4 ms·

I think that the most severe vulnerabilities that are found have been known about for a long time by our intelligence community and likely others. I doubt much

I think that the most severe vulnerabilities that are found have been known about for a long time by our intelligence community and likely others. I doubt much of anything off the shelf for companies even if they open their wallets a lot can be realistically expected to defeat against advanced well funded nation state intrusions. I would not add North Korea or Iran to that list. I think they are far behind. Maybe North Korea gets some scarps from China The US has without a doubt the most powerful position. All major operating systems are made here. GitHub is for the most part here. A lot of equipment comes from there or at least in warehouses or just pass through. Given ample opportunities for modification. We have the FAANG. Twitter and lots of other worldwide platforms that have millions of users. All slurped Up by the NSA (at least if they want to). The US has a very coveted position. Presumably China possibly is next. So much manufacturing happens there on whole equipment or parts for it. Should give them rich opportunity to modify products they are interested inn.

mtgx 6y ago
So we know that Microsoft had a multi-billion dollar incentive from the NSA to buy Skype and remove its P2P encryption. And then we know that Microsoft removed P2P encryption as soon as it bought Skype, and then it joined the PRISM program revealed by Snowden. https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f... I wonder if GitHub was bought for the same reason (the NSA could silently add backdoors to software code hosted on GitHub without the UX revealing anything of the kind). Now that we're openly seeing how the US freaks about about "national security" because other countries might own these highly popular chip platforms or social media companies, I wonder what other events played in the same way in the past - like what other companies did the US "had to have" for the purpose of enabling much easier spying on rivals, and then "suddenly" some American company offered to buy out those companies. Now I'm not necessarily saying this is the one and only reason these companies made these acquisition - most likely, in most cases, NSA approached the companies that would be open to the idea because it could also prove strategic for their business in some way. So it would be a "win-win" for these companies to both acquire a possibly useful technology, as well as get paid later on by the US government through various "unrelated contracts" that would pay for these deals.
reactchain 6y ago
The US has a very coveted position in the West, but the reach of this is getting smaller every year. Having root access to FAANG for instance is pretty useless in China, Apple is the only one of those five with any presence to speak of. And anything supply chain related China would be in the more powerful position.

mtgx 6y ago

So we know that Microsoft had a multi-billion dollar incentive from the NSA to buy Skype and remove its P2P encryption. And then we know that Microsoft removed P2P encryption as soon as it bought Skype, and then it joined the PRISM program revealed by Snowden. https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f... I wonder if GitHub was bought for the same reason (the NSA could silently add backdoors to software code hosted on GitHub without the UX revealing anything of the kind). Now that we're openly seeing how the US freaks about about "national security" because other countries might own these highly popular chip platforms or social media companies, I wonder what other events played in the same way in the past - like what other companies did the US "had to have" for the purpose of enabling much easier spying on rivals, and then "suddenly" some American company offered to buy out those companies. Now I'm not necessarily saying this is the one and only reason these companies made these acquisition - most likely, in most cases, NSA approached the companies that would be open to the idea because it could also prove strategic for their business in some way. So it would be a "win-win" for these companies to both acquire a possibly useful technology, as well as get paid later on by the US government through various "unrelated contracts" that would pay for these deals.

reactchain 6y ago

The US has a very coveted position in the West, but the reach of this is getting smaller every year. Having root access to FAANG for instance is pretty useless in China, Apple is the only one of those five with any presence to speak of. And anything supply chain related China would be in the more powerful position.