17 ms·

The Great SIM Heist: How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle

576 points by frandroid 12y ago

uptown 12y ago
Absolutely everything is compromised.
- mpclark 12y ago
  ...and so deeply.
- 0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
  That is just the opposite argument of saying that nothing is compromised. Neither are correct.
leesalminen 12y ago
Do they want me to be apathetic about the actions of our government? I'm getting close.
- orbifold 12y ago
  You should read "The Crisis of Democracy", in short yes, you are supposed to be apathetic, the people in power get uncomfortable quickly if you take an interest in what they do.
rsingel 12y ago
This is yet another good argument for TextSecure and RedPhone, which don't depend on the SIM card encryption. https://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/
- hannibalhorn 12y ago
  While certainly a step in the right direction, the lack of an open baseband remains a huge problem, even with TextSecure. Any smartphone has a whole separate OS running, with access to the system bus and memory, that we generally have zero visibility into. There could be exploitable bugs, there could be actual backdoors, and we just have no idea. If you truly want to secure data, you need to use an airgapped system with hardware that is much more open.
  - orbifold 12y ago
    That should be a solvable problem, aren't there tons of operating systems professors and electrical engineers around in Europe that could in principle develop an open baseband chip and operating system? Germany and France should have an interest that their communication can't be trivially backdoored by the NSA.
    - SXX 12y ago
      Main issue is there really no specifications available on many things. Also it's will be nearly impossible to pass certification so no real manufacturer would use it. If you want more details you may check OsmocomBB site and IRC. > Germany and France should have an interest that their communication can't be trivially backdoored by the NSA. Nobody saying that governments don't have trusted hardware with only their own backdoors. In almost every country manufacturer have to provide source code and specs in order to pass certification so gov does have everything needed. Though it's not help anybody else as it's will never be open.
  - patcon 12y ago
    Manual baseband isolation via mobile hotspot and nexus 7, does the trick for now
    - tmzt 12y ago
      Until the AMSS in the hotspot is compromised and used to attack your Android device via wifi. This applies to mobile hotspots built around Qualcomm baseband/application processors, in other cases you would have to exploit the main CPU first.
      - scintill76 12y ago
        Well, at least that requires two exploits/backdoors, instead of one.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    Modern basebands are sandboxed, from what I understand. Partly because phones kept getting unlocked through exploiting baseband bugs and that messes with carrier subsidies.
- chinathrow 12y ago
  Yet they do depend on a good RNG, don't they? Is that a given on common smartphones these days?
  - pixl97 12y ago
    I'm not sure about hardware RNG, but many if not most phones have sources of 'random' enviornmental data they can use to generate a random number such as cameras and phone movement. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/42428/is-generating-random-numbers-using-a-smartphone-camera-a-good-idea https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/42428/is-genera...
- contingencies 12y ago
  The problem with these sorts of on-phone-afterthoughts are that they are just lipstick on a pig. You are still being tracked (GSM, wifi) and vulnerable to local hacks. Due to the nature of the devices (millions of identical devices are produced for major models), their distribution patterns (model selection led by fashion and price point), their homogeneity (two dominant embedded OS platforms only), their complexity (leading to a very large potential attack surface), and their ubiquitousness (your phone number, IMEI, local physical cell, or email address is probably terribly easy to find) it would be extremely foolhardy to rely upon the security of a modern, commercially available handset.
- Tepix 12y ago
  It's unfortunate that the free Linphone for iOS crashes since the last update... it offers standard ZRTP calls for iOS.
xai3luGi 12y ago
At this point, we might as well just go back to landlines and fax machines.
- saganus 12y ago
  Aren't those even easier to wiretap? I believe (maybe I'm wrong here) that the word wiretap comes precisely because people could literally "tap" into the wire and listen everything. Or did I miss the sarcasm?
  - khuey 12y ago
    The old technologies required more effort (somebody had to go physically tap the wire).
    - ars 12y ago
      You can't tap a cell phone call remotely either - you have to be pretty close to the cell phone. So it's not that different, a bit easier, yes. But you still have to physically go there.
      - mszyndel 12y ago
        So little you know... ;)
      - jdbernard 12y ago
        Not if you have access to the carrier's internal network...
        ars 12y ago
        If you have access to the internal network you don't need SIM card keys which is the subject here.
    - saganus 12y ago
      When I re-read the parent's post I thought to myself "of course he is being sarcastic!" But then I saw your post and it made me think. And I believe you are onto something here. I mean, sure, probably tapping one phone is much easier physically, just connect the wires and you're done. However the point you bring is game-changer. In ye' olden days spooks were interested in certain persons only, but now it seems that we are all fair game, and so the "easy" way of wiretapping becomes incredibly hard when you want to spy on everyone. It's basically an scalability problem then. Never saw it that way.
deleted 12y ago
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dthal 12y ago
>>The document noted that many SIM card manufacturers transferred the encryption keys to wireless network providers “by email or FTP with simple encryption methods that can be broken … or occasionally with no encryption at all.” If that's true, then NSA/GCHQ aren't the only people who could have grabbed a big pile of keys.
- nicolas314 12y ago
  I can confirm this. In many cases these keys are exchanged over email with simple DES encryption and a key known to everybody in the business (pretty obvious key BTW). It really boils down to the security procedures in place between the SIM manufacturer and Mobile Network Operators.
  - chinathrow 12y ago
    WTF. That is sloppyness on our sholders. And you knew about that? Did you report it up on your line of command?
    - peterwwillis 12y ago
      There are three things that happen when you report negligence "up the line of command". 1. You get ignored. 2. Your boss (or coworkers) make you want to quit. 3. You get fired.
  - jdbernard 12y ago
    I want to chime in to offer the counter. I used to work for Gemalto. I'm not exactly sure which keys you are talking about, but when I was there Gemalto's standard practice for the transfer of the keys mentioned in the article--individual SIM embedded keys--was to use AllynisConnect (which I only mention because it's easily found on Google) to facilitate the transfer of individual SIM keys to the customer. Obviously I'm not going to comment on the details of the cryptography involved, but it was much more considered than "simple encryption methods or no encryption at all." Notably this mechanism would not protect the keys against an attacker who was inside Gemalto's or the customer's secure network, as seems to be the case here. I'd be interested in knowing which keys specifically you are talking about.
deleted 12y ago
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- infinity0 12y ago
  There is no shock and surprise. Historically, not all communication has been compromised, because it takes physical effort and risk of detection to open every letter. Secure communication (in the sense of the contemporary normal means of communication) has not been a historically hard-to-get commodity.
- anologwintermut 12y ago
  The SIM card bit is actually I think a distraction. The real issue should be the means: the NSA/GCHQ intentionally targeted innocent/non government affiliated people's personal email and social networking. That's different than collecting everyone'ss data and claiming you never look at it unless someone does something to loose their innocence. Orwellian nightmare that that is and probably bullshit, revelations along those lines are not surprising. The systematic targeting of the personal lives of random employees (at least of non-governmental/ non defense industry ones), is new.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - nzp 12y ago
