7 ms·

This isn't surprising. What the US government wants the government gets. I was working for a large ISP in 2010-2011 and we were considering long haul transport

This isn't surprising. What the US government wants the government gets. I was working for a large ISP in 2010-2011 and we were considering long haul transport gear between Huawei and Infinera. All things being equal Huawei had a better cost/performance value prop. That was, until the FBI came in with a heavy handed opinion. You see at that point in time the best place to siphon data was at large ingress/egress. As I understand it there are two reasons the FBI wanted Infinera: 1) Infinera is a US based company and had to abide, like Cisco, to provide "LE" (law enforcement) capable firmware/software and 2) to keep a Chinese firm from generally gaining that position in a large ISP. So while it's huge Google was told what to do, it's not surprising as this is business as usual. And back to an earlier point... The best place to siphon data in 2019? Your phone. Times have changed, data collection by governments hasn't.

yding 7y ago
By LE capable firmware you mean that the FBI had a backdoor to eavesdrop? Wow.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Yes indeed [0]. [0] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/10000/10008/feature/guides/lawful_intercept/10LIovr.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/10000/10008/fe...
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    So, the US having freedom really was just a meme after all.
    - plazmatic 7y ago
      Everything is a meme to the plebs these days. Simplify everything for the small brains.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jrockway 7y ago
      TLS is still legal. So is routing all your traffic through Tor if you think the metadata is relevant. I can't imagine much useful material comes from wiretapping these days. Maybe once in a while, but the real value largely exists in the application layer, which is obtained in a different way.
      - crehn 7y ago
        When TLS is everywhere, what's the most reasonable way for law enforcement to surveil suspects?
        parliament32 7y ago
        Bottom-up. The FBI sees that you're having a TLS conversation at X time with a server in Facebook's IP range, so they just go ask Facebook for what you were doing at that time. Foreign-hosted services seem like they'd be hard to crack, but it's extremely likely their data flows though Cloudflare, Amazon, GCE, or a similar US-based company.
    - Angostura 7y ago
      Following the requirements of a judge is not necessarily antithetical to Freedom. Even in societies where freedom is values, conspiracy to murder (say) tends to be frowned upon.
      - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
        But Cisco hasn't conspired to murder anyone.
  - Gaelan 7y ago
    Doesn’t seem like a backdoor AFIACT—just support for handling a request from the government. (Distinction being that the ISP manually tells their equipment to intercept data instead of the government having technical access.)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Lawful Intercept is not a backdoor: > The surveillance is performed through the use of wiretaps on traditional telecommunications and Internet services in voice, data, and multiservice networks. The LEA delivers a request for a wiretap to the target's service provider, who is responsible for intercepting data communication to and from the individual. The service provider uses the target's IP address or session to determine which of its edge routers handles the target's traffic (data communication). The service provider then intercepts the target's traffic as it passes through the router, and sends a copy of the intercepted traffic to the LEA without the target's knowledge. Responding to lawful warrants and subpoenas is everyone’s obligation, and has been for hundreds of years under American law, and English law before that. The government is entitled to almost any evidence—it just has to follow the proper process to get it. Lawful intercept just supports that process. That’s also why the FBI having access to US data is fundamentally different than Chinese back doors in US networks. US law enforcement has legal ways to access data flowing in networks to perform their legitimate law enforcement functions. The Chinese have no legitimate reason to access data in US networks.
    - windexh8er 7y ago
