7 ms·

His comments are actually the most insightful points I've seen about the discussion regarding PRISM: I have my own suspicions -- which I won't go into here --

by andreyf 13y ago

His comments are actually the most insightful points I've seen about the discussion regarding PRISM: I have my own suspicions -- which I won't go into here -- about what PRISM was actually about. I'll just say that there are ways to intercept people's Google, Facebook, etc., traffic in bulk without sticking any moles into the org -- or directly tapping their lines. You may find some interesting hints in the leaked PRISM slides [1], especially the second and fourth ones shown there. The subtleties of phrasing are important, I suspect, not because they were trying to be elliptical but because they reveal what was obvious to the people who were giving that presentation. And like I said, I have both some reason to believe that there aren't such devices inside Google, and that the PRISM slides are actually talking about a somewhat different kind of data collection -- one that's done from outside the companies. Any ideas what he could be thinking? 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/m http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...

jmgao 13y ago
A target's phone call, e-mail or chat will take the cheapest path, not the physically most direct path - you can't always predict the path Dates When PRISM Collection Began For Each Provider This is complete conjecture, but this reads to me like the NSA set up its own backhauls and set up peering agreements at artifically low prices to get traffic going over their pipes. Is there historical data for route announcements available anywhere? There are a lot of specific dates that could confirm/disprove this.
- ihsw 13y ago
  This is expounded upon in some news articles, particularly that data is routed not by the most efficient geographic route but by the cheapest by dollar price. It's a very important tidbit of information that divulges the heart of the matter -- the NSA is a backbone operator[1]. It's a tall claim to make, however their involvement in internet exchange points (and other regional network access points) would be far more difficult to conceal. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_tier_1_networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_tier_1_n...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- andrewcooke 13y ago
  OK, so when did Google push SSL everywhere? How does that fit with the graph at http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2013/06/prism-slide-5-thumb-570x427-123899.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c... ? It's possible Google come out as good guys in this...?
  - jmgao 13y ago
    Looks like Gmail in 2010, and all of their sites for logged in users since 2011. [1] http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/google-search-in-chrome-gets-more-secure.html http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/google-search-in-chrome-get...
- xfs 13y ago
  This. Acquire access to major routers, send routing commands, route target traffic into their hidden networks, and avoid physically wiretapping anything. And this framework can be done globally: Your target's communications [...] flowing into and through the U.S. is as easy as announcing BGP route advertisements globally. Actually the Great Firewall of China started investigated realtime and fine-grained control of national routing infrastructure as early as in 2003.[1] This allows them to apply routing policies to routers national-wide in seconds. One observable effect is that a single address can be null routed immediately after failure to get blocked by TCP resets. It is believed the HTTPS MITM of Github last time was also helped by this routing framework. And the GFW is viewed by the Chinese government as a national security framework. No wonder the USG is doing the same thing. [1]: Liu, G., Yun, X., Fang, B., Hu, M. 2003. A control method for large-scale network based on routing diffusion. Journal of China Institute of Communications: 10.
JunkDNA 13y ago
Beam splitters (prisms?) inside the backbone providers. All traffic goes to its destination unharmed, but the NSA gets all the packets. SSL is harder, but all you need is the private keys. Those are hard to get but not impossible for someone with the resources of the government. This is the only scalable way to do what they are supposed to be doing and not involve lots of outsiders. Note that the people who have really clammed up the past few days are the telecoms in all this.
- jonknee 13y ago
  It has been well known that they already do the beam splitting portion, so it's really just up to the keys.
  - commandar 13y ago
    If anyone's not familiar, information about that began to leak in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- est 13y ago
  That's why IMHO secret sharing[1] algorithms are so important We store only parity of data in one data center, and some in another on a different continent. Any data intercepted or lost does not damage the integrity of the whole, plus this makes ISP can not discriminate raw binary data. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing, invented by Adi Shamir, the S of RSA
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  This is exactly the conclusion I came to. My guess is they have the SSL/TLS keys. That being said, tptacek thinks we are wrong, and he is a subject matter expert, so I am not sure.
  - kalmi10 13y ago
    The linked quora answer (from the co-author of Firesheep) says that even in that case one can't launch a passive man in the middle attack if perfect forward secrecy is used. Google.com uses Diffie–Hellman key exchange which provides perfect forward secrecy. So... If I understand everything correctly, it should be impossible to decrypt passively captured HTTPS traffic to/from google.com. http://www.quora.com/SSL-Secure-Sockets-Layer/Is-it-ever-possible-to-decrypt-passively-sniffed-SSL-TLS-traffic/answer/Ian-Gallagher-2 http://www.quora.com/SSL-Secure-Sockets-Layer/Is-it-ever-pos... Could someone more knowledgeable confirm this?
silverlake 13y ago
Here's a much simpler explanation: The Feds submit a FISA order for specific data collection. The companies' lawyers approve it. Then the NSA has a convenient user interface for accessing that data (perhaps real-time?) somehow from the companies' servers (possibly through an intermediary). How else is this data being sent to Ft. Mead? Thumb drives via FedEx? The dates on the slides might be when a company has erected some convenient access point to grab the data "lawfully" obtained by a FISA order. Microsoft whipped something together quickly. Apple took years to get the UX just right. Frankly, sucking in ALL of the Internet seems extremely difficult and useless. We're talking GOOG+AAPL+MS+YHOO+Skype+many more. And all for $20M/year? The gov't spends more on toilet paper.
- twinge 13y ago
  This is my thoughts exactly. I cannot imagine any hugely sophisticated data collection infrastructure costing a mere $20m a year. More likely this is software written to take in structured data obtained by subpoena -- as it's generated by targeted users. This "ultimate user data liberation" API may have even been the system at Google that was attacked by the Chinese: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chines...
  - commandar 13y ago
    It's possible PRISM is a separate program that's accounted for differently. We've had pretty good evidence for a while now that the government does have firehose type capability in at least some locations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- losvedir 13y ago
  Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Referring to this: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2013/06/prism-slide-5-thumb-570x427-123899.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c... For only $20M/yr (which is nothing by government standards), I could definitely see that being a roadmap for building the user friendly endpoint to obtain the relatively small number of legally obtained records from each provider.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
codezero 13y ago
I wonder if he's hinting at spying on XMPP -- a lot of the companies implicated use this protocol and the timelines of the powerpoint timeline is aligned with a lot of companies mobile growth as well as XMPP usage -- also, this might explain why Google is suddenly dropping XMPP support (rather than just being "closed")
0x08bc2ff1 13y ago
There are two features in the slides that need to be accounted for in any explanation. 1. The second slide, which implies that the fact that the internet traffic passes through the US is relevant. This implies that either some physical interception was necessary, either from outside the companies, or from the inside with their cooperation, or that it was legally necessary (on order to require the companies to deliver the information. And yet it would seem like the issue of what the NSA could require US companies to reveal, is orthogonal from which traffic passes through the US, since in that case the issue would be what was stored on US servers. 2. The implied cooperation from the companies in the slides. According to the Washington Post, the "Special Source Operations" in the logo refers to "the NSA term for alliances with trusted U.S. companies". Given this, and the use of the terms "providers", it seems unlikely that no cooperation from the companies is involved. From the above, I would propose that the PRISM scheme must involve some combination of physical interception, and cooperation from the companies involved. For example, the NSA may be intercepting traffic then asking the companies for private keys for some of the traffic they intercept. This would fit the above facts in that it requires the traffic to pass through the US, and also requires cooperation from the companies.

