A brief history of the U.S. trying to add backdoors into encrypted data (2016)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-nsa-attempting-to-insert-backdoors-into-encrypted-data

by whatever3 • 2 years ago

550 180 2 years ago

loughnane3• 2 years ago

This topic comes up a bunch still. Someone please correct me, but as I understand it anyone using new chips that use Intel ME (or AMD's equivalent) have a gaping hole in their security that no OS can patch.

I know puri.sm[0] takes some steps to try to plug the hole, but haven't read up to see if it's effective or no.

[0] https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/

bri3d3• 2 years ago

anyone using new chips that use Intel ME (or AMD's equivalent) have a gaping hole in their security that no OS can patch

Not really; anyone using chips with Intel ME or AMD PSP have an additional large binary blob running on their system which may or may not contain bugs or backdoors (of course, also realizing a sufficiently bad bug is indistinguishable from a backdoor).

There are tens to hundreds of such blobs running on almost any modern system and these are just one example. I would argue that ME and PSP are not the worst blob on many systems; they have both unsupported but almost certainly effective (MEcleaner / ME code removal), supported and almost certainly effective (HAP bit), or supported and likely effective (ME / PSP disable command) mechanisms to disable their functionality, and they are comparatively well-documented versus the firmware that runs on every other peripheral (networking, GPU, etc.) and comparatively hardened versus EFI.

loughnane3• 2 years ago

Yeah, this lives in the back of my mind too. I run debian on 11th gen intel, but with the non-free blobs included to make life easier. I've been meaning to try it without them, but it's too tempting to just get things 'up' instead of hacking on it.

wtallis2• 2 years ago

Most consumer products (as opposed to some of those marketed to businesses) don't have enough of the components in place for the ME to accomplish anything, good or bad.

loughnane3• 2 years ago

What do you mean? What sort of components?

charcircuit• 2 years ago

but as I understand it anyone using new chips that use Intel ME (or AMD's equivalent) have a gaping hole in their security that no OS can patch.

The existence of security coprocessors is not a security hole and firmware updates to these processors can be released if a security issue was found.

Onavo• 2 years ago

Does Apple have a warranty canary? How do we know that the M series of chips haven't been compromised?

adamomada• 2 years ago

marcan of the Asahi Linux project got into a discussion on reddit about this, and says that when it comes to hardware, you just can’t know.

I can't prove the absence of a silicon backdoor on any machine, but I can say that given everything we know about AS systems (and we know quite a bit), there is no known place a significant backdoor could hide that could completely compromise my system. And there are several such places on pretty much every x86 system

(Long) thread starts here, show hidden comments for the full discussion https://old.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/13voeey/what_is...

I highly recommend reading this if you’re interested https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Introduction-to-Appl...

dylan6042• 2 years ago

Are these blob type of attacks accessible after boot? Essentially, are these only accessible if you have physical access? And at that point, isn't it game over anyways?

bri3d3• 2 years ago

Intel ME allows intentional remote access through the ME in some enterprise scenarios (vPro). The driver support matrix is quite small and this is a massively overblown concern IMO, but it’s the root of a lot of the hand wringing.

However, onboard firmware based attacks are absolutely accessible remotely and after boot in many scenarios. It’s certainly plausible in theory that an exploit in ME firmware could, for example, allow an attacker to escape a VM or bypass various types of memory protection. Unfortunately the actual role of the ME is rather opaque (it’s known, for example, to manage peripherals in s0ix sleep).

Ditto for any other blob. Maybe a specially crafted packet can exploit a WiFi firmware. Maybe a video frame can compromise the GPU.

These are also good persistence vectors - gain access remotely to the NOR flash containing EFI, and you have a huge attack surface area to install an early boot implant. (or if secure boot isn’t enabled, it’s just game over anyway). On Linux, it’s often just hanging out in /dev as a block device; otherwise, once an attacker has access to the full address space, it’s not too hard to bitbang.

These are all fairly esoteric attacks compared to the more likely ways to get owned (supply chain, browser bugs, misconfiguration), but they’re definitely real things.

The closed-sourceness is only a tiny part of the problem, too - a lot of the worst attacks so far are actually in open source based EFI firmware, which is riddled with bugs.