    No, that's actually the bread and butter of intelligence work. At least it was in HUMINT, if not in SIGINT. You identify individual(s) with access to what you need and then work on/with them. This is not surprising or even controversial (mind you, I am not in any way in favour of such things, just playing the devil's advocate a bit) at all. Hard evidence of dragnet, massive, all encompassing surveillance really is the new revelation that has come out of Snowden leaks including this one. Targeting of individuals (especially if they're foreigners) was always going on.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  You aren't surprised that our government is building a massive dragnet blackmail database. Good for you. You aren't alone and like the rest of us you didn't do anything useful with your prediction. What do you want, a gold sticker? Tell me again why I (or anyone else) should find the fact that you foresaw this outcome comforting -- or relevant at all. > Rooms can be bugged. Yeah but they need a warrant, it costs money to bug a room, and they can't decide to retroactively bug every room their target has ever been in. To make things concrete, do you really think none of these powers would have made a difference if they had had them back when they were trying to sink MLK's platform?
anologwintermut 12y ago
Personally, the biggest take away to this is the invasive targeting of completely innocent and ordinary people simply as a means to get access to things the NSA needed (sim Card keys). We have concrete evidence they nailed peoples personal email accounts and social networks merely as a means to an get crypto keys in mass. Sure, the potential mass surveillance is exceedingly problematic, but thats mainly problematic because of the potential for abuse. Abuse that we either assumed would happen or already had, but as far as I know there was little direct evidence of. The absolute lowest bar for surveillance seems to be that a government doesn't use it to intentionally target innocent people/ those not in the game (hell, lets lower it even further to be only people the government themselves believe are innocent).[0] That potentially allows dragnet collection of data if no one looks at it. It might allow hacking just a company's servers to get access to third party data. It probably allows you to spy on foreign heads of state (even if it's a boneheaded move). But it damn well doesn't allow you to go through the personal communications of people who you know have done nothing wrong and aren't even working for someone who has. [0] This is precisely the woefully low bar Obama has been espousing : “The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures,”
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  It's interesting because last I checked Obama/NSA were saying they don't collect content, only metadata (that harmless, harmless metadata [1]). If that's the case, why were they so interested in the SIM key?! [1] - http://justsecurity.org/10311/michael-hayden-kill-people-based-metadata/ http://justsecurity.org/10311/michael-hayden-kill-people-bas...
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    The metadata qualifier is about U.S. domestic data gathering. There's no such limitation on their activities outside of the U.S. (Hence there is no reason to make an inference about what capabilities they would attempt to build out)
steffenfrost 12y ago
Isn't the NSA breaking US law by hacking into a commercial entity's network?
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  Which is probably why GCHQ was the one doing the actual hacking. NSA just got a share in the prize.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    That seems to be the real value in the Five Eyes network. Each member can undertake surveillance of the domestic communications of the other members, thus absolving the own-state surveillance apparatus from claims of domestic spying. But the poisoned fruit may be (and appears to be) freely shared.
    - a3n 12y ago
      If I receive and use/sell stolen property, I've broken the law even if I didn't steal it. I would think if anyone could work their way through the "standing" restrictions, it could be shown in court that the NSA violated the Constitution by receiving "stolen" surveillance data. The reason why we have the 4th Amendment is not because the act of spying is feared (as egregious as that is), it's because of what the government might do with the results. So receiving the data violates at least the spirit of the constitution, and I would think the letter also.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        Maybe. Seems to me that there's a bit of an issue with the general operating mode of an intelligence agency. I've said in the past that I wasn't generally overly concerned with stories such as the NSA's reported monitoring of German chancellor Angela Merkel -- which later reports suggest might _not_ have happened -- apparently they're not even totally up on which close national ally heads-of-state they're spying on. But keeping tabs on other countries -- even friendly ones -- yeah, that's part of the basic remit. But an organize "we'll spy on yours if you spy on ours" arrangement, particularly with a "don't ask for it, we'll just give it to you" understanding. That's violating the intent of legal and constitutional protections every which way. At the same time, if a talent scout in North Whateveristan gets handed a sheaf of goatskins exfiltrated from the local TCP-over-parchment connectivity provider, the legality of that data's acquisition shouldn't be a hinderence. But if North Whateveristan happens to be a friend and we're concerned with that the goatskins reveal, then breaking that information to the government (or other friends in slow places) should be possible at some level. If there's a resolution by law in this, it's likely going to have to require explicit controls over how and when data of a given nation's nationals or residents is provided to that nation. And bars on mass transfers. Perhaps mandating them outside intelligence services through diplomatic channels? At least that'll give Wikileaks a sporting chance.
Spearchucker 12y ago
In 2007 I worked with Gemalto when they ported a Java/PKCS #11 Chip & PIN implementation to the .NET Micro Framework/CAPI for Microsoft, who were using it for challenge/response authN on a remote access project for the UK Ministry of Defence. There was a case study of the project on Microsoft.com, but it seems to no longer be there. Anyway, this sucks because the Gemalto guys I did this with were to this day among the best vendors I've ever worked with. Really awesome guys, smart, and incredibly willing to share what they knew and did. And it's somewhat ironic that Gemalto are trusted by the UK MoD for sourcing their smart card components in Europe. So much for keeping it local to avoid hacks.
digitalneal 12y ago
I think its safe to say NSA/GCHQ are not the only ones in the game who have hit this target.
- rl3 12y ago
  On that note, I wonder if their compromising of these systems affords the target any sort of immunization from attacks by other actors. It would make sense that NSA/GHCQ wouldn't want their foreign competitors to share in the prize, and it would also be congruent with their interests to not afford competing actors access to such a prize. Then again, this notion is likely far too romantic. The reality is probably closer to one where foreign actors have compromised everything just the same.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Sometimes denying data to others is as good as advertising that someone else got there first. So you might want to leave the treasure trove in place so that nobody else figures out you have it. Intelligence is wheels within wheels within wheels...
    - rl3 12y ago
      Good point. However, it might be possible to deny adversaries without alerting them to the fact that they were denied in the first place.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        Depends how advanced the adversary is. It also depends on if you want to deny them, because you might learn something by watching what they do. Or you might feed them false data and see what happens. Aren't mind games fun?
    - ericcumbee 12y ago
      and the inverse is that there can be good intel gleaned by watching who else is trying to get in.
higherpurpose 12y ago
This is exactly why Intel's upcoming SGX worries me greatly, too. NSA could get the "key" to all SGX machines and therefore to all applications using SGX to secure themselves properly (ironically enough) [1]. Intel really needs to figure out how to protect the SGX system against such a key robbery, and not by promising to only give access to a couple of employees in the whole company who know a very special hand-shake. Intel needs to modify the SGX system in such a way that you don't have to trust Intel (or anyone hacking Intel) to keep the key secure, even if that means the company not giving itself access to SGX at all (which includes not having the ability to update it). [1] - http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/09/23/thoughts-on-intels-upcoming-software.html http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/09/23/thoughts-on-intel...
- kevin_b_er 12y ago
  You mistake the point of SGX. The point of is a reincarnation of treacherous computing. Intel SGX requires remote attestation. This means that YOU, the owner of the device, is not trusted. To have 3rd party keys would mean they would have to trust you. With trust in you, how could it be marketed to the copyright owners? The answer is that it cannot. The point of Intel SGX is to deny ownership of the device to its owner. But yes, any situation like this where you cannot be trusted means a hacker can gain a higher level of trust than you if they break the security.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    SGX does not require remote attestation. Just like all prior TC platforms, it offers remote attestation but there is no requirement that it be used. By the way, very frequently the owner of a computer is not in fact trustworthy. Situations where that occurs crop up all the time in security engineering. For example a big use of TC is making Bitcoin wallets that are secure against malware. There are other uses too, like safe outsourcing of private data storage/computation to the cloud.
