10 ms·

The Secret Surveillance Catalogue

199 points by jbegley 11y ago

escapologybb 11y ago
I couldn't see where the checkout button was, maybe AdBlock had blocked that element?
- ethbro 11y ago
  It's a known tracking cookie.
fit2rule 11y ago
This is a real orgy of authoritarianism, folks. I once knew someone who has contributed to this catalog. Their justification for participating in this heinous orgy of totalitarianism, was, simply: "I hope your children and loved ones are safe". 'twas the last I had to do with them - I cannot be friends with someone who justifies the creation of these devices, nor their continued application to society. Especially when they invoke terror to justify the crime.
littletimmy 11y ago
Jesus Christ that's invasive! It boggles my mind how we as a republic can allow for this. Basically, someone attacked us a long time ago, and now politicians just have to say "we're keeping you safe" and we allow them to do ANYTHING they want. This will not end well for anyone who is not in power.
- chinathrow 11y ago
  > This will not end well for anyone who is not in power. Or the other way around.
  - harryf 11y ago
    Historically the other way round, while much celebrated (4th July, Bastille day) tends to be the statistical anomaly
    - cryoshon 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution I don't know the exact dates that are relevant here, but as recently as the late 80s people were bucking totalitarian oppression via violence.
      - logfromblammo 11y ago
        Bouazizi's fire ended up burning quite a few government officials, even outside of Tunisia. By my count, it started six rebellions, prompted five government reforms, and Libya's Qaddafi got brutally murdered in public. Libya, Syria, and Iraq are still in a state of civil war. So more recently than the late 80s. As recently as right frickin now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
    - iamthepieman 11y ago
      >...(4th July, Bastille day) tends to be the statistical anomaly While I think your statement is true, it's probably true because individuals and society can adapt to invasive governemnt behavior for a very long time. Historically we see the Tea Act, the Boston massacre and the Intolerable acts and think "Of course the colonies rose up" But we often forget or don't take into account everything leading up to 1776 in the British Americas: The British government prohibited settlement beyond the Appalachian mountains in the early 1760s, offending many colonists. The currency act banning bills of credit issued by the colonies. the sugar, stamp, townshend and tea acts - all tax acts on common consumer goods such as sugar, tea, newspapers, playing cards, glass, paper etc. Some of these were later repealed but only under intense pressure and economic reprisals from the colonies. This was all just after the French and Indian war which the colonies bore the brunt of. Many in the colonies felt that they had proved themselves in the war as a capable independent military and economic force. So there were least 10 years of turmoil leading up to July 1776 and 20 if you count the start of the French and Indian War. And the American Revolution got the ball rolling for the French. Starting with Louis the 16th going into debt to help the colonies and helped merrily along by, yet again, an unfair tax system. Both of these examples and many more, are largely caused by economic turmoil (largely, not solely, of course there are many factors). I think as long as governments watch what you spend and where you spend it, but don't decrease how much you can spend then everyone will go merrily along.
- laotzu 11y ago
  "The best political weapon is the weapon of terror" -HH
saiya-jin 11y ago
wait, random example for CYBERHAWK - "Takes 4-10 mins for download; Saved and dialed numbers, missed calls, SMS data, pictures, calendar, sound files all consolidated into one report" - how is it possible?
- chinathrow 11y ago
  Some companies are selling 0day for use in LE/Intelligence. Some large vendors might also work with them in the end.
- gosub 11y ago
  > Cyber Hawk exploits over 79 cell phones i would say: unpublished exploits and backdoors
  - eli 11y ago
    Or the 79 cell phone models with no security in the first place. Lots of phones 10+ years ago didn't really bother.
- eli 11y ago
  Not really enough to go on here. Are these unlocked phones? Which models? I seem to recall that many old dumb phones had official, proprietary interfaces for downloading data off them.
- grkvlt 11y ago
  It requires physical access to the device, which makes a lot of this information easy to obtain, especially at the time the catalog was created.
lifeisstillgood 11y ago
A society where only police have access to everyone's data is a police state. A society where everyone has access to everyone else's data is free, but uncomfortable. A society where everyone has privacy is either behind us, or in front of us, as we choose.
dogma1138 11y ago