Which takes me back to my original response to “isn’t everyone backdoored by ME” - sure, maybe, but if you’re looking for practical holes and back doors, ME is hardly your largest problem.

sweetjuly• 2 years ago

People always complain about ME/PSP but it misses the point: there is no alternative to trusting your SoC manufacturer. If they wanted to implement a backdoor, they could do so in a much more powerful and secretive way.

hn8305823• 2 years ago

In case anyone is wondering about the context for this 2016 article, it was right after the 2015 San Bernardino attack and the FBI was trying to get into one of the attacker's phones. Apple resisted the request primarily because they wanted a certificate that would allow them to install any rogue firmware/app/OS on any iPhone, not just the attacker's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_San_Bernardino_attack

KennyBlanken4• 2 years ago

The FBI has used damn near every major incident to push for nerfing encryption, and inbetween they bray about child porn.

coppsilgold2• 2 years ago

    FBI director James Comey have publicly lobbied for the insertion of cryptographic “backdoors” into software and hardware to allow law enforcement agencies to bypass authentication and access a suspect’s data surreptitiously. Cybersecurity experts have unanimously condemned the idea, pointing out that such backdoors would fundamentally undermine encryption and could exploited by criminals, among other issues.

"could exploited by criminals" is sadly a disingenuous claim. A cryptographic backdoor is presumably a "Sealed Box"[1] type construct (KEM + symmetric-cipher-encrypted package). As long as the government can keep a private key secure only they could make use of it.

There are plenty of reasons not to tolerate such a backdoor, but using false claims only provides potential ammunition to the opposition.

[1] <https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/public-key_cryptography/sea...>

2OEH8eoCRo03• 2 years ago

And Apple has a backdoor that only Apple can use. Why don't criminals exploit Apple's backdoor?

frickinLasers• 2 years ago

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/12/exploit-used-in-mas...

Looks like criminals were using it for four years undetected.

quickslowdown• 2 years ago

Which backdoor do you mean? I'm not an Apple expert by any means, but I thought they encrypted customer data in a way that even they can't get to it? Wasn't that the crux of this case, that Apple couldn't help the FBI due to security measures, prompting the agency to ask for a backdoor?

catlifeonmars3• 2 years ago

Source/reference? I’m not aware of such a backdoor

catlifeonmars3• 2 years ago

FWIW this is a fair and valid argument. Generally, no one entity should have that much power. Doesn’t really matter if it’s USG or a tech giant.

devwastaken2• 2 years ago

It's not a false claim, assuming the feds will keep such a key "secure" is not backed by evidence. Top secret materials are leaked all the time. Private keys from well secured systems are extracted from hacks. The FBI having such a key would make them a very profitable target for the various corps that specialize in hacking for hire. For example, NSO group.

If the power doesn't exist, nobody can exploit it.

coppsilgold2• 2 years ago

Do military cryptographic keys leak often? Do nuclear codes leak?

The times highly valuable cryptographic keys leaked for various cryptocurrency exchanges it has generally if not always been due to gross negligence.

Such a key would be highly sensitive and it would also require very little traffic to use. You would just need to send the secure system a KEM (<100 bytes) and it will respond with the symmetric key used for the protected package.

I don't doubt they could secure it. Can even split the key into shares and require multiple parties to be present in the secure location.

whatshisface• 2 years ago

As long as the government can keep a private key secure only they could make use of it.

Your devices would be secure as long as a private key that happened to be the most valuable intelligence asset in the United States, accessed thousands of times per day, by police spread across the entire nation, was never copied or stolen.

dylan6042• 2 years ago

Well, it's a good thing that we don't have to worry about corrupt police /s

catlifeonmars3• 2 years ago

As long as the government can keep a private key secure only they could make use of it.

Not disingenuous. Keys are stolen or leaked all the time. And the blast radius of such a master key would be extremely large.

nonrandomstring• 2 years ago

false claims

As Pauli said, "That's not even wrong". It cannot even meet the basic criteria for truth or falsehood.

It's simply naked hubris.

sowbug• 2 years ago

You assume a perfect implementation of the backdoor. Even if the cryptographic part were well-implemented, someone will accidentally ship a release build with a poorly safeguarded test key, or with a disabled safety that they normally use to test it.

