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New NSA Leak Shows MITM Attacks Against Major Internet Services

656 points by chopin 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
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bostik 13y ago
The simplified view given in the documentcloud link begs a question: just which CA certificate(s) is/are controlled by NSA? Because in order to pull that MITM off, they either need to have the target service's CA - or they have the ability to fake any certificate. My guess is on the latter. And that means at least one commonly accepted CA certificate is effectively compromised.
- deleted 13y ago
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- chopin 13y ago
  Afaik it is not necessary that a root CA is compromised. Sufficient would be to compromise any intermediate CA who is not on a revocation list. How to circumvent Googles certificate pinning in Chrome, I have no good idea. They would need to compromise any certificate in the chain.
chopin 13y ago
The documents mention the DigiNotar hack explicitly. What I do not understand is that the hack was detected when (afair) Iranian authorities tried to MITM Google connections, so the hack was claimed to come from an Iranian hacker. This begs the question whether this is wrong and the NSA hacked DigiNotar genuinely or they just used the breach (perhaps then only known to them) to fake certificates themselves. One may also take into account that DigiNotar was responsible for Netherlands public key infrastructure. This made DigiNotar possibly an even more valuable target.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  If memory serves, the Internet in Iran is state-controlled. While it was a user in Iran who initially discovered the MITM'ing being performed and the obvious assumption is that it was the Iranian government MITM'ing its citizens, it is also quite possible that it was (e.g.) the NSA MITM'ing (everyone|a group of people) in Iran (possibly attempting to MITM connections from Iranian officials/nuclear power plants/etc.).
yk 13y ago
Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.sch...
einaros 13y ago
And here I was thinking I was being an all paranoid nutter when I expressed privacy concerns with US hosted CDNs and analytics services .. https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumvent-https https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumve...
newgre 13y ago
If it is true that the NSA MITMed Google connections, then one could draw the conclusion that the NSA doesn't actually have a direct connection to Google data centers (as claimed by Google). If they had such a connection, then why would they use MITM attacks against people?
- frank_boyd 13y ago
  If you can't be sure your "backdoor" can be kept alive indefinitely, you better get used to using multiple approaches.
- uptown 13y ago
  Hard to know for-sure, but it could be something as basic as redundancy. If one method of information-capture was eventually disallowed, they'd have an alternative. Or if one method of information-capture required more oversight than they wanted - they'd have an alternative.
- discostrings 13y ago
  The "direct access" that the NSA has to Google accounts probably requires sending a request for some set of information to Google. It likely needs to be signed off on (even if it's all automated). I'd imagine the NSA would like to hide some activities, especially corporate espionage, even from the watchers at Google--it reduces the risk of anyone at Google growing a spine.
- michaelt 13y ago
  Requests to Google may be audited or logged; Google have an incentive to do this so they can pass the buck when the inevitable evidence of abuse comes out. The NSA, on the other hand, would prefer there to be no audit trail so there's no evidence of the inevitable abuses.
- samstave 13y ago
  It would also stand to reason that the court/LEO requests to Google for data are just a CYA/formality with respect to them "legally" getting the authorization to read the data. They likely have the access to all the data they want. They use the legal vectors for requests just to see what the companies would give them on the request, and can compare the difference between the provided data vs the slurped data.
frank_boyd 13y ago
One more reason to not use any of the giant email providers like Yahoo, Google, and Hotmail.
- joekrill 13y ago
  And what makes any smaller providers any more safe?
  - ArchD 13y ago
    A smaller provider with fewer clients probably provides a lower ROI for the NSA because of the economy of scale, although if they are specifically targeting you, it may still not make a meaningful difference.
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      There is a trade-off here, sure there are fewer people that they can listen in on like that but presumably a smaller provider will also be a softer target, possibly much softer.
  - peterwwillis 13y ago
    Actually, they can be quite a bit safer. If they're small enough the NSA might not have any existing targets on them, which means they won't have tried to find a way to intercept their traffic yet. They could just do SSL traffic inspection, but it's too costly (and practically impossible) to do that everywhere, so they have to do it on specific target networks, which involves a lot of work to get the thing in the right place on the network. It would be a huge pain in the ass to cover all the smaller providers.
    - Nanzikambe 13y ago
      One thing the leaks have reveal is that the NSA invested significant effort in compromising/backdooring hardware. Now if I were intent on compromising hardware to increase my reach, my prime targets are going to be the makers of routing & switching hardware. Someone like Cisco perhaps. Do you have any idea how many such hardware blackboxes lie between any two locations on the net? All that would be needed is a single vulnerable/backdoored one in that path, configure it to DNAT & SNAT through your MITM host .. I highly doubt there're very many places out of that reach. Especially not smaller providers. edit: s/setups/providers/g
SchizoDuckie 13y ago
Holy shit. This means that The Netherlands was a high-level target with Diginotar, and they hit the frickin' jackpot. Just for reference, read this: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_bij_DigiNotar http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_bij_DigiNotar The Diginotar hack basically exposed all of the information about the Dutch that NSA could ever want to digg through: Information about licenseplates (RDW) Tax info (DigiD) Phone records (OPTA) and the complete dutch encrypted government infrastructure (PKI Overheid) Let's see what traction this new info will get now in The Netherlands...
- Nanzikambe 13y ago
  Here's some pretty detailed info in English: http://threatpost.com/final-report-diginotar-hack-shows-total-compromise-ca-servers-103112/77170 http://threatpost.com/final-report-diginotar-hack-shows-tota...
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  My understanding was DigiNotar was pretty strongly linked to an Iranian government affiliated hacker. Indeed, the breach was caught because someone man in the middled gmail in Iran and Chrome's certificate fingerprinting caught it. Although the NSA certainly has reason to spy on Iran, why risk discovery this way? They can legally compel Google to give them the email of foreigners in a foreign country. So maybe NSA had DigiNotar's key, but the hack that shut it down was done by someone else.
  - lambda 13y ago
