Why the Latest NSA Leak Is the Scariest of All

[Guest]

How the spy agency infected every corner of the Internet.

Why the Latest NSA Leak Is the Scariest of All : Read more

 

[Benthon]

Holy crap....

 

[koga73]

Not surprising... I'm sure they have found flaws in cryptographic algorithms such as PGP and AES. Besides that since they watch ALL traffic they are able to see the key exchange for protocols such as SSL and TLS. Once they have the key the traffic is easily decrypted. Finally for anything else encrypted where a company maintains cryptographic keys (such as in a db) the secret surveillance court orders the company to hand over the keys and issues a gag order. It's completely fucking crazy.

We need new open source encryption standards and more secure internet protocols that change rapidly.

 

[derekullo]

Don't be Evil

 

[kinggraves]

If you thought you could send critical information across several computers for decades and no one was ever going to peek at it you're too naive to live. The very reason this country's constitution is built the way it is is because the founding fathers knew better than to trust the government. What do you do about it? If you're that concerned about security you need to never touch a public network, period. Every security measure can be counteracted with the proper approach. This is the compromise of life, security comes at the cost of convenience. The more locks you have on your front door, the more locks you have to unlock every time you leave. Most people take a minimum amount of security to deter all but the most determined criminals. The safest measure is to not do anything that would make that attention on your computer an issue. Still, I am by no means excusing the government far overstepping their bounds. Thankfully for their sakes the American populace is already too sedated and stupified to realize they should be shocked and outraged about this gross invasion of their privacy and rights.

 

[bmwman91]

If having our wise, omnipresent government know everything that you do stresses you out, pop some Prozac. Brave New World meets 1984, baby!

 

[amdfreak]

Power to Assange, Snowden and Manning who are the real heroes. All those hypocrite whores in the NSA, White House, ... should be in jail instead.

Actually this is a great opportunity for other non US companies to offer services/products which would not allow any espionage. E.g. : http/www.nofbiciansa.com

 

[g-thor]

The article states that the spy agencies "broke into the computer servers of uncooperative companies to steal information ..."

If your work was that important, why didn't you go through the proper channels? Why not do it legally, do it right? Too slow for you? Too bad, but that's part of what our style of government is about.

Expediency is not an excuse for the government to get away with something that would land an ordinary citizen in jail.

 

[Jeff Krogue]

"Why buy American when cheaper Chinese products are no less secure?"

Ah, I don't have a whole lot of trust in China either. It would be nice if Germany would step up and start providing the same type software and services that are now mainly US based.

 

[COLGeek]

Sounds more like a sci-fi movie plot than reality.

Regardless, does it come as any great surprise that the ability to decrypt any commercially available encryption protocol exists? Any thing that you can put together via an algorithm (math) can be taken apart with the same.

This should come as no great eureka moment to any informed user.

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

The road to serfdom and 1984 are both excellent books to read. This surprises me, but yet it doesn't. It really just makes me sad. On a positive note, time to move to africa and live like an aborigine! But Im too white for that, hmmmmm back to the drawing board....

 

[Honis]

Suddenly, open source everything doesn't seem so crazy...

 

[skuds]

The problem is that if NSA & GCHQ have the keys to all internet traffic it wont belong before the bad boys get them, then we will big problems.

 

[happyballz]

NSA - the root of evil everywhere; I am ashamed that my tax dollar keep going to these constitution-burning and freedom/privacy-killing imbeciles.

 

[alidan]

@Jeff Krogue

its not about trust, you know all american hardware and software is compromised, you know all chinese hardware and software is compromised, so what is the difference between the two? cost, and why use higher cost if its equally compromised.

 

[FloKid]

Blame it on the terrorists, NSA is your fwaaaaand!!!

 

[milktea]

> kinggraves "If you're that concerned about security you need to never touch a public network, period."

I think is just as naive to think it's secure to stay away from public network.
You're only as secure as how much you know your foe.

 

[rawoysters]

The article states that the spy agencies "broke into the computer servers of uncooperative companies to steal information ..."

If your work was that important, why didn't you go through the proper channels? Why not do it legally, do it right? Too slow for you? Too bad, but that's part of what our style of government is about.

Because they were "uncooperative" doesn't mean they were doing anything illegal as you state. Perhaps their privacy was as important to them as it is most people. And how were these improper channels?

 

[rawoysters]

The article states that the spy agencies "broke into the computer servers of uncooperative companies to steal information ..."

"If your work was that important, why didn't you go through the proper channels? Why not do it legally, do it right? Too slow for you? Too bad, but that's part of what our style of government is about."

Because they were "uncooperative" doesn't mean they were doing anything illegal as you state. Perhaps their privacy was as important to them as it is most people. And how were these improper channels?

 

[merikafyeah]

There are brilliant mathematicians and algorithmically-minded people all over the world. If full AES-128/192/256 could be feasibly cracked, we'd know about it.

Building backdoors into a system isn't the same as cracking the underlying encryption of said system. It's like purposefully making the hinges weak so you can attack that instead of the door itself.