It's an unnecessary moving part that can break, except that this particular part breaking defeats the whole purpose of the system.

buffet_overflow• 2 years ago

As long as the government can keep a private key secure only they could make use of it.

Well, keep in mind they would have to keep it secure in perpetuity. Any leak over the lifetime of any of that hardware would be devastating to the owners. Blue Team/Defensive security is often described as needing to be lucky every time, where as Red Team/attackers just have to get lucky once.

This attack vector is in addition to just exploiting the implementation in some way, which I don't think can be handwaved away.

Rebelgecko• 2 years ago

As long as the government can keep a private key secure only they could make use of it.

That's a big "if". Look at how the government has protected physical keys...

Ever since the TSA accidentally leaked them, you can buy a set of keys on Amazon for $5 that opens 99% of "TSA approved" locks

bayindirh2• 2 years ago

Let’s see:

Mercedes recently forgot a token in a public repository which grants access to everything.

Microsoft forgot its “Golden Key” in the open, allowing all kinds of activation and secure boot shenanigans.

Microsoft’s JWT private key is also stolen, making the login page a decoration.

Somebody stole Realtek’s driver signing keys for Stuxnet attack.

HDMI master key is broken.

BluRay master key is broken.

DVD CSS master key is broken.

TSA master keys are in all 3D printing repositories now.

Staying on the physical realm, somebody made an automated tool to profile, interpret and print key blanks for locks with "restricted keyways" which has no blanks available.

These are the ones I remember just top of my head.

So yes, any digital or physical secret key is secure until it isn’t.

It’s not a question of if, but when. So, no escrows or back doors. Thanks.

wkat4242• 2 years ago

I've been waiting for those wildvine keys to leak which would finally let me choose what to play my stuff on. But it still hasn't happened. They are getting better at secrecy sadly.

piperswe2• 2 years ago

It's apparently now trivial to brute force the private key used for Windows XP-era Microsoft Product Activation, as another example. (that's where UMSKT and the like get their private keys from)

mnw21cam• 2 years ago

As long as the government can keep a private key secure...

Which government? Software crosses borders.

You can bet that if the US mandated a back door to be inserted into software that was being exported to another country, that country would want to either have the master key for that back door, or a different version of the software with a different back door or without the back door. A software user could choose the version of the software that they wanted to use according to which country (if any) could snoop on them. It's unworkable.

Hikikomori• 2 years ago

Are they lobbying for this because they can't access stuff today and "need" it or is just a psyop so we believe what that they cannot access it today.

salawat• 2 years ago

The same government that failed to keep all of it's Top Secret clearance paperwork secure? How soon we forget the OPM hack...

eviks2• 2 years ago

As long as the government can keep a private key secure only they could make use of it.

That's a disingenuous claim since it's known they can't

Geisterde3• 2 years ago

Ill take "what is vault 7" for $500.

progbits• 2 years ago

As this is from 2016 it doesn't include this new fun revelation:

On 11 February 2020, The Washington Post, ZDF and SRF revealed that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence, and the spy agencies could easily break the codes used to send encrypted messages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

hedora• 2 years ago

More details here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200212014117/https://www.washi...

pgeorgi• 2 years ago

The CIA/BND connection wasn't known, but the collusion with certain agencies was known to different degrees for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crypto_AG&oldid=7...

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF2• 2 years ago

Considering that I remember reading the CIA’s own historical document on this operation, I would guess its usefulness had run its course. If I’m not mistaken, it was the CIA who released the document to journalists; it seemed like bragging.

_kbh_3• 2 years ago

To add another dimension to this, personally i think that the Crypto AG relationship is what is referred to as "HISTORY" in this leaked NSA ECI codenames list.

https://robert.sesek.com/2014/10/nsa_s_eci_compartments.html

HISTORY HST NCSC (TS//SI//NF) Protects NSA and certain commercial cryptologic equipment manufacturer relationships.

treflop• 2 years ago

The guy who founded Crypto AG was really good friends with a guy who became a top dog at the NSA.

p-e-w5• 2 years ago

The company had about 230 employees, had offices in Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Selsdon and Steinhausen, and did business throughout the world.