The only surprising thing here is just how out of date the catalog appears to be when compared to the current offerings from these (and many other) vendors. Most of these products have brochures and commercials on the vendor website and social media pages they aren't overwhelmingly classified.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  The lack of any information about the Hailstorm device is notable. Hailstorm is the version that can break 3G/4G connections, supposedly. Breaking GSM is not anything remarkable because GSM was designed on the assumption that cell site simulators didn't exist. But 3G authenticates the tower. Whatever Hailstorm is doing, it's not just taking advantage of a missing design requirement, it's actually subverting the crypto itself. Unfortunately it seems there's nearly nothing public about it.
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    Isn't Hailstorm just an IMSI catcher with an integrated downgrade to GSM/GPRS which allows you to break the connection?
    - mike_hearn 11y ago
      It might be. The stuff I've read suggests developing it was a difficult project and Harris is the only one that has such a product. Seems unlikely if all it's doing is jamming.
  - EthanHeilman 11y ago
    3G uses the KASUMI or A5/3 cipher which was shown to be easily broken in in 2010 (two hours on a PC via a related key attack): >we have actually simulated the attack in less than two hours on a single PC, and experimentally verified its correctness and complexity. Interestingly, neither our technique nor any other published attack can break MISTY in less than the $2^{128}$ complexity of exhaustive search, which indicates that the changes made by the GSM Association in moving from MISTY to KASUMI resulted in a much weaker cryptosystem. - http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013 http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013 This is actually far worse than cell site simulation because it is a passive attack and so is totally undetectable. You could just setup recording equipment, hide them in a van and start decrypting conversations. Given how much weaker KASUMI is from MISTY is seems possible this was a backdoor engineered by an intelligence agency. If so, it certainly tells the lie to NOBUS (no one but us). Odd how the GSM association always generates breakable ciphers.
cryoshon 11y ago
So, let's get this out of the way: will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidence? The only way we know about this stuff is by someone deciding to play outside the rules and inform the public directly. The security services and police are wildly out of control and have been intensely surveilling and scrutinizing the content of innocent people's communications without any oversight. This clearly doesn't make us any safer, as there have been two terrorist attacks on US soil during the era in which these totalitarian abuses have happened, so that argument can be discarded. In short, we don't have security (nor could we ever have perfect security), and they've taken our liberty without our permission. Disgusting abuse of democracy. How can people attend a political rally or do any political activity when they know that their attendance and discussions are going to be analyzed for weaknesses by a malevolent third party?
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Short answer: this dries up any dissent. But if you think THIS is what stops people from organizing politically then you're wrong: the intelligence agencies have done a lot worse. They've dabbled with human experimentation in the 50's, sabotaged civil rights movements in the 60's, propagandized anti-Soviet literature in the 70's, and so on. This is another step in the long line of government abuses in the land of the free.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of COINTELPRO and the like-- and I know that similar programs exist now as well. Kind of odd how the "bastion of democracy" can't stop doing unabashedly anti-democratic things over the course of decades.
    - littletimmy 11y ago
      The thing is, democracy doesn't work on a scale as large as the United States. (By not work I mean the people are far to the left of the elite with their redistributionist policies, and that's unacceptable to the people in power.) So either you have countries directly managing public opinion like China/Russia, or you have countries covertly managing public opinion like the United States. Essentially, you have to choose Brave New World or 1984 if you want to manage a "democracy".
throw23001 11y ago
I have seen this discussion evolve from the early 90's from overwhelmingly freedom loving, rational and logical to now scaremongering, feeble justifications and often just self importance. Isn't it time to have something like the Hippocratic Oath that commits developers to some ethical standards and not engage in activities that may have negative consequences for humanity in general. The problem with Snowden is not what he has done but what thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of others have not. And the way the freedom loving media, the EU and the US has treated him apart from being shameful doesn't help potential whistle blowers. Given what we now know about the level of sophistication and ever growing number programs at play there needs to be more activism against the groups and individuals who enable this. And also more oversight of the level of involvement of security agencies and other vested interests in open source.
