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Snowden Documents Indicate NSA Has Breached Deutsche Telekom

• sauere 12y ago
  Imagine where Germany would be today if the US would not have been stealing trade secret, patented designs and other stuff over the last 70+ years.
  • happyscrappy 12y ago
    It is too bad they are so helpless and spineless, maybe they will wake up someday.
    • sauere 12y ago
      Yeah uhm, you might not want to cause any trouble if you have 200+ US army installations in your country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_installations_in_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_inst...
    • deleted 12y ago
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      • spain 12y ago
        To be honest, it did work out pretty well for them. They failed because of strategic reasons.
        • logicchains 12y ago
          Or incredibly bad decision-making on the part of a possibly barbituate-crazed leader; "let's break our pact with previously-friendly Russia and invade them, learning nothing from Napoleon's extreme failure in Russia. Fighting a war on two fronts is a great idea!" Who knows; if Germany hadn't gone to war with Russia it's possible that they'd still have today much of the land they took in 1939-1941.
          • mercurial 12y ago
            That's possible. On the other hand, who would trust Stalin as far as he could throw him? Ironically enough, the same strategic mistake did in another megalomaniac dictator more than a century before. Don't start a land war in Russia, unless you're Mongols.
          • TeMPOraL 12y ago
            Or maybe they would be a Soviet state today. It's not that Russia didn't have plans to backstab Hitler.
            • Theodores 12y ago
              ...and that's it folks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law Hitler was mentioned.
              • panzi 12y ago
                It wasn't a comparison to Hitler, though. He just was mentioned.
          • stefan_kendall3 12y ago
            Germany started WW1 because it could not let Russia mobilize. You leave your precious flank open, and suddenly you start speaking Soviet, as mentioned.
    • rmc 12y ago
      Um... Last time that happened it was pretty horrible...
      • pluma 12y ago
        That doesn't seem to stop anyone else from copying the entire invading-countries-under-false-premises thing, though, sadly enough.
  • factorizer 12y ago
    Thinking in terms of nations is something for peasants. The ruling elites don't care about nations. They care about class war. And they are winning it.
    • spain 12y ago
      This is the most pretentious comment I've seen in a while on HN, congratulations. I suggest you come back when you've learned a bit of history.
      • IsTom 12y ago
        It's their victory that they convinced you that they don't want just to squeeze everyone else dry.
    • pkinsky 12y ago
      Not all war is class war, only most. Unless you think the ruling elite of, say, Israel and Saudi Arabia are on friendly terms.
      • WildUtah 12y ago
        Surely the Israeli and Saudi ruling elites would never be working together. [0] [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Peace_Initiative
  • Theodores 12y ago
    Germany is doing very nicely when it comes to GDP, balance of trade, making progress on renewables and plenty of other metrics. The USA? Don't they just print money? The kids at school that work out their own homework go on to do well. The kids that copy from others don't really succeed too brilliantly. Those that copy are a step behind. In terms of innovation, I don't see American goods as anywhere near as polished as their German counterparts. I would take the lowest spec. German car over any American car in current production without hesitation. The same applies to white goods and even cakes!
    • madengr 12y ago
      Yeah, but the lowest spec German cars are not made in Germany; Mexican VWs. Can I even buy a German made car in the US, other than a Porsche? Last I had was a VW Corrado. There are quality things made in the US, just not many domestic brand cars.
      • twoodfin 12y ago
        My wife's base model VW Tiguan was made in Wolfsburg, and it's a terrific car, albeit having already been recalled twice in two years.
        • jacquesm 12y ago
          Recalls are a sign that a manufacturer takes its reputation serious and has the interest of the customer at heart. Beware of the car manufacturer that never has recalls.
    • fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      >The USA? Don't they just print money? It isn't a mere house of cards; we bully developing countries for their resources, too. >The kids at school that work out their own homework go on to do well. This is true, to some extent, but it isn't a guarantee. >The kids that copy from others don't really succeed too brilliantly. Those that copy are a step behind. Are you implying some kind of meritocracy exists? Because I would disagree. Some of the kids that cheat seem to do quite well, much to our collective detriment. In terms of innovation, I don't see American goods as anywhere near as polished as their German counterparts. I agree. IMO some of that is a deliberate compromise between durability and cost, and some of it is probably just industrialized sloth and rent seeking. We do still have lots of innovation here, but IMO we've lost that edge, and are doing nothing that would help us regain it, or even remain competitive. > I would take the lowest spec. German car over any American car in current production without hesitation. The same applies to white goods and even cakes! You might be interested to know that I have two German (and two American) cars in my drive right now. I'm happier with the 1982 model though than I am with the 1999; but even with their problems they are superior to their American "equivalents". German cakes? You've gone a step too far!