That's a... really strange list of office locations, especially considering the relatively small number of employees.

The owners of Crypto AG were unknown, supposedly even to the managers of the firm, and they held their ownership through bearer shares.

How does this work in practice? If management doesn't know who owns the company, how can the owners exercise influence on company business?

quasse• 2 years ago

Via lawyer / legal representative if I had to hazard a guess.

anticensor• 2 years ago

Codify all the management policy in the main charter, leaving nothing else to the board to decide?

ahazred8ta4• 2 years ago

IIRC the CEO was part of the board of directors, but the other directors were anonymous or represented by proxies.

1337biz• 2 years ago

Would be interesting what similar companies are (in parts) most likely agency fronts.

My guess would be quite a few in the soft privacy selling business, such as VPN or email providers.

Goodroo• 2 years ago

Proton mail is a CIA front email provider

EthanHeilman3• 2 years ago

I wrote blog entry on this subject with a very similar name [0] which covers the CryptoAG story in more detail. It doesn't have the 2020 news.

[0]: A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013), https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html

samstave• 2 years ago

This is an epically cool blog post! - submit it to HN on its own merits.

This was of particular interest to me:

>>"...1986 Reagan tipped off the Libyans that the US could decrypt their communications by talking about information he could only get through Libya decrypts on TV15. In 1991 the Iranians learned that the NSA could break their diplomatic communications when transcripts of Iranian diplomatic communications ended up in a French court case..."

Because, in 1986 - thats effectively when a lot of the phreaking and social engineering was at a peak - Cyberpunk was moving from imagination --> zeitgeist --> reality.

Social engineering and line-printer litter recovery were yielding the backdoors into the Telecom Switching system. BBS's were raging [0].

So when you get a gaph-guffaw look into infosec in a slipup like these ones, it reinforces in mind that the 80s were some really wild times all around as technology tsunami'd from people's minds business and reality.

[0] BBS Docu - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460402/

[1] phreaking - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

[2] history of phreaking - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PmkUPBhL4U

_kbh_3• 2 years ago

I wrote blog entry on this subject with a very similar name [0] which covers the CryptoAG story in more detail. It doesn't have the 2020 news. [0]: A Brief History of NSA Backdoors (2013), https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html

Wow this is super interesting I noticed this paragraph in the text.

2013, Enabling for Encryption Chips: In the NSA's budget request documents released by Edward Snowden, one of the goals of the NSA's SIGINT project is to fully backdoor or "enable" certain encryption chips by the end of 201311. It is not publicly known to which encryption chips they are referring.

From what I know Cavium is one of these "SIGINT enabled" chip manufactures.

https://www.electrospaces.net/2023/09/some-new-snippets-from...
> "While working on documents in the Snowden archive the thesis author learned that an American fabless semiconductor CPU vendor named Cavium is listed as a successful SIGINT "enabled" CPU vendor. By chance this was the same CPU present in the thesis author's Internet router (UniFi USG3). The entire Snowden archive should be open for academic researchers to better understand more of the history of such behavior." (page 71, note 21)
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366552520/New-revelation...

Unfortunately the relevant text for the second is pretty long so I dont wanna quote it.

schmudde• 2 years ago

Sharing this seems like an appropriate way of commemorating David Kahn's passing (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39233855). <3

xyst• 2 years ago

for a long time, the US considered cryptography algos as a munition. Needed some arms license to export.

Also, US tried to convince the world only 56 bits of encryption was sufficient. As SSL (I don’t think TLS was a thing back then) was becoming more mainstream, US govt only permitted banks and other entities to use DES [1] to “secure” their communications. Using anything more than 56 bits was considered illegal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard

londons_explore3• 2 years ago

Even now, if you join a discussion on crypto and say something like "Why don't we double the key length" or "Why not stack two encryption algorithms on top of one another because then if either is broken the data is still secure", you'll immediately get a bunch of negative replies from anonymous accounts saying it's unnecessary and that current crypto is plenty secure.

ahazred8ta4• 2 years ago

EVERYTHING IS FINE. WOULD YOU LIKE A BRAIN SLUG?

paulpauper2• 2 years ago

two encryption algorithms will mean needing two completely unrelated , unique passwords. this can be impractical and increase odds of being locked out forever

Geisterde3• 2 years ago

Well, I think that would sevearly inhibit future development. Scaling on bitcoin has been a delicate game of optimizing every bit that gets recorded, but also support future developments that dont even exist yet, there is no undo button either. New signature schemas and clevar cryptography tricks can do quite a bit, but when you slap another layer of cryptography on you will inevitably make things worse in the long run.

