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XKeyscore
- apt-get 10mo agoHow relevant is this (and the NSA's general spying capability) in 2025? We hear a lot about local agencies perusing the services of private companies to collect citizens' data in the US, whether that's traffic information, IoT recordings, buying information from FAANG, etc. What's the NSA's position in the current administration? (e.g. we've heard a lot of noise in the past about the FBI and CIA getting the cold shoulder internally. I wonder how this applies to the NSA.)
- monerozcash 10mo agoNSAs collection capabilities have been greatly degraded. They can no longer read all internet traffic, basically everything is encrypted now. NSA does not have magic tools to break modern encryption.
- themafia 10mo agoSo instead of collecting at AT&T Room 631 you now collect at Google Room Whatever. The NSA has spent no small amount of time in the last decade obviously interfering with NIST and public encryption standards. The obvious reason is they _want_ to have the magic tools to break some modern encryption.
- monerozcash 10mo ago>So instead of collecting at AT&T Room 631 you now collect at Google Room Whatever. Even if true, significantly degraded. Probably not true though, NSA has been very leaky and such a story would be kind of devastating for Google. NSA lacks the legal capability to force Google to do so, the money to bribe Google to do so and also almost certainly lacks the political backing to put one of the biggest US companies in such a position. I don't doubt for a second that NSA could hack Google (or just bribe employees with appropriate access) and break into specific Gmail accounts if they wanted to. Bulk collection would be far more difficult to implement. >The NSA has spent no small amount of time in the last decade obviously interfering with NIST and public encryption standards. The obvious reason is they _want_ to have the magic tools to break some modern encryption. They do try, they just haven't been very successful at it.
- themafia 10mo agoGoogle, along with all other major service providers, has a legal portal so law enforcement can process warrant orders. I think all you have to do is hack that portal or process.
- monerozcash 10mo agoSure, and you could also just submit fake warrants as many criminals have successfully done. Neither of these approaches would enable bulk collection. I'm sure the NSA can read essentially any specific emails they're interested in, they just can't do so at anywhere near the scale they used to pre-Snowden. Not only that, these days almost all chats have moved to E2EE platforms. Reading that traffic in a stealthy manner requires compromising endpoints, bulk collection simply isn't possible.
- ls612 10mo agoIt’s not Google room whatever, it’s Cloudflare room whatever. That’s why you don’t hear much about undermining encryption standards anymore, who needs that when you have SSL termination for 40% of the internet?
- matheusmoreira 10mo agoBrief list of NSA backdoors: https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html https://www.ethanheilman.com/x/12/index.html
- hollow-moe 10mo agoThey surely don't have any kind of access to letsencrypt root certs whatsoever
- monerozcash 10mo agoYou can't decrypt anything with letsencrypt root certs, you can issue your own certificates but it would be impossible to use those at any significant scale. It's also worth considering that CT makes it extremely noisy to use such certificates to attack web browsers.
- hollow-moe 10mo agoI'd bet they could absolutely proxy large parts of people and make use of these certs. I wonder how much are CT logs scrutinized, would these "rogue" certs be found easily because we can't find traces of them being generated by letsencrypt ? Browsers checks CRLs but are they checking CT logs to be ensure the cert they're checking was logged ?
- monerozcash 10mo agoThey couldn't do that at scale without being detected, no. There are various people actively looking for this, and the existing tooling makes it easy to detect. >Browsers checks CRLs but are they checking CT logs to be ensure the cert they're checking was logged ? Yes, all modern browsers require certificates to be in the CT logs in order for them to be accepted. For example, we can easily pull up logs for gmail.com and see which certificates browsers would accept. https://api.certspotter.com/v1/issuances?domain=gmail.com&expand=dns_names&expand=issuer&expand=revocation&expand=problem_reporting&expand=cert_der https://api.certspotter.com/v1/issuances?domain=gmail.com&ex...