  • atmosx 12y ago
    Thats a joke right? Imagine where Germany would be today if. Marshall had no plan for Germany after the WW2.
  • rhino369 12y ago
    Imagine where Germany would be if the USA didn't stop the Soviets from raping them out of existence in 1945.
• japasc 12y ago
  As i see it, all the US patent system is invalid with this kind of revelation. They can not claim any original idea any more, because of spying
  • colanderman 12y ago
    Don't be ridiculous. An idea is original if there's no prior art. If there's no prior art, spying on other people doesn't magically cause prior art to spring into being.
    • japasc 12y ago
      If its developed as a secret, you will never prove prior art.
    • chippy 12y ago
      I agree but it's not totally ridiculous, because prior art has to be published or at least known about. So if a technology was worked in a secret laboratory which was stolen, there was no prior art as all the thieves would say was "we've been working on this for years also, and released it before you".
      • panzi 12y ago
        "And pretty soon My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed, When he finds out I published first!"
        • 6chars 12y ago
          Ever since I meet this man, my life is not the same.
      • colanderman 12y ago
        So in your world, the NSA shares all the secrets it finds with random patent thieves?
  • ghshephard 12y ago
• bowlofpetunias 12y ago
  The picture in the sidebar (Spiegel cover on the fall of the Berlin wall) is extremely painful in this context. Millions of Germans that honestly believed they wouldn't be spied on anymore once they were part of the "free" West.
  • DanielBMarkham 12y ago
    That's a rather odd thing to believe. As an American, I certainly never felt like I was immune to foreign governments spying on me. My problem is when my government collects tons of data about my own life and is then able to assemble it into any kind of crime they want. It's the collection of my personal information by my own government and then the use of that information for social control that I don't expect to happen. I would expect other governments to keep a close eye on me, especially if I were to get into a position where I could affect national policy. That is, after all, the role of an intelligence agency. [Insert long discussion about how spying and intelligence agencies have done a lot to prevent many wars.] Why did they feel this way? Did they feel that freedom somehow meant being left alone by every government on the planet? There was a general understanding that people are in some form of agreement with their own government, right? And that this agreement had absolutely no bearing on any other government, right?
    • Spearchucker 12y ago
      By my interpretation of what you wrote, you're suggesting that freedom actually means having no expectation of privacy. I can't agree to that. OP is correct. I have the expectation that my torment will not invade my privacy. I also have the expectation that my government protects me from other governments. That's just how it works. For sure right now the reality isn't that effective - but that doesn't change my expectation.
      • Spearchucker 12y ago
        Typo - torment should've been "government".
    • anon1385 12y ago
• etiam 12y ago
  You may also perhaps also be interested in the corresponding article at The Intercept, mostly the same journalists. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/14/nsa-stellar/
  • valevk 12y ago
    I'm not sure if they see this for the first time, or whether it's a little staged for the camera, but those guys have to be feeling really uncomfortable. Imagine some journalist coming to your office, and showing you slides with passwords, that can access you infrastructure. http://vimeo.com/106026217 http://vimeo.com/106026217
    • kriro 12y ago
      Well you can see it in their faces. It was a true WTF moment. The lead engineer visibly choked a couple of times. As an aside...pretty weak password for such an important system.