Histories biggest bug bounty is sitting on the bitcoin blockchain, if it were even theoretically plausible to crack sha-256 like that then we would probably know, and many have tried.

AnotherGoodName• 2 years ago

The best is the claim that multiple encryption makes it weaker or that encryption is the weaker of the two. If that were true we'd break encryption just by encrypting once more with a weaker algo.

KennyBlanken4• 2 years ago

I'll do you one better.

The head of security for Golang, a google employee, was also part of the TLS 1.3 committee and in Golang, it's impossible by design to disable specific ciphers in TLS 1.3

The prick actually had the nerve to assert that TLS 1.3's security is so good this should never be necessary, and that even if it were, they'll just patch it and everyone can upgrade.

So someone releases a 0-day exploit for a specific TLS cipher. Now you have to wait until a patch is released and upgrade your production environment to fix it - all the while your pants are down. That's assuming you're running a current version in production and you don't have to test for bugs or performance issues upgrading to a current release.

Heaven fucking forbid you hear a cipher is exploitable and be able to push a config change within minutes of your team hearing about it.

I'd place 50/50 odds on it being a bribe by the NSA vs sheer ego.

meroes• 2 years ago

Do you have more on the legality aspect? I knew NSA pressured for a weaker key but what aspect could be made illegal? I had to write an undergrad paper on the original DES and I never saw an outright illegality aspect but wouldn’t be surprised. They also put in their own substitution boxes which I surprisingly never found much info on how exactly NSA could use them. So much speculation but why no detailed post mortems in the modern age?

ahazred8ta4• 2 years ago

In the US, since the 1950s, you need a permit to export any product which has encryption. There are fines if you don't file the right paperwork. In the 1970s and 80s they would only approve keys of 40 bits or less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

MattPalmer1086• 2 years ago

It seems that they changed the S boxes to make them more resistant to differential analysis (which they knew about but the public didn't). So this is actually a case of them secretly strengthening the crypto.

Presumably this is because they didn't want adversaries being able to decrypt stuff due to a fundamental flaw. I guess it's possible they also weakened it in another way, but if so nobody has managed to find it.

mannyv• 2 years ago

There's talk that the NSA put its own magic numbers into elliptical curve seeds. Does that count?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/bounty-offere...

nimbius• 2 years ago

Everyone forgets the speck and simon crypto the NSA wanted in the Linux kernel that were, ultimately, removed from it entirely after a lot of well deserved criticism from heavy hitters like Schneier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speck_(cipher)

whatever3• 2 years ago

I posted this because of the Enigma/Crypto AG mixup in the article, but it doesn't seem that anyone noticed. Seemed relevant considering the post about fabricated Atlas Obscura stories a few days ago.

mmaunder2• 2 years ago

Honorable mention for the ITAR regs that prevented Phil Zimmerman from exporting PGP 128 bit encryption until Zimmerman and MIT press printed the source as a book protected by the first amendment, exported it, and this enabled others to OCR it, and recompile it offshore.

Also that ITAR enabled Thawte in South Africa (where I’m from) as a business to completely dominate sales for 128 bit SSL certs outside the US. Thawte was eventually acquired by Verizon for $600 million and the founder Mark Shuttleworth used the cash to become an astronaut and then founded Ubuntu.

inquirerGeneral• 2 years ago

I didn't know any of this. Thanks.

"The U.S. Munitions List changes over time. Until 1996–1997, ITAR classified strong cryptography as arms and prohibited their export from the U.S.[5]

Another change occurred as a result of Space Systems/Loral's conduct after the February 1996 failed launch of the Intelsat 708 satellite. The Department of State charged Space Systems/Loral with violating the Arms Export Control Act and the ITAR.[6][7]

As a result, technology pertaining to satellites and launch vehicles became more carefully protected." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_....

