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PRC Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications Infrastructure
- basilgohar 2y ago> and the copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders Is this legal speak for saying, "They're using our backdoors without our permission."?
- mikestew 2y agoI think so? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42043010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42043010
- Cyph0n 2y agoDoes this mean that they were able to (ab)use LI infra? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception
- halJordan 2y agoYes. What no one here bothers to even mention is that APTs have been doing this very thing since the 2004 Athens Affair. It didn't feed into the sanctimony so it isn't mentioned.
- Cyph0n 2y agoI was just reading about the Greece incident linked on the wiki page. Absolutely staggering stuff - none of which I heard of before!
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- talldayo 2y agoI like the tacit implication that all 335 million-odd Americans might be subject to requests pursuant to court orders, but none of us can ever really know for sure since those records might be sealed, expunged, vacated or classified. It's like we're on the $500,000 question and my Phone-a-Friend still has Snowden on the line.
- eru 2y ago> I like the tacit implication that all 335 million-odd Americans [...] I wouldn't worry too much. Us unAmericans in the rest of the world don't have any constitutional guarantees to save us from the US spooks (nor from each other), and you don't have any constitutional guarantees to save you from the rest of the world, either. So the flimsy guarantees that would in theory save you from your own spooks are really just a drop in the bucket.
- walterbell 2y agoTrickle-down surveillance can lead to on-demand local neo-stasi orgs in every country, representing local, national, transnational or global interests. Like the WestWorld S3 “RICO crime app”.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoYes, they leveraging CALEA mandated infrastructure. https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/16/wyden-calea-hack-proves-dangers-of-government-mandated-backdoors/ https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/16/wyden-calea-hack-proves-... https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_letter_to_fcc__doj_on_wiretapping_systems_hackpdf.pdf https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_letter_to_f... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
- sailfast 2y agoCan you imagine if the proponents of the Clipper Chip had actually won the argument? Yeesh. This is inexcusable.
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- talldayo 2y ago> Can you imagine if the proponents of the Clipper Chip had actually won the argument? Given that 90% of smartphone hardware comes from 2-3 manufacturers, I actually can imagine it pretty well...
- davidw 2y agoWyden is so good on this stuff.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoHe is a treasure.
- plussed_reader 2y ago[flagged]
- bongobingo1 2y agoDamn, if only some one, some where, at some point, had mentioned that there's no such thing as a secure backdoor to encryption. Oh well, maybe such events are impossible to predict.
- CarpaDorada 2y agoNo it is not, because these are not backdoors, the entities legally own the data users have provided them and the courts require them to share the data for investigative purposes. When the FBI pressed Apple to break its encryption, it would not had been a backdoor, but simply a different product that Apple would've offered. A backdoor would be a secret exploit that circumvents encryption, or other security methods.
- greycol 2y agoYou've probably conflated the saying "going through the backdoor" with the noun backdoor, which is an understandable mistake to make. Conflating the two is even easier when the backdoor is morally questionable i.e. When someone purposefully installs a wooden backdoor on a bankvault and says it's so that we don't need to go through the whole rigmarole of opening the main vault-door. Yes it allows them to do their job of checking what's in safety deposit boxes easier but the door itself is an evil.
- CarpaDorada 2y ago"Using our backdoors" is what was said, not "going through the backdoor". Backdoors have a very specific meaning in computer security. US law enforcement is not using backdoors to access the data of US companies.
- grayfaced 2y agoA backdoor bypasses legitimate access mechanisms. Whether it is a backdoor or not depends fully on whether you believe lawful intercept is a legitimate access mechanism. And I think the law is on the side of it being not a backdoor.
- greycol 2y agoWe've had multiple bills proposed by multiple countries for government mandated backdoors. Multiple articles refer to how these bills would create backdoors, multiple computer security experts say the bills would create backdoors in the software. Under your definition of the word they'd all be using the word incorrectly because logically no bill could create a legal backdoor by definition. It's seems there's a semantic schism on "the point in software where security is weak enough (either purposefully or unkowingly) for 3rd party access by a 3rd party" and "the point in software where security is purposefully weakened for 3rd party access by the legal requirement of a 3rd party" there's definitely a distinction but I generally conflate the two, perhaps incorrectly, under the word backdoor. If you've got another more appropos word for this purposeful and legal weakining of security for non primary user/provider access I'd love to know it because sadly I feel I'd use it fairly often in the coming years.
- AzzyHN 2y agoDamn, who could've seen this coming!?
- sangnoir 2y agoIt's legal speak for "They are looking at who we have wiretaps on", which any country would be interested in, just to see which of their assets are being watched, for counter-counter-espionage purposes.
- walterbell 2y agoFor cross-referencing with ground surveillance.
- halJordan 2y agoThat is incorrect. While you're idea probably is interesting to them, they are indeed leveraging the infrastructure to "live off the land" doing their own collect. They are very much doing their own targeting.
