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Obama Lets N.S.A. Exploit Some Internet Flaws, Officials Say
- adamnemecek 13y agoNSA decides it shouldn't and should, respectively.
- jamesbritt 13y ago"Obama says" versus "Obama does." Actions, not speeches, count.
- stfu 13y ago"Obama does x" is the headline when when the news is in general positive. "The government/administration/specific department" is the headline when it is negative. Look out for it...
- ethanbond 13y ago"Obama exploited heart bleed" isn't a very accurate statement. It's almost as inaccurate as "NSA says it should disclose exploits."
- refurb 13y ago"President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security it should – in most circumstances — reveal them to assure they get fixed, rather than stockpile them for use in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday." Emphasis added is mine. The "in most circumstances" means they can pretty much do whatever the hell they want.
- asharpe 13y agoAgreed, so large you can drive a truck through it analogy. Why is there not more of a furore about this? When Bush set up (and it was found out) about the extensive activities of the NSA, the reaction was vitriolic in every sense of the word. Here Obama is tacitly agreeing to similar intrusion. This is not a comment on Bush vs Obama, it is more a comment on the media and public reactions.
- marcosdumay 13y agoThat's the problem with people-oriented politics. Who's going to complain? The people doing it now, or the people that did exactly the same thing earlier?
- randomfool 13y agoAlso would like to stress "President Obama has decided". This is not a law, Obama (or the next guy) can change their mind at any time. No one will be held liable in court for not abusing rather than disclosing security flaws.
- pekk 13y agoThis is arguably good military strategy, too - the US has ample resources to allocate to finding novel or even one-off exploits on an ongoing basis, where some poorer powers might want to rely more on keeping secret existing exploits for a longer period. Perpetually making enemies' weapons obsolete. Also, the US has a much larger attackable surface area and far more to lose in this domain. So it makes perfect, cynical sense if the US government wants internet security in general to be better. Just like a naval power with strong international trade interests has reasons to keep shipping lanes open to all and to deter naval piracy. None of this requires benevolence, it's all self-interested
- tptacek 13y agoWhat's a "novel" or "one-off" exploit? I don't see the realistic dividing line between "NOBUS" exploits that NSA could realistically believe it has a proprietary grasp on and the kinds of exploits that get deployed at Pwn2Own.
- AlexLord 13y agoConfiguration Errors are an example of "one-off" exploits. Things which are specific to a environment, rather then a code base.
- niels_olson 13y agoThe naval analogy is interesting. One of the six missions of a global naval presence is to protect the sea lanes of communication. Even if that means the North Koreans occasionally manage to acquire some centrifuge tubes, the global value of trade outweighs the costs. By very direct corollary, one would hope the NSA regards protection of the digital lanes of communication open as one of its principle missions. Trade begets economic interdependence. It's tough to go to war with major trade partners.
- tptacek 13y agoIt's very hard to take this initiative seriously. Software vulnerabilities are what software vulnerabilities are: the fundamental enabler of modern network signal intelligence. When you see Obama sign an executive order ending foreign signals intelligence, you can at that point start to believe that the USG is primarily in the business of fixing rather than stockpiling vulnerabilities. NSA's first and overriding mission is in conducting signals intelligence against our adversaries. As people have pointed out here and elsewhere: regardless of what other missions NSA may have crept into in the last 40 years, when SIGINT comes into conflict with some other NSA mission, SIGINT wins. (This analysis is descriptive, not normative.)
- 7579523 13y agoI have some small insight into the internal equities process. As a general principal the NSA prefers that the crypto be strong and if they want access to just steal the keys.
- midas007 13y agoThat was also my first reaction. It seems like just another lie even before it finishes leaving his mouth, another predictable broken promise, a priori.
- anonbanker 13y agoContrast this with the recent NSA statement[1] made about heartbleed. This is how they intend to interpret this decision. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7575802
- humancontact 13y ago> – in most circumstances —
- higherpurpose 13y ago> But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” Or a law enforcement need? So this is almost pointless then. Don't expect regular iPhone or Android bugs to be reported, because law enforcement uses them all the type to tap people, so of course in their view there's a "need" for them. He should've just left it to NSA only, and for very specific cases, if at all. Everyone else (FBI, police, DHS, etc) should be reporting the exploits. As it is, don't expect them to reveal more than one relatively major bug every 2 years or so - and even that sounds optimistic, I think.