• metafex 12y ago
  A few years ago I worked for a small Telco company who provided software for virtual MNOs, and security there was not that, let's say, inspiring confidence. It is generally a problem with small companies in the Internet and Mobile-services areas that security is only an afterthought. Partially also due to the fact that the protocols which are used are pretty old and do not implement much, if any, security measures. edit: customers of the company were mostly in eastern europe, middle east and oceania, so maybe that was another reason ;-)
  • maxerickson 12y ago
    Up until 2 years ago, Virgin Mobile USA rate limited PIN attempts using cookies: https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/open-season-on-virgin-mobile-customer-data/ https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/open-season-on-virgin-mobile-c... (VM USA was a VMNO, but now it's more of a Sprint brand, since 2009 Sprint owns them outright)
  • schoen 12y ago
    There's also the problem that when communications companies think of security, they may be thinking of "revenue protection" more than customer privacy (that is, making sure that customers have to pay to communicate, and that they get billed accurately). Ross Anderson liked to point out that the crypto that some cell phones used to discourage you from using aftermarket batteries was stronger than the crypto they used to protect your voice calls over the air. He's also suggested that the crypto in GSM ended up more focused on subscriber authentication than on voice privacy. There is also now a source for the notion that governments pressured the designers of GSM to make it not provide strong cryptographic privacy: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Sources-We-were-pressured-to-weaken-the-mobile-security-in-the-80s-7413285.html http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/Sources-We-were-pres... Here is a sad thing: Governments are STILL pressuring the designers of GSM to make it not provide strong cryptographic privacy. Like, today. We got some documents from ETSI only a couple of years ago showing that they are designing a cryptographic backdoor mode for the official GSM end-to-end voice encryption, which isn't even deployed yet. The use of the backdoor mode will be optional according to carriers' view of their jurisdictional obligations. Sorry, that last part is less on-topic for this thread. But in the big picture, I'm sure the people who are involved in those efforts are not making corresponding compromises in the billing and revenue-protection areas.
• BillFranklin 12y ago
  This will strain the US-German relationship even further.
  • andreasvc 12y ago
    Really? I get that as part of the diplomatic games they have to take on an outward posture of being shocked by such revelations, but aren't their intelligence agencies fully aware that these things are just par for the course?
  • pdkl95 12y ago
    I'm not so sure - a decent argument could be made that the German government really wants to get into the FVEY club. Both Snowden and Drake have said things that suggest this. (note: government != the people, who are justifiably mad)
• deleted 12y ago
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• igl 12y ago
  This article disappeared from the german frontpage of Spiegel.de very quickly :)
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • danbruc 12y ago
    It's still there, just not the featured one on top. And as bad as all this is, there are still worse things happening in the world.
    • igl 12y ago
      yes, if you scroll down to the Top ten list of most shared articles in the small widget to the right. It's #4. By worse things you mean camerons face? In an article that asks "why isn't GB [the NATO] bombing the shit out of iraq yet [again]?"
    • IsTom 12y ago
      If we (as in democratic countries) don't keep outselves together because there are "worse things" (there always are) there will be no demoracies anymore in few dozens of years.
• lispm 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure our German services know much more than they say. There is also a lot of cooperation between German services and the US. Keep in mind that Germany hosts major military and intelligence installations for the US. The central US military commands for Europe and Africa are both hosted in Germany. The US organizes a lot of the world-wide military activities (aka wars) from Germany. We host US nuclear weapons. We have surveillance installations here. The CIA and NSA have bases here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command in Stuttgart/Germany. Imagine that, the US military activities for Africa are coordinated in Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_European_Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_European_Command in Stuttgart/Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex in Griesheim/Germany hosts 1000+ people working for the NSA. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Intelligence_Center https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Intelligence_Cent... under construction in Wiesbaden/Germany, for the US Army and the NSA.
  • valevk 12y ago
    And they are building new bases. I am also convinced that the German authorities know much more than we like to think (they don't say that they know nothing), and I'm also pretty sure the NSA and CIA know as much as the German authorities.
  • sauere 12y ago
    The main problem is that the ruling political parties in Germany are - please excuse the language, i don't know how else to put this - sucking US d*ck big time. The way the whole NSA/Snowden thing has been handled in Germany is a fucking joke.
    • valevk 12y ago
      You know why? I think it's because we have the same situation in Germany as in the US. We are still waiting for "our Snowden".
    • enlightenedfool 12y ago
• BillFranklin 12y ago
  Having access to an ISP at the level the NSA does, geolocation, complete communications surveillance and MitM attacks become very easy. I'm based in Cologne and a customer of one of the breached ISPs - very annoyed.
• chestnut-tree 12y ago
  The BBC broadcast a good documentary on the broad issue of internet survelliance a few weeks ago (Horizon: Inside the Dark Web). It's been uploaded to YouTube and is well worth a watch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjNkbLBEqg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjNkbLBEqg There is a segment in the programme that starts at 4 mins 50 sec that explains how key fibre optic cables that connect the UK and US handle as much as 25% of all internet traffic. It also explains how relatively simple it is for GCHQ to insert an "optical tap" that allows them to capture the data that flows through the cables.
