Backdoors in various OS's ?

Not sure if it's actually what it's "purported" to be ? Just posting it in case, & for your info etc !

 

My 2c: if the NSA has a backdoor in the Linux kernel, it isn't going to be somewhere obvious like SELinux.

 

The NSA could invest in backdooring the kernel... or they could just invest in finding exploits. Finding exploits is very likely *much* cheaper, and more reliable. The other advantage to that is that, by finding those exploits, they can patch them on their own systems while maintaining them as a weapon.

It's a much more cost effective method. I'm quite sure the NSA (and other agencies) have many many vulnerabilities with exploit code ready to fire off for the majority of the popular projects.

I'm also goin gto ignore the 90% of that article that's nonsensical.

 

@Hungry Man

Is it plausible that there's a "revolving door" between NSA and private exploit providers, malware authors, etc?

 

Sure, but there's no real need for it. I don't know any hackers/ exploit developers on the black market who work for them, or at least they don't *knowingly* work for them, so if they do they're pretending to be other people.

The way I see it, the NSA has no reason to go to black market. It's more expensive to buy on there - people on there sell a single exploit for half of what one researchers paycheck is.

It's much more cost effective to just hire a single researcher full time to find multiple exploits for a fraction of the cost.

 

Thanks.

I vaguely remember reading that freelancers -- including a supposedly well-known botnet expert -- contributed to Stuxnet. But maybe it was a joke that I didn't get

 

The NSA does hire hackers on occasion so it could be that one of the people on Stuxnet used to be black market.

 

What I read was that they were still black market

The talk was something like "OMG he worked for US government, so can we still trust him?". It was probably just a joke, all in good fun, etc.

 

A broken watch is right twice a day ..
I think that's a lot more than can be said about Alex Jones
and his right-wing gold-standard peddling infowars-empire .
They cry wolf so often it's getting lame !

Besides, I'm not sure the author even knows what 'access control' is :

Clearly, it is a NWO-lizzard-people conspiracy, designed to take away your god-given guns !

 

hi
I remember similar speculations about the famous Open SSL vulnerability in Debian https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/kroll/software-transparency-debian-openssl-bug/

And in the same way from USA to China http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Linux-as-Trojan-Horse-Forced-Adoption-of-Red-Flag-Linux

If we can not misestimate the power of NSA, it is not serious to believe in their ubiquity abilities...when an article about NSA rootkit on our toasters or Nespresso machines (as it might be a reality on connected tv http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/black-hat-smart-tvs-are-perfect-target-spying-you ) ?
NSA does not mean No Surveillance Area...

The race to the secure OS is a reality since years for many major countries like Russia, China or India, as most aware governement wanted to limit the impact of US based softwares.
Of course an open souce OS developper can be corrupted by a malletta of dollars or a trio of bimbos...but i really doubt of this suicidal game...

rgds

 

bohhaaaaa you 98% of you laugh

back in the 80"s and yes i have posted this here before, the us sent a bunch a printer-fax machines to russia with a spy chip built in.

russia sent a beautiful 3D wooden picture to the white house. as part of the pic was a hole the size a snuff can with plastic over it. ruskies aimed a freq at the hole and was able to pick up what was being said in the room

oh a step further they sent some nice curtains with built in transmitting qualities. another non electronic idea.