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GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
- weinzierl 13y agoThe TL;DR is, quote: "The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America."
- BgSpnnrs 13y agoA couple more eyebrow-raising tidbits: "One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months." "UK officials could also claim GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA"."
- majke 13y ago"... This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites ..." Isn't Facebook using SSL these days?
- peter487 13y agoNot by default on every account. I have recently changed settings on couple of my friends account to force SSL.
- juraj24 13y agoWhat is the current understanding regarding the crackability of SSL?
- UVB-76 13y agoThe encryption (if implemented correctly) is good, but if an intelligence agency has access to a Certificate Authority, or the target of your communications, man-in-the-middle attacks are feasible. In short, nothing is safe anymore.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoOr if Facebook have handed over their private key, etc.
- peter487 13y agoIt has been discussed over and over on hackernews recently so just tldr version. Let’s consider two scenarios. 1) NSA forces CA to issues a certificate for google.com and decide to man-in-the-middle you. In that case there is a mechanism call certificate pinning. To put it simply certificates of Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. are hard coded into Firefox and Google Chrome. (Microsoft provides this ability in IE using latest EMET 4.0). So if someone tries to send you cert for google, which doesn’t match the one hardcoded your browser would get crazy and issue a big red warning :) 2) NSA records your encrypted communication with Google and later obtains Google private key (either by factoring Google public key or using some secret court order or whatever). In this case they CAN’T decrypt your communication with Google because Google uses version of Diffi- Hellman protocol with so called ephemeral keys. More here http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/11/protecting-data-for-long-term-with.html http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2011/11/protecting-.... Ephermal DH is not implement by many sites (hackernews does it, facebook doesn’t) SSL can be broken in myriad of different ways but at least in these two scenarios you are to certain degree safe
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rphillips 13y agoIt is likely that internal user data within Facebook (and other websites) is not encrypted, and can be freely snooped between the backend servers and the frontend servers.
- tptacek 13y agoThis being more or less the entire stated mission of GCHQ, I wonder who's actually surprised by this revelation.
- mpyne 13y agoPeople who are still locked into the mold of Henry Stimson, I would imagine. I think people are more surprised that their own traffic is falling into this and not just diplomatic/military signals. But that's one of the unintended consequences of communications in general shifting over to Internet methods instead of dedicated circuits.
- jdp23 13y agoPerhaps people shouldn't be surprised, but the discussion of the data sharing with the NSA certainly appears to call into question some of the US government's claims: "This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets.... By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data."
- doe88 13y agoYes but one month ago they still had plausible deniability, not anymore. In short the term it may change nothing but in the long run it will have an impact, no doubt.
- tptacek 13y agoI'm confused as to how anyone could have believed that one of the 5 largest signals intelligence agencies in the world could not have been tapping Internet backbone cables. Can we just resolve this right here? The Internet backbone is tapped. To whatever extent NSA isn't looking at our traffic (or is pretending not to, or pantomiming not doing it), some other foreign SIGINT agency is. To believe otherwise is to believe that state-sponsored intelligence agencies somehow believe the Internet is off limits to surveillance because I don't know freedom and progress or something. Of course they don't believe that.
- tjaerv 13y ago"This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as 'intercept partners'. […] some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned 'sensitive relationship teams' and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of 'special source' material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause 'high-level political fallout'."
- mtgx 13y agoIt's nice to see that giving all their users data to the spy agencies is a business model for these companies.
- sambe 13y ago"Paid for the cost" - to me - means no profit.
- aspensmonster 13y agoI see no list of company names in this article by The Guardian. I believe the British people --or anyone that does business with them (edit: "them" as in the companies that have assisted the GCHQ) in any way, really-- would be very interested in hearing some names right about now.
- DanBC 13y agoThe companies are obvious. BT is one.
- UVB-76 13y agoThis is disgraceful.
- DanBC 13y agoSince this is part of GCHQ's mission, and publicly declared on their recruitment website, it shouldn't be that surprising. (http://www.gchq-careers.co.uk/about-gchq/about-gchq/ http://www.gchq-careers.co.uk/about-gchq/about-gchq/) > As one of the UK's intelligence and security agencies, we gather and analyse digital and electronic signals from many channels, from all corners of the world. Converting this information into intelligence material, we play a significant role in informing national security, military operations, police activity and foreign policy.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- abdulhaq 13y ago"The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases." 850,000 employees/contractors?? - That can't be correct can it?
- Phlarp 13y agoRoughly 1.5 million people have top secret clearance[1], I would personally be alarmed if over half of them had access to data like this, although I can't say it would surprise me at this point. [1] http://news.clearancejobs.com/2011/09/26/how-many-people-have-security-clearances/ http://news.clearancejobs.com/2011/09/26/how-many-people-hav...
- aspensmonster 13y agoI'm personally alarmed that so many people (presumably) have had access to this material and yet these leaks are only _now_ coming out.
- kryten 13y agoMost government employees with top secret clearance (DV in the UK) like I was are scared of the consequences of breaking the rules. When someone puts their life on the line and opens their mouth, there is enough attention on the matter for other people to come forward safely. If the attention is not there, people disappear (without trial in some cases) and end up rotting in jail somewhere.
- sshagent 13y ago21 pb a day - someone has an expensive storage bill
- inthewind 13y agoBetter store it all on site or they'll end up with a feedback loop; if they pump it back down the commoner's pipes. ;)
- embolism 13y agoNo big deal. It's Silicon Valley who's to blame.
- johansch 13y agohttp://www.submarinecablemap.com/ http://www.submarinecablemap.com/
- teawithcarl 13y agoThis is what I thought all along. A) Access is MUCH broader than just tapping Google, FB, MSFT, etc. Access is at the far broader level of telecommunication cables. Encryption can be broken later, with specialty FPGA chips. B) More importantly, with the US taking "everything foreign" and with GCHQ (also) taking "everything foreign" ... the Venn set of these two closely associated govt spying operations means they get "everything, period", including US domestic communications. If true, the original Snowden revelations are (small) child's play to what may actually be being surveilled, which may indeed be everything.
- o0-0o 13y agoImportant to extend your Venn diagram to the "Five Eyes". Canada, US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. A much wider intersection is possible in that context.
- o0-0o 13y agoFrom the article, "(Metadata describes basic information on who has been contacting whom, without detailing the content.)". Could someone let the journalists know what metadata really is? I mean, come on. Metadata is a concise, highly valued description of the data, also including identifying information. In other words, keywords! For this comment, the keywords (metadata) might be: Journalists Metadata Meta Data Article
- inthewind 13y agoI think your definition of meta-data is too narrow. It's not just keywords. Excuse me if I state the obvious, but with something like a web page access, the meta data will be in part: your internet address, what time you accessed it, the referring url etc. A phone call's meta data could include the length of the call, which phone the call was made on, which mast was used etc. Meta data is additional data about the data isn't it? One assumes that you could then make telling deductions from that meta data. Like a persons movements (acquired from phone, financial and internet records). You can also draw a lot about their character: their interests, their political views, their cicles etc. The meta data is very revealing in itself.