    Or perhaps the Iran link was a misdirection. They were worried that people would notice the MITMed certs, so they MITMed a lot of Iranian customers to make it look like the attack came from there. > They can legally compel Google to give them the email of foreigners in a foreign country. They can, but they may wish to be more subtle than that. For example, if they were engaged in economic espionage, they might not want that story to break, and would be worried that someone at Google may leak the story. If they had to ask Google, there would be more people who would know about what's going on.
  - 13y ago
josteink 13y ago
If this is true, and that NSA has been MITMing providers like Google, they are undermining the already shabby trust the US cloud-industry has attempted to build. I doubt Google and friends are very happy about that, since that's their one big basket where all the money comes in. NSA in their eagerness to do rampant spying on everyone have had quite some collateral. They have decided to compromise the one thing which allows us to communicate securely on the internet: trust. Right now we need to find out which (root?) CAs are compromised by the NSA. Long term it would probably be a very wise decision to revoke any US-based CA from the default trusted-list of browsers and OSes. We cannot have untrustworthy CAs in a system based on trust. That's simply not an option. Edit: As I've been pondering for a while (and which was also pointed out on reddit) we now have a situation where self-signed certs are more secure than CA-issued ones. They are the only ones you know can't be faked. How backwards is that? The NSA is ruining the internet one piece at a time. The NSA needs to be dismantled.
- einaros 13y ago
  This doesn't just affect services that are hosted by Google, but also encrypted sites that pull scripts in from Google Analytics, Google's CDN, etc. I wrote a semiparanoid rant about this a couple of days ago ... but didn't think I'd be this close to the truth. https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumvent-https https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumve...
- __alexs 13y ago
  > Right now we need to find out which (root?) CAs are compromised by the NSA. Given that basically all CAs people actually use (even in Europe) are owned by US companies, I would estimate something close to 100% of them have cooperated with the NSA at some point. Obviously there are non-US CAs like China's CNNIC but most of them won't actually sell you a certificate.
  - Element_ 13y ago
    If the NSA is doing this "legally" via secret courts etc... Then you have to assume every company subject to US law can't be trusted.
peterwwillis 13y ago
Some firefox add-ons to help defend against mitm: Certificate Patrol (notifies you when certs change) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-p... Force-TLS (force websites to always use HTTPS) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/force-tls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/force-tls/ Perspectives (compare certs with peers to verify authenticity) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/perspectives/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/perspectives/
- foodstances 13y ago
  Certificate Patrol is kind of useless for all Google properties, since they constantly swap out certificates on most of their domains every few days. Ironically, these are probably the most important sites you need to be worried about MITMs with, but you'll constantly be ignoring them with Certificate Patrol.
- chopin 13y ago
  I use Certificate Patrol at home. For Google this is not a very useful add-on as the certificates change all the time. Especially for Google I lost track whether these changes are legitimate or not. Since I only search with Google and have no account with them that's a fine enough trade-off for me. Where I using more sensitive services I'd be worried.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  Also Monkeysphere and HTTPS Everywhere (which Force-TLS sounds similar to): http://web.monkeysphere.info/download/ http://web.monkeysphere.info/download/ https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
- dingaling 13y ago
  > Some firefox add-ons to help defend against mitm: In theory yes, but not more than 10 minutes ago Cert Patrol noticed that Amazon have changed the CA for the SSL cert for an image server. What am I supposed to do? It is interesting info, but if I reject the cert then I can't be sure my connection is secure. If I accept it... I can't be sure my connection isn't MiTMed. The human factor is always the weak link.
leef 13y ago
The ephemeral session keys should protect against the MITM attacker getting anything but another encrypted stream of data, right?
- jedbrown 13y ago
  No, MITM works by spoofing identity. Certificate pinning is what can protect you from a MITM with the ability to sign certificates that say "google". Ephemeral keys only protect the session from being decrypted by a passive adversary.
- biot 13y ago
  Only if you can prove that your ephemeral session keys were negotiated with the intended destination. With a MITM, here's what you think is happening: Encrypt Outbound ==> Decrypt Inbound at Source at Destination Decrypt Inbound <== Encrypt Outbound at Source at Destination The ==> and <== indicate secure steps. How do you know your secure connection isn't with the Attacker who then transparently proxies all communications back and forth using a separately negotiated secure connection with the Destination? To you it looks secure, but in reality what happens is this: Encrypt Outbound ==> Decrypt/Intercept --> Re-Encrypt ==> Decrypt Inbound at Source at Attacker at Attacker at Destination Decrypt Inbound <== Re-Encrypt <-- Decrypt/Intercept <== Encrypt Outbound at Source at Attacker at Attacker at Destination The --> and <-- indicate nonsecure steps. This happens through all phases from SSL handshake to streaming of data and, if the Attacker is able to use a certificate that you trust, the interception will generally go unnoticed.
ReidZB 13y ago
If I had to design a system to break TLS (and I had the authority of a secretive government agency), selected MITM attacks would be exactly what I would use. Large-scale MITM attacks, i.e. ones against a huge section of the population, really have a lot of disadvantages. First, there are always cautious people who check certs religiously, sometimes with browser addons to help (in fact I see that peterwwillis linked to some below). So, if you execute a large-scale MITM effort, you run the risk of being discovered. Note that if the NSA can compel Google to turn over its secret key(s), this isn't an issue, but I am operating under the assumption that we don't want to give away our MITMing easily. Second, broad MITMs require a lot of resources to be effective. To MITM all of Google's traffic requires network capacity equivalent to Google's, no small thing (though I suspect very much within the power of the NSA if it were deemed necessary). There's a lot of data on the internet at any one time. Third, the fact that you must have physical servers on physical networks sitting between Google and the target means that the MITM server's IP address will be the one that targeted clients appear under. That is, if you have a single server MITMing thousands of requests, all of them will appear from the same IP address. That's another risk of being discovered if the MITM is too broad and the servers are too beefy. Although, this assumes that people on the other end are doing some sort of analytics --- maybe not true. But intel agencies are pretty paranoid, so whatever. Fourth, it still pretty much gets the job done anyway, with less cost: passively sniff traffic for, say, DNS requests to resolve suspicious domains, or plaintext connections that have suspicious contents. Passive sniffing requires less computational power than actual MITMs, and it can be done without raising any red flags. Plus, even if you miss someone suspicious, just get a NSL for Google to hand over all the data anyway in the worst case. Fourth, if an investigation ever were launched about my breaking of TLS, targeted attacks look great. See, we don't target the American people --- only specific connections that are "suspicious" are targeted. Broad-scale MITMs seem very illegal-wiretap-y, but the targeted connections look very legitimate, at least in comparison. So, these reasons are why I've always held the belief that the government is not executing large-scale MITM/dragnet collection of encrypted communications ... and hence TLS is effective, so long as you're not the one being targeted.