- notepad0x90 10mo ago1) They don't necessarily need to break all encryption, just knowing who is talking to who and then delivering a tailored payload is their M.O.; The Tailored Access Operations division exists just for this. 2) They didn't build a Yottabyte-scale datacenter for no reason 3) They have the capability to compromise certificate authorities. Pinned certs aren't universal. 4) Speculation, but, Snowden's revelations probably set off an "arms race" of sorts for developing this capability. Lots more people started using Tor, VPNs, and more, so it would almost be dereliction of duty on their part if they didn't dramatically increase their capability, because the threats they are there to stop didn't disappear. 5) ML/LLM/AI has been around for a while, machine learning analysis has been mainstream for over a decade now. All that immense data a human can never wade through can be processed by ML. I would be surprised if they aren't using an LLM to answer questions and query real-time and historical internet data. 6) You know all the concerns regarding Huawei and Tiktok being backdoored by the Chinese government? That's because we're doing it ourselves already. 7) I hope you don't think TAO is less capable than well known notorious spyware companies like the NSO group? dragnet collection is used to find patterns for follow-up tailored access.
- monerozcash 10mo agoNone of your proposed solutions are stealthy enough to enable bulk collection at a pre-Snowden scale. Yeah, they can still collect lots of useful metadata.
- notepad0x90 10mo agoI don't understand, all they have to do is tap submarine cables, why is that infeasible now? What specific thing do you think they were collecting before that they can't now? Metadata is extremely valuable!! lots of things can be inferred from it. In other comments I've decried companies like slack including your password reset or login codes in the email subject for example. They can take any packet and trace it back to a specific individual, even if you're on Tor, chaining VPNs,etc.. without decrypting it. They can see what destinations you're visiting. they can build a pattern of life profile you and mine that. The ad industry does much of this without access to global internet traffic captures already lol.
- matheusmoreira 10mo agoThey don't break encryption, they circumvent it. They get into people's computers and access the stored data after it's been decrypted. They stockpile zero day vulnerabilities and use them against their targets in order to install persistent malware. They intercept equipment and literally implant hardware onto the PCBs that let them access the networks. They have access to hordes of government CCTVs. They have real time satellite imaging. They have cellphone tower data.
- monerozcash 10mo agoThis is all in line with significantly degraded collection capabilities. They can easily go after specific targets, but bulk collection is no longer viable in the same way it was pre-Snowden.
- matheusmoreira 10mo agoYes but I wouldn't say their capabilities have been "greatly" degraded. It's still very much in the "push a button and have someone's entire life history up on the screen" territory. Degraded would be "it is impossible for them to know anything about people unless they send dozens of human agents to stalk them".
- monerozcash 10mo agoI think going from "lol we can read and store all the emails sent by everybody" to "lol we can hack any specific person and then read their emails" indicates a massive loss of capability. The first approach enabled them to find targets that were not on their radar based on message contents, they can no longer do that.
- matheusmoreira 10mo agoThey still read emails. No doubt they're inside Google, Microsoft, Apple. They might not be inside Proton Mail, it uses PGP but keys are stored server side so I wouldn't know. No doubt they still read texts. I think the US is still among the countries that use SMS a lot. They no doubt have access to the data big tech's mined out of the entire world's population. That capability alone puts them into "bring everything about this guy up on the screen" territory.
- yupyupyups 10mo ago>NSA does not have magic tools to break modern encryption. They don't. But they have other options. For example, Cloudflare is an American company that has plaintext access to the traffic of many sites. Cloudflare can be compelled to secretly share anything the NSA want.
- monerozcash 10mo ago>Cloudflare can be compelled to secretly share anything the NSA want. This is true given some possible interpretations, false given other possible interpretations. Cloudflare can be secretly compelled to share specific things, there's no legal mechanism to compel Cloudflare to share everything.
- morkalork 10mo agoWasn't the whole thing that the secret courts were too liberal in access they were granting?
- monerozcash 10mo agoNot in the sense that they were ordering companies to facilitate full take collection of content by the NSA, no. Hence the famous "SSL added and removed here ;-)" slide
- doobiedowner 10mo agoWasn’t room 641A just the NSA strong arming At&T to facilitate full take collection?
- monerozcash 10mo agoGetting AT&T to do that is not the same as getting Google to do that. AT&T does not have much to lose by doing that, Google does.
