NSA has direct access to tech giants' systems for user data, secret files reveal

Why NSA spied on inexplicably unencrypted Windows crash reports.

-- Tom

 

A few more notes on NSA random number generators.

-- Tom

 

The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple's iPhone.

-- Tom

 

Apple Denies Working with NSA on iPhone Backdoor

 

U.S. to China: We Hacked Your Internet Gear We Told You Not to Hack.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/nsa-cisco-huawei-china/

 

What You Need to Know about the Third-Party Doctrine.

-- Tom

 

Wow, just WOW !

 

Clone my old friend

Now how long ago was we talking about hardware bugs? and everybody said we were fear mongerers? Was hard to do because of all the different manufactures? had to be a dedicated direct attack? bla bla bla/
Oh and before that we were installing fear over ROOTKITS which were not suppose to work on WIndows 7 at all ? LOL
Is Johanna R working for these guys now? Havent heard from her in ages. just kidding.

YA remember back in the early 80 when Norton had a BIOS scan as part of its AV? And you could set a jumper to not allow any flashing of BIOS. And when you wanted to flash it you had to physicaly move the jumper? WHy was that feature removed again?

What can we fear mongerer next? Reading our thoughts remotley? or maybe even programming our thoughts? What ever happened to wearing that special tin foil hat?

 

2 newspapers call for clemency for Edward Snowden.

-- Tom

 

They can call for it as much as they want, but the U.S won't be letting this one go. He didn't just toss a pie in their face, he threw the bakery at them.

 

Thought Programming has been going on for decades. Most Americans are heavily thought programmed. Universal Thought Programming Tool == TV.

 

It seems that many of the U.S. giant tech companies are tied to this. We probably have Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. although they all apparently deny involvement. I wonder if there has been a study to see if there is a correlation between allegedly involved companies and how easily they get away from U.S. gov't prosecution for such things as illegal trade practices. I realize that from time to time these companies will be hit with some fine that looks big to us but is actually very little compared to the money they probably made from the illegal activity or from the companies' overall net worth. It would be interesting to see how these allegedly involved companies get treated by federal prosecutors compared to companies not involved.

 

In my opinion the US government consists of corporate representatives whose purpose is to secure their own prosperity regardless of any consequences to the rest of the US population or that of the world. I believe they all knew what was going on and were in agreement with it and probably most are complicit in it to some extent.

 

The government is little more than a puppet and the enforcement arm for the corporate giants, all of which are controlled by a select few. Computing, news media, internet, etc are but one small segment of what they control. Food, healthcare, energy, the chemical industry, the banking and monetary systems, etc are all complicit. This forum limits discussion to the internet and computing aspects of it, but make no mistake. They're all one and the same. Resisting or fighting against one portion of this, communication and information security for instance, while ignoring or downplaying the rest is a good way to guarantee the fight will fail.

 

RL

and I thinksmart phones are evil too.

NP are you refering to the build a burger group?

 

NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption.

If and when NSA cracks quantum computing - no one will know about it for at least 25 years! They already Own the Internet, except everyone is p***d at them. Trust will be a long time in getting repaired for them. The question will be in how to create a level playing field if they and only they get quantum computing first and keep it from the rest of us.

-- Tom

 

Absolutely correct.
Lets call it hellevision shall we. Anton LaVey ( the founder and High Priest of the First Church of Satan, in San Francisco. ) called it the #1 conditioning tool for the satanist agenda. Im loathe to agree with any satanist much less the chief, but in this case I agree.

Noone, ... I agree. Regarding bold italics...OK time and time and time again, I see this issue come up. Everybody, ask yourself....are solutions to problems achieved by going for the spider or the going for the web? (no pun intended) Why discuss security, and not discuss who it is who we need to be secure from? Its like trying to fight with your arms pinned behind your back. That said, regarding the part Ive only bolded - I think we're past the point of no return. Theres an agenda, and that is a totalitarian NWO. It WILL happen, it's not a case of if but when.

Not funny but LOL, you won't need to worry about infighting about political factions... very soon there'll only be one.

Sound too far fetched? Naysayers, hope you remember this post.

 

Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston (2011) The Network of Global Corporate Control. PLOS ONE 2011 6(10) <http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025995> with Appendix S1.

 

And this is why withholding money from these corporations works better than threatening local politicians and making "petitions". Money talks, everything else walks. NSA compliance can be shut down if all customers, and just the privacy-concerned ones, would threaten the Googles and Microsofts of the world to take their business and cash elsewhere. It isn't likely to happen, because for all the media the NSA situation is getting it has been said a few times that the public is mostly shrugging. Again we end up with convenience being a deciding factor in something important. That's just how people tend to be.