    - anonymousDan 12y ago
      Yup, cloud is a major motivation for SGX (see e.g. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper-baumann.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14... for an example of how it might be put to use). I think it is good idea for making it more difficult for malicious insiders to mount an attack, but any claims of it protecting you from the NSA are laughable given Intel will probably hand over keys to them anyway.
bsder 12y ago
Personally, my biggest takeaway is that anything centralized is compromised, period. Any centralized system is such a juicy target that the NSA will compromise it. The only way to avoid dragnet issues is to decentralize and force the NSA to expend resources at the edges. This doesn't means that you can make an individual target secure. The NSA can always outspend you. But you can prevent the NSA from easily just vacuuming up everybody cheaply.
- vmiroshnikov 12y ago
  Yet you still have carefully to cloak yourself, otherwise you will bring more attention to yourself.
- chinathrow 12y ago
  Agreed. I still wait to learn that AWS is compromised on a huge scale too. No words yet - mark this post and let's see and wait.
  - anonbanker 12y ago
    replying as breadcrumbs.
thorntonbf 12y ago
At some point, people have to begin to realize that this has progressed past "looking for terrorists." Statists are gonna state, I guess.
- GabrielF00 12y ago
  The article specifically cites the mobile phone networks of Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia as targets. One is a state sponsor of terrorism, the other three are places where the US is actively fighting terrorism.
  - scintill76 12y ago
    You conveniently left out Iceland, from the very same sentence that is the source of what you listed. As far as I know, Iceland is innocent of terrorism accusations from the US. (OK, benefit of the doubt: maybe The Intercept added Iceland to the article later, or you genuinely didn't see it.) Anyway, you really think the "bad countries" you named from a 5-year-old document are an exhaustive list of what they've got today? You think the agencies won't scoop up any other countries' keys, including the United States', just in case their metadata graphs later suggest sleeper agents in "the good countries"? I'm too ticked to make a good argument about morality or lack thereof right now, so I'll just leave it here. They hacked and surveilled non-terrorists to get the keys, and got the keys of at least one "non-terrorist country" (Iceland), so no, I don't find your argument convincing, and I think the parent post's point stands.
    - GabrielF00 12y ago
      From the Intercept article its not clear why this type of data was collected from an Icelandic carrier. The linked graph appears to show 100 IMSI's from Iceland, as opposed to 100,000 from Somalia* and tens of thousands from Afghanistan. It's possible that the Iceland data was acquired incidentally because it happened to come from the same sources that were sending data on more interesting countries. It's possible that there's something of value to be learned in Iceland. I don't know. The Intercept gives us very little context as to the actual products that the intelligence agencies produce. [Edit: Page 11 of this document indicates that the acquisition of keys from Iceland and Tajikistan was unexpected and that those countries were not targeted: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/pcs-harvesting-scale/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/pcs-h...] I don't dispute the fact that the US government has intelligence-gathering priorities that don't involve terrorism. I would argue that at least one reason terrorism is discussed is that there are diplomatic consequences to saying one spies on foreign governments. I also agree with the more cynical view, that terrorism is cited as a rationale because terrorism is scary and something opposed by everyone the US is trying to convince. I believe very strongly that the world would be a lot safer if the US government knew certain things like the intentions of the Russian leadership and the capabilities of the Russian armed forces. Or the state of the Iranian nuclear program and that country's negotiating position. Or what exactly is happening on the ground in the midst of all the chaos in Libya or Syria or Yemen. The answers to these questions will determine the fate of entire regions of the world. *A subsequent document puts a later figure for Somalia at 300,000.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Sadly this would be an excellent application for the CFAA except that they agencies involved are immune from its prosecution.
- a3n 12y ago
  Maybe so, but ... > Additionally, the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companies’ core networks, giving it access to “sales staff machines for customer information ... So these corporations had customers' personal data stolen. I believe they're obligated to inform those customers, and possibly other obligations. (No direct knowledge, just spouting off what I've read during the Target and Home Depot breaches.)
sehugg 12y ago
Ironically Gemalto also tracks statistics on data breaches -- guess they ought to update their numbers? http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/21603/gemalto-releases-findings-of-2014-breach-level/ http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/21603/gemalto-releases-f...
lawnchair_larry 12y ago
"TOP-SECRET GCHQ documents reveal that the intelligence agencies accessed the email and Facebook accounts of engineers and other employees of major telecom corporations and SIM card manufacturers in an effort to secretly obtain information that could give them access to millions of encryption keys. They did this by utilizing the NSA’s X-KEYSCORE program, which allowed them access to private emails hosted by the SIM card and mobile companies’ servers, as well as those of major tech corporations, including Yahoo and Google." First, it came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a terrorist. Then, it came for the muslims, and I did not speak out, because I was not a muslim. Then, it came for the Dutch, Belgian, and German engineers, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Dutch, Belgian, or German engineer. If you're an engineer, developer, sales staff, or pretty much anything else, and you work at a company that has something worth stealing, you should think about how this ends. If they don't come for you first, your personal life is now completely fair game for nation state attackers. They will stop at nothing, they have limitless budgets, they will attack your private life, they will reflash the firmware in components of your personal devices, and they will stalk you. Even when you did nothing wrong, even when your employer did nothing wrong, even when your social graph is in no way linked to anyone who ever did anything wrong.
- alfiedotwtf 12y ago
  This should be the top comment.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Just as important, if you're an engineer, developer, or mathematician who works for the NSA or a similar agency, you need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself if this is really what you wanted to do when you grew up.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    What, work with some of the smartest people on the planet with a near-infinite budget solving the biggest big data problems out there whilst defending your country from turrists? Sign me up!
knodi123 12y ago
How is snowden still producing high-level stuff like this? Did he really steal info on that many headline-worthy stories all in one go, or does he have fresh sources? Sometimes this feels like another instance of what I call the "weird al phenomenon", where any person who hears a silly parody of a pop song attributes it to weird al, because "wait, you're telling me there are other song parody writers?"
- rys 12y ago
  It's safe to assume that the vast quantities of documentation he liberated have enough newsworthy material in them to last those with access a very very long time.
  - zecho 12y ago
    Greenwald and Poitras have said this publicly many times. They have years worth of material to report from the cache of files.
  - mirimir 12y ago
    Perhaps more charitably, it will take them a very long time to parse it. It's too bad that they can't responsibly crowdsource the work.
- hurin 12y ago
  It's also likely or possible that other disclosures are labeled under Snowden in order not to compromise or reveal the existence of a new source.
  - fysac 12y ago
    In fact, Bruce Schneier believes there's another, unknown NSA leaker besides Snowden: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/the_us_intellig.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/the_us_intell...
    - Tepix 12y ago
droopybuns 12y ago
How many silicon valley patriots would support this outrageous attack? It was one week ago that Obama was arguing that this kind of activity is necessary. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/stanford-obama-tim-cook-privacy-security http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/stanford-obama-ti... This is not a republican/democrat problem. This is an institutional problem. We need comprehensive reform of both parties and it should be followed by a purging of the existing federal machine.
