The only place your are safe from the NSA.
Posted on 08/22/2013 8:19:40 AM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion
"I reported that Windows 8 was dangerous. Some wrote to argue I was wrong. I wrote why NASA announced it was dumping Windows 8 and that even Skype should not be used. Microsoft has been criticized for the Prism affair."
"Now appears that Windows 8 is especially dangerous. The German government warns against Microsoft program because it has the ability to control the hardware and software of the computer. The NSA can enter you computer remotely. Has Microsoft created economic suicide?"
(Excerpt) Read more at armstrongeconomics.com ...
"Explosive, for example, the fact that the secret key generated during the manufacturing process, external to the chip and then transferred into the chip. Here it is trivial to produce a copy of all keys. It is not excluded that such laws exist and this must not be reported. The TPM chip is a dream for the NSA. Also, the other realistic scenario is that the TPM manufacturers do not sit in the range of the NSA but in China, can not really calm down. ”"
had to check for the humor tag
i mean, seriously. do users think operating systems are magic?
what do you think an OS does if not control the hardware and software??
Care to expand on that? I have a TPM in my machine. A TPM is an encryption device that creates a unique hash based on the configuration of the hardware in the system. That hash is 1024-bit (or longer) and is impossible to crack in any realistic or near-term time frame. If you enable the TPM with a unique password, it's more secure than any certificate or password ever could be.
Microsoft doesn't take over the TPM. The TPM is user-addressable but useless without the hardware its plugged into. Windows 8 takes over the EFI boot system, meaning you can't dual-boot your machine. That's it.
I run Linux myself. I have a Win7 machine for gaming, but I'll never upgrade to Win8. This is a bit more hysterical than technical. The BANE of the NSA is someone who uses a TPM properly. Most people don't realize they have a TPM installed in their machine. It's a personal encryption system if you know how to activate and utilize it.
Unless there's a back door you don't know about.
I've purchased my last MS OS, switching to Linux Mint.
The obvious translation is bad (hard to read).
If I understand correctly, Windows 8 comes complete with an extra part that makes remote control of the machine possible whether the device is on or off? The implication here is that this has been incorporated to better assist NSA spying. I’m sure (maybe not so sure) that, if true, Microsoft must have had other intentions for the “upgrade”. But those are not mentioned.
Microsoft is not advertising, “Let’s help the government prevent terrorism by helping themselves to all your data.” The financial suicide angle discredits the piece even if there is some validity to the claim.
I don’t doubt that Microsoft and their lobbying efforts have yielded some sack time with the devil (government). There must be more facts and info about this beyond why the German Government won’t be using Windows 8 in order to hamper NSA Spying efforts.
The only place your are safe from the NSA.
I stopped using Skype, even before the Snowden fiasco, as there was an FR article I read sometime ago that MS provided the courts with info of a Skype user w/o a warrant. When we speak to our employees in the Philippines, they use Viber and we sort of started using it.
Again, it’s not even technically feasible. The salt and hash are generated upon first power up. You can even go into your TPM mastering settings and re-generate the salt and hash. It’s a push/pop system, not FIFO, so you can’t create a secondary tunnel. It’s as secure as a VPN connection, because even sniffing the channel causes the tunnel to collapse.
I’m an Ubuntu fanboy!
Dave: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL? HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you. Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL. HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that........
With an unlimited budget and access to the biggest brains in the world, you think the word impossible has any meaning?
Microsoft has had a CAPI key in their operating systems since XP. It is, ironically, called _NSAKEY. While there’s widespread speculation about its use, the naming and even the key itself is suspect. Microsoft’s had backdoors built into their systems for years