 

@ controler

Fear mongerering/Paranoid/Tin hat/Sky falling, etc etc ! Yeah we've had plenty of that over the years

Actually i wish we had been wrong, but it's even worse than we might have even evisaged way back then

It's a good thing that we, along with other members, saw the light & started locking down our comps/browsers etc as much as we could, & as soon as we did

Amazingly some of the older Apps i continue to use are able to hold their own even today, along with some newer ones too noone_particular is still on 98SE, which i used for years & liked. He's a good example of it being able to be safe & secure in the 21st century, with 20th century tech The only reason i moved to XP was due to needing to install non security software that wouldn't run on 98SE

Anyway, the cat is TRULY out of the bag BIG Time now, & won't be going away

 

I would expect the American public to just shrug. I dont think many of them understand their own society never mind question it. But I think worldwide we will see linux taking a larger share of the OS market and other open source software take a larger share of the apps market.

 

That's a term I'm not familiar with. I was referring to the individuals and groups that control entire industries, not just individual companies, eg Rockefeller controlling the majority of petroleum companies, Monsanto controlling most of the worlds seed supply, the giant banks that many mistake for government agencies (Federal Reserve), etc. It's not hard to pick out which individuals, groups, and corporations are running the show. Look for the ones who are the sole beneficiaries of fairly recent laws. Look for government agencies whose sole purpose is to protect those companies/interests. These agencies pretend to regulate them. In reality, they're little more than rubber stamps whose primary purpose is to make competition impossible. You'll find these controlling things that are necessities for life while being staffed by the companies they claim to control. Example: FDA. Few things are more necessary than food and medicine.

Easier said than done in most cases. With a growing number of things, it's becoming impossible. With things like operating systems, we have a few options. For the hardware they run on and the components used by that hardware, we have almost no options. Unless we use ancient hardware, which ones are free of NSA influence and backdoors? Who sells a DSL modem that doesn't have undocumented open ports?

When we move beyond computing and communications, our ability to "vote with our wallet" gets even more limited. Except for farmers markets, try to get food that isn't packaged in petroleum products. Try to get meat that hasn't been pumped with growth hormones or antibiotics. Supplies of these are very limited and expensive. Under the guise of reform, we now have to pay premiums to insurance companies for health care. Payments mandated by governments are taxes, no matter what they call it. When have we ever had to pay taxes to private industry?

Regarding the internet, computers, operating systems, network devices, etc:
It's safe to say that we don't realize the half of it. The list of what's been compromised, exploited, and spied on far exceeds anything that the most "paranoid" among us could have thought of. The leaked documents reveal that the NSA has most everything compromised multiple times from all directions. With computing, they've compromised the current operating systems, the hardware, and the internet itself. I would be completely shocked if they haven't compromised linux via similar methods. We've seen examples of servers for companies and corporations having been compromised for long periods of time without being discovered. Looking at what they've done with Microsofts and Googles infrastructure without their knowing, how can one believe that they haven't done the same with linux repositories? When they target allies, how can one believe that they haven't targeted potential opposition? I completely expect that they've targeted and compromised repositories and update servers for the purpose of pushing out malware or system killing "updates" should the "need" arise. Another version of the internet kill switch.

I'm finding it hard to see 21st century technology as more secure, not just in regards to computing, internet, communications, etc, but with most everything. Individual components of newer devices and systems might be more secure than their 20th century counterparts, but there's so much more to attack. How many ways can a keyless entry be attacked when compared to a physical keyed lock? Wired communication equipment vs wireless? Remotely controlled devices or appliances in our homes or vehicles? Most everything modern can be attacked remotely. IMO, 21st century technology is designed to be remotely exploitable and/or vulnerable to disruption with much of it spying on you or recording your activities. Security is measured or quantified against specific threats, eg browsers against web exploits, operating systems against rootkits, etc. IMO, we're looking at the wrong threats.

 

I have a question for internet security experts, we know there are 65535 tcp/ip ports. As a C programmer I know the max value of an unsigned 16 bit integer is also 65535 so I assume as the tcp/ip protocol was designed when we used 16 bit processors that was the reason for the total number of ports. How do we know that is really still the total number of available ports ?

 

On an Open Source operating system, one could inspect the source code. On Windows, I'm not sure one can be 100% certain.

 

Snowden's revelations have shown that limiting the discussion is no longer an option: 21st century concepts and technology cannot be captured in 20st century language. It's up to us to develop new ways to describe what is happening and discuss current issues without getting stuck in political idiom or obsolete patterns.