nsa

Telecoms, data center infrastructure infiltrated, Bloomberg stories say, mystery deepens despite denials

13 October 2018 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Taken at face value, a pair of articles on Bloomberg by Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley details how Chinese government intelligence agencies snuck tiny chips into computer servers used by Amazon and Apple, and by at least one major U.S. telecoms company. The devices – as small as the tip of a pencil – could be used to listen to communications going in and out, or to dive deeper into those systems.

If true, Bloomberg’s reporting means that the Chinese government, and possibly other intelligence agencies and criminal groups, have a backdoor that leads deep into U.S.… More

NSA shares blame with criminals for massive ransomware attack

14 May 2017 by Steve Blum
, , , ,

Cybercriminals successfully penetrated more than 200,000 computer systems in 150 countries in a continuing attack that began late last week. The initial assault was unwittingly blocked by a security blogger who triggered an off switch while trying to figure out what was going on. But that didn’t help systems that were already infected – it will can still spread from computer to computer within a network – and a new version, without the kill switch, is reported to be already out and running wild.… More

Snowden tells CES crowd fighting encryption is the wrong fight

8 January 2016 by Steve Blum
, , ,

“I’ve read the emails of terrorists, I know what they’re doing, I know how they work”, Edward Snowden told a rapt audience in a CES booth yesterday. “Terrorists are already using encryption. Everybody in the world is using encryption”.

He was being interviewed by serial entrepreneur Peter Diamondus – X-Prize, Singularity and, yesterday, Human Longevity, Inc. – via a BeamPro telepresence robot made by Palo Alto-based Suitabletech. It was a promotionally convenient necessity since Snowden is a fugitive, living in exile in Russia after blowing the whistle on the National Security Agency’s massive data trawling operation.… More

Latest Snowden revelations will push Internet infrastructure and traffic away from U.S.


Expect more lines in the future to bypass the U.S.

If there was ever any doubt that there’s no privacy on the Internet, the latest nuggets from Edward Snowden’s trove of documents detailing U.S. electronic spying efforts should remove it. Stories on the ProPublica.org website and in the New York Times show how telecommunications companies have cooperated with the National Security Agency to trawl emails that pass through their systems, regardless of where the messages originate or where they are destined.… More