- vox_mollis 11y ago
  Developer ethics are definitely an issue. But if you want to really see evil, take a look at the infosec community. "White Hat" is effectively equivalent to government contractor now. Infosec people readily sell 0days to governments or fronts for governments without hesitation. They unquestioningly collaborate with law enforcement on victimless crime cases, so long as the money is good. Yes, this is a gross generalization. But any doubts of this generalization can easily be remedied by attending RSA or BlackHat and talking to the other attendees. CCC and Defcon may be a slight step up, but not by much. In any other community this wouldn't be all that disgusting, except the fundamental roots of the community are ostensibly in creatively and intelligently circumventing authority - and now they're rarely more than collaborators.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    > attending RSA Colbert, during his talk[1] at RSA: If you're attending this conference, it is your business to prevent security breaches, and that means learning enough about hacks, exploits, and leaks to scare your clients into hiring you again next year. [very subdued "ha-ha-only-serious" laughter] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gGtVScrQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gGtVScrQo
  - 11y ago
csseinpoont 11y ago
1 point by lolyololol 0 minutes ago | edit | delete Having an open discussion about state surveillance is essentially impossible on hacker news given moderation policy, liberal use of banning, astro turfing and corresponding up and down voting and flagging that occurs. HN Mod policy is to claim they take such claims seriously but nothing changes and those who complain too loudly get banned
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Can you provide examples?
lolyololol 11y ago
Having an open discussion about state surveillance is essentially impossible on hacker news given moderation policy, liberal use of banning, astro turfing and corresponding up and down voting and flagging that occurs. HN Mod policy is to claim they take such claims seriously but nothing changes and those who complain too loudly get banned.
draw_down 11y ago
The blurb at the front says some of these things are in use by US government, some aren't. So why does the government's internal catalog list things the government doesn't use? Who would buy those things if they weren't in use? I'm not trying to make a point here, I'm confused.
- wavefunction 11y ago
  Police departments, US state-level LE departments, the wealthy and powerful, other countries and likely corporations come to mind
  - draw_down 11y ago
    But the first two are part of the government, so anything they use is by definition in use by the government. Would the other groups get the catalogue? I would think not since it's supposedly internal to the US government...
enginn 11y ago
In terms of the complexity here, it is quite substantial, and for the lay person to cache all the multi-layered exploits in their head is unexpected. It's disgustingly complex and multi pronged ex-filtration of data that has no bounds. This industry is 1000 years ahead of the common UNIX neck beard / basement dweller type who probably owns no more than $10,000 worth of kit, but uses that kit on orders of magnitude more advanced levels than the catalog presented here. If it is the case that 'they' are 1000 years ahead of us in terms of ex-filtration and their budget is apparently limitless, then this allows the citizen to dream of many strategies to avoid, overcome, and render such ex-filtration useless. One strategy which I will announce (a public one I will give away because bragging in public forums is apparently safe) is to compartmentalize a digital life. A frustratingly common motif is the "Person A stores their life on their phone" and thus we have a central store of data about person A. Bad OPSEC, you cry? Well the lay person is not familiar with spycraft terms like OPSEC and such a term has only flourished in use in recent times because of Snowden. Infact a great many spycraft terms have gained widespread use, like OSINT for example, which were so rare, that you would be red-flagged as a spy if you searched for those terms, or were using them in everyday conversation. All that is needed is for the lay person to acknowledge that unless a spy-vs-spy tactic is employed, then it really is a disgusting grab fest for all one's data. Annoyingly this can lead to arms-race type scenarios where a citizen attempts to 'beef up' their digital life, and the cost can be substantial, and potentially turning citizens into digital Winston Smiths, which is never good, and the surveillance can be said to have failed. Compartment-ed computing is but one of a whole cornucopia of techniques and strategies to reverse the Panopticon on itself though...