- anonbanker 12y ago
  the call to revolution falls upon the deaf ears of the well-fed in the silicon valley, my friend.
bcl 12y ago
Gemalto doesn't just make sim cards. They also make OTP tokens - http://www.gemalto.com/readers/tokens http://www.gemalto.com/readers/tokens
- chinathrow 12y ago
  And HSMs since their merger with SafeNet.
pests 12y ago
One notable line: "GCHQ operatives identified key individuals and their positions within Gemalto and then dug into their emails. In one instance, GCHQ zeroed in on a Gemalto employee in Thailand who they observed sending PGP-encrypted files, noting that if GCHQ wanted to expand its Gemalto operations, “he would certainly be a good place to start.”"
- merrua 12y ago
  Does that suggest they have an exploit in PGP?
CyberDildonics 12y ago
And yet for some reason the idea that data should be separately encrypted at every protocol layer is something people fight.
Iv 12y ago
At this point, if you are surprised by this, you should not be working in the security field.
malandrew 12y ago
I'm wondering if this also involves stealing keys that secures the Gemalto AWS mult-factor auth devices.
gcb0 12y ago
the first line from the one-page-PDF source for the article is: "Billing servers to suppress SMS billing" were the GCHQ risking bankrupting the government because of abusive SMS billing from the telcos? [1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/cne-access-core-mobile-networks-2/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/cne-a...
b6 12y ago
I donate to the EFF whenever possible. What else can I do to fight these bastards? I think the NSA is a threat to humanity and I feel helpless.
SXX 12y ago
Nothing new. At this point nobody should consider any closed source encryption like something even nearly trustworthy.
- jdbernard 12y ago
  That has very little to do with this particular attack. The NSA did not attack the proprietary code, which uses standard, open, and publicly-known and documented cryptographic operations, by the way. They compromised the key custodians. While I agree in principle about open source, using purely open-source software would not have provided any defence here.
  - SXX 12y ago
    > While I agree in principle about open source, using purely open-source software would not have provided any defence here. In open source software / hardware there wouldn't be "master key" that can't be changed and that have to be used by telecom's. Yeah of course no doubt NSA may penetrate in network of every of them, but it's would be a lot more costly.
    - mike_hearn 12y ago
      No, really, this isn't about open source stuff. Any architecture that requires pre-shared symmetric keys is going to have this problem. The fix is architectural, not open sourcing stuff. From what I understand LTE is significantly better.
junto 12y ago
Since the US and British governments operate on the premise of invading the privacy of all citizens without warrant in order to prevent a handful of bad apples, should other countries consider a temporary blanket ban on all US citizens from visiting to their countries in order to make a point? I know that only 4% of US citizens have passports, and most countries rely on US trade, but still it would certainly send a message? Simplistic I know but somehow we need to voice our dissatisfaction with the way things are headed. Foreign citizens can't change US policy, only US citizens can vote out their corrupted system. The privacy of non-US citizens is considered as fair game. We have no comeback presently.
- dTal 12y ago
  >I know that only 4% of US citizens have passports You're off by an order of magnitude. It's actually about 38% [0]. Bear in mind Americans even need a passport to travel to Canada or Mexico now. I also do not think that preventing Americans from travelling abroad will improve their global perspective. [0] http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/statistics.html http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/...
steeve 12y ago
Remember when hacking Sony was an act of war?
_pmf_ 12y ago
I've always regarded encryption that is not end-to-end as a gimmick.
deleted 12y ago
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cm2187 12y ago
It doesn't justify the NSA/GCHQ's actions but the fact these keys could be stolen like that mostly means mobile communications were never really secure in the first place. I am every day more appalled by the scale of the data breaches we learn about every week.
gerty 12y ago
French press is trying to connect Gemalto and NSA. Common denominator is Alex Mandl. He's currently Executive Chairman of Gemalto. Previously, he was in Board of Directors of In-Q-Tel which is a CIA company.
motters 12y ago
Surely this has got to be illegal. When will the lawsuits commence?
TruthWillFree 12y ago
What is problematic here is that the legitimacy of almost all information exchanged in a digital form has been lost almost entirely. How much longer must we presume ignorance in what is really happening? How much longer will the innocent be bullied through technological and psychological means to promote the interests of the current national security apparatus with interests entirely different than the rest of America/World? What happened to Aaron Swartz is only a taste of what is happening to the rest of us who believe these types of activities are unethical and a violation of constitutional law. Do we honestly believe that this isn't being used for insider trading, to capture sensitive medical information, and steal other trade secrets that should be protected by law? Wake up America. We need to stand up against this digital tyranny.
chinathrow 12y ago
I always wondered if HSMs are at risk to be compromised at the core (read: the manufacturer) such as those frome SafeNet (in use e.g. with Box.com on their enterprise external HSM plan). And guess what, Gemalto merged with SafeNet the other day. http://www.safenet-inc.com/SafeNet-Gemalto-Merger/ http://www.safenet-inc.com/SafeNet-Gemalto-Merger/ Everything is compromised. Everything! References: https://www.box.com/blog/breaking-the-last-barrier-to-cloud-adoption-with-box-enterprise-key-management/ https://www.box.com/blog/breaking-the-last-barrier-to-cloud-... http://www.safenet-inc.com/data-encryption/hardware-security-modules-hsms/ http://www.safenet-inc.com/data-encryption/hardware-security...
Tharkun 12y ago
So, should I get a new SIM?
- chinathrow 12y ago
  You might start with asking your mobile operator how they react to this compromise.
Lanzaa 12y ago
One key thing that stood out to me was this: > [GCHQ operatives] noted that the use of PGP could mean the contents were potentially valuable. This good reminder that encrypting everything is important for security. Only encrypting valuable or sensitive information provides information to an attacker on where they should focus their efforts.
bigbugbag 12y ago
Interestingly this is about Gemalto, a company with a remarkable history. Remember times when the USofA wasn't adopting the smart card technology ? Well it had something to do with this chip technology (crypto) being a foreign technology which coincidently was the propriety of the French company Gemplus. At the turn of the millenium an US investment funds (Texas Pacific Group) managed to find its way in Gemplus capital after a couple denials, which is the start what is known in France as l'affaire Gemplus. To summarize instead of helping to conquer the US market, TPG used its power to change the board of director (and choose Alex Mandl as the head), initiated rounds of layoff and moved the R&D to the US to take control of the sought after technology. The whole thing is shown to be an operation of the C.I.A. through In-Q-Tel to take control of the chip card technology and possibly insert backdoors before exporting. Slow to react, it takes several years for the french government to create its own version of In-Q-Tel called "Fonds Stratégique d'Investissement" and try to reclaim Gemplus, now Gemalto, by becoming the majority stakeholder with 8% of shares in 2009, a move that happens too late and TPG having gotten what they wanted sells its share a year later.
summerdown2 12y ago
I think one of the big issues here is that for an intelligence agency, good defensive security is essentially silent. There's not a lot of money or political capital in "nothing broke today." On the other hand, good offensive capabilities, even if kept secret externally, are loud and flashy within the organisation, and come with lots of political capital beyond it. Because of this asymmetry, I think it's almost impossible for an intelligence organisation to stop its "defense" mission being swallowed by the "attack" one. And so we all end up less free and less safe. I do sometimes wonder what the world would be like if the NSA took it as its mission to secure the internet and chain of encryption, rather than constantly breaking it. If, for example, they used their resources to seek out vulnerabilities and exploits and fix them. Maybe such a world is impossible. But I do think there's a valid space for a national cyber defense organisation that runs counter to this trend, that acts to shore up the infrastructure rather than constantly subverting it.
hobarrera 12y ago
Shouldn't TLS/GPG/OTR/etc have our backs on this anyway (at least on the data-side of it)? I mean, they can now intercept and read any mobile data traffic, but that traffic usually has layer-specific encryption as well (eg: TLS for banking). Doesn't that cover us? Am I missing something?