- maldeh 13y agoCall it paucity of imagination on my part, but I was wondering if somebody could make explicit some legitimate examples of situations involving a "clear national security need"? It's not like they're just making a legal exception for a "Blockbuster" scenario, where terrorists are about to nuke a city and a lone hacker saves the day by breaking SSH, right? Is this supposed to apply to instances where the flaw affects the competition more than civilians -- say, a security flaw that somehow disproportionately affects Iran, China and Russia over the US? (there are obvious reasons why the government cannot explicitly acknowledge this, but I'm wondering if this is a direct implication)
- XorNot 13y agoThe NSA would monitor hacker message boards and the various black market websites for exploits like this. If they find something which they don't see any chatter about on any of these sources, then it's reasonable to presume no one has found it. Moreover, actually exploiting heartbleed would leave a signature. You can fake SSL certificates, but eventually someone has to lose their money, or some innovation has to come out of the blue. MitM's involve traffic diversions unless they're conducted at a government level. Espionage always leaves a trail - even if you don't know where someone gets their intel, you can always tell they must be getting it somehow.
- lvs 13y agoThis "change" is so nuanced as to be essentially indistinguishable from the status quo.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- monochromatic 13y agoNothing but pandering, and not even a very good job of it. Business as usual down at the NSA.
- agwa 13y ago> "You are not going to see the Chinese give up on ‘zero days’ just because we do" This is a dishonest argument - many of the zero days held by the Chinese are likely to be the same zero days being withheld the N.S.A., so by disclosing them the N.S.A. would be dealing a huge blow to our adversaries' offensive capabilities. The NYT should have gotten a quote to counter-balance this argument from a "senior intelligence official" (upon whom they shamefully, but predictably, bestowed anonymity). Now many of the people reading this article will come away believing this is akin to nuclear disarmament, which is a totally inapt comparison.
- pyronite 13y ago> upon whom they shamefully, but predictably, bestowed anonymity I'm with you on the rest of your points but not on this one. Balance would be nice but anonymity is often key to good reporting. There's nothing shameful about soliciting a quote and then keeping that person anonymous.
- agwa 13y agoI'm not against all anonymity, but in general, anonymity is bad for journalism. It makes it impossible for readers to judge the credibility of the source, and puts people who want to challenge the source at a disadvantage. It permits the source to say whatever they want, without any fear of it harming their credibility. In narrow circumstances, such as whistle-blowing where the source would face harm from a disclosure of their identity, anonymity is both appropriate and essential (and in such a case it's essential for the newspaper to do as much verification as possible before conferring anonymity). But a government employee spewing pro-government propaganda does not need the protection of anonymity. Edit: reworded for clarity.
- dalke 13y agoFor some details to back up agwa's statement, http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=1596 http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=1596 has some interesting history on anonymity in newspaper reporting. For example: > During his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, Kissinger insisted on anonymity even though the information was reported by the press traveling with him and attributed to the "senior official on the plane." On one of Kissinger's sojourns, humorist Art Buchwald attributed information to a "high U.S. official with wavy hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a German accent." > Periodically, journalists grow weary of the insistence on anonymity and rebel. But generally not for long. > In 1971, then-Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee ordered that information provided by Kissinger about a pending summit meeting be attributed to him because it was simply too important to be reported anonymously, according to Walter Isaacson's book "Kissinger." > "The Post's action caused a widespread realization that reliance on backgrounders had gone too far," Isaacson wrote. Nevertheless, the White House Correspondents Association soon passed a resolution agreeing to abide by Kissinger's briefing rules. How does it help us, the public, to let Kissinger choose when to make anonymous statements? Overall that American Journalism Review link points out that time and time again, with only a few exceptions, anonymity is abused.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- joe_the_user 13y agoHonestly, it seems like the only way the US could get credibility on this "front" is to create an open, well-funded agency whose only purpose would be to enhance world Internet security. Give it a mandate to be entirely separate from any would-be signal intelligence exploiters and let it loose. Yes, I'm sure something akin to this exists but if this had 10% of the US intelligence budget, it would be an eye-opener.
- AJ007 13y agoPrior to the NSA leak, "cyber warfare" was quite the buzzword. China, Iran, and other countries threatened the all US infrastructure from abroad. There was even debate as to if a foreign "cyber attack" could justify an armed military strike. The solution allegedly was the US government spending all kinds of money on these "cyber defenses." Snowden's leak suddenly left people wondering if the United States itself posed the greatest threat to the US's own "cyber security." There is little doubt that the revelations did severe and lasting damage to US companies who want foreign customers. Today the problems are, someone might have been able to access your Yahoo mail in the past two years. As computing and bandwidth expands and blends in to the background, future exploits will be things like, every moment, visual and audio, of the past two years of your life, was recorded and is available to playback in full detail. For better or worse, of course the government will get heavily involved.