- mdavidn 13y ago
  If a MITM attacker is confident they control all paths between a server and a victim, they need not alter IP addresses on packets in transit. To pull this off, the attacker must be near the victim (e.g. compromise a broadband router), thereby reducing the number of targets, or near the server (e.g. compromise every link into a multihomed datacenter), thereby reducing the number of sites intercepted.
anologwintermut 13y ago
I'd say this is likely bullshit at least that it was done against a Brazilian company. Why take the risk of getting caught and burning your ability to do this when you can get the information from Google? 1) Chrome(and some plugins) pin's certificates and would notice a man in the middle attack(unless it was done with google's key). Sure, most corporate targets probably use IE, but if anyone uses chrome on or one of these plugins on the network, you've both alerted your target and exposed a presumably tightly guarded ability. Hell, if it get's reported, you've probably burned the ability. Of course, you might be able to filter out both the plugins and chrome, but it's a risk. 2) NSA could legitimately just ask for the company's emails from Google. Petrobras is a Brazilian company in Brazil staffed by Brazilians and as such a legally allowed target for Foreign Surveillance without either the NSA's twisted definitions of search and who is a US national. Google is legally required to hand over the information by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act of 2008. Why authorize an operation that could reveal both the CA's you have in your pocket and you network penetration exploits? As a side note, the cited slide looks nothing like anything else we have seen and lack security/ handling information (e.g the prominent TS/SCI/ORCON/NOFORN on the top of the prism slides).
- raverbashing 13y ago
  There is no implied relation in the presentation between MITM attacks and the attack on Petrobras They're merely on the same presentation describing attacks and targets
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  I believe Chrome only "pins" certain certificates and almost certainly doesn't pin every SSL certificate you may happen to come across -- this is what the EFF's Observatory[0] and browser plugins like Certificate Patrol[1] are for -- although I may very well be wrong on that. Also, a March 2010 research paper by Christopher Soghoian and Sid Stamm "in which they present evidence that certificate authorities (CAs) may be cooperating with government agencies to help them spy undetected on 'secure' encrypted communications."[2] More details on that from the EFF[3] but if we assume that the government can obtain Google's private keys then they could almost certainly carry this out undetected, IMO. [0]: https://www.eff.org/observatory https://www.eff.org/observatory [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/certificate-p... [2]: http://files.cloudprivacy.net/ssl-mitm.pdf http://files.cloudprivacy.net/ssl-mitm.pdf [3]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/researchers-reveal-likelihood-governments-fake-ssl https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/researchers-reveal-lik...
Create 13y ago
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6091 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6091 http://web.monkeysphere.info/ http://web.monkeysphere.info/
leef 13y ago
Applied Cryptography mentions the 'Interlock Protocol' [1]. Why is something like this not used in today's protocols to try and detect MITM attacks? 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlock_protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlock_protocol
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  It sounds like the interlock protocol only protects against MITMs that try to modify the conversation. It seems likely that most MITMing is for the purpose of merely reading a conversation, not modifying it. The wiki page also describes an attack against the protocol, so it might not be very effective.
fejr 13y ago
Weird. This has been submitted in less than two hours, has 90 points, but it is at the bottom of the front page. Other stories from 6+ hours ago with less points are at the top.
- mcphilip 13y ago
  This has been the case for nearly all NSA related stories in the past week. There is a lot of flagging going on. I'd be interested in a data dump of who is doing the flagging and getting an idea if it's an indicator that the HN community as a whole doesn't want these stories or if it's just a small, but vigilant subset.
  - dictum 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369530
danbruc 13y ago
This might also be an indication that their advances in attacking commonly used ciphers are not that major - it does not make that much sense to perform a relatively complex MITM attack if you are able to just break the used cipher.
- richardjs 13y ago
  I wondered the same thing regarding them requesting private keys a while ago. If they could break the ciphers, why would they need the keys?
- nly 13y ago
  Not so, active MITM is absolutely required if you want to get around PFS.
txutxu 13y ago
Wait. They access google directly... without depend on routing your traffic and tramp your SSL to get a lot of compressed js and ajax traffic. So... maybe this was only needed or relevant before have direct access ?
- stordoff 13y ago
  MITMing a Google server doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they want the info Google has. Google host a number of libraries such as Analytics and jQuery which are widely used on other sites. The attack could have been to send a modified version of those so that websites (other that Google) transmit information that is normally kept on the client (e.g. sending the key to the NSA in an app that normally does client-side encryption).
  - txutxu 13y ago
    Great point. Then I understand better the relevance. Thanks.
rurounijones 13y ago
"Google directly by performing a man-in-the-middle attack to impersonate Google security certificates." Which CA did they use to get those certs, they should be obliterated from trust networks.
dpeck 13y ago
A bit surprised at the shock here, CAs are, for the most part, in the lawful intercept business and have been as long as they've existed. Moxie Marlinspike and others have been talking about this for years. Its a recognized problem, and thats why apps that are serious about protecting communications have been moving to a pinning model. Obviously this sucks at the browser level, though Chrome protect does this with Google properties (and others?) at the CA level now, but at the app level it's very doable and should be something you're implementing.