by andreyf 13y ago

jmgao 13y ago

A target's phone call, e-mail or chat will take the cheapest path, not the physically most direct path - you can't always predict the path Dates When PRISM Collection Began For Each Provider This is complete conjecture, but this reads to me like the NSA set up its own backhauls and set up peering agreements at artifically low prices to get traffic going over their pipes. Is there historical data for route announcements available anywhere? There are a lot of specific dates that could confirm/disprove this.

ihsw 13y ago
This is expounded upon in some news articles, particularly that data is routed not by the most efficient geographic route but by the cheapest by dollar price. It's a very important tidbit of information that divulges the heart of the matter -- the NSA is a backbone operator[1]. It's a tall claim to make, however their involvement in internet exchange points (and other regional network access points) would be far more difficult to conceal. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_tier_1_networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_tier_1_n...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
andrewcooke 13y ago
OK, so when did Google push SSL everywhere? How does that fit with the graph at http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2013/06/prism-slide-5-thumb-570x427-123899.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c... ? It's possible Google come out as good guys in this...?
- jmgao 13y ago
  Looks like Gmail in 2010, and all of their sites for logged in users since 2011. [1] http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/google-search-in-chrome-gets-more-secure.html http://blog.chromium.org/2013/01/google-search-in-chrome-get...
xfs 13y ago
This. Acquire access to major routers, send routing commands, route target traffic into their hidden networks, and avoid physically wiretapping anything. And this framework can be done globally: Your target's communications [...] flowing into and through the U.S. is as easy as announcing BGP route advertisements globally. Actually the Great Firewall of China started investigated realtime and fine-grained control of national routing infrastructure as early as in 2003.[1] This allows them to apply routing policies to routers national-wide in seconds. One observable effect is that a single address can be null routed immediately after failure to get blocked by TCP resets. It is believed the HTTPS MITM of Github last time was also helped by this routing framework. And the GFW is viewed by the Chinese government as a national security framework. No wonder the USG is doing the same thing. [1]: Liu, G., Yun, X., Fang, B., Hu, M. 2003. A control method for large-scale network based on routing diffusion. Journal of China Institute of Communications: 10.