      Lawful intercept isn't itself a backdoor, but it did provide one that was exposed via Snowden. In this case I'll call a spade a spade: many lawful intercept tools were used as backdoors, or overreach of legal authority. Again, keep in mind the context of my original comment: the years 2010-2011 which was pre-Snowden. The FBI may have stepped in with a heavy hand for many reasons but those reasons may have included inclusion of another large ISP in programs like PRISM.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        PRISM was literally a system for handling the paperwork for lawful intercepts. There are instances of the USG exceeding its authority, but you've somehow managed to cite one of the few leaked programs that had an almost purely lawful purpose.
        windexh8er 7y ago
- dsl 7y ago
  No, not at all. It was an extension of lawful wiretaps in to the digital age. CALEA required that manufacturers add the ability for lawful intercept to be done on their equipment by the providers that purchased them. Law enforcement still had to go to a judge, get a court order, and take it to the ISP. The ISP could then configure the devices to siphon off traffic from a single customer to a collection device. The same functionality and process has existed in phone networks basically since they became electronically switched.
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    While your statement on CALEA is true it also isn't the correct history. What CALEA put in place was designed for lawful intercept but we also know there were programs in use going against said law [0]. Remember the context of my conversation was 2010-2011 which was pre-Snowden. It's likely state, local and national agencies have less of an interest, today, at route/switch infrastructure simply because of the post-Snowden crypto push. [0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvp8ga/the-fbi-wants-to-wiretap-every-us-citizen-online https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvp8ga/the-fbi-wants-to-w...
    - dsl 7y ago
      PRISM was a confusing program because neither the people reporting on it, or the tech companies impacted understood how it worked. The claim was the NSA had direct access in to providers networks, and the companies claimed they did not - the "logical" conclusion was an abuse of CALEA or similar access granted to FBI. It was later discovered the NSA capability was the direct result of tapping fiber optic cables between international data centers, nothing to do with lawful intercept capabilities.
      - windexh8er 7y ago
        We never got the full picture on PRISM. We do know that at least a part of the program was a direct result of tapping fiber much of the program also went redacted. I've posted this before but during 2010 the main data center I had access to was closed one evening and the next morning we had a mobile server rack tied back to main routing gear via fiber which was in a mobile rack, blacked out and fully tamper taped. We knew a three letter agency was installing it and all floor access was revoked for that evening as well as being in the building. This was not off long haul fiber but was off of main routing infrastructure. I don't believe PRISM was purely fiber taps and that these programs had deeper hooks. Unfortunately I don't have any evidence beyond the assumption based on the facts I had been given and what I physically saw. I've used and installed a lot of long haul gear and have seen and installed many fiber taps in my day, this implementation was hardly passive in nature. But, that's just first hand knowledge of a random patron of the Internet.
- ahoka 7y ago
  I can assure you that every telecom equipment has lawful interception capabilities. Some countries even mandate a standard log format for metadata (Turkey does that). It's just one of the features that the operators ask for when getting their equipment, because they have to comply with local law enforcement.
mhkool 7y ago
What most people forget is that in a war the other party shoots back. It may take some time but it will happen and sometimes when you do not expect it. I think that Trump's move with banning Huawei is bad for the US in the mid and long run.
- option 7y ago
  sometimes whoever shots first wins
  - NetOpWibby 7y ago
    I’m not betting on US, pun intended.
    - hueving 7y ago
      Anything to substantiate that? Or do you mean "not betting" in the sense that you have no insight into either side being an obvious winner?
      - NetOpWibby 7y ago
        The competency of the current U.S. administration is my substantiation.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- benj111 7y ago