- dkl 13y ago
  Please give some references about this "pinning model," as I'm having difficulty finding anything via google. Thanks.
  - fejr 13y ago
    Parent is refering to public key pinning. Chrome for instance has been doing it the last couple years [1]. Also see Moxie's comment in this very thread. [2] [1] https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6381673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6381673
moxie 13y ago
Trevor Perrin and I have been working on a dynamic certificate pinning proposal called TACK to help mitigate these types of attacks: http://tack.io http://tack.io In the current state of the world, we're all dependent on CA signatures for each connection we make to a website. TACK is a layer of indirection away from CA certificates, such that we'd only be dependent on CA signatures the very first time we contacted a website. It doesn't introduce any new authorities or change the default UX at all. After the Comodo breaches a few years ago, I put together a talk about these types of attacks, where the fundamental problems lie, and why approaches like DANE are similarly ineffective: http://youtu.be/8N4sb-SEpcg?t=4m47s http://youtu.be/8N4sb-SEpcg?t=4m47s
- MichaelSalib 13y ago
  Your tack.io proposal looks great. Do you have any sense as to whether or when it will be adopted?
  - moxie 13y ago
    We have some large websites on board to deploy it, and Trevor has been working with browser vendors to get it integrated. The latter has been pretty slow going, but there is interest.
    - devx 13y ago
      Maybe browser vendors will take it more seriously now, and with more urgency.
      - randall 13y ago
        Especially one who's already had other services attacked. (Google)
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      This isn't a promise or official or anything, but I'm fairly sure that Silent Circle will be interested in deploying TACK. I can put it on the table, if you want, but anything that increases security will be welcome. Also, how does TACK relate to certificate pinning? The introduction has a few differences (e.g. tack expiration), but the two techniques seem pretty similar, am I missing something?
venomsnake 13y ago
Flying Pig - I wonder if it has something to do with the "With sufficient trust pigs fly just fine". Seems to summarize very well the NSA approach towards its mandates.
coldcode 13y ago
Eventually we will find out enough about what the NSA can do that the entire internet is as good as screwed. If they can get away with MITM against just about any secure site then how does the internet economy function any more?
- arbitrage 13y ago
  consider that, if there have been undetected rampant MITM attacks, the economy never noticed or cared. the economy side of things will be fine. the economy of what the internet is used for isn't really the concern, here. arguably, even with rampant MITM attacks going on, e-commerce is loads more secure that what we've had for in place for the past 5,000 years. this is much more than an economic issue.
brennenHN 13y ago
Bucket Brigade is a better term for this kind of attack. Non-gendered speech and all.
diego_moita 13y ago
Funny. I tried to submit the original Globo/Fantastico story to HN 4 days ago (http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united-states-spied-brazilian-oil-giant.html http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents...) but was blocked as spam. Schneier's credibility makes a lot of difference.
- toyg 13y ago
  Of course. A simple visit to http://www.schneierfacts.com http://www.schneierfacts.com will tell you why.
state 13y ago
Relevant (and just posted on the Cryptome list): http://www.freelists.org/post/cryptome/MITM-Manipulation-of-Snowden-Documents http://www.freelists.org/post/cryptome/MITM-Manipulation-of-...
wmeredith 13y ago
At one point does the NSA become considered a terrorist organization in and of itself? It seems to me that they have stared too long into the abyss.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  They already are in my book.
  - jgross206 13y ago
    Can you expand on that? Under what definition of terrorism is the NSA a terrorist organization? It seems to me that their intent to be as clandestine as possible makes them distinctly non-terroristic.
    - cmircea 13y ago
      Spreading terror.
      - meowface 13y ago
        That's not their goal, though. If anything they'd prefer that everyone in the world didn't know they existed whatsoever, which is quite the opposite to what any terrorist group would like. You could call what they do criminal, but it's not terroristic.
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      "Terrorism" is, admittedly, a very ill defined term. Academics have been arguing for decades about whether or not State actions against their own people can be labelled "terrorism" or not. Given that, I won't quote a dictionary or textbook definition, but rather say that I see them contributing as a part of a larger system that seems to meet some definitions of "terrorist", at least if you believe in the existence of "state terrorism". It seems to me that their intent to be as clandestine as possible makes them distinctly non-terroristic. Yeah, I'll admit that's an arguable point. I haven't even made up my own mind on the "intent" aspect. All told, labeling them a "criminal" organization would probably be better, but I think it would be wrong to overlook the role they play in allowing the US government to use fear as a tool of control.
cromwellian 13y ago
It's worth noting that Chrome's use of TLS Channel ID makes it unlikely this attacks can be pulled if the end user has a ChannelID capable browser.
coenhyde 13y ago
Cut the cables. The USA should be kicked off the internet. They've proven they can't be trusted. It is irresponsible on behalf of the rest of the world to allow this behavior to continue. Maybe after US businesses have experienced enormous economic damages they will change their way.
- j_baker 13y ago
  If the USA were kicked off the internet, US businesses would be far from the only ones that would experience enormous economic damages.
  - coenhyde 13y ago
    Absolutely. IMO it would hurt the rest of the world more. However I don't think it is unreasonable to start thinking about this as a possible solution. This would be a drastic action but its severity is matched by the issue at hand.
gregschlom 13y ago
> One document [1] published by Fantastico, apparently taken from an NSA presentation [...] > Another screenshot [2] implies is that the 2011 DigiNotar hack was either the work of the NSA, or exploited by the NSA. I doubt that those 2 documents are original slides or screenshots from NSA material. They both are written with the familiar rounded font that Globo uses for all its text [3] [1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/166819124 http://www.scribd.com/doc/166819124 [2] http://imgur.com/a/g3UGP#1 http://imgur.com/a/g3UGP#1 [3] http://www.fonts.com/font/urw/vag-rundschrift?siteId=2c670c80-4121-4446-893f-d7fe9690be92 http://www.fonts.com/font/urw/vag-rundschrift?siteId=2c670c8...)
louwrentius 13y ago
If you worry about the NSA spying on your company, DUMP MPLS WAN networking ASAP, it's unencrypted and basically just VLANS at layer 3. The easiest way to snoop on all internal company data is to sniff those MPLS links at ISPs.
educating 13y ago
Some security solutions actually rely on doing MITM to read secure packets to identify malware, etc. Really stupid.