3abiton• 2 years ago

Does that make crypto nerds arms dealers?

CWuestefeld• 2 years ago

At the time, I had a t-shirt that said "this t-shirt is a munition", because it also had on it the RSA public key algorithm encoded as a barcode.

e40• 2 years ago

Cane to say the same thing. It sparked a lot of interesting conversations over the years.

mmaunder2• 2 years ago

Haha I remember that. OG fist bump!

dramm• 2 years ago

Had the same t-shirt with the barcode readable source code on it. I think prompted by seeing Greg Rose wear one, may have gotten it from him/mutual friends. As an foreign citizen I was never brave enough to wear it through a USA entry airport.

a-dub• 2 years ago

i seem to have vague recollection of a variant of this shirt that had a perl script on it? or was the perl script for decoding the barcode?

p-e-w5• 2 years ago

I never understood the story about the book-printed PGP source code. Isn't source code protected speech under the first amendment anyway, regardless of the form in which it is transmitted? All kinds of media receive first amendment protection, including things like monetary donations, corporate speech, art, etc. I've never heard of there being a requirement for the printed form. Did the interpretation of the first amendment change recently in this regard?

int_19h3• 2 years ago

The idea was to make it blatantly clear that it's not a "munition".

femto• 2 years ago

The book was published in 1995 [1,2]. Free speech protection for source code under US law wasn't decided until 1996, in Bernstein v. United States [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Co...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

tjoff• 2 years ago

[...] and this enabled others to OCR it, and recompile it offshore.

Did it? Or did it just give them plausible deniability?

I remember playing with OCR as a kid and all the software I could get my hands on gave horrendous results, even if the input was as perfect as one could hope for.

And even today I sometimes run tesseract on perfect screenshots and it still makes weird mistakes.

Would be interesting to know if the book had any extra OCR-enabling features. I'm sure the recipients would get access to proper tools and software but OCRing source-code still seems like a nightmare back then.

consp• 2 years ago

Banks used it on checques for ages, why would it be that difficult? You do need a compatible typesetting though.

MereInterest• 2 years ago

Not so much plausible deniability, as a clear First Amendment argument. If you’re forbidden from exporting computer code, that was some new-fangled magic thing that nobody could possibly understand. If you’re banned from exporting a book, well that has some clear and obvious precedent as a restriction of free speech.

bouncycastle• 2 years ago

RSA = Republic of South Africa

dirtyhippiefree• 2 years ago

RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) is a public-key cryptosystem, one of the oldest widely used for secure data transmission.

T3OU-7362• 2 years ago

Thawte happily sold certs to US entities like universities (I was a sysadmin at one of those universities with such a cert :) )

ETH_start• 2 years ago

For financial encryption, so essential is warrantless surveillance to their control of finance, that they've successfully argued that a neutral and immutable protocol instantiating open source code on a distributed public blockchain is property of a sanctionable entity, and thus within their authority to prohibit Americans from using:

https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/texas/txwdc...

hunglee2• 2 years ago

the biggest threat to a citizens privacy is always your own government.

BLKNSLVR2• 2 years ago

Yep. I use Chinese brand phones because if they're snooping all my shit, they're much further away from me than my own government and not likely to have sharing arrangements.

aspenmayer3• 2 years ago

Wouldn’t Chinese branded phones be a higher priority target by foreign agencies in the first place?

AtlasBarfed2• 2 years ago

I kinda disagree, because the government, even now, can be shamed and outraged.

Corporations however? They are, by design, utterly amoral.

So the modern state is that corporations are hoovering all your data they can for "ad research and optimization". I think I read recently that facebook has thousands of companies involved in the customer data supply chain?

And if those companies have your data, it's not that YOUR government has it guaranteed. It's that ALL governments have your data.

quasarj• 2 years ago

I like that typo in the image label - the Chipper Clip lol

bemusedthrow75• 2 years ago

We've had enough of chipper clips to last a lifetime!

  It looks like you're writing an article about encryption. Would you like help?