199 points by jbegley 11y ago

escapologybb 11y ago

I couldn't see where the checkout button was, maybe AdBlock had blocked that element?

ethbro 11y ago
It's a known tracking cookie.

fit2rule 11y ago

This is a real orgy of authoritarianism, folks. I once knew someone who has contributed to this catalog. Their justification for participating in this heinous orgy of totalitarianism, was, simply: "I hope your children and loved ones are safe". 'twas the last I had to do with them - I cannot be friends with someone who justifies the creation of these devices, nor their continued application to society. Especially when they invoke terror to justify the crime.

littletimmy 11y ago

Jesus Christ that's invasive! It boggles my mind how we as a republic can allow for this. Basically, someone attacked us a long time ago, and now politicians just have to say "we're keeping you safe" and we allow them to do ANYTHING they want. This will not end well for anyone who is not in power.

chinathrow 11y ago
> This will not end well for anyone who is not in power. Or the other way around.
- harryf 11y ago
  Historically the other way round, while much celebrated (4th July, Bastille day) tends to be the statistical anomaly
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution I don't know the exact dates that are relevant here, but as recently as the late 80s people were bucking totalitarian oppression via violence.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      Bouazizi's fire ended up burning quite a few government officials, even outside of Tunisia. By my count, it started six rebellions, prompted five government reforms, and Libya's Qaddafi got brutally murdered in public. Libya, Syria, and Iraq are still in a state of civil war. So more recently than the late 80s. As recently as right frickin now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
  - iamthepieman 11y ago
    >...(4th July, Bastille day) tends to be the statistical anomaly While I think your statement is true, it's probably true because individuals and society can adapt to invasive governemnt behavior for a very long time. Historically we see the Tea Act, the Boston massacre and the Intolerable acts and think "Of course the colonies rose up" But we often forget or don't take into account everything leading up to 1776 in the British Americas: The British government prohibited settlement beyond the Appalachian mountains in the early 1760s, offending many colonists. The currency act banning bills of credit issued by the colonies. the sugar, stamp, townshend and tea acts - all tax acts on common consumer goods such as sugar, tea, newspapers, playing cards, glass, paper etc. Some of these were later repealed but only under intense pressure and economic reprisals from the colonies. This was all just after the French and Indian war which the colonies bore the brunt of. Many in the colonies felt that they had proved themselves in the war as a capable independent military and economic force. So there were least 10 years of turmoil leading up to July 1776 and 20 if you count the start of the French and Indian War. And the American Revolution got the ball rolling for the French. Starting with Louis the 16th going into debt to help the colonies and helped merrily along by, yet again, an unfair tax system. Both of these examples and many more, are largely caused by economic turmoil (largely, not solely, of course there are many factors). I think as long as governments watch what you spend and where you spend it, but don't decrease how much you can spend then everyone will go merrily along.
laotzu 11y ago
"The best political weapon is the weapon of terror" -HH

saiya-jin 11y ago

wait, random example for CYBERHAWK - "Takes 4-10 mins for download; Saved and dialed numbers, missed calls, SMS data, pictures, calendar, sound files all consolidated into one report" - how is it possible?

chinathrow 11y ago
Some companies are selling 0day for use in LE/Intelligence. Some large vendors might also work with them in the end.
gosub 11y ago
> Cyber Hawk exploits over 79 cell phones i would say: unpublished exploits and backdoors
- eli 11y ago
  Or the 79 cell phone models with no security in the first place. Lots of phones 10+ years ago didn't really bother.
eli 11y ago
Not really enough to go on here. Are these unlocked phones? Which models? I seem to recall that many old dumb phones had official, proprietary interfaces for downloading data off them.
grkvlt 11y ago
It requires physical access to the device, which makes a lot of this information easy to obtain, especially at the time the catalog was created.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

A society where only police have access to everyone's data is a police state. A society where everyone has access to everyone else's data is free, but uncomfortable. A society where everyone has privacy is either behind us, or in front of us, as we choose.