656 points by chopin 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

The simplified view given in the documentcloud link begs a question: just which CA certificate(s) is/are controlled by NSA? Because in order to pull that MITM off, they either need to have the target service's CA - or they have the ability to fake any certificate. My guess is on the latter. And that means at least one commonly accepted CA certificate is effectively compromised.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
chopin 13y ago
Afaik it is not necessary that a root CA is compromised. Sufficient would be to compromise any intermediate CA who is not on a revocation list. How to circumvent Googles certificate pinning in Chrome, I have no good idea. They would need to compromise any certificate in the chain.

chopin 13y ago

The documents mention the DigiNotar hack explicitly. What I do not understand is that the hack was detected when (afair) Iranian authorities tried to MITM Google connections, so the hack was claimed to come from an Iranian hacker. This begs the question whether this is wrong and the NSA hacked DigiNotar genuinely or they just used the breach (perhaps then only known to them) to fake certificates themselves. One may also take into account that DigiNotar was responsible for Netherlands public key infrastructure. This made DigiNotar possibly an even more valuable target.

jlgaddis 13y ago
If memory serves, the Internet in Iran is state-controlled. While it was a user in Iran who initially discovered the MITM'ing being performed and the obvious assumption is that it was the Iranian government MITM'ing its citizens, it is also quite possible that it was (e.g.) the NSA MITM'ing (everyone|a group of people) in Iran (possibly attempting to MITM connections from Iranian officials/nuclear power plants/etc.).

yk 13y ago

Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.sch...

einaros 13y ago

And here I was thinking I was being an all paranoid nutter when I expressed privacy concerns with US hosted CDNs and analytics services .. https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumvent-https https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumve...

newgre 13y ago

If it is true that the NSA MITMed Google connections, then one could draw the conclusion that the NSA doesn't actually have a direct connection to Google data centers (as claimed by Google). If they had such a connection, then why would they use MITM attacks against people?

frank_boyd 13y ago
If you can't be sure your "backdoor" can be kept alive indefinitely, you better get used to using multiple approaches.
uptown 13y ago
Hard to know for-sure, but it could be something as basic as redundancy. If one method of information-capture was eventually disallowed, they'd have an alternative. Or if one method of information-capture required more oversight than they wanted - they'd have an alternative.
discostrings 13y ago
The "direct access" that the NSA has to Google accounts probably requires sending a request for some set of information to Google. It likely needs to be signed off on (even if it's all automated). I'd imagine the NSA would like to hide some activities, especially corporate espionage, even from the watchers at Google--it reduces the risk of anyone at Google growing a spine.
michaelt 13y ago
Requests to Google may be audited or logged; Google have an incentive to do this so they can pass the buck when the inevitable evidence of abuse comes out. The NSA, on the other hand, would prefer there to be no audit trail so there's no evidence of the inevitable abuses.
samstave 13y ago
It would also stand to reason that the court/LEO requests to Google for data are just a CYA/formality with respect to them "legally" getting the authorization to read the data. They likely have the access to all the data they want. They use the legal vectors for requests just to see what the companies would give them on the request, and can compare the difference between the provided data vs the slurped data.

frank_boyd 13y ago

One more reason to not use any of the giant email providers like Yahoo, Google, and Hotmail.

joekrill 13y ago
And what makes any smaller providers any more safe?
- ArchD 13y ago
  A smaller provider with fewer clients probably provides a lower ROI for the NSA because of the economy of scale, although if they are specifically targeting you, it may still not make a meaningful difference.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    There is a trade-off here, sure there are fewer people that they can listen in on like that but presumably a smaller provider will also be a softer target, possibly much softer.
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  Actually, they can be quite a bit safer. If they're small enough the NSA might not have any existing targets on them, which means they won't have tried to find a way to intercept their traffic yet. They could just do SSL traffic inspection, but it's too costly (and practically impossible) to do that everywhere, so they have to do it on specific target networks, which involves a lot of work to get the thing in the right place on the network. It would be a huge pain in the ass to cover all the smaller providers.
  - Nanzikambe 13y ago
    One thing the leaks have reveal is that the NSA invested significant effort in compromising/backdooring hardware. Now if I were intent on compromising hardware to increase my reach, my prime targets are going to be the makers of routing & switching hardware. Someone like Cisco perhaps. Do you have any idea how many such hardware blackboxes lie between any two locations on the net? All that would be needed is a single vulnerable/backdoored one in that path, configure it to DNAT & SNAT through your MITM host .. I highly doubt there're very many places out of that reach. Especially not smaller providers. edit: s/setups/providers/g

SchizoDuckie 13y ago

Holy shit. This means that The Netherlands was a high-level target with Diginotar, and they hit the frickin' jackpot. Just for reference, read this: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_bij_DigiNotar http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_bij_DigiNotar The Diginotar hack basically exposed all of the information about the Dutch that NSA could ever want to digg through: Information about licenseplates (RDW) Tax info (DigiD) Phone records (OPTA) and the complete dutch encrypted government infrastructure (PKI Overheid) Let's see what traction this new info will get now in The Netherlands...

Nanzikambe 13y ago
Here's some pretty detailed info in English: http://threatpost.com/final-report-diginotar-hack-shows-total-compromise-ca-servers-103112/77170 http://threatpost.com/final-report-diginotar-hack-shows-tota...
anologwintermut 13y ago
My understanding was DigiNotar was pretty strongly linked to an Iranian government affiliated hacker. Indeed, the breach was caught because someone man in the middled gmail in Iran and Chrome's certificate fingerprinting caught it. Although the NSA certainly has reason to spy on Iran, why risk discovery this way? They can legally compel Google to give them the email of foreigners in a foreign country. So maybe NSA had DigiNotar's key, but the hack that shut it down was done by someone else.
- lambda 13y ago
  Or perhaps the Iran link was a misdirection. They were worried that people would notice the MITMed certs, so they MITMed a lot of Iranian customers to make it look like the attack came from there. > They can legally compel Google to give them the email of foreigners in a foreign country. They can, but they may wish to be more subtle than that. For example, if they were engaged in economic espionage, they might not want that story to break, and would be worried that someone at Google may leak the story. If they had to ask Google, there would be more people who would know about what's going on.
- 13y ago