576 points by frandroid 12y ago

uptown 12y ago

Absolutely everything is compromised.

mpclark 12y ago
...and so deeply.
0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
That is just the opposite argument of saying that nothing is compromised. Neither are correct.

leesalminen 12y ago

Do they want me to be apathetic about the actions of our government? I'm getting close.

orbifold 12y ago
You should read "The Crisis of Democracy", in short yes, you are supposed to be apathetic, the people in power get uncomfortable quickly if you take an interest in what they do.

rsingel 12y ago

This is yet another good argument for TextSecure and RedPhone, which don't depend on the SIM card encryption. https://whispersystems.org/ https://whispersystems.org/

hannibalhorn 12y ago
While certainly a step in the right direction, the lack of an open baseband remains a huge problem, even with TextSecure. Any smartphone has a whole separate OS running, with access to the system bus and memory, that we generally have zero visibility into. There could be exploitable bugs, there could be actual backdoors, and we just have no idea. If you truly want to secure data, you need to use an airgapped system with hardware that is much more open.
- orbifold 12y ago
  That should be a solvable problem, aren't there tons of operating systems professors and electrical engineers around in Europe that could in principle develop an open baseband chip and operating system? Germany and France should have an interest that their communication can't be trivially backdoored by the NSA.
  - SXX 12y ago
    Main issue is there really no specifications available on many things. Also it's will be nearly impossible to pass certification so no real manufacturer would use it. If you want more details you may check OsmocomBB site and IRC. > Germany and France should have an interest that their communication can't be trivially backdoored by the NSA. Nobody saying that governments don't have trusted hardware with only their own backdoors. In almost every country manufacturer have to provide source code and specs in order to pass certification so gov does have everything needed. Though it's not help anybody else as it's will never be open.
- patcon 12y ago
  Manual baseband isolation via mobile hotspot and nexus 7, does the trick for now
  - tmzt 12y ago
    Until the AMSS in the hotspot is compromised and used to attack your Android device via wifi. This applies to mobile hotspots built around Qualcomm baseband/application processors, in other cases you would have to exploit the main CPU first.
    - scintill76 12y ago
      Well, at least that requires two exploits/backdoors, instead of one.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  Modern basebands are sandboxed, from what I understand. Partly because phones kept getting unlocked through exploiting baseband bugs and that messes with carrier subsidies.
chinathrow 12y ago
Yet they do depend on a good RNG, don't they? Is that a given on common smartphones these days?
- pixl97 12y ago
  I'm not sure about hardware RNG, but many if not most phones have sources of 'random' enviornmental data they can use to generate a random number such as cameras and phone movement. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/42428/is-generating-random-numbers-using-a-smartphone-camera-a-good-idea https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/42428/is-genera...
contingencies 12y ago
The problem with these sorts of on-phone-afterthoughts are that they are just lipstick on a pig. You are still being tracked (GSM, wifi) and vulnerable to local hacks. Due to the nature of the devices (millions of identical devices are produced for major models), their distribution patterns (model selection led by fashion and price point), their homogeneity (two dominant embedded OS platforms only), their complexity (leading to a very large potential attack surface), and their ubiquitousness (your phone number, IMEI, local physical cell, or email address is probably terribly easy to find) it would be extremely foolhardy to rely upon the security of a modern, commercially available handset.
Tepix 12y ago
It's unfortunate that the free Linphone for iOS crashes since the last update... it offers standard ZRTP calls for iOS.

xai3luGi 12y ago

At this point, we might as well just go back to landlines and fax machines.

saganus 12y ago
Aren't those even easier to wiretap? I believe (maybe I'm wrong here) that the word wiretap comes precisely because people could literally "tap" into the wire and listen everything. Or did I miss the sarcasm?
- khuey 12y ago
  The old technologies required more effort (somebody had to go physically tap the wire).
  - ars 12y ago
    You can't tap a cell phone call remotely either - you have to be pretty close to the cell phone. So it's not that different, a bit easier, yes. But you still have to physically go there.
    - mszyndel 12y ago
      So little you know... ;)
    - jdbernard 12y ago
      Not if you have access to the carrier's internal network...
      - ars 12y ago
        If you have access to the internal network you don't need SIM card keys which is the subject here.
  - saganus 12y ago
    When I re-read the parent's post I thought to myself "of course he is being sarcastic!" But then I saw your post and it made me think. And I believe you are onto something here. I mean, sure, probably tapping one phone is much easier physically, just connect the wires and you're done. However the point you bring is game-changer. In ye' olden days spooks were interested in certain persons only, but now it seems that we are all fair game, and so the "easy" way of wiretapping becomes incredibly hard when you want to spy on everyone. It's basically an scalability problem then. Never saw it that way.

deleted 12y ago

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dthal 12y ago

>>The document noted that many SIM card manufacturers transferred the encryption keys to wireless network providers “by email or FTP with simple encryption methods that can be broken … or occasionally with no encryption at all.” If that's true, then NSA/GCHQ aren't the only people who could have grabbed a big pile of keys.

nicolas314 12y ago
I can confirm this. In many cases these keys are exchanged over email with simple DES encryption and a key known to everybody in the business (pretty obvious key BTW). It really boils down to the security procedures in place between the SIM manufacturer and Mobile Network Operators.
- chinathrow 12y ago
  WTF. That is sloppyness on our sholders. And you knew about that? Did you report it up on your line of command?
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    There are three things that happen when you report negligence "up the line of command". 1. You get ignored. 2. Your boss (or coworkers) make you want to quit. 3. You get fired.
- jdbernard 12y ago
  I want to chime in to offer the counter. I used to work for Gemalto. I'm not exactly sure which keys you are talking about, but when I was there Gemalto's standard practice for the transfer of the keys mentioned in the article--individual SIM embedded keys--was to use AllynisConnect (which I only mention because it's easily found on Google) to facilitate the transfer of individual SIM keys to the customer. Obviously I'm not going to comment on the details of the cryptography involved, but it was much more considered than "simple encryption methods or no encryption at all." Notably this mechanism would not protect the keys against an attacker who was inside Gemalto's or the customer's secure network, as seems to be the case here. I'd be interested in knowing which keys specifically you are talking about.

deleted 12y ago

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infinity0 12y ago
There is no shock and surprise. Historically, not all communication has been compromised, because it takes physical effort and risk of detection to open every letter. Secure communication (in the sense of the contemporary normal means of communication) has not been a historically hard-to-get commodity.
anologwintermut 12y ago
The SIM card bit is actually I think a distraction. The real issue should be the means: the NSA/GCHQ intentionally targeted innocent/non government affiliated people's personal email and social networking. That's different than collecting everyone'ss data and claiming you never look at it unless someone does something to loose their innocence. Orwellian nightmare that that is and probably bullshit, revelations along those lines are not surprising. The systematic targeting of the personal lives of random employees (at least of non-governmental/ non defense industry ones), is new.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nzp 12y ago
  No, that's actually the bread and butter of intelligence work. At least it was in HUMINT, if not in SIGINT. You identify individual(s) with access to what you need and then work on/with them. This is not surprising or even controversial (mind you, I am not in any way in favour of such things, just playing the devil's advocate a bit) at all. Hard evidence of dragnet, massive, all encompassing surveillance really is the new revelation that has come out of Snowden leaks including this one. Targeting of individuals (especially if they're foreigners) was always going on.
jjoonathan 12y ago
You aren't surprised that our government is building a massive dragnet blackmail database. Good for you. You aren't alone and like the rest of us you didn't do anything useful with your prediction. What do you want, a gold sticker? Tell me again why I (or anyone else) should find the fact that you foresaw this outcome comforting -- or relevant at all. > Rooms can be bugged. Yeah but they need a warrant, it costs money to bug a room, and they can't decide to retroactively bug every room their target has ever been in. To make things concrete, do you really think none of these powers would have made a difference if they had had them back when they were trying to sink MLK's platform?

