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As for certificates, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the NSA controls several root certificates and can exert legal pressure if not outright control of
by olifante 12y ago
As for certificates, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the NSA controls several root certificates and can exert legal pressure if not outright control of many others. They can use this power to perform SSL Man-in-the-Middle attacks. See http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/37216/how-likely-possible-is-it-that-the-nsa-have-broken-common-encryption-techniques http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/37216/how-likely..., https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_... or https://digitalelf.net/2013/09/how-the-nsa-is-breaking-ssl/ https://digitalelf.net/2013/09/how-the-nsa-is-breaking-ssl/. I don't see how it can be remotely controversial that the US and its allies possess deeply asymmetric power. They have legal power over all popular desktop OSes, all popular mobile OSes, all major cloud providers (Amazon, Azure and Google) and most major social networks. To pretend that other countries have anything approaching this capability is patently ludicrous.
- Amezarak 12y agoYou don't need control over the DNS root zone to exert control over DNS. Other countries are well-known exert control over DNS. The same goes for certificates. There is no deep asymmetry, other countries already have the powers you are talking about and they are using them here, today, in the now. You also did not address my point concerning their "legal power" over e.g. Microsoft/Windows and Apple/OS X. As for cloud providers, they are located all over the globe, and countries they operate in have the same power you are counting the US as having.