josteink 13y ago

If this is true, and that NSA has been MITMing providers like Google, they are undermining the already shabby trust the US cloud-industry has attempted to build. I doubt Google and friends are very happy about that, since that's their one big basket where all the money comes in. NSA in their eagerness to do rampant spying on everyone have had quite some collateral. They have decided to compromise the one thing which allows us to communicate securely on the internet: trust. Right now we need to find out which (root?) CAs are compromised by the NSA. Long term it would probably be a very wise decision to revoke any US-based CA from the default trusted-list of browsers and OSes. We cannot have untrustworthy CAs in a system based on trust. That's simply not an option. Edit: As I've been pondering for a while (and which was also pointed out on reddit) we now have a situation where self-signed certs are more secure than CA-issued ones. They are the only ones you know can't be faked. How backwards is that? The NSA is ruining the internet one piece at a time. The NSA needs to be dismantled.

einaros 13y ago
This doesn't just affect services that are hosted by Google, but also encrypted sites that pull scripts in from Google Analytics, Google's CDN, etc. I wrote a semiparanoid rant about this a couple of days ago ... but didn't think I'd be this close to the truth. https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumvent-https https://2x.io/read/would-the-nsa-infiltrate-cdns-to-circumve...
__alexs 13y ago
> Right now we need to find out which (root?) CAs are compromised by the NSA. Given that basically all CAs people actually use (even in Europe) are owned by US companies, I would estimate something close to 100% of them have cooperated with the NSA at some point. Obviously there are non-US CAs like China's CNNIC but most of them won't actually sell you a certificate.
- Element_ 13y ago
  If the NSA is doing this "legally" via secret courts etc... Then you have to assume every company subject to US law can't be trusted.

peterwwillis 13y ago

Some firefox add-ons to help defend against mitm: Certificate Patrol (notifies you when certs change) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/certificate-p... Force-TLS (force websites to always use HTTPS) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/force-tls/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/force-tls/ Perspectives (compare certs with peers to verify authenticity) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/perspectives/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/perspectives/

foodstances 13y ago
Certificate Patrol is kind of useless for all Google properties, since they constantly swap out certificates on most of their domains every few days. Ironically, these are probably the most important sites you need to be worried about MITMs with, but you'll constantly be ignoring them with Certificate Patrol.
chopin 13y ago
I use Certificate Patrol at home. For Google this is not a very useful add-on as the certificates change all the time. Especially for Google I lost track whether these changes are legitimate or not. Since I only search with Google and have no account with them that's a fine enough trade-off for me. Where I using more sensitive services I'd be worried.
jlgaddis 13y ago
Also Monkeysphere and HTTPS Everywhere (which Force-TLS sounds similar to): http://web.monkeysphere.info/download/ http://web.monkeysphere.info/download/ https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
dingaling 13y ago
> Some firefox add-ons to help defend against mitm: In theory yes, but not more than 10 minutes ago Cert Patrol noticed that Amazon have changed the CA for the SSL cert for an image server. What am I supposed to do? It is interesting info, but if I reject the cert then I can't be sure my connection is secure. If I accept it... I can't be sure my connection isn't MiTMed. The human factor is always the weak link.

leef 13y ago

The ephemeral session keys should protect against the MITM attacker getting anything but another encrypted stream of data, right?

jedbrown 13y ago
No, MITM works by spoofing identity. Certificate pinning is what can protect you from a MITM with the ability to sign certificates that say "google". Ephemeral keys only protect the session from being decrypted by a passive adversary.
biot 13y ago
Only if you can prove that your ephemeral session keys were negotiated with the intended destination. With a MITM, here's what you think is happening: Encrypt Outbound ==> Decrypt Inbound at Source at Destination Decrypt Inbound <== Encrypt Outbound at Source at Destination The ==> and <== indicate secure steps. How do you know your secure connection isn't with the Attacker who then transparently proxies all communications back and forth using a separately negotiated secure connection with the Destination? To you it looks secure, but in reality what happens is this: Encrypt Outbound ==> Decrypt/Intercept --> Re-Encrypt ==> Decrypt Inbound at Source at Attacker at Attacker at Destination Decrypt Inbound <== Re-Encrypt <-- Decrypt/Intercept <== Encrypt Outbound at Source at Attacker at Attacker at Destination The --> and <-- indicate nonsecure steps. This happens through all phases from SSL handshake to streaming of data and, if the Attacker is able to use a certificate that you trust, the interception will generally go unnoticed.

ReidZB 13y ago

If I had to design a system to break TLS (and I had the authority of a secretive government agency), selected MITM attacks would be exactly what I would use. Large-scale MITM attacks, i.e. ones against a huge section of the population, really have a lot of disadvantages. First, there are always cautious people who check certs religiously, sometimes with browser addons to help (in fact I see that peterwwillis linked to some below). So, if you execute a large-scale MITM effort, you run the risk of being discovered. Note that if the NSA can compel Google to turn over its secret key(s), this isn't an issue, but I am operating under the assumption that we don't want to give away our MITMing easily. Second, broad MITMs require a lot of resources to be effective. To MITM all of Google's traffic requires network capacity equivalent to Google's, no small thing (though I suspect very much within the power of the NSA if it were deemed necessary). There's a lot of data on the internet at any one time. Third, the fact that you must have physical servers on physical networks sitting between Google and the target means that the MITM server's IP address will be the one that targeted clients appear under. That is, if you have a single server MITMing thousands of requests, all of them will appear from the same IP address. That's another risk of being discovered if the MITM is too broad and the servers are too beefy. Although, this assumes that people on the other end are doing some sort of analytics --- maybe not true. But intel agencies are pretty paranoid, so whatever. Fourth, it still pretty much gets the job done anyway, with less cost: passively sniff traffic for, say, DNS requests to resolve suspicious domains, or plaintext connections that have suspicious contents. Passive sniffing requires less computational power than actual MITMs, and it can be done without raising any red flags. Plus, even if you miss someone suspicious, just get a NSL for Google to hand over all the data anyway in the worst case. Fourth, if an investigation ever were launched about my breaking of TLS, targeted attacks look great. See, we don't target the American people --- only specific connections that are "suspicious" are targeted. Broad-scale MITMs seem very illegal-wiretap-y, but the targeted connections look very legitimate, at least in comparison. So, these reasons are why I've always held the belief that the government is not executing large-scale MITM/dragnet collection of encrypted communications ... and hence TLS is effective, so long as you're not the one being targeted.