  (o) Insert a joke about Apple forcing a U2 album on us

  (o) Let me write the joke myself

  [x] Don't show me this tip again

xrd• 2 years ago

That's the backdoor in the rot13 visible to the naked eye.

jarjar2_2• 2 years ago

One of my favorite comics about cryptography. https://xkcd.com/538/

Government routinely posits a desperate need for backdoors in crypto and crypto secured products, but almost universally they get the data they want without needing a manufacturer provided backdoor. So why they insist on continuing to do that is beyond me. It's almost security theater.

If they really want your protected information they will be able to get it. Either through a wrench or a legal wrench. In lieu of that they can use practically unlimited resources at their disposal from who they employ (or contract out to) to the long axis to which most secured devices succumb from, time.

My personal threat model isn't to defeat the government. They will get the data eventually. My personal threat model is corporations that want to know literally everything about me and bad faith private actors (scammers, cybercrime and thieves) that do too.

Ultimately it will take strict legislation and compliance measurement along with penalties to protect the government from overstepping the bounds they promise not to step over already, let alone new ones. It will take even stricter legislation to stop corporations from doing it. There are significant financial and political incentives for our ruling bodies to not do that, unfortunately.

I mean honestly, when you have this kind of ability at your disposal...

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/08/1004332551/drug-rings-platfor...

paulpauper2• 2 years ago

A backdoor, which works anywhere and way better than the wrench option.

jarjar2_2• 2 years ago

They don't need it, which was my point. They have all the tools the need right now to get what they want. Why should anyone grant them more?

dennis_jeeves2• 2 years ago

Ultimately it will take strict legislation and compliance measurement along with penalties to protect the government from overstepping the bounds they promise not to step over already, let alone new ones.

They will find ways to not comply, often blatantly. They have no scruples.

hoseja• 2 years ago

They can't break all the kneecaps. They do want all the data.

jonathanyc• 2 years ago

Now the argument coming from civil society for backdoors is based on CSAM:

Heat Initiative is led by Sarah Gardner, former vice president of external affairs for the nonprofit Thorn, which works to use new technologies to combat child exploitation online and sex trafficking. In 2021, Thorn lauded Apple's plan to develop an iCloud CSAM scanning feature. Gardner said in an email to CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday, August 30, which Apple also shared with WIRED, that Heat Initiative found Apple's decision to kill the feature “disappointing.”
“Apple is one of the most successful companies in the world with an army of world-class engineers,” Gardner wrote in a statement to WIRED. “It is their responsibility to design a safe, privacy-forward environment that allows for the detection of known child sexual abuse images and videos. For as long as people can still share and store a known image of a child being raped in iCloud we will demand that they do better.”

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-csam-scanning-heat-initiat...

rpmisms4• 2 years ago

CSAM is evil, and I personally believe we should execute those who distribute it.

I have an even stronger belief in the right to privacy, and those in the government who want to break it should be executed from their positions (fired and publicly shamed).

smolder3• 2 years ago

In some cases artwork where no child was harmed counts as CSAM. Is that execution worthy?

int_19h3• 2 years ago

This isn't even a recent thing anymore. "iPhone will become the phone of choice for the pedophile" was said by a senior official in 2014, when full device encryption was starting to become common.

matheusmoreira2• 2 years ago

The perfect political weapon. Anyone who opposes is automatically labeled a pedophile and child abuser. Their reputations are destroyed and they will never oppose again.

Joel_Mckay2• 2 years ago

Encryption is meaningless with cpu-level side-channel memory key dumps active on most modern platforms. The reality is if you have been targeted for financial or technological reasons, than any government will eventually get what they are after.

One can't take it personally, as all despotic movements also started with sycophantic idealism.

Have a great day, =)

https://xkcd.com/538/

keepamovin3• 2 years ago

Agree with this. Makes me think that the code-breakers themselves must be using specialized hardware to protect their own side-channels. But for this to be feasible you need to have big chipmakers in on it. Fascinating to consider

Joel_Mckay2• 2 years ago

No need, data collection is a different function than exploitation. People that are turned into assets are often not even aware how they are being used.