anologwintermut 12y ago

Personally, the biggest take away to this is the invasive targeting of completely innocent and ordinary people simply as a means to get access to things the NSA needed (sim Card keys). We have concrete evidence they nailed peoples personal email accounts and social networks merely as a means to an get crypto keys in mass. Sure, the potential mass surveillance is exceedingly problematic, but thats mainly problematic because of the potential for abuse. Abuse that we either assumed would happen or already had, but as far as I know there was little direct evidence of. The absolute lowest bar for surveillance seems to be that a government doesn't use it to intentionally target innocent people/ those not in the game (hell, lets lower it even further to be only people the government themselves believe are innocent).[0] That potentially allows dragnet collection of data if no one looks at it. It might allow hacking just a company's servers to get access to third party data. It probably allows you to spy on foreign heads of state (even if it's a boneheaded move). But it damn well doesn't allow you to go through the personal communications of people who you know have done nothing wrong and aren't even working for someone who has. [0] This is precisely the woefully low bar Obama has been espousing : “The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures,”

higherpurpose 12y ago
It's interesting because last I checked Obama/NSA were saying they don't collect content, only metadata (that harmless, harmless metadata [1]). If that's the case, why were they so interested in the SIM key?! [1] - http://justsecurity.org/10311/michael-hayden-kill-people-based-metadata/ http://justsecurity.org/10311/michael-hayden-kill-people-bas...
- maxerickson 12y ago
  The metadata qualifier is about U.S. domestic data gathering. There's no such limitation on their activities outside of the U.S. (Hence there is no reason to make an inference about what capabilities they would attempt to build out)

steffenfrost 12y ago

Isn't the NSA breaking US law by hacking into a commercial entity's network?

SoftwareMaven 12y ago
Which is probably why GCHQ was the one doing the actual hacking. NSA just got a share in the prize.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  That seems to be the real value in the Five Eyes network. Each member can undertake surveillance of the domestic communications of the other members, thus absolving the own-state surveillance apparatus from claims of domestic spying. But the poisoned fruit may be (and appears to be) freely shared.
  - a3n 12y ago
    If I receive and use/sell stolen property, I've broken the law even if I didn't steal it. I would think if anyone could work their way through the "standing" restrictions, it could be shown in court that the NSA violated the Constitution by receiving "stolen" surveillance data. The reason why we have the 4th Amendment is not because the act of spying is feared (as egregious as that is), it's because of what the government might do with the results. So receiving the data violates at least the spirit of the constitution, and I would think the letter also.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Maybe. Seems to me that there's a bit of an issue with the general operating mode of an intelligence agency. I've said in the past that I wasn't generally overly concerned with stories such as the NSA's reported monitoring of German chancellor Angela Merkel -- which later reports suggest might _not_ have happened -- apparently they're not even totally up on which close national ally heads-of-state they're spying on. But keeping tabs on other countries -- even friendly ones -- yeah, that's part of the basic remit. But an organize "we'll spy on yours if you spy on ours" arrangement, particularly with a "don't ask for it, we'll just give it to you" understanding. That's violating the intent of legal and constitutional protections every which way. At the same time, if a talent scout in North Whateveristan gets handed a sheaf of goatskins exfiltrated from the local TCP-over-parchment connectivity provider, the legality of that data's acquisition shouldn't be a hinderence. But if North Whateveristan happens to be a friend and we're concerned with that the goatskins reveal, then breaking that information to the government (or other friends in slow places) should be possible at some level. If there's a resolution by law in this, it's likely going to have to require explicit controls over how and when data of a given nation's nationals or residents is provided to that nation. And bars on mass transfers. Perhaps mandating them outside intelligence services through diplomatic channels? At least that'll give Wikileaks a sporting chance.

Spearchucker 12y ago

In 2007 I worked with Gemalto when they ported a Java/PKCS #11 Chip & PIN implementation to the .NET Micro Framework/CAPI for Microsoft, who were using it for challenge/response authN on a remote access project for the UK Ministry of Defence. There was a case study of the project on Microsoft.com, but it seems to no longer be there. Anyway, this sucks because the Gemalto guys I did this with were to this day among the best vendors I've ever worked with. Really awesome guys, smart, and incredibly willing to share what they knew and did. And it's somewhat ironic that Gemalto are trusted by the UK MoD for sourcing their smart card components in Europe. So much for keeping it local to avoid hacks.

digitalneal 12y ago

I think its safe to say NSA/GCHQ are not the only ones in the game who have hit this target.

rl3 12y ago
On that note, I wonder if their compromising of these systems affords the target any sort of immunization from attacks by other actors. It would make sense that NSA/GHCQ wouldn't want their foreign competitors to share in the prize, and it would also be congruent with their interests to not afford competing actors access to such a prize. Then again, this notion is likely far too romantic. The reality is probably closer to one where foreign actors have compromised everything just the same.
- Kalium 12y ago
  Sometimes denying data to others is as good as advertising that someone else got there first. So you might want to leave the treasure trove in place so that nobody else figures out you have it. Intelligence is wheels within wheels within wheels...
  - rl3 12y ago
    Good point. However, it might be possible to deny adversaries without alerting them to the fact that they were denied in the first place.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      Depends how advanced the adversary is. It also depends on if you want to deny them, because you might learn something by watching what they do. Or you might feed them false data and see what happens. Aren't mind games fun?
  - ericcumbee 12y ago
    and the inverse is that there can be good intel gleaned by watching who else is trying to get in.

higherpurpose 12y ago

This is exactly why Intel's upcoming SGX worries me greatly, too. NSA could get the "key" to all SGX machines and therefore to all applications using SGX to secure themselves properly (ironically enough) [1]. Intel really needs to figure out how to protect the SGX system against such a key robbery, and not by promising to only give access to a couple of employees in the whole company who know a very special hand-shake. Intel needs to modify the SGX system in such a way that you don't have to trust Intel (or anyone hacking Intel) to keep the key secure, even if that means the company not giving itself access to SGX at all (which includes not having the ability to update it). [1] - http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/09/23/thoughts-on-intels-upcoming-software.html http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/09/23/thoughts-on-intel...

kevin_b_er 12y ago
You mistake the point of SGX. The point of is a reincarnation of treacherous computing. Intel SGX requires remote attestation. This means that YOU, the owner of the device, is not trusted. To have 3rd party keys would mean they would have to trust you. With trust in you, how could it be marketed to the copyright owners? The answer is that it cannot. The point of Intel SGX is to deny ownership of the device to its owner. But yes, any situation like this where you cannot be trusted means a hacker can gain a higher level of trust than you if they break the security.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  SGX does not require remote attestation. Just like all prior TC platforms, it offers remote attestation but there is no requirement that it be used. By the way, very frequently the owner of a computer is not in fact trustworthy. Situations where that occurs crop up all the time in security engineering. For example a big use of TC is making Bitcoin wallets that are secure against malware. There are other uses too, like safe outsourcing of private data storage/computation to the cloud.
  - anonymousDan 12y ago
    Yup, cloud is a major motivation for SGX (see e.g. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14-paper-baumann.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi14/osdi14... for an example of how it might be put to use). I think it is good idea for making it more difficult for malicious insiders to mount an attack, but any claims of it protecting you from the NSA are laughable given Intel will probably hand over keys to them anyway.

bsder 12y ago

Personally, my biggest takeaway is that anything centralized is compromised, period. Any centralized system is such a juicy target that the NSA will compromise it. The only way to avoid dragnet issues is to decentralize and force the NSA to expend resources at the edges. This doesn't means that you can make an individual target secure. The NSA can always outspend you. But you can prevent the NSA from easily just vacuuming up everybody cheaply.

vmiroshnikov 12y ago
Yet you still have carefully to cloak yourself, otherwise you will bring more attention to yourself.
chinathrow 12y ago
Agreed. I still wait to learn that AWS is compromised on a huge scale too. No words yet - mark this post and let's see and wait.
- anonbanker 12y ago
  replying as breadcrumbs.

thorntonbf 12y ago

At some point, people have to begin to realize that this has progressed past "looking for terrorists." Statists are gonna state, I guess.