JunkDNA 13y ago

Beam splitters (prisms?) inside the backbone providers. All traffic goes to its destination unharmed, but the NSA gets all the packets. SSL is harder, but all you need is the private keys. Those are hard to get but not impossible for someone with the resources of the government. This is the only scalable way to do what they are supposed to be doing and not involve lots of outsiders. Note that the people who have really clammed up the past few days are the telecoms in all this.

jonknee 13y ago
It has been well known that they already do the beam splitting portion, so it's really just up to the keys.
- commandar 13y ago
  If anyone's not familiar, information about that began to leak in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
est 13y ago
That's why IMHO secret sharing[1] algorithms are so important We store only parity of data in one data center, and some in another on a different continent. Any data intercepted or lost does not damage the integrity of the whole, plus this makes ISP can not discriminate raw binary data. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing, invented by Adi Shamir, the S of RSA
jcampbell1 13y ago
This is exactly the conclusion I came to. My guess is they have the SSL/TLS keys. That being said, tptacek thinks we are wrong, and he is a subject matter expert, so I am not sure.
- kalmi10 13y ago
  The linked quora answer (from the co-author of Firesheep) says that even in that case one can't launch a passive man in the middle attack if perfect forward secrecy is used. Google.com uses Diffie–Hellman key exchange which provides perfect forward secrecy. So... If I understand everything correctly, it should be impossible to decrypt passively captured HTTPS traffic to/from google.com. http://www.quora.com/SSL-Secure-Sockets-Layer/Is-it-ever-possible-to-decrypt-passively-sniffed-SSL-TLS-traffic/answer/Ian-Gallagher-2 http://www.quora.com/SSL-Secure-Sockets-Layer/Is-it-ever-pos... Could someone more knowledgeable confirm this?

silverlake 13y ago

Here's a much simpler explanation: The Feds submit a FISA order for specific data collection. The companies' lawyers approve it. Then the NSA has a convenient user interface for accessing that data (perhaps real-time?) somehow from the companies' servers (possibly through an intermediary). How else is this data being sent to Ft. Mead? Thumb drives via FedEx? The dates on the slides might be when a company has erected some convenient access point to grab the data "lawfully" obtained by a FISA order. Microsoft whipped something together quickly. Apple took years to get the UX just right. Frankly, sucking in ALL of the Internet seems extremely difficult and useless. We're talking GOOG+AAPL+MS+YHOO+Skype+many more. And all for $20M/year? The gov't spends more on toilet paper.

twinge 13y ago
This is my thoughts exactly. I cannot imagine any hugely sophisticated data collection infrastructure costing a mere $20m a year. More likely this is software written to take in structured data obtained by subpoena -- as it's generated by targeted users. This "ultimate user data liberation" API may have even been the system at Google that was attacked by the Chinese: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chines...
- commandar 13y ago
  It's possible PRISM is a separate program that's accounted for differently. We've had pretty good evidence for a while now that the government does have firehose type capability in at least some locations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
losvedir 13y ago
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Referring to this: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2013/06/prism-slide-5-thumb-570x427-123899.jpg http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c... For only $20M/yr (which is nothing by government standards), I could definitely see that being a roadmap for building the user friendly endpoint to obtain the relatively small number of legally obtained records from each provider.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

codezero 13y ago

I wonder if he's hinting at spying on XMPP -- a lot of the companies implicated use this protocol and the timelines of the powerpoint timeline is aligned with a lot of companies mobile growth as well as XMPP usage -- also, this might explain why Google is suddenly dropping XMPP support (rather than just being "closed")

0x08bc2ff1 13y ago

There are two features in the slides that need to be accounted for in any explanation. 1. The second slide, which implies that the fact that the internet traffic passes through the US is relevant. This implies that either some physical interception was necessary, either from outside the companies, or from the inside with their cooperation, or that it was legally necessary (on order to require the companies to deliver the information. And yet it would seem like the issue of what the NSA could require US companies to reveal, is orthogonal from which traffic passes through the US, since in that case the issue would be what was stored on US servers. 2. The implied cooperation from the companies in the slides. According to the Washington Post, the "Special Source Operations" in the logo refers to "the NSA term for alliances with trusted U.S. companies". Given this, and the use of the terms "providers", it seems unlikely that no cooperation from the companies is involved. From the above, I would propose that the PRISM scheme must involve some combination of physical interception, and cooperation from the companies involved. For example, the NSA may be intercepting traffic then asking the companies for private keys for some of the traffic they intercept. This would fit the above facts in that it requires the traffic to pass through the US, and also requires cooperation from the companies.