  Would any down voters care to expand? The assertion that there's going to be consequences seems... inevitable? To me at least.
- anon739967 7y ago
  >What most people forget is that in a war the other party shoots back Yes, and these actions are the US finally shooting back after enduring years of industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and market access restrictions.
Thorrez 7y ago
>The best place to siphon data in 2019? Your phone. But can't you reverse engineer your phone and see what it's doing? And can't you monitor the network data it's sending? With a backdoor in long haul transport gear, academics, researchers, random hackers, watchdog groups, journalists, competitors, etc, don't have the ability to monitor for bad behavior.
- antocv 7y ago
  AFAIK nobody has reverse-engineered even parts of the radio-firmware, the separate OS which has memory access to your other OS. Linux/Android/Iphones OS, is really just a guest, a side-show to what the radio-firmware can and is doing, ie spying.
  - dafsdfasdfsa 7y ago
    This is not true anymore. Some android phones (samsung, google), have DMA disabled and modern iphones (around 2016?) use USB or SDIO without DMA. I honestly believe that the theoretical DMA backdoor attack (and most other similar attacks) have been mitigated thoroughly. I am much more concerned about secretly held 0days (RCE) and most concerned about warrantless orders against cloud storage. https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.... p41
    - tgragnato 7y ago
      > without DMA [...] 0days (RCE) > https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.... p41 Are you citing "To protect the device from vulnerabilities in network processor firmware, network interfaces including Wi-Fi and baseband have limited access to application processor memory. When USB or SDIO is used to interface with the network processor, the network processor can’t initiate Direct Memory Access (DMA) transactions to the application processor. When PCIe is used, each network processor is on its own isolated PCIe bus. An IOMMU on each PCIe bus limits the network processor’s DMA access to pages of memory containing its network packets or control structures."? Correct? The attention to hardware isolation and separation is appreciated, but I don't hold my breath for iBoot and SEPOS protecting an iPhone from powerful adversaries.
youeseh 7y ago
This might provide some context as to why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrF2X4Db84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrF2X4Db84 After 9-11, the FBI's mandate was expanded from investigating terrorist attacks to include preventing them from occurring.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rayiner 7y ago
Pretty much every developed country has some framework for collecting electronic data pursuant to legal process: https://tmt.bakermckenzie.com/-/media/minisites/tmt/files/2017_surveillance_law.pdf?la=en https://tmt.bakermckenzie.com/-/media/minisites/tmt/files/20.... Country after country has decided that the government should have access to that information to perform legitimate government law enforcement functions. (The process can be abused, sure, but the functionality must be present to permit entirely proper and lawful requests for data.) And that is deeply rooted in precedent and practice. If you were a maritime shipper in the 1700s, you’d have to respond to law enforcement requests for information about the goods you transported on behalf of suspects. What’s not proper is when a foreign country that performs no law enforcement function in a jurisdiction tries to “siphon data.” Trying to draw an equivalence between the two is entirely fallacious.
- hrktb 7y ago
  > If you were a maritime shipper in the 1700s, you’d have to respond to law enforcement requests for information about the goods you transported on behalf of suspects Tell me if I am mistaken, but in these specific case it looks more to me like forbidding customers and companies from using foreign made secure vaults because the government can't force them to secretly provide a master key. Then sure, the argument is also valid that these vault makers could be providing a master key to their respective governments, but that would be a different argument and different enforcement.
- noobermin 7y ago
  This is fine as long as they get a warrant. As long as that's not the case then such searches should be considered unconstitutional.