GabrielF00 12y ago
The article specifically cites the mobile phone networks of Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia as targets. One is a state sponsor of terrorism, the other three are places where the US is actively fighting terrorism.
- scintill76 12y ago
  You conveniently left out Iceland, from the very same sentence that is the source of what you listed. As far as I know, Iceland is innocent of terrorism accusations from the US. (OK, benefit of the doubt: maybe The Intercept added Iceland to the article later, or you genuinely didn't see it.) Anyway, you really think the "bad countries" you named from a 5-year-old document are an exhaustive list of what they've got today? You think the agencies won't scoop up any other countries' keys, including the United States', just in case their metadata graphs later suggest sleeper agents in "the good countries"? I'm too ticked to make a good argument about morality or lack thereof right now, so I'll just leave it here. They hacked and surveilled non-terrorists to get the keys, and got the keys of at least one "non-terrorist country" (Iceland), so no, I don't find your argument convincing, and I think the parent post's point stands.
  - GabrielF00 12y ago
    From the Intercept article its not clear why this type of data was collected from an Icelandic carrier. The linked graph appears to show 100 IMSI's from Iceland, as opposed to 100,000 from Somalia* and tens of thousands from Afghanistan. It's possible that the Iceland data was acquired incidentally because it happened to come from the same sources that were sending data on more interesting countries. It's possible that there's something of value to be learned in Iceland. I don't know. The Intercept gives us very little context as to the actual products that the intelligence agencies produce. [Edit: Page 11 of this document indicates that the acquisition of keys from Iceland and Tajikistan was unexpected and that those countries were not targeted: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/pcs-harvesting-scale/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/pcs-h...] I don't dispute the fact that the US government has intelligence-gathering priorities that don't involve terrorism. I would argue that at least one reason terrorism is discussed is that there are diplomatic consequences to saying one spies on foreign governments. I also agree with the more cynical view, that terrorism is cited as a rationale because terrorism is scary and something opposed by everyone the US is trying to convince. I believe very strongly that the world would be a lot safer if the US government knew certain things like the intentions of the Russian leadership and the capabilities of the Russian armed forces. Or the state of the Iranian nuclear program and that country's negotiating position. Or what exactly is happening on the ground in the midst of all the chaos in Libya or Syria or Yemen. The answers to these questions will determine the fate of entire regions of the world. *A subsequent document puts a later figure for Somalia at 300,000.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Sadly this would be an excellent application for the CFAA except that they agencies involved are immune from its prosecution.

a3n 12y ago
Maybe so, but ... > Additionally, the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companies’ core networks, giving it access to “sales staff machines for customer information ... So these corporations had customers' personal data stolen. I believe they're obligated to inform those customers, and possibly other obligations. (No direct knowledge, just spouting off what I've read during the Target and Home Depot breaches.)

sehugg 12y ago

Ironically Gemalto also tracks statistics on data breaches -- guess they ought to update their numbers? http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/21603/gemalto-releases-findings-of-2014-breach-level/ http://www.cso.com.au/mediareleases/21603/gemalto-releases-f...

lawnchair_larry 12y ago

"TOP-SECRET GCHQ documents reveal that the intelligence agencies accessed the email and Facebook accounts of engineers and other employees of major telecom corporations and SIM card manufacturers in an effort to secretly obtain information that could give them access to millions of encryption keys. They did this by utilizing the NSA’s X-KEYSCORE program, which allowed them access to private emails hosted by the SIM card and mobile companies’ servers, as well as those of major tech corporations, including Yahoo and Google." First, it came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a terrorist. Then, it came for the muslims, and I did not speak out, because I was not a muslim. Then, it came for the Dutch, Belgian, and German engineers, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Dutch, Belgian, or German engineer. If you're an engineer, developer, sales staff, or pretty much anything else, and you work at a company that has something worth stealing, you should think about how this ends. If they don't come for you first, your personal life is now completely fair game for nation state attackers. They will stop at nothing, they have limitless budgets, they will attack your private life, they will reflash the firmware in components of your personal devices, and they will stalk you. Even when you did nothing wrong, even when your employer did nothing wrong, even when your social graph is in no way linked to anyone who ever did anything wrong.

alfiedotwtf 12y ago
This should be the top comment.
CamperBob2 12y ago
Just as important, if you're an engineer, developer, or mathematician who works for the NSA or a similar agency, you need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself if this is really what you wanted to do when you grew up.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  What, work with some of the smartest people on the planet with a near-infinite budget solving the biggest big data problems out there whilst defending your country from turrists? Sign me up!

knodi123 12y ago

How is snowden still producing high-level stuff like this? Did he really steal info on that many headline-worthy stories all in one go, or does he have fresh sources? Sometimes this feels like another instance of what I call the "weird al phenomenon", where any person who hears a silly parody of a pop song attributes it to weird al, because "wait, you're telling me there are other song parody writers?"

rys 12y ago
It's safe to assume that the vast quantities of documentation he liberated have enough newsworthy material in them to last those with access a very very long time.
- zecho 12y ago
  Greenwald and Poitras have said this publicly many times. They have years worth of material to report from the cache of files.
- mirimir 12y ago
  Perhaps more charitably, it will take them a very long time to parse it. It's too bad that they can't responsibly crowdsource the work.
hurin 12y ago
It's also likely or possible that other disclosures are labeled under Snowden in order not to compromise or reveal the existence of a new source.
- fysac 12y ago
  In fact, Bruce Schneier believes there's another, unknown NSA leaker besides Snowden: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/the_us_intellig.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/08/the_us_intell...
  - Tepix 12y ago

droopybuns 12y ago

How many silicon valley patriots would support this outrageous attack? It was one week ago that Obama was arguing that this kind of activity is necessary. http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/stanford-obama-tim-cook-privacy-security http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/stanford-obama-ti... This is not a republican/democrat problem. This is an institutional problem. We need comprehensive reform of both parties and it should be followed by a purging of the existing federal machine.

anonbanker 12y ago
the call to revolution falls upon the deaf ears of the well-fed in the silicon valley, my friend.

bcl 12y ago

Gemalto doesn't just make sim cards. They also make OTP tokens - http://www.gemalto.com/readers/tokens http://www.gemalto.com/readers/tokens

chinathrow 12y ago
And HSMs since their merger with SafeNet.

pests 12y ago

One notable line: "GCHQ operatives identified key individuals and their positions within Gemalto and then dug into their emails. In one instance, GCHQ zeroed in on a Gemalto employee in Thailand who they observed sending PGP-encrypted files, noting that if GCHQ wanted to expand its Gemalto operations, “he would certainly be a good place to start.”"

merrua 12y ago
Does that suggest they have an exploit in PGP?

