzes fingerprints, who would have a need for such code? Chances are the FSB need to analyze fingerprints in much the same way the FBI do. It makes sense to collaborate with others who have similar requirements, as this will decrease your development costs. You just need to check the code thoroughly to ensure it works as you want it to. The russians will be doing their own checks during collaborative development, as they will be equally concerned that some of the code was written by people connected to the FBI.
The key point is understanding what your doing, and understanding what code you're running. Who wrote it doesn't matter, so long as it does the job it's supposed to.
Plus consider this, if the FSB wanted to get malicious code onto an american system they would go to great lengths to disguise the origin of the code, which doesn't seem to be the case here.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Some of the Indians that are doing contracting work on western software are putting in backdoors for Russians, who then replace it with a different one and then let the code sit for a bit. This is why Microsoft has done tons of work to secure windows and yet the penetration rate on the most advanced continues to stay high. If CIOs continue to pay other nations such low money, then it should not be surprising that this has been going on for over 10 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
demand the source code for any tool used by cops at your tail.
in dui cases it has worked.
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
Who do you give the benefit of the doubt to the United States of America Intelligence Agencies or Russia? US Citizens who are not traitors pick the US.
for the U.S. The vast majority of the world's software is made and sold by U.S. companies. If these software paranoia stories incite a global panic so that every country only "trusts" software made domestically, the biggest loser is going to be the U.S.
BeauHD, EditorDavid and msmash are total fucking idiots. They keep on pushing these fake-ass neocon, pro-war, libtard propaganda. You three are killing this site for fuck's sake. All three of you are useful idiots and shills.
See subject: I checked out this site's owner's reviews (BizX ala Whipslash) & I don't like what I see from GlassDoor reviews:
"the company was very big on black-hat SEO tactics"
"single source of revenue corporation -- google ads. If they have a bad month, they layoff people." THIS EXPLAINS A LOT HERE
"I would have to agree with the negative comments on this list the reviews are made up by the company. I've met the owner and he's a shady dude."
"Everyone I talk to that has worked for this man (a good 7 or 8 employees), has had pretty much the same opinion of him (narcissistic, cheap, clueless, selfish, etc)" meaning whipslash
"fire people right before any bonus is paid"
"You never knew when the boss would show up and threaten everyone's job""necessary to fire anyone at will because they don't agree with them. The fact that this has happened to well over a dozen people in the past year is evidence that something is deeply wrong"
"I had a very bummer experience with Bizx, LLC"
"Don't work with them or for them Ã" BizX is not a company I'd ever trust. I was an employee there and the web content produced is written by doing minimal research and pushing advertisers rather than on actual experience"
"Often hostile leadership, micromanaging, and a feeling that your efforts are worthless. Leadership will often pit co-workers against each other, and there is a definite lack of cooperation within the departments, which leads to "each for themselves" type of company culture."
"During the time I was there, people were getting fired so often that people were always scared they were next. A day when the owner doesn't visit was a 'good day'"
"Don't waste your time with this company"
"NOT RECOMMENDED Respect is a two-way street, however you won't get any from upper management. Talking down to employees, yelling, cursing. There are better opportunities out there"
"the low pay wasn't worth it."
"dissent or differing opinions are absolutely not tolerated. Try it and you'll be fired."
"management has been known to yell at people as if they are children"
APK
P.S.=> I am starting to realize WHY a lot of the 'old timers' here took off & I should've realized something was wrong myself seeing that. I really don't think I want to hang here anymore after reading the above & I used to really like this place but I accomplished what I wanted here (using tech expertise to find any 'holes' in what I was working on). This is making me think VERY HARD about seeking greener pastures - trolls I can handle with facts. Bad people I don't handle & do not want to be around them, & yes, I do RUN AWAY from them (eventually they are bad news & take YOU with them & I've known a lot of that kind in cities & well enough to RUN fast))... apk
If you like this clickbait, you'll love our stories on how the US military designed TCP/IP for nuclear war and the BSD code for it contains daemons! This internet will kill us all.
Some 20 years I worked on a big budget (it involved Satellites...) project. One of my co-workers was from Russia, and was his wife. Once you ran his code through indent it was pretty sweet stuff. He was a great guy, his wife was a wonderful woman, and last I saw of him his wife was 8 months pregnant. The joys of being a consultant at the end of the project.
// Seriously, Alex indented 1 column at a time, no blank lines anywhere, no whitespace in for/while loops, etc
/// After indent his code was beautiful.
/ we used to joke that in Russia they charged for whitespace
>Buzzfeed
Now they will identify Natasha's fingerprints on the blueprints!
> ... This anti-Russia hysteria is really jumping the shark about now ...
And yet Slashdot, a site supposed to know better, decides to double down and shoves that hysteria down our throats
Slashdot ... what the bloody hell it is becoming?
Note that US Army uses algebra to calculate trajectories of ballistic missiles. And algebra was developed in Islamic aliphate in IX century.
BTW, Russians in Kremlin use American software such as Wndows or MS Office. Moreover some years ago Russian President Medvedev accepted an iPhone as a gift from Jobs.
Still ZERO evidence of Russian hacking or involvement. But ample evidence of s deeply corrupt DNC.
You poor desperate sods still have no idea why Trump will win a second term. But I already know who you're going to blame. LOL
There is an old Spanish saying that could be translated more or less "Thieves think that every body is also a thief". We must conclude that that is exactly what USA is doing: infecting every piece of software and equipment, as Snowden said.
So non-USA government agencies are ridiculously stupid using the slightest bit of software or equipment coming from USA.