- snorbleck 10mo agostore now... decrypt later...
- monerozcash 10mo agoSure, why not. If quantum computers capable of factoring sufficiently large numbers ever arrive, we'll be living in a very different world anyway.
- ch2026 10mo agoYou should read about Project Cloudflare
- tehjoker 10mo agoIsrael produced Pegasus for hacking smartphones and taking them over. You don't think NSA can do that? They control all the endpoints they want.
- monerozcash 10mo agoSo what? They can't do that at scale without making a ton of noise. That's a very boring capability compared to what they were able to do pre-Snowden. That's also not a new capability, they were able to do that pre-Snowden too.
- globalnode 10mo agoDont need to break encryption if you read data from the source -- O/S vendors will do it for you.
- cannabis_sam 10mo agoThis is naive to the point where it is indistinguishable from disinformation. Aside from a tiny minority of people applying their own encryption (with offline confirmed public keys) at end points with securely stored air gapped private keys, this information is available to the US government, it’s the god damn job of the NSA.
- monerozcash 10mo agoThe NSA can hack pretty much anybody, yes. The NSA can no longer collect everything as they were doing pre-Snowden. The crucial difference is that it is no longer nearly as easy for the NSA to identify new targets as it used to be, because they don't have full take access to the vast amounts of content they used to.
- themafia 10mo agoYou only need to look at a few headline "true crime" cases to see the obvious parallel construction that is being done.
- monerozcash 10mo agoCould you be more specific? It's really hard to have an useful conversation based on a comment like this, but really easy to have one based on a comment which links to specific cases and perhaps even explains how the obvious parallel construction appears.
- themafia 10mo agoIt's a common "conspiracy theory" that this happened in the Luigi Mangione case even thought I don't agree he's "probably innocent": https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1hlmq3f/from_what_ive_read_about_it_luigi_mangione_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1hlmq3... The FBI apparently attempted to use this in the Bryan Kohberger case: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/us/idaho-murders-bryan-kohberger-dna.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/us/idaho-murders-bryan-ko... It's hard to find solid coverage of this because obviously the methods are often hidden and rarely leak out to the press at large. The press also gets confused and thinks that defending our constitutional rights will lead to criminals being acquitted. If you spend a lot of time watching and studying these cases and how they evolve throughout the courts it becomes obvious that this is likely occurring more than most people realize.
- monerozcash 10mo agoI don't think the Mangione case is a particularly good example, you wouldn't use a 911 call by a random McDonald's manager to disguise parallel construction. The caller is easy to identify, how could the government ever trust this person to not reveal their parallel construction? If they were planted by the government, that'd be extremely difficult to hide. The government also likely wouldn't be able to compensate them in any meaningful way for telling such a lie. The Kohlberger case also does not suggest parallel construction, the DOJ policy isn't binding and the DOJ can in fact legally violate that whenever they want.
- dialup_sounds 10mo agoNSA is under Pete Hegseth's Department of War [sic] if that is any indication of their position and priorities.
- monerozcash 10mo agoThe most interesting detail about the whole XKeyscore story is that it was apparently not leaked by Snowden https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_pri.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_p... https://www.reuters.com/article/opinion/commentary-evidence-points-to-another-snowden-at-the-nsa-idUSKCN10X00A/ https://www.reuters.com/article/opinion/commentary-evidence-... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/11/second-leaker-in-us-intelligence-says-glenn-greenwald https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/11/second-leake... It is possible that the "second source" and the shadow brokers are one and the same. https://www.electrospaces.net/2017/09/are-shadow-brokers-identical-with.html https://www.electrospaces.net/2017/09/are-shadow-brokers-ide... https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/09/15/shadow-brokers-and-the-second-source/ https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/09/15/shadow-brokers-and-the... And here's an interesting tidbit about a possible link between TSB and Guccifer 2.0 https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/11/01/show-me-the-metadata-a-forensic-tie-between-shadow-brokers-and-guccifer-2-0/ https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/11/01/show-me-the-metadata-a...