dogma1138 11y ago

The only surprising thing here is just how out of date the catalog appears to be when compared to the current offerings from these (and many other) vendors. Most of these products have brochures and commercials on the vendor website and social media pages they aren't overwhelmingly classified.

mike_hearn 11y ago
The lack of any information about the Hailstorm device is notable. Hailstorm is the version that can break 3G/4G connections, supposedly. Breaking GSM is not anything remarkable because GSM was designed on the assumption that cell site simulators didn't exist. But 3G authenticates the tower. Whatever Hailstorm is doing, it's not just taking advantage of a missing design requirement, it's actually subverting the crypto itself. Unfortunately it seems there's nearly nothing public about it.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Isn't Hailstorm just an IMSI catcher with an integrated downgrade to GSM/GPRS which allows you to break the connection?
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    It might be. The stuff I've read suggests developing it was a difficult project and Harris is the only one that has such a product. Seems unlikely if all it's doing is jamming.
- EthanHeilman 11y ago
  3G uses the KASUMI or A5/3 cipher which was shown to be easily broken in in 2010 (two hours on a PC via a related key attack): >we have actually simulated the attack in less than two hours on a single PC, and experimentally verified its correctness and complexity. Interestingly, neither our technique nor any other published attack can break MISTY in less than the $2^{128}$ complexity of exhaustive search, which indicates that the changes made by the GSM Association in moving from MISTY to KASUMI resulted in a much weaker cryptosystem. - http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013 http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013 This is actually far worse than cell site simulation because it is a passive attack and so is totally undetectable. You could just setup recording equipment, hide them in a van and start decrypting conversations. Given how much weaker KASUMI is from MISTY is seems possible this was a backdoor engineered by an intelligence agency. If so, it certainly tells the lie to NOBUS (no one but us). Odd how the GSM association always generates breakable ciphers.

cryoshon 11y ago

So, let's get this out of the way: will the people who are going to argue that the US is not a police state please step forward and address this damning evidence? The only way we know about this stuff is by someone deciding to play outside the rules and inform the public directly. The security services and police are wildly out of control and have been intensely surveilling and scrutinizing the content of innocent people's communications without any oversight. This clearly doesn't make us any safer, as there have been two terrorist attacks on US soil during the era in which these totalitarian abuses have happened, so that argument can be discarded. In short, we don't have security (nor could we ever have perfect security), and they've taken our liberty without our permission. Disgusting abuse of democracy. How can people attend a political rally or do any political activity when they know that their attendance and discussions are going to be analyzed for weaknesses by a malevolent third party?

littletimmy 11y ago
Short answer: this dries up any dissent. But if you think THIS is what stops people from organizing politically then you're wrong: the intelligence agencies have done a lot worse. They've dabbled with human experimentation in the 50's, sabotaged civil rights movements in the 60's, propagandized anti-Soviet literature in the 70's, and so on. This is another step in the long line of government abuses in the land of the free.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Yes, I'm aware of COINTELPRO and the like-- and I know that similar programs exist now as well. Kind of odd how the "bastion of democracy" can't stop doing unabashedly anti-democratic things over the course of decades.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    The thing is, democracy doesn't work on a scale as large as the United States. (By not work I mean the people are far to the left of the elite with their redistributionist policies, and that's unacceptable to the people in power.) So either you have countries directly managing public opinion like China/Russia, or you have countries covertly managing public opinion like the United States. Essentially, you have to choose Brave New World or 1984 if you want to manage a "democracy".

throw23001 11y ago

I have seen this discussion evolve from the early 90's from overwhelmingly freedom loving, rational and logical to now scaremongering, feeble justifications and often just self importance. Isn't it time to have something like the Hippocratic Oath that commits developers to some ethical standards and not engage in activities that may have negative consequences for humanity in general. The problem with Snowden is not what he has done but what thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of others have not. And the way the freedom loving media, the EU and the US has treated him apart from being shameful doesn't help potential whistle blowers. Given what we now know about the level of sophistication and ever growing number programs at play there needs to be more activism against the groups and individuals who enable this. And also more oversight of the level of involvement of security agencies and other vested interests in open source.