mdavidn 13y ago
If a MITM attacker is confident they control all paths between a server and a victim, they need not alter IP addresses on packets in transit. To pull this off, the attacker must be near the victim (e.g. compromise a broadband router), thereby reducing the number of targets, or near the server (e.g. compromise every link into a multihomed datacenter), thereby reducing the number of sites intercepted.

anologwintermut 13y ago

I'd say this is likely bullshit at least that it was done against a Brazilian company. Why take the risk of getting caught and burning your ability to do this when you can get the information from Google? 1) Chrome(and some plugins) pin's certificates and would notice a man in the middle attack(unless it was done with google's key). Sure, most corporate targets probably use IE, but if anyone uses chrome on or one of these plugins on the network, you've both alerted your target and exposed a presumably tightly guarded ability. Hell, if it get's reported, you've probably burned the ability. Of course, you might be able to filter out both the plugins and chrome, but it's a risk. 2) NSA could legitimately just ask for the company's emails from Google. Petrobras is a Brazilian company in Brazil staffed by Brazilians and as such a legally allowed target for Foreign Surveillance without either the NSA's twisted definitions of search and who is a US national. Google is legally required to hand over the information by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Act of 2008. Why authorize an operation that could reveal both the CA's you have in your pocket and you network penetration exploits? As a side note, the cited slide looks nothing like anything else we have seen and lack security/ handling information (e.g the prominent TS/SCI/ORCON/NOFORN on the top of the prism slides).

raverbashing 13y ago
There is no implied relation in the presentation between MITM attacks and the attack on Petrobras They're merely on the same presentation describing attacks and targets
jlgaddis 13y ago
I believe Chrome only "pins" certain certificates and almost certainly doesn't pin every SSL certificate you may happen to come across -- this is what the EFF's Observatory[0] and browser plugins like Certificate Patrol[1] are for -- although I may very well be wrong on that. Also, a March 2010 research paper by Christopher Soghoian and Sid Stamm "in which they present evidence that certificate authorities (CAs) may be cooperating with government agencies to help them spy undetected on 'secure' encrypted communications."[2] More details on that from the EFF[3] but if we assume that the government can obtain Google's private keys then they could almost certainly carry this out undetected, IMO. [0]: https://www.eff.org/observatory https://www.eff.org/observatory [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/certificate-patrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/certificate-p... [2]: http://files.cloudprivacy.net/ssl-mitm.pdf http://files.cloudprivacy.net/ssl-mitm.pdf [3]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/researchers-reveal-likelihood-governments-fake-ssl https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/researchers-reveal-lik...

Create 13y ago

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6091 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6091 http://web.monkeysphere.info/ http://web.monkeysphere.info/

leef 13y ago

Applied Cryptography mentions the 'Interlock Protocol' [1]. Why is something like this not used in today's protocols to try and detect MITM attacks? 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlock_protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlock_protocol

sillysaurus2 13y ago
It sounds like the interlock protocol only protects against MITMs that try to modify the conversation. It seems likely that most MITMing is for the purpose of merely reading a conversation, not modifying it. The wiki page also describes an attack against the protocol, so it might not be very effective.

fejr 13y ago

Weird. This has been submitted in less than two hours, has 90 points, but it is at the bottom of the front page. Other stories from 6+ hours ago with less points are at the top.

mcphilip 13y ago
This has been the case for nearly all NSA related stories in the past week. There is a lot of flagging going on. I'd be interested in a data dump of who is doing the flagging and getting an idea if it's an indicator that the HN community as a whole doesn't want these stories or if it's just a small, but vigilant subset.
- dictum 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369530

danbruc 13y ago

This might also be an indication that their advances in attacking commonly used ciphers are not that major - it does not make that much sense to perform a relatively complex MITM attack if you are able to just break the used cipher.

richardjs 13y ago
I wondered the same thing regarding them requesting private keys a while ago. If they could break the ciphers, why would they need the keys?
nly 13y ago
Not so, active MITM is absolutely required if you want to get around PFS.

txutxu 13y ago

Wait. They access google directly... without depend on routing your traffic and tramp your SSL to get a lot of compressed js and ajax traffic. So... maybe this was only needed or relevant before have direct access ?

stordoff 13y ago
MITMing a Google server doesn't _necessarily_ mean that they want the info Google has. Google host a number of libraries such as Analytics and jQuery which are widely used on other sites. The attack could have been to send a modified version of those so that websites (other that Google) transmit information that is normally kept on the client (e.g. sending the key to the NSA in an app that normally does client-side encryption).
- txutxu 13y ago
  Great point. Then I understand better the relevance. Thanks.

rurounijones 13y ago

"Google directly by performing a man-in-the-middle attack to impersonate Google security certificates." Which CA did they use to get those certs, they should be obliterated from trust networks.

dpeck 13y ago

A bit surprised at the shock here, CAs are, for the most part, in the lawful intercept business and have been as long as they've existed. Moxie Marlinspike and others have been talking about this for years. Its a recognized problem, and thats why apps that are serious about protecting communications have been moving to a pinning model. Obviously this sucks at the browser level, though Chrome protect does this with Google properties (and others?) at the CA level now, but at the app level it's very doable and should be something you're implementing.

