Edit: Changed “the government” to “governments”
I mean, people say use end to end encryption, VPN, Tor, Open Source Operating System, but I think one thing missed is the hardware is not really open source, and theres no practical open source alternative for hardware. There’s Intel ME, AMD PSP, so there’s probably one in phones. How can people be so confident these encryption is gonna stop intelligence agencies?
We don’t.
We really really don’t.
Consider the attack that Israel carried out this fall by detonating walkie-talkies and pagers. This wasn’t just some illicit code in the firmware or hardware, they managed to hijack the supply chain and hide literal bombs in commercially-produced handheld devices!
Bottom line: If you do not directly control the production chain from chip design and fab to end-user software, you can never be sure.
40 years ago, the legendary Ken Thompsonand Dennis Ritchie accepted the Turing Award for creating Unix. Thompson’s acceptance speech Reflections on Trusting Trust pointed out this same fundamental security flaw.
I encourage everyone to read the article, and spread it as widely as possible. It is terrifying and accurate, nearly half a century later.
It’s not just back doors. All governments will have a group of people who’s job is to find security vulnerabilities in OS and use them to attack other nations.
If Wanacry rings a bell the you might be aware that the Eternal Blue exploit was the infection vector which was originally designed by the NSA and leaked by a hacking group. Only after the leak did the NSA tell Microsoft how it worked and it was patched.
‘They’ (I.e. government agencies/PPP) actively exploit weaknesses or institutionally create them. Personal favorite is the backdoors built into TETRA, which is used for mainly government purposes (law enforcement, emergency services). ETSI acts as a strawman for government interest and serves no cause other than that of its masters. That bugs me to no end because this does not serve any purpose.
https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/interview-with-the-etsi-standards/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor
If I was a government intelligence agency I’d probably sell my soul to get access to these…
I get that they have legitimate use cases for corporations, but why are there virtually no consumer grade CPUs without that stuff ? Surely they would be less expensive and no one would miss the features on their home computers.
Well, there is this time a few months ago where the Chinese government hacked AT&T and Verizon using the mandatory backdoors the US government left for wiretaps…
https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b
That’s the reason leaving backdoors is generally a really, really bad idea, because you don’t know who else can use them
Lol they still have persistence in the network too, afaik
They do.
Didn’t national treasure Edward Snowden prove this?
AFAIK, his leaks showed that corporations are collaborating, and software could have backdoors. I don’t think they ever showed docs that reveal non-targeted hardware based surveillance. The common understanding post-snowden was, use Open Source OS and use Encryption and you’re safe, unless you are specifically targeted.
My question is asking about hardware-based mass surveillance.
Wasn’t that something Asange or Snowden blew the whistle on? That the CIA or NSA or something actually has backdoors in pretty much everything, along with all kinds of spyware floating around the net?
I think they were more like Verizon and other carriers logging metadata. Google and Apple, in their server side services. And the government has physically tapped internet cables. HTTP was not widespead at the time, and corporations were (either forced, or willingly) co-operating with authorities for mass surveillance. Also, most devides had no encrption for data at rest. You know, that type of thing.
I don’t think the snowden leaks ever said anything about a hardware backdoor outside of targetted attacks (Correct me if I’m wrong). So it was widely understood post-snowden era that using an open source OS + encryption for both at rest and communications would be good enough for non-targeted attacks.
But my question asks if governments could be listening to everyone as a mass surveillance non-targeted attack, via hardware backdoors
If they listen to everyone, it would show up in some way, using power and bandwidth. Even using like steganography wouldn’t hide it very well IMO. One exception being windows ofc 😅 where they spy on you for sure already.
Wasn’t it that mega share guy (king dotcom or something) that figured out his PC was compromised because his ping skyrocketed on CS-GO?
There’s no way to check the whole thing, but you can totally pick a component and reverse engineer it, which is something people do quite a bit. When spying is found, it’s usually a private company doing it.