vox_mollis 11y ago
Developer ethics are definitely an issue. But if you want to really see evil, take a look at the infosec community. "White Hat" is effectively equivalent to government contractor now. Infosec people readily sell 0days to governments or fronts for governments without hesitation. They unquestioningly collaborate with law enforcement on victimless crime cases, so long as the money is good. Yes, this is a gross generalization. But any doubts of this generalization can easily be remedied by attending RSA or BlackHat and talking to the other attendees. CCC and Defcon may be a slight step up, but not by much. In any other community this wouldn't be all that disgusting, except the fundamental roots of the community are ostensibly in creatively and intelligently circumventing authority - and now they're rarely more than collaborators.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > attending RSA Colbert, during his talk[1] at RSA: If you're attending this conference, it is your business to prevent security breaches, and that means learning enough about hacks, exploits, and leaks to scare your clients into hiring you again next year. [very subdued "ha-ha-only-serious" laughter] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gGtVScrQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gGtVScrQo
- 11y ago

csseinpoont 11y ago

1 point by lolyololol 0 minutes ago | edit | delete Having an open discussion about state surveillance is essentially impossible on hacker news given moderation policy, liberal use of banning, astro turfing and corresponding up and down voting and flagging that occurs. HN Mod policy is to claim they take such claims seriously but nothing changes and those who complain too loudly get banned

cryoshon 11y ago
Can you provide examples?

lolyololol 11y ago

Having an open discussion about state surveillance is essentially impossible on hacker news given moderation policy, liberal use of banning, astro turfing and corresponding up and down voting and flagging that occurs. HN Mod policy is to claim they take such claims seriously but nothing changes and those who complain too loudly get banned.

draw_down 11y ago

The blurb at the front says some of these things are in use by US government, some aren't. So why does the government's internal catalog list things the government doesn't use? Who would buy those things if they weren't in use? I'm not trying to make a point here, I'm confused.

wavefunction 11y ago
Police departments, US state-level LE departments, the wealthy and powerful, other countries and likely corporations come to mind
- draw_down 11y ago
  But the first two are part of the government, so anything they use is by definition in use by the government. Would the other groups get the catalogue? I would think not since it's supposedly internal to the US government...

enginn 11y ago

In terms of the complexity here, it is quite substantial, and for the lay person to cache all the multi-layered exploits in their head is unexpected. It's disgustingly complex and multi pronged ex-filtration of data that has no bounds. This industry is 1000 years ahead of the common UNIX neck beard / basement dweller type who probably owns no more than $10,000 worth of kit, but uses that kit on orders of magnitude more advanced levels than the catalog presented here. If it is the case that 'they' are 1000 years ahead of us in terms of ex-filtration and their budget is apparently limitless, then this allows the citizen to dream of many strategies to avoid, overcome, and render such ex-filtration useless. One strategy which I will announce (a public one I will give away because bragging in public forums is apparently safe) is to compartmentalize a digital life. A frustratingly common motif is the "Person A stores their life on their phone" and thus we have a central store of data about person A. Bad OPSEC, you cry? Well the lay person is not familiar with spycraft terms like OPSEC and such a term has only flourished in use in recent times because of Snowden. Infact a great many spycraft terms have gained widespread use, like OSINT for example, which were so rare, that you would be red-flagged as a spy if you searched for those terms, or were using them in everyday conversation. All that is needed is for the lay person to acknowledge that unless a spy-vs-spy tactic is employed, then it really is a disgusting grab fest for all one's data. Annoyingly this can lead to arms-race type scenarios where a citizen attempts to 'beef up' their digital life, and the cost can be substantial, and potentially turning citizens into digital Winston Smiths, which is never good, and the surveillance can be said to have failed. Compartment-ed computing is but one of a whole cornucopia of techniques and strategies to reverse the Panopticon on itself though...