- sdigf 10mo ago[flagged]
- sallveburrpi 10mo agoYou mean a Russian asset like Comrade Krasnov?
- monerozcash 10mo agoThe USG does not seem to believe that Snowden was a Russian agent.
- throwawayq3423 10mo agoI don't think it matters if he was more so that he inarguably has become one.
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- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- codedokode 10mo agoThis is a reminder why all the traffic should be encrypted and obfuscated (i.e. no SNI in clear text). Ideally, the traffic should be encrypted to resemble a random noise. If you are making an app, you can embed public keys and use those to completely encrypt traffic, without relying on CAs. For example, Telegram does this, using a homemade encryption protocol that has no clear-text SNI like HTTPS. As I remember, WeChat also uses some home-grown form of obfuscation. As a bonus, this makes it more difficult for telecoms to discriminate against certain sites or apps and helps enforce net neutrality no matter if they like it or not.
- anonymousiam 10mo agoIt's also a reminder that no mater how secure you think you are, some third party may have access. Consider that TAO (or SSF) can probably get through your firewall and router, and maybe into the management engine on the servers with your critical data. The only thing you've got going for you is that they will (probably) keep your data secure (for themselves).
- jwpapi 10mo agoI mean if I create an offline private key and encrypt my message to be only read with my public key and I’ve learned about math and encryption. I can be assured that my receiver would need to be compromised. I don’t like these general observation comments. This kind of makes it unappealing to learn about encryption, but it’s worth it and makes you choose either a proper encrypted software or use a key for secret messages.
- saghm 10mo agoIsn't the whole issue with net neutrality that ISPs would be incentivized to prioritize their own traffic (or that of companies they collaborate with)? How does making it harder for them to identify traffic for my app/service/whatever stop them from doing that? As long as they can identify the traffic they do want to prioritize (by companies who haven't done the process you describe), it's not obvious to me why they wouldn't have trouble deprioritizing my stuff based on them at least knowing that it's not their own, effect if they don't know whose it is? "Random noise" isn't likely to look like it's their special favorite traffic. If everyone including the priority traffic did this, then I guess it would have an effect on net neutrality, then I could see that it would make a difference, but I don't see how that could be construed as "whether they like it or not" given that they could just as easily not implement this if they didn't "like it". That's not to say this isn't worth doing for the privacy and security benefits, but I'm struggling to see how this would have any real-world influence on net neutrality.
- sdigf 10mo ago[flagged]
- runjake 10mo agoBeing familiar with the USG classification system, I was thrown off by the beginning of this article. It doesn't sound like something that would be classified merely as Secret. The article begins with: > XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by... This should be edited to: > XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a classified computer system used by... The program is allegedly a Top Secret program.
- Sniffnoy 10mo agoThen edit it, it's Wikipedia!
- nerdsniper 10mo agoBecause Wikipedia. My edit got immediately auto-bot-reverted[1] by some anti-vandalism crusader. Insert bell-curve meme[1] where "just edit wikipedia" is the middle of the bell-curve. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Discospinster#WTF_edit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Discospinster#WTF_ed...? [1] https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/533936279/Bell-Curve https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/533936279/Bell-Curve
- viccis 10mo agoSaying something is "secret" is not the same as saying it is "classified Secret"
- 47282847 10mo agoIt’s not secret. If it was it wouldn’t be on Wikipedia.
- halJordan 10mo agoIf you want someone to be actually pedantic about it, then no system is ever classified. Knowledge of the system might be classified, the system may be accredited to handle classified data, at some level. The data this system allegedly collects is obviously unclassified and only becomes classified after landing in some data lake. Information is classified not anything else. All of that to say, this is one of the many secret computer systems the nsa allegedly has. As the Wikipedia article clearly indicates
- tehjoker 10mo agoBack in they day, it is claimed they could only store 20 TB a day, but technology has improved considerably... but so have data volumes. I wonder if they can store more content for longer now or if the volumes have increased too much.
- MajesticHobo2 10mo agoI'm sure they can store far more than 20 TB now, but it is true that the content pool is much larger. I would guess it's not a favorable ratio.