- sangnoir 2y agoHow would their own targeting relate to "copying of certain information that was subject to U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders"? AFAIK, telecoms enforcement requests subject to court orders in the US mean one thing, and one thing only: lawful interception of communication.
- basilgohar 2y agoThere is no known limit to the scope of what LE can monitor, and there is no public record to access or analyze in the case of sealed documents. So it could, for all we know, be anyone and everyone. Remember, way back when, AT&T just gave the NSA full access to their network.
- sangnoir 2y agoI'm not sure I'm following your argument in the context of this thread. Are you suggesting there were no surveillance court orders whose targets the Chinese found a d copied?
- webdoodle 2y agoYep. Pretty much the dystopian governments go-to playbook for surveillance. Find a private entity that is providing a communication service they can't spy on, then pressure them to put in a backdoor with threats of jail, etc. Former CEO of Qwest Communications Joe Nachio claims he fought the NSA's initial requests for these backdoors, and was rewarded with being taken to court for insider trading. Remember no one at the top of these companies got there without breaking some rules along the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
- churchill 2y agoWhenever I see these news & FBI releases about Chinese state-sponsored hackers breaching systems in America, I wonder whether the same thing happens over there: American malware and hacker groups attacking & laying landmines in China's internet infrastructure, although the Chinese may not publicize these exploits because their system opts to maintain an air of invincibility.
- talldayo 2y agoChina has the Great Firewall segregating most international access from the country's network. Additionally, China (moreso than most) has a motivation to onshore as much of their software and hardware manufacturing to bolster their own industry. It's possible that isolated attacks could pop off now and again, but hacking to-and-from China is strictly state controlled.
- nitwit005 2y agoTheir censorship infrastructure isn't security. If anything, it's another thing to hack.
- WatchDog 2y agoIt does have some defensive benefit. Getting legitimate connectivity to work reliably across the Chinese border, is a big pain. Due to this, Chinese commercial internet infrastructure has very few dependencies on international services. Western infrastructure by comparison is very vulnerable to distribution of connectivity, attacks on deep sea cables can cause a lot of damage.
- petergs 2y agoIt certainly does happen. See for example under “Targets”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations
- tharkun__ 2y ago
- 7thpower 2y agoI will be interested to see if the Trump administration will target their response at any specific companies or entities related to telecommunications (beyond existing measures) or just focus on existing tariffs and export controls. I also wonder if information about similar attacks from US allies will be detailed in the coming days, or if the exploits were just limited to our specific back doors (as has been reported in the previous weeks). China will have convenient amnesia during their next communications lamenting the West’s unprovoked aggression.
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- dgfitz 2y agoSounds like Xi isn’t stoked about tariffs.
- The28thDuck 2y agoIs this related to Verizon going down recently?
- RachelM71948937 2y ago[dead]
- clwg 2y agoI was working with MISP[0], an open-source threat intelligence sharing platform, and came across a really interesting dataset from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on China's technology research institutions[1]. I liked the data so much I built a quick cross-filter visualization on top of it to help explore it[2]. The data offers a fairly comprehensive and interesting perspective on China's research priorities and organization, I can't speak to the effectiveness of the programs themselves, but it does make me concerned that we are falling far behind in many areas, including cyber security. [0] https://www.misp-project.org/ https://www.misp-project.org/ [1] https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MISP/misp-galaxy/refs/heads/main/clusters/china-defence-universities.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MISP/misp-galaxy/refs/head... [2] https://www.layer8.org/8541dd18-ff05-4720-aac7-1bd59d3921dd/ https://www.layer8.org/8541dd18-ff05-4720-aac7-1bd59d3921dd/
- _lvbh 2y ago> we are falling far behind in many areas, including cyber security In terms of quantity and quality of talent, I don't think the western world would fall behind China, especially with their strict control of information. Most people there will have difficulty independently learning about cybersecurity. The difference is that most talent is captured by the private sector with higher compensation or bounties. Meanwhile, China can very easily compel anyone they need into the government so the % utilization on outward attacks is probably higher.
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago> In terms of quantity At the very least China is generally gonna have everyone else beat on quantity of people involved in quite a lot of things.
- tw1984 2y agocheck AI, green energy, EV, mobile computing, cloud computing, quantum stuff, robots etc. it is pretty much China vs US now when it comes to quality. how many people would seriously believe that EU or Japan can possibly compete with China on its own in terms of quality for those above mentioned sectors. just looking at those low quality & high pollution Japanese & European cars.
- grahamj 2y agoHey China, could you just like, you know, not do that? That'd be cool. Thanks!
- jumping_frog 2y agoI will just leave this here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%80%9305 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2...
- knowaveragejoe 2y agoIs this a whataboutism?
- jumping_frog 2y agoFriends don't treat friends like this.
- uptownfunk 2y agoHow many are there that we don’t even know they are targeting. That is what would keep me up at night
- humanlity 2y agoSnowden: wow, cool