Interesting hacker conference talk about the NSA

[mr_a500]

Everybody knows the NSA is spying, but here are some fascinating details:

[mintberryminuscrunch]

http://ftp.ccc.de/congress/2013/mp4/30c ... 264-hq.mp4
Link to the mp4
Or goto youtube.com/html5 if you don't allow flash

[trax]

Jacob Appelbaum is a pretty interesting guy, I was at all his talks.

[mr_a500]

I thought more people would be freaked out about this. Perhaps I should have said "Shocking" instead of "Interesting". It certainly is shocking - especially near the end of the video.

[mintberryminuscrunch]

.. Still processing the information..

[7bit]

What does the video say?


I can only watch videos, but can't hear them ...

[mr_a500]

What does the video say?


I can only watch videos, but can't hear them ...

You couldn't tell from the slides?

You can read about some of it here:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 41006.html

(Now you'll probably tell me that you can look at websites, but you can't read. )

[mintberryminuscrunch]

What does the video say?


I can only watch videos, but can't hear them ...

Use a player that can handle two audio streams

[7bit]

Or maybe I should use a computer that has got some speakers attached.


From the video I can see that they* still spy around like they did 20 or 40 or 60 years ago. Let me know if something really significant happend.

*) USA and USSR

[Findecanor]

I find it worrisome that they have no qualms about infecting innocent people's computers, phones and routers. They even infect intermediary computers to be able to use their Wifi to jump to networks not connected to the Internet.
The exploits seem to be pretty advanced - AFAIK some of the vulnerabilities mentioned in the talk (rewriting BIOS and firmware) were discovered by independent white hats only quite recently.
No group of hobbyist hackers has even near the amount of resources in terms of hardware and manpower that NSA does. NSA guys must be laughing their asses off when they hear Anonymous say that they "are Legion".

The talk also raised the question: how much is the US computer industry in on it? NSA claims to be able to remotely control any Apple iOS device, using it for instance to listen to you while it is "off".
It was not mentioned in the talk, but I get reminded of the "Connected Standby" feature that Microsoft has been pushing in the past few years, and of the X-box One drawing quite a lot of power and having a camera and microphone enabled running in "standby" mode.

[7bit]

My ThinkPad does not have a camera, if it had, I would have taped it.

I always closed the camera of the INDY workstations I worked at.

Somehow, I always expected that cosed source hardware is a big security hole, so nothing really new to me. The question is how to wake up our European politicans?

Angela Merkel is from East Germany, so she got used to be listend to all the time. In the East block, they listened and recorded every phone call, opened letters etc. Result: She thinks it is normal, no reason to kick the Americans into their ass.

[bhtooefr]

Honestly, if we Americans are gonna be treated like this level of crap, can we at least get Soviet levels of societal stability?

[mr_a500]

I also saw an annoying video today where the former head of the CIA and NSA is asked about privacy protections for non-US citizens outside of the US and he arrogantly said "I have no idea what that means, all right? The fourth amendment of our constitution is not an international treaty."

So basically, the American government feel they have the right to openly invade the privacy of every non-American person on the planet, because they're not covered by the American constitution which (theoretically) prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. (not that they don't illegally invade the privacy of Americans too, even though they're supposed to be covered by the 4th amendment)

Shouldn't that work both ways then?? If I have no privacy rights because I'm not an American, wouldn't that mean that as a Canadian I have the right to invade the privacy of Americans because they're not covered by the Canadian Charter of Rights?


Edit: Oh shit. Now the NSA has my comment on their servers. I'll have to watch out for 3 am SWAT raids on my house now. If I disappear, you know what happened.

[7bit]

I recommend you to capture an airplaine and direct it to Cuba, where you will be save from the Americans ...

[mintberryminuscrunch]

Guantanamo?

[Findecanor]

Guantanamo is a city in Cuba, yes. It is near the Guantanamo Bay. USA has its "Guantanamo Bay" base at both sides of the mouth of the bay, and also occupying half of the water.

[IvanIvanovich]

If you have been paying any attention at all, most of this is old news. I have been aware of most of these things as concepts of things that were in all probability being done for at least a decade. It is nice that much more of these things have been brought into the attention of average people as even mainstream news has covered some of it in a superficial way thanks to people that have come forward and made a lot of noise like Mark Klein and Edward Snowden. Though still too many people seem to have the attitude that it's ok and they are not effected by it since they have 'nothing to hide'. They don't seem to realize that their apathy about it is taken as consent. What happens if they suddenly shift those 'anti-terrorism' programs that you didn't mind to start rounding up people for other reasons like you openly disagreed with some political policy on your facebook... and that you do not enough debt/random superficial excuse.
One of the worst parts of it though is the collusion of technology companies with this. Even for those of us that want to take steps against it and try to make it less easy for these agencies are going to have a bad time when we can't even trust the hardware we are using. How can I be sure the firmware in my hardware is safe, even if I can check the software? What can be done if you only have one ISP choice and they won't allow a non ISP supplied (NSA approved) modem?
Maybe people will stop wondering why I refuse to have a cellphone, webcam/mic on my PC and won't take part in social media so I can divulge every detail of my life for the perusal of the NSA.
I think it's all rather sad and terrible that it has been allowed to get to where we are with many agencies clearly operating without check or any boundaries. I am not deluded to believe any of it would have stop put to it no matter how much it comes into negative attention, but at least more people will start to see behind the facade of 'freedom' in America and see the ugly face of the surveillance/police state it truly is. That America is becoming not that much better than some of the repressive regimes they like to call out during political posturing. That in some ways America is worse than them since don't even have the integrity to be open about the ways they are oppressing own citizens and disregard the laws that are supposed to protect us from tyrants when it's inconvenient for them.

[mr_a500]

If you have been paying any attention at all, most of this is old news.

The spying is old news. The actual technical details are the new news - and the fact that they can do things that nobody thought possible is what's shocking.

[IvanIvanovich]

I used to go on a lot of tech/'hacker' sites because I was quite interested in some topics for a time and many of those programs have been named, detailed and discussed quite awhile ago. Also it was amazing what you could find published on the internet on some government sites that probably weren't intended to be have if you looked. Certainly, some of these things had only been suspected and not confirmable until recently that is true.

Sometimes, I just wish all the cool people that had a clue would all just come together and colonize the moon or something.