yding 7y ago

By LE capable firmware you mean that the FBI had a backdoor to eavesdrop? Wow.

windexh8er 7y ago
Yes indeed [0]. [0] https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/10000/10008/feature/guides/lawful_intercept/10LIovr.html https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/10000/10008/fe...
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  So, the US having freedom really was just a meme after all.
  - plazmatic 7y ago
    Everything is a meme to the plebs these days. Simplify everything for the small brains.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrockway 7y ago
    TLS is still legal. So is routing all your traffic through Tor if you think the metadata is relevant. I can't imagine much useful material comes from wiretapping these days. Maybe once in a while, but the real value largely exists in the application layer, which is obtained in a different way.
    - crehn 7y ago
      When TLS is everywhere, what's the most reasonable way for law enforcement to surveil suspects?
      - parliament32 7y ago
        Bottom-up. The FBI sees that you're having a TLS conversation at X time with a server in Facebook's IP range, so they just go ask Facebook for what you were doing at that time. Foreign-hosted services seem like they'd be hard to crack, but it's extremely likely their data flows though Cloudflare, Amazon, GCE, or a similar US-based company.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    Following the requirements of a judge is not necessarily antithetical to Freedom. Even in societies where freedom is values, conspiracy to murder (say) tends to be frowned upon.
    - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
      But Cisco hasn't conspired to murder anyone.
- Gaelan 7y ago
  Doesn’t seem like a backdoor AFIACT—just support for handling a request from the government. (Distinction being that the ISP manually tells their equipment to intercept data instead of the government having technical access.)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- rayiner 7y ago
  Lawful Intercept is not a backdoor: > The surveillance is performed through the use of wiretaps on traditional telecommunications and Internet services in voice, data, and multiservice networks. The LEA delivers a request for a wiretap to the target's service provider, who is responsible for intercepting data communication to and from the individual. The service provider uses the target's IP address or session to determine which of its edge routers handles the target's traffic (data communication). The service provider then intercepts the target's traffic as it passes through the router, and sends a copy of the intercepted traffic to the LEA without the target's knowledge. Responding to lawful warrants and subpoenas is everyone’s obligation, and has been for hundreds of years under American law, and English law before that. The government is entitled to almost any evidence—it just has to follow the proper process to get it. Lawful intercept just supports that process. That’s also why the FBI having access to US data is fundamentally different than Chinese back doors in US networks. US law enforcement has legal ways to access data flowing in networks to perform their legitimate law enforcement functions. The Chinese have no legitimate reason to access data in US networks.
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    Lawful intercept isn't itself a backdoor, but it did provide one that was exposed via Snowden. In this case I'll call a spade a spade: many lawful intercept tools were used as backdoors, or overreach of legal authority. Again, keep in mind the context of my original comment: the years 2010-2011 which was pre-Snowden. The FBI may have stepped in with a heavy hand for many reasons but those reasons may have included inclusion of another large ISP in programs like PRISM.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      PRISM was literally a system for handling the paperwork for lawful intercepts. There are instances of the USG exceeding its authority, but you've somehow managed to cite one of the few leaked programs that had an almost purely lawful purpose.
      - windexh8er 7y ago
dsl 7y ago
No, not at all. It was an extension of lawful wiretaps in to the digital age. CALEA required that manufacturers add the ability for lawful intercept to be done on their equipment by the providers that purchased them. Law enforcement still had to go to a judge, get a court order, and take it to the ISP. The ISP could then configure the devices to siphon off traffic from a single customer to a collection device. The same functionality and process has existed in phone networks basically since they became electronically switched.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  While your statement on CALEA is true it also isn't the correct history. What CALEA put in place was designed for lawful intercept but we also know there were programs in use going against said law [0]. Remember the context of my conversation was 2010-2011 which was pre-Snowden. It's likely state, local and national agencies have less of an interest, today, at route/switch infrastructure simply because of the post-Snowden crypto push. [0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvp8ga/the-fbi-wants-to-wiretap-every-us-citizen-online https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvp8ga/the-fbi-wants-to-w...
  - dsl 7y ago
    PRISM was a confusing program because neither the people reporting on it, or the tech companies impacted understood how it worked. The claim was the NSA had direct access in to providers networks, and the companies claimed they did not - the "logical" conclusion was an abuse of CALEA or similar access granted to FBI. It was later discovered the NSA capability was the direct result of tapping fiber optic cables between international data centers, nothing to do with lawful intercept capabilities.
    - windexh8er 7y ago
      We never got the full picture on PRISM. We do know that at least a part of the program was a direct result of tapping fiber much of the program also went redacted. I've posted this before but during 2010 the main data center I had access to was closed one evening and the next morning we had a mobile server rack tied back to main routing gear via fiber which was in a mobile rack, blacked out and fully tamper taped. We knew a three letter agency was installing it and all floor access was revoked for that evening as well as being in the building. This was not off long haul fiber but was off of main routing infrastructure. I don't believe PRISM was purely fiber taps and that these programs had deeper hooks. Unfortunately I don't have any evidence beyond the assumption based on the facts I had been given and what I physically saw. I've used and installed a lot of long haul gear and have seen and installed many fiber taps in my day, this implementation was hardly passive in nature. But, that's just first hand knowledge of a random patron of the Internet.
ahoka 7y ago
I can assure you that every telecom equipment has lawful interception capabilities. Some countries even mandate a standard log format for metadata (Turkey does that). It's just one of the features that the operators ask for when getting their equipment, because they have to comply with local law enforcement.

