3 ms·

Why 1997?

• nickpsecurity 8y ago
  As an opponent of NSA, I was studying them closely to assess capabilities. Anderson, Schell, and Karger were pushing "COMPUSEC" in the 1970's on the military who mostly didnt believe in it. They and NSA thought all you needed was access controls on computers plus COMSEC between them. The BLACKER VPN paper mentioned the rivalry between COMSEC vs COMPUSEC people, too. That was somewhere between 1980-1990. It wasn't until around 1990 after many pentests by INFOSEC pioneers and hackers in the media convinced them to hire their own hackers. They were still focused on crypto and software flaws since they were low-hanging fruit. I figured subversion would be high-profile targets only. How Patriot act got passed was straight outta Nazi playbook. If a power grab, I knew secret backdoors, surveillance, and disappearances would follow. They'd launch USAP's forcing people to backdoor stuff or be held indefinitely under Patriot Act. Despite Haydens work, NSA still moves slow. I figured a few years before large-scale capabilities came online. Said 2004. Far as I recall, nothing in Snowden leaks refuted that estimate. What about TAO? Hayden was forcing management to listen to engineers. They'd propose backdoors. Still software focused mostly, though. I estimated 1999. Later article on TAO history said 1997 was their start. Damn. Now I say 1995-1997. Only thing left off was use obscure, less-popular hardware IP holders and terroristd probably werent using. Macs, Amigas, SGI... or just off-brand x86.