5 ms·

That's the quote that jumped out at me too. The solution for those who want to stay out of NSA's reach is to use your own hardware, and use open source software

That's the quote that jumped out at me too. The solution for those who want to stay out of NSA's reach is to use your own hardware, and use open source software (where it's hard to put a backdoor without being discovered) and strong encryption.

electic 13y ago
Remember when Microsoft would trash Linux because it was open source and "not secure." Well, this settles it. Using your own hardware and open source software helps but someone determined will still get in...
- untog 13y ago
  Even "your own hardware" is going to be pretty damn hard: working with chipmakers to insert back doors So you're going to need to make your own chips, too.
  - captainmojo 13y ago
    http://opencores.org/or1k/Main_Page http://opencores.org/or1k/Main_Page
    - wiml 13y ago
      The following isn't directly applicable to your suggestion, but it's a reminder that an FPGA, just like a CPU, may not be doing exactly and only what you told it to do: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Backdoor http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Backdoor > Abstract. This paper is a short summary of the first real world detection of a backdoor in a military grade FPGA. [....] The backdoor was found to exist on the silicon itself, it was not present in any firmware loaded onto the chip. [....]
  - rahoulb 13y ago
    RMS doesn't seem such an extremist any more.
    - javert 13y ago
      I don't agree with RMS on much, but this just goes to show that calling people "extremist" is a logical fallacy. There is only correct and incorrect, and the margin by which something deviates from a commonly accepted norm is irrelevant to judging that.
  - pja 13y ago
    Refusing to rely on the RNG in Intel processors doesn't seem particularly unreasonable in the light of this revelation does it?
gaius 13y ago
That's a false sense of security. You can inspect every line of code in SSL but unless you are a world-class cryptographer yourself, how will you spot a backdoor in the algorithm?
- electic 13y ago
  It's a bit harder to sneak in junk in open source projects. You can see the checkins. However, you are right, if the flaw is in the algorithm itself, it's hopeless.
  - jorgeortiz85 13y ago
    Is it harder to sneak in junk in open source projects? I'm reminded of Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture, "Reflections on Trusting Trust". http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html Could someone add a backdoor to git that hides backdoors from showing up in git? Could gcc be backdoored to add backdoors to arbitrary software? How likely is it that NSA has a few zero-days lying around they could use to hack into the servers that host git or gcc or any other tool you rely on? What if they had agents among the committers and maintainers of these projects? Security against a well-armed, well-funded, well-organized, secretive adversary is hard.
    - hyperpape 13y ago
      There are countermeasures concerning the Trusting Trust attack: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_tru..., though I'm not sure if anyone has ever seriously attempted to deploy them.
      - betterunix 13y ago
        I have given some thought to this kind of thing, and one thing I realized is that the limits of the trusting trust attack can be exploited as well. Let's support you only have one compiler. Now, it is going to try to insert the worm into any compiler it compiles, right? The problem is that it must be able to detect that it is actually compiling a compiler. This, however, is not a decidable problem. It is possible to construct a program that will fool the worm and thus you can create a compiler that you know you can trust for this test. It will probably be a hard compiler to use, but you will need it at most twice -- once to check for an attack, and if there is an attack once more to bootstrap a clean compiler.

electic 13y ago

Remember when Microsoft would trash Linux because it was open source and "not secure." Well, this settles it. Using your own hardware and open source software helps but someone determined will still get in...

untog 13y ago
Even "your own hardware" is going to be pretty damn hard: working with chipmakers to insert back doors So you're going to need to make your own chips, too.
- captainmojo 13y ago
  http://opencores.org/or1k/Main_Page http://opencores.org/or1k/Main_Page
  - wiml 13y ago
    The following isn't directly applicable to your suggestion, but it's a reminder that an FPGA, just like a CPU, may not be doing exactly and only what you told it to do: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Backdoor http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Backdoor > Abstract. This paper is a short summary of the first real world detection of a backdoor in a military grade FPGA. [....] The backdoor was found to exist on the silicon itself, it was not present in any firmware loaded onto the chip. [....]
- rahoulb 13y ago
  RMS doesn't seem such an extremist any more.
  - javert 13y ago
    I don't agree with RMS on much, but this just goes to show that calling people "extremist" is a logical fallacy. There is only correct and incorrect, and the margin by which something deviates from a commonly accepted norm is irrelevant to judging that.
- pja 13y ago
  Refusing to rely on the RNG in Intel processors doesn't seem particularly unreasonable in the light of this revelation does it?

gaius 13y ago

That's a false sense of security. You can inspect every line of code in SSL but unless you are a world-class cryptographer yourself, how will you spot a backdoor in the algorithm?

electic 13y ago
It's a bit harder to sneak in junk in open source projects. You can see the checkins. However, you are right, if the flaw is in the algorithm itself, it's hopeless.
- jorgeortiz85 13y ago
  Is it harder to sneak in junk in open source projects? I'm reminded of Ken Thompson's Turing Award lecture, "Reflections on Trusting Trust". http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html Could someone add a backdoor to git that hides backdoors from showing up in git? Could gcc be backdoored to add backdoors to arbitrary software? How likely is it that NSA has a few zero-days lying around they could use to hack into the servers that host git or gcc or any other tool you rely on? What if they had agents among the committers and maintainers of these projects? Security against a well-armed, well-funded, well-organized, secretive adversary is hard.
  - hyperpape 13y ago
    There are countermeasures concerning the Trusting Trust attack: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_tru..., though I'm not sure if anyone has ever seriously attempted to deploy them.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      I have given some thought to this kind of thing, and one thing I realized is that the limits of the trusting trust attack can be exploited as well. Let's support you only have one compiler. Now, it is going to try to insert the worm into any compiler it compiles, right? The problem is that it must be able to detect that it is actually compiling a compiler. This, however, is not a decidable problem. It is possible to construct a program that will fool the worm and thus you can create a compiler that you know you can trust for this test. It will probably be a hard compiler to use, but you will need it at most twice -- once to check for an attack, and if there is an attack once more to bootstrap a clean compiler.