- XorNot 13y agoThe Snowden leak told no one who was capable of any amount of critical thinking anything they didn't already realize. It was base-level obvious that the US, EU and every other nation had cyber-warfare programs because there was no technical reason they couldn't, and the risks were the same as they were to China and others: its an invisible, zero-casualty engagement, indistinguishable from the actions of lone individuals or groups. Moreover, it should always have been apparent that things inside the US could be arbitrarily subjected to search and seizure. This is not a problem companies are unfamiliar with - mining companies are big on sovereign risk, but moreover, it's not like Microsoft stores it's technical data on Google cloud services for exactly the same reasons. The most surprising thing which has been disclosed nowhere by the Snowden leaks is any evidence of the NSA passing stolen technical schematics or plans off to US companies for competitive advantage. I'm sure a lot of people will insist this totally happened, but no one has come up with hard evidence that it has.
- andrewfong 13y agoThis is why the NSA should be chopped in half. Offense and defense in different agencies so there's less conflict of interest
- agwa 13y agoWow! The NYT has changed the title of this article from "Obama Decides U.S. Should Reveal, Not Exploit, Internet Security Flaws" to "Obama Lets N.S.A. Exploit Some Internet Flaws, Officials Say" Kudos to them for switching it to a much more accurate description of the situation.
- LiamMcCalloway 13y agoNewsdiffs.org is useful to track both minor and major changes made to stories. More generally, it's a convenient if limited way into the publishing process. It deserves scrutiny, all the more so for those PR-type articles that essentially try to covey nonsense. http://www.newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/us/politics/after-heartbleed-bug-obama-decides-us-should-reveal-internet-security-flaws.html http://www.newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/201...
- scintill76 13y agoWow, I was wondering why the HN title and NYT title were almost exactly opposite. This diffing site is interesting, thanks. The new title doesn't seem to fit well with the rest of the article, though.
- harywilke 13y agoIt's like looking through Winston Smith's commits.
- malandrew 13y agoBut Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” the officials said, a loophole that is likely to allow the N.S.A. to continue to exploit security flaws both to crack encryption on the Internet and to design cyberweapons. i.e.: But Mr. Obama then went on to say "discount everything I've just said, the NSA should go on with business as usual, interpreting all current and future situations to further their offensive needs regardless of what is best for the American people or becoming of a modern democracy."
- niels_olson 13y agoOk, is there any odds that a diff of Red Hat and Debian would reveal patches that Red Hat's largest customer, the Pentagon, has pushed?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- line-zero 13y ago"We should reveal security flaws! ...Except in 99% of situations." Go to hell you fucking snake.
- dfc 13y agoWhat is up with the "Mr. Obama ..." crap? Did the NYT have a change in policy recently? I do not remember Sanger writing like that in Confront and Conceal.
- yukichan 13y agoStutnex used zero day flaws so when they make a statement like: "When Federal agencies discover a new vulnerability in commercial and open source software ... it is in the national interest to responsibly disclose the vulnerability rather than to hold it for an investigative or intelligence purpose."[1] I have to scratch my head because I can't reconcile this. I also can't reconcile what meaningful impact the White House statement will have since it has such a vague loophole. The White House statement reminds me of when Putin plays lip service to democratic processes inside Russia. Lots of words, little if any meaning or change. [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/11/nsa-says-it-wasnt-previously-aware-of-heartbleed/ http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/04/11/nsa-says-it-wasnt-pre...
- fredgrott 13y agoDoublespeak... In black and white hat circles it is understood that using an internet security flaw is in fact revealing it as your adversaries find out by such acts.. His ex order has not rational meaning that context, the context of NSA's mission, the CIA's mission or DoD's mission.. What does Obama think we effing five?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- somebody63246 13y agoPresident doesn't know what the economy is either.
- uptown 13y agoNY Times updated their headline: "Obama Lets N.S.A. Exploit Some Internet Flaws, Officials Say"
- pkinsky 13y ago>But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” Read: unless we really want to.
- davidgerard 13y agoSo how's the US government's track record in reporting flaws to vendors?