I once insisted I could be bribed to avoid the escalation of coercion as a joke, that was funny until someone actually offered $80k for my company workstation one day.

It is a cultural phenomena, as in some places it is considered standard acceptable practice.

My advice is to be as boring as possible, legally proactive, and keep corporate financial profit modes quiet.

Good luck =)

keepamovin3• 2 years ago

I was so curious about the origins of the SHA algorithms that I made a FOIA to NSA about SHA-0^0, as I wanted to understand how it was developed and requested all internal communications, diagrams, papers and so on responsive to that.

Interestingly I found that after I got a reply (rough summary: you are a corporate requester, this is overly broad, it will be very expensive) I could no longer access the NSA website. Some kind of fingerprint block. The block persisted across IP addresses, browsers, incognito tabs, and devices so it can't be based on cookies / storage.

Still in place today:

  Access Denied

  You don't have permission to access "http://nsa.gov/serve-from-netstorage/" on this server.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1#Development

p-e-w5• 2 years ago

Some kind of fingerprint block. The block persisted across IP addresses, browsers, incognito tabs, and devices so it can't be based on cookies / storage.

Then what is it based on, if it happens across different devices and different IP addresses?

I find it very surprising that the NSA would go to such technologically advanced lengths to block FOIA requesters from their website (which, needless to say, doesn't contain any sensitive information).

keepamovin3• 2 years ago

Yeah weird, right? Highly surprising, high entropy, highly informative bit of signal possibly. Obvious way to admit SHA-0 is a pressure point maybe.

Idk, maybe you can figure out the block, I think it's beyond me. Here's a picture if that helps haha! :)

https://imgur.com/a/rNIjrB2

Highly unlikely to be a coincidence but I took it to mean: Don't make these requests ... OK ... haha! :)

ranger_danger2• 2 years ago

there are MANY different ways to fingerprint something or someone, see e.g. https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/ or https://scrapeops.io/web-scraping-playbook/how-to-bypass-clo....

also fun fact, even Tor Browser can't hide the real OS you're running when a site uses javascript-based OS queries.

justinclift• 2 years ago

That url (http://nsa.gov/serve-from-netstorage/) works via Tor, so maybe try that? ;)

Anon4Now• 2 years ago

I'm curious as to why the NSA still has http:// urls.

pseudocomposer• 2 years ago

It redirects to HTTPS.

AtlasBarfed2• 2 years ago

They probably have someone specifically assigned to crack every device you use.

subjectsigma• 2 years ago

IIUC blocking people from making FOIA requests is illegal / can be grounds for a lawsuit, and they can always just classify anything they don’t want to give away, so it doesn’t really make sense for the NSA to do something like that. Their website is probably just broken.

mouzogu• 2 years ago

how likely is it that whatsapp or telegram are backdoored?

i wonder what tools do guerilla armies or drug lords use to communicate..

or maybe its better to hide in plain sight.

just use some kind of double speak that gives plausible deniability.

KennyBlanken4• 2 years ago

Telegram is a poster-child for sketchy security.

KennyBlanken4• 2 years ago

This leaves out at least one other proven case - the NSA worked to weaken an early encrypted telephone system that was sold to numerous other governments and allowed them to listen in on conversations.

Then there's this: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/nsa-secret-backdoor-...

And then there was the Tailored Access Operations group that backdoored hundreds if not thousands of computers and networking gear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations

And then there's Bullrun where they partnered with commercial software and hardware companies to insert backdoors, specifically in many commercial VPN systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullrun_(decryption_program)

Let's also not forget the backdooring of Windows NT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

...and Lotus Notes was also backdoored, as well.

qubex• 2 years ago

The image isn’t of an Enigma but of a Lorenz teleprinter encryption system. It was would be referred to now as a “stream cipher”.

mstef• 2 years ago

i believe the cryptomuseum has a more extensive list than the one in the link: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/intel/nsa/backdoor.htm particularly one is interesting as i have reverse engineered and proven its existence: https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/philips/px1000/nsa.htm

thewileyone• 2 years ago

Huawei was targeted because they refused to allow backdoors in their switches and phones that the 5 Eyes could exploit.

A brief history of the U.S. trying to add backdoors into encrypted data (2016)

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