mhkool 7y ago

What most people forget is that in a war the other party shoots back. It may take some time but it will happen and sometimes when you do not expect it. I think that Trump's move with banning Huawei is bad for the US in the mid and long run.

option 7y ago
sometimes whoever shots first wins
- NetOpWibby 7y ago
  I’m not betting on US, pun intended.
  - hueving 7y ago
    Anything to substantiate that? Or do you mean "not betting" in the sense that you have no insight into either side being an obvious winner?
    - NetOpWibby 7y ago
      The competency of the current U.S. administration is my substantiation.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
benj111 7y ago
Would any down voters care to expand? The assertion that there's going to be consequences seems... inevitable? To me at least.
anon739967 7y ago
>What most people forget is that in a war the other party shoots back Yes, and these actions are the US finally shooting back after enduring years of industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and market access restrictions.

Thorrez 7y ago

>The best place to siphon data in 2019? Your phone. But can't you reverse engineer your phone and see what it's doing? And can't you monitor the network data it's sending? With a backdoor in long haul transport gear, academics, researchers, random hackers, watchdog groups, journalists, competitors, etc, don't have the ability to monitor for bad behavior.

antocv 7y ago
AFAIK nobody has reverse-engineered even parts of the radio-firmware, the separate OS which has memory access to your other OS. Linux/Android/Iphones OS, is really just a guest, a side-show to what the radio-firmware can and is doing, ie spying.
- dafsdfasdfsa 7y ago
  This is not true anymore. Some android phones (samsung, google), have DMA disabled and modern iphones (around 2016?) use USB or SDIO without DMA. I honestly believe that the theoretical DMA backdoor attack (and most other similar attacks) have been mitigated thoroughly. I am much more concerned about secretly held 0days (RCE) and most concerned about warrantless orders against cloud storage. https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.... p41
  - tgragnato 7y ago
    > without DMA [...] 0days (RCE) > https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.... p41 Are you citing "To protect the device from vulnerabilities in network processor firmware, network interfaces including Wi-Fi and baseband have limited access to application processor memory. When USB or SDIO is used to interface with the network processor, the network processor can’t initiate Direct Memory Access (DMA) transactions to the application processor. When PCIe is used, each network processor is on its own isolated PCIe bus. An IOMMU on each PCIe bus limits the network processor’s DMA access to pages of memory containing its network packets or control structures."? Correct? The attention to hardware isolation and separation is appreciated, but I don't hold my breath for iBoot and SEPOS protecting an iPhone from powerful adversaries.

youeseh 7y ago

This might provide some context as to why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrF2X4Db84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JrF2X4Db84 After 9-11, the FBI's mandate was expanded from investigating terrorist attacks to include preventing them from occurring.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

rayiner 7y ago

Pretty much every developed country has some framework for collecting electronic data pursuant to legal process: https://tmt.bakermckenzie.com/-/media/minisites/tmt/files/2017_surveillance_law.pdf?la=en https://tmt.bakermckenzie.com/-/media/minisites/tmt/files/20.... Country after country has decided that the government should have access to that information to perform legitimate government law enforcement functions. (The process can be abused, sure, but the functionality must be present to permit entirely proper and lawful requests for data.) And that is deeply rooted in precedent and practice. If you were a maritime shipper in the 1700s, you’d have to respond to law enforcement requests for information about the goods you transported on behalf of suspects. What’s not proper is when a foreign country that performs no law enforcement function in a jurisdiction tries to “siphon data.” Trying to draw an equivalence between the two is entirely fallacious.

hrktb 7y ago
> If you were a maritime shipper in the 1700s, you’d have to respond to law enforcement requests for information about the goods you transported on behalf of suspects Tell me if I am mistaken, but in these specific case it looks more to me like forbidding customers and companies from using foreign made secure vaults because the government can't force them to secretly provide a master key. Then sure, the argument is also valid that these vault makers could be providing a master key to their respective governments, but that would be a different argument and different enforcement.
noobermin 7y ago
This is fine as long as they get a warrant. As long as that's not the case then such searches should be considered unconstitutional.