The NSA doesn’t care about your search history, but advertisers do. (and the government ever did, they’ll just call up google)
Yeah, we don’t. It’s generally hard/impossible to prove the nonexistence of something. Similar as with God. It’s unlikely, but we can’t prove he doesn’t exist with certainty. These proofs only work for very simple and contained systems.
I’ve worked for the government. They had me managing 78 full AWS accounts for various departments. Me, 1 guy. And I had to explain basics of tech to everybody in charge of the cloud accounts.
Our gov can barely manage itself, let alone some next level tech on millions of devices and keep track of it all. They couldn’t even get me a new mouse without 2 forms, 1 online ticket, and 2 levels of approvals.
Does your govt not have an NSA like entity?
Yep but the capable agencies know what they want
Which government is this?
A few years ago they had rerouted shipments from Cisco to the NSA and then forward to the intended recipients. Not just a few parcels, but truckloads.
We will never have a way of knowing for sure. There are stories of government agencies famously requesting backdoor access to Apple devices, seemingly because they can’t get in otherwise, and Apple refusing, however they end up getting access on their own eventually. But who knows how much of that is even true? Government agencies are historically manipulative when it comes to public narrative, so anything made public by them should be taken with a hefty grain of salt
The side of corporation is corrupt as well because they use it for marketing.
What about that thin shiney metallic woodwind instrument? And the musician who plays it?
We know they do, actually.
All US companies provide the NSA with backdoors. All modern AMD and Intel CPUs have the ability to run remote code signed by their manufacturer and snoop into memory.
Put the two things together and now you know.
I’m not aware of us knowing that they provide
backdoorsvulnerabilities to the NSA. If US companies have data, then they’re legally obliged to make it available to the NSA (PATRIOT and CLOUD Act). The NSA may also separately develop backdoors (e.g. EternalBlue). But that the NSA coerces US companies to actively attack their customers, is news to me.modern AMD and Intel CPUs have the ability to run remote code signed by their manufacturer and snoop into memory.
If US companies have data, then they’re legally obliged to make it available to the NSA (PATRIOT and CLOUD Act).
The key used to sign the remote code could be considered data that they’re legally obliged to make available to the NSA? 🤷😅
That said, the lengths they had to go to for stuxnet kinda implies it’s still not super easy to do, but I guess maybe they were using older cpus that don’t have the signed code vulnerability? 🤷
It’s been a minute but I feel like Snowden revealed a program like that. A quick search gave me PRISM which kinda fits the bill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
Hmm, I just realized that “backdoors” in my previous comment had somewhat of a double-meaning. They do provide the NSA access to data that they have on their servers. In that sense, a backdoor exists, which is also what this PRISM article confirms.
But knowingly integrating vulnerabilities and making these available to the NSA for attacking customer devices, that is another shtick entirely. And I’m not finding anything in that article that says so (although I only read the parts that seemed relevant).
Fair point. Building secret backdoors for the gov is a different beast all together.
Yes this is something I’m more interested in learning as well. Data access to servers by adversaries can be largely mitigated with E2E encryption and VPN use so that even if, for example, the NSA wanted data on certain servers, unless they had an encryption key, would be largely meaningless (unless metadata wasn’t encrypted). We largely know that if LE wants data, they can get a court order to hand it over.
What I’d like to know is if there has been any evidence of “hardware” backdoors like what you now describe. I haven’t been able to find evidence of any successful attempts by major agencies/corporations, but I guess part of a successful attempt involves the public not knowing that it exists.
My threat model has me using an iPhone with Lockdown Mode & Advanced Data Protection enabled. I am wondering if I need to reassess my model to potentially go for the Pixel with GrapheneOS.
According to my research, the iPhone with these specific settings for reducing attack surface and encrypting everything that gets put onto servers is more than enough for myself (admittedly a pretty stringent threat model). But would also like to hear what others think.
Seeing these Powerpoint slides again makes me realize that grapic design is really their passion.