• danbruc 12y ago
  The main problem in this whole story is the inability to punish the misbehavior without getting hit by the backlash. It's the same with Russia's recent activities. We lack efficient means of punishment on a global scale when dealing with powerful nations. Therefore the best option is usually to improve defense measures and that takes time.
  • coldtea 12y ago
    What "recent activities"? I'm afraid the very powerful nations that have done what TFA says have also frame your understanding of what Russia did. Some thinking points: a) Russia is next to Ukraine, so it's like they're dealing with a dispute in their borders (e.g not like certain countries that go across the globe to the middle east or asia to assert their "national interests"). b) Ukraine's legitimate voted for government was toppled by a minority (including nazi sympathizers) with western support. c) The population of Ukraine has tons of people that are pro-Russia and are of Russian descent. Crimea in particular had voted to unite with Russia time and again. Imagine Mexico's legitimate government had been toppled by a Russian-supported coalition (with pro-nazi's among them). Imagine Baja California had 90% people of USA descent that had voted for union with California. What the US response to that would be?
    • twoodfin 12y ago
      So you'd support a US invasion of Mexico under those circumstances? Somehow I doubt it.
      • coldtea 12y ago
        Under those circumstances? Yes. Or at least I'd understand it and respect the resoning behind it. I don't expect "knight on a white horse" or a beacon of justice, and I don't judge all situations the same. It's all a matter of degree and case-by-case basis, there's no black and white in politics. For the same reasons I'm against USSR's invasion of Afghanistan or Hungary too. So, comparatively speaking, this is a 10 times more defensible situation that an all-powerful country invading/bombing a smaller one (and under false pretextes at that) to secure cheap resources and/or a favorable diplomatic outcome in the area. The hypocrisy of people treating those two situations the same is incredible.
• kaeso 12y ago
  While everybody is mostly focused on Deutsche Telecom and Stellar, I'm more concerned about the long list of big-profile red-filled dots ('SIGINT collection points from AS') in the dox and slides: * AS1299 (TeliaSonera) * AS3549 (Level3/GBLX) * AS6762 (TelecomItalia/Sparkle) * AS3320 (DeutscheTelekom) * AS1273 (CW Cable and Wireless) * AS702 (Verizon/UUNET) This list covers most of the uplink/transit/tier-1 providers, serving most of EU operators (TATA and TINET being the biggest absents here).
• Keyframe 12y ago
  It has now been a year+ since Snowden is out of the loop (I guess). I wonder how fast NSA moves and how much things have changed since this intel.
  • vidarh 12y ago
    Presumably a lot have changed, but if anything we can pretty safely assume it has changed for the worse, not better.
• crazy1van 12y ago
  Evidence that the US spy agencies engage in large scale espionage on its own people is outrageous. Evidence that US spy agencies engage is foreign espionage is expected. What is the difference? The US has made explicit commitments to its people through things like the 1st and 4th amendments to protect their privacy.
  • panzi 12y ago
    And this is exactly why more and more non-US-citizen don't like the US anymore. Seeing the world in two classes "US" and "non-US". Yes, I know, no secret service is better. The question is: Are secret services compatible with democracy? More and more indicators let me think: no.
    • blumkvist 12y ago
      Nobody lives in a true democracy. And it's actually a good thing. Unfortunately the majority of the population is willingly ignorant and refuses to be educated on complex issues. Instead, they have very unbalanced opinions, based almost solely on emotion. It is very easy to harness those emotions and use them to raise to power and then do unspeakable atrocities. Hitler, Musolini to name just a couple.
      • bjelkeman-again 12y ago
        And what is a true democracy then?
        • panzi 12y ago
          Everything the government is 100% out in the open (except for ongoing police investigations - but the moment they are finished they are made public). There are only direct elections and almost all decisions are don via general elections. The whole population is well educated on all issues that are subject to politics so they can make informed decisions when voting. This is of course unfeasible. The only way to make something like that feasible would be to link up our minds like the Borg. Still, the current state is not good enough.
• meepmorp 12y ago
  At this point, Snowden's clearly a traitor. His revelations about domestic surveillance were important and timely (if not surprising to people who've been paying attention). But here, he's leaked data that's unarguably within the laws under which the NSA operates - it's a foreign telecom operator that operates abroad. Releasing this information isn't whistle blowing, it's pursuing a political agenda.