CyberDildonics 12y ago

And yet for some reason the idea that data should be separately encrypted at every protocol layer is something people fight.

Iv 12y ago

At this point, if you are surprised by this, you should not be working in the security field.

malandrew 12y ago

I'm wondering if this also involves stealing keys that secures the Gemalto AWS mult-factor auth devices.

gcb0 12y ago

the first line from the one-page-PDF source for the article is: "Billing servers to suppress SMS billing" were the GCHQ risking bankrupting the government because of abusive SMS billing from the telcos? [1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/cne-access-core-mobile-networks-2/ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2015/02/19/cne-a...

b6 12y ago

I donate to the EFF whenever possible. What else can I do to fight these bastards? I think the NSA is a threat to humanity and I feel helpless.

SXX 12y ago

Nothing new. At this point nobody should consider any closed source encryption like something even nearly trustworthy.

jdbernard 12y ago
That has very little to do with this particular attack. The NSA did not attack the proprietary code, which uses standard, open, and publicly-known and documented cryptographic operations, by the way. They compromised the key custodians. While I agree in principle about open source, using purely open-source software would not have provided any defence here.
- SXX 12y ago
  > While I agree in principle about open source, using purely open-source software would not have provided any defence here. In open source software / hardware there wouldn't be "master key" that can't be changed and that have to be used by telecom's. Yeah of course no doubt NSA may penetrate in network of every of them, but it's would be a lot more costly.
  - mike_hearn 12y ago
    No, really, this isn't about open source stuff. Any architecture that requires pre-shared symmetric keys is going to have this problem. The fix is architectural, not open sourcing stuff. From what I understand LTE is significantly better.

junto 12y ago

Since the US and British governments operate on the premise of invading the privacy of all citizens without warrant in order to prevent a handful of bad apples, should other countries consider a temporary blanket ban on all US citizens from visiting to their countries in order to make a point? I know that only 4% of US citizens have passports, and most countries rely on US trade, but still it would certainly send a message? Simplistic I know but somehow we need to voice our dissatisfaction with the way things are headed. Foreign citizens can't change US policy, only US citizens can vote out their corrupted system. The privacy of non-US citizens is considered as fair game. We have no comeback presently.

dTal 12y ago
>I know that only 4% of US citizens have passports You're off by an order of magnitude. It's actually about 38% [0]. Bear in mind Americans even need a passport to travel to Canada or Mexico now. I also do not think that preventing Americans from travelling abroad will improve their global perspective. [0] http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/statistics.html http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/passports/...

steeve 12y ago

Remember when hacking Sony was an act of war?

_pmf_ 12y ago

I've always regarded encryption that is not end-to-end as a gimmick.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cm2187 12y ago

It doesn't justify the NSA/GCHQ's actions but the fact these keys could be stolen like that mostly means mobile communications were never really secure in the first place. I am every day more appalled by the scale of the data breaches we learn about every week.

gerty 12y ago

French press is trying to connect Gemalto and NSA. Common denominator is Alex Mandl. He's currently Executive Chairman of Gemalto. Previously, he was in Board of Directors of In-Q-Tel which is a CIA company.

motters 12y ago

Surely this has got to be illegal. When will the lawsuits commence?

TruthWillFree 12y ago

What is problematic here is that the legitimacy of almost all information exchanged in a digital form has been lost almost entirely. How much longer must we presume ignorance in what is really happening? How much longer will the innocent be bullied through technological and psychological means to promote the interests of the current national security apparatus with interests entirely different than the rest of America/World? What happened to Aaron Swartz is only a taste of what is happening to the rest of us who believe these types of activities are unethical and a violation of constitutional law. Do we honestly believe that this isn't being used for insider trading, to capture sensitive medical information, and steal other trade secrets that should be protected by law? Wake up America. We need to stand up against this digital tyranny.

chinathrow 12y ago

I always wondered if HSMs are at risk to be compromised at the core (read: the manufacturer) such as those frome SafeNet (in use e.g. with Box.com on their enterprise external HSM plan). And guess what, Gemalto merged with SafeNet the other day. http://www.safenet-inc.com/SafeNet-Gemalto-Merger/ http://www.safenet-inc.com/SafeNet-Gemalto-Merger/ Everything is compromised. Everything! References: https://www.box.com/blog/breaking-the-last-barrier-to-cloud-adoption-with-box-enterprise-key-management/ https://www.box.com/blog/breaking-the-last-barrier-to-cloud-... http://www.safenet-inc.com/data-encryption/hardware-security-modules-hsms/ http://www.safenet-inc.com/data-encryption/hardware-security...

Tharkun 12y ago

So, should I get a new SIM?

chinathrow 12y ago
You might start with asking your mobile operator how they react to this compromise.

Lanzaa 12y ago

One key thing that stood out to me was this: > [GCHQ operatives] noted that the use of PGP could mean the contents were potentially valuable. This good reminder that encrypting everything is important for security. Only encrypting valuable or sensitive information provides information to an attacker on where they should focus their efforts.

bigbugbag 12y ago

Interestingly this is about Gemalto, a company with a remarkable history. Remember times when the USofA wasn't adopting the smart card technology ? Well it had something to do with this chip technology (crypto) being a foreign technology which coincidently was the propriety of the French company Gemplus. At the turn of the millenium an US investment funds (Texas Pacific Group) managed to find its way in Gemplus capital after a couple denials, which is the start what is known in France as l'affaire Gemplus. To summarize instead of helping to conquer the US market, TPG used its power to change the board of director (and choose Alex Mandl as the head), initiated rounds of layoff and moved the R&D to the US to take control of the sought after technology. The whole thing is shown to be an operation of the C.I.A. through In-Q-Tel to take control of the chip card technology and possibly insert backdoors before exporting. Slow to react, it takes several years for the french government to create its own version of In-Q-Tel called "Fonds Stratégique d'Investissement" and try to reclaim Gemplus, now Gemalto, by becoming the majority stakeholder with 8% of shares in 2009, a move that happens too late and TPG having gotten what they wanted sells its share a year later.

summerdown2 12y ago

I think one of the big issues here is that for an intelligence agency, good defensive security is essentially silent. There's not a lot of money or political capital in "nothing broke today." On the other hand, good offensive capabilities, even if kept secret externally, are loud and flashy within the organisation, and come with lots of political capital beyond it. Because of this asymmetry, I think it's almost impossible for an intelligence organisation to stop its "defense" mission being swallowed by the "attack" one. And so we all end up less free and less safe. I do sometimes wonder what the world would be like if the NSA took it as its mission to secure the internet and chain of encryption, rather than constantly breaking it. If, for example, they used their resources to seek out vulnerabilities and exploits and fix them. Maybe such a world is impossible. But I do think there's a valid space for a national cyber defense organisation that runs counter to this trend, that acts to shore up the infrastructure rather than constantly subverting it.

hobarrera 12y ago

Shouldn't TLS/GPG/OTR/etc have our backs on this anyway (at least on the data-side of it)? I mean, they can now intercept and read any mobile data traffic, but that traffic usually has layer-specific encryption as well (eg: TLS for banking). Doesn't that cover us? Am I missing something?