A system with millions of fingerprints and who knows what other demographic and biometric data should be air-gapped out of principle. That's an information gold mine that will be a prime target for every bad actor on the planet, state-sponsored or not.
OMG, it's in billions of android phones!
People looked over the NSA's contribution pretty darn carefully, but it went in. Although most agenies don't contribute openly, I'm sure staff from the GCHQ, Spetssvyaz, Mossad, BRGE, BSI, etc. have contributed.
I'm less sure about the PLA, and while I doubt the (North) Korea Computer Center has contributed anything back, I'd be surprised rather tan shocked to learn I'm wrong.
Note how whisthleblower used to mean someone who exposes internal problems as a last resort to get them fixed , for the greater benefit, and at huge personal cost.
Now every official (anonymous) leaker becomes a whistleblower. The original whistleblower is just a traitor.
These guys, Hala and Desbois, are ex employees who make a problem out of nothing. Why are they considered whistleblowers?
But, they're still going to keep them.
When auto correct changes "fear" to "fair," that says a lot about a person.
And the rest of the world uses computers, smartphones, cpus and gadgets with software-code partly made in USA... So should the rest of the world stop using technology alltogether?!?
Well, someone did - Safran.
Almost all the internet connected devices in America are made in China, including most of the stuff used by FBI. Which gives more opportunities for mischief? A source code or unseeable embedded device controlling software?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So you're saying the FBI isn't smart enough to be able to put this software in a machine on an untrusted network, and firewall it so that it can only connect to a specific host, and not leak info back to any possible other sites in the world?
It's obvious this is just more Red Baiting, straight from the 1950s. Fsck that noise.
APK you are just mad that that people pointed out how retarded you are.
You got spanked hard so many times yesterday that you now need to lash out.
APK doesn't like it when his BS is called out which only makes him more angry.
You can't refute any criticisms of your work with facts and can't defend any of your claims logically, so instead you feverishly pound out responses that looks like a dog vomited up a box of Alpha-bits and then crapped out some punctuation on it.
No law enforcement agency should be using any code they didn't review and compile themselves. Then it wouldn't matter where it came from - code is code.
Nothing wrong with the code itself, so long as it can be inspected. The two things that ARE worrying:
(1) the firm deliberately concealed the fact it purchased it from a Russian company (why not be transparent?)
(2) could this create a 'backdoor' of sorts to manipulate the results of a fingerprint check (e.g., certain patterns come back clean, etc.)?
if we continue this guilt by association and say that anything that somehow has been "tainted" by Russians, then we would have a fraction of the technology we current have. This is getting ridiculous.
Good god, the American Left is just looney tunes now with this Russian crap.
Vladimir Putin keeps raping my goats. That asshole!
Keep losing elections.
"known as the FSB that is a successor of the Soviet-era KGB" both FSB (federal security agency) and KGB (national security committee) properly translate to English (what people actually understand beneath each word) as a National Security Agency.
Russia has no sense of conquest. Stop believing anybody stein or berg. FFS SMFH
Like oh wow they really want to change our politicians so they can what? Get more of our fiat currency that is actually merely debt instrument level?
look on investopedia:
fiat money
fractional reserve banking
No M3 since 2009. That is the m1//m2/M3/m4 money supply report M. How much currency is in circulation. They just stopped reporting it because it was "not worth the effort". usdebtclock.org
Forget any and every thing any Jew-affiliate or Jew says. Period. Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen GFY. Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was a scam in the first place. Our money isn't backed. There is no gold, no silver, and our oil aside from WTI is foreign. Fort Knox is empty. Forget about Russia. Like they are going to do some really smart shit and take us over or what? Stupid Jew lies.
Hollywood is like this: pay Americans to make an entertaining act to brainwash other Americans. Jewish Hollywood. Profit at the same time. Why is this so hard to understand? The media, social media, banks, wall street, hollywood, and way more are all run by Jews. Self-professed Jews. Self-professed chosen ones of God. The Jews wrote their own book. Our legal system began as coming from burning bushes. GMAFB. USA is now under legal control of the Bar Association which is under control of the 4 Inns of Crown Temple of England. ENGLAND. Get it yet?
Do some homework, tell a friend. Get the fucking Jews out stop trippin on Putin and Russia. We are not friends of Israel no matter how many times headlocked presidents say so. We are infiltrated and extorted by Israel because they control US money (the system itself aka Federal Reserve and banks - see fractional reserve banking and what it is). Jews/Israel can crash our economy at their whim right now.
Not to mention Jews sucking baby penis (see YouTube) after circumcision or whirling chickens (Google it) over their head for their sins.
Noah didn't bring two fleas and two antelopes and two squirrels and two eagles and two aardvarks and the rest on a boat are you fucking stupid? That is not a religion it is literally weirdo shit. Don't believe a mother fucking Jew in your life. To get Jewed means what? Yet what do they run? Was it an accident? NO. They are who is trying to take over USA and also do not forget who pressured by media "public thought shaping" the public into thinking sure sure... usa is immigrants so open the borders ya ya. Get rekt punks. y'all are stupid for allowing it to go this far.
Begin Hitler references and Godwin's law all that now. IDGAF. IT *is* the Jews who are messing up global economies and more. Feel free to add what you have seen them screw up as a comment to this. Any excuses for them will be disregarded as goy/goyim brainwash.
Stop believing their burning bush Noah bullshit too. Same goes for Samson and Delilah. Nobody loses their power by a haircut ok? All Jewish fables.
goddamit stop being stupid thx.
Have a nice day :)
Playing Tetris on the about screen is the closest to fun that database would ever be
Burn the witch!