dkl 13y ago
Please give some references about this "pinning model," as I'm having difficulty finding anything via google. Thanks.
- fejr 13y ago
  Parent is refering to public key pinning. Chrome for instance has been doing it the last couple years [1]. Also see Moxie's comment in this very thread. [2] [1] https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html https://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6381673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6381673

moxie 13y ago

Trevor Perrin and I have been working on a dynamic certificate pinning proposal called TACK to help mitigate these types of attacks: http://tack.io http://tack.io In the current state of the world, we're all dependent on CA signatures for each connection we make to a website. TACK is a layer of indirection away from CA certificates, such that we'd only be dependent on CA signatures the very first time we contacted a website. It doesn't introduce any new authorities or change the default UX at all. After the Comodo breaches a few years ago, I put together a talk about these types of attacks, where the fundamental problems lie, and why approaches like DANE are similarly ineffective: http://youtu.be/8N4sb-SEpcg?t=4m47s http://youtu.be/8N4sb-SEpcg?t=4m47s

MichaelSalib 13y ago
Your tack.io proposal looks great. Do you have any sense as to whether or when it will be adopted?
- moxie 13y ago
  We have some large websites on board to deploy it, and Trevor has been working with browser vendors to get it integrated. The latter has been pretty slow going, but there is interest.
  - devx 13y ago
    Maybe browser vendors will take it more seriously now, and with more urgency.
    - randall 13y ago
      Especially one who's already had other services attacked. (Google)
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    This isn't a promise or official or anything, but I'm fairly sure that Silent Circle will be interested in deploying TACK. I can put it on the table, if you want, but anything that increases security will be welcome. Also, how does TACK relate to certificate pinning? The introduction has a few differences (e.g. tack expiration), but the two techniques seem pretty similar, am I missing something?

venomsnake 13y ago

Flying Pig - I wonder if it has something to do with the "With sufficient trust pigs fly just fine". Seems to summarize very well the NSA approach towards its mandates.

coldcode 13y ago

Eventually we will find out enough about what the NSA can do that the entire internet is as good as screwed. If they can get away with MITM against just about any secure site then how does the internet economy function any more?

arbitrage 13y ago
consider that, if there have been undetected rampant MITM attacks, the economy never noticed or cared. the economy side of things will be fine. the economy of what the internet is used for isn't really the concern, here. arguably, even with rampant MITM attacks going on, e-commerce is loads more secure that what we've had for in place for the past 5,000 years. this is much more than an economic issue.

brennenHN 13y ago

Bucket Brigade is a better term for this kind of attack. Non-gendered speech and all.

diego_moita 13y ago

Funny. I tried to submit the original Globo/Fantastico story to HN 4 days ago (http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents-show-united-states-spied-brazilian-oil-giant.html http://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-documents...) but was blocked as spam. Schneier's credibility makes a lot of difference.

toyg 13y ago
Of course. A simple visit to http://www.schneierfacts.com http://www.schneierfacts.com will tell you why.

state 13y ago

Relevant (and just posted on the Cryptome list): http://www.freelists.org/post/cryptome/MITM-Manipulation-of-Snowden-Documents http://www.freelists.org/post/cryptome/MITM-Manipulation-of-...

wmeredith 13y ago

At one point does the NSA become considered a terrorist organization in and of itself? It seems to me that they have stared too long into the abyss.

mindcrime 13y ago
They already are in my book.
- jgross206 13y ago
  Can you expand on that? Under what definition of terrorism is the NSA a terrorist organization? It seems to me that their intent to be as clandestine as possible makes them distinctly non-terroristic.
  - cmircea 13y ago
    Spreading terror.
    - meowface 13y ago
      That's not their goal, though. If anything they'd prefer that everyone in the world didn't know they existed whatsoever, which is quite the opposite to what any terrorist group would like. You could call what they do criminal, but it's not terroristic.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    "Terrorism" is, admittedly, a very ill defined term. Academics have been arguing for decades about whether or not State actions against their own people can be labelled "terrorism" or not. Given that, I won't quote a dictionary or textbook definition, but rather say that I see them contributing as a part of a larger system that seems to meet some definitions of "terrorist", at least if you believe in the existence of "state terrorism". It seems to me that their intent to be as clandestine as possible makes them distinctly non-terroristic. Yeah, I'll admit that's an arguable point. I haven't even made up my own mind on the "intent" aspect. All told, labeling them a "criminal" organization would probably be better, but I think it would be wrong to overlook the role they play in allowing the US government to use fear as a tool of control.

cromwellian 13y ago

It's worth noting that Chrome's use of TLS Channel ID makes it unlikely this attacks can be pulled if the end user has a ChannelID capable browser.

coenhyde 13y ago

Cut the cables. The USA should be kicked off the internet. They've proven they can't be trusted. It is irresponsible on behalf of the rest of the world to allow this behavior to continue. Maybe after US businesses have experienced enormous economic damages they will change their way.

j_baker 13y ago
If the USA were kicked off the internet, US businesses would be far from the only ones that would experience enormous economic damages.
- coenhyde 13y ago
  Absolutely. IMO it would hurt the rest of the world more. However I don't think it is unreasonable to start thinking about this as a possible solution. This would be a drastic action but its severity is matched by the issue at hand.

gregschlom 13y ago

> One document [1] published by Fantastico, apparently taken from an NSA presentation [...] > Another screenshot [2] implies is that the 2011 DigiNotar hack was either the work of the NSA, or exploited by the NSA. I doubt that those 2 documents are original slides or screenshots from NSA material. They both are written with the familiar rounded font that Globo uses for all its text [3] [1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/166819124 http://www.scribd.com/doc/166819124 [2] http://imgur.com/a/g3UGP#1 http://imgur.com/a/g3UGP#1 [3] http://www.fonts.com/font/urw/vag-rundschrift?siteId=2c670c80-4121-4446-893f-d7fe9690be92 http://www.fonts.com/font/urw/vag-rundschrift?siteId=2c670c8...)

louwrentius 13y ago

If you worry about the NSA spying on your company, DUMP MPLS WAN networking ASAP, it's unencrypted and basically just VLANS at layer 3. The easiest way to snoop on all internal company data is to sniff those MPLS links at ISPs.

educating 13y ago

Some security solutions actually rely on doing MITM to read secure packets to identify malware, etc. Really stupid.