  • plg 12y ago
    The question is, who released this information? My impression from all I have read about the Snowden affair is that some time ago he gathered some very large number of documents (large enough that he couldn't have gone through them all by hand, rather it seems he did something like a giant data dump). He then encrypted these documents, disseminated them to a small number of individuals/locations, and now he is not necessarily in control of them any more, perhaps even he no longer has access to them all. This doesn't address the more general question, if you gather a crapload of documents indiscriminately, and then you end up losing control of them (and losing control of the ability to release what you want and not release what you don't want to), are you nevertheless responsible for future releases? I don't know the answer to that
    • mpyne 12y ago
      Snowden, in an interview that he gave when this all started, stated explicitly that (unlike Manning), he reviewed each and every single document in that mass that he dumped. Furthermore, that review was to ensure that it was material the the public "needed to know" and wouldn't actually harm the U.S. (as he claimed he could do). So the question of who ended up with the material after Snowden is irrelevant, inasmuch as Snowden himself says he signed off on each and every single leak you see in the media derived from that initial document dump, even if he didn't directly control the editorial process of each media (or activist) outlet doing the publishing. The alternative (that Snowden didn't actually review every document and simply negligently put stuff out there) is bad for him too, as it makes him a liar. In either event this is indicative of a political agenda, not some concern with American civil liberties. But we've already known that since his leak of phone tapping in a certain Central Asian country where American (and allied) forces are fighting for their lives each and every day, something which can't possibly implicate American civil liberties.
• deleted 12y ago
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• PaulHoule 12y ago
  I knew skript kids who were networking mapping cities and national networks like TymNet back in 87. Around 2k I made a map of the Netherlands, because it was a small but interesting country. The bigger boys play with bigger toys.
• rukugu 12y ago
  Maybe we should have ethics taught in CS so that people know that it's wrong even if you are sitting at a terminal and having fun because the work is challenging.
  • takeda 12y ago
    Many universities do, I know for sure UCLA does, although the course it is taken by other engineers as well so many case studies are from other areas. The closest one to CS at the time I was taking it was about Intel's floating point fiasco, but it did not sound as bad as others because it did not affect people's lives. Hopefully they'll add recent NSA scandal to the syllabus.
  • RivieraKid 12y ago
    That sounds silly. Ethics is subjective. When you teach "This is wrong." and the student replies "I feel it's right.", what do you say? Unless you have some ethical framework plus a good reason to follow act according that framework, you operate on the level of subjective feelings and opinions.
    • pluma 12y ago
      There is such a thing as "ethics class" and it's really not about dogmatic "do this" or "don't do that". Instead it analyzes various situations to derive insight about why some things are ethically right and some aren't. By calling it entirely pointless you're dismissing a whole branch of philosophy. I know moral relativism is still popular among some groups of people, but there are other approaches to understanding morality. And no, I'm not talking about religion or Ayn Rand.
      • RivieraKid 12y ago
        > derive insight about why some things are ethically right and some aren't What exactly "ethically right" means is subjective. > you're dismissing a whole branch of philosophy Yes, and it's not the only branch I dismiss :-) > but there are other approaches to understanding morality For example? My problem with ethical systems is that they're built on a subjective feelings of rightness and wrongness.
• markdutton 12y ago
  Interesting how this post is disappearing fast from the front page. On the other hand, when Apple launches a new product, the front page looks like the front page of Apple.com, for more than 1 day.
• doctorstupid 12y ago
  Imagine the uproar that would ensue if Germany were to be found spying on U.S. citizens.
  • takeda 12y ago
    And they probably are. What if US spies on German citizens, and Germany spies on US citizens and then they both exchange with each other what they have learned?
• mgulaid 12y ago
  Most likely, the hacked company in the video is Horizon Energy in the UAE. The first part of the IP matches of the UAE, and you can see the name horizon on the screen. after quick search you can see Horizon has energy operations in the ME and Africa.
  • uaygsfdbzf 12y ago
    82.205.128.0/17 belongs to Horizon Satellite Network. The IP from the slide might be something like: 82.205.224.2 - 7206-1.CGN.horizon-satellite.com (CGN is the airport code of Köln/Bonn, close to the Stellar office) or 82.205.224.16 - Border-7206.NetCologne.horizon-satellite.com (Netcologne is mentioned on the slides as well) or 82.205.224.250 - loopback-1-7206-3.CGN.horizon-satellite.com Fun fact: The Cisco 7206 router was last sold >12 years ago and doesn't get support since many, many years: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/7206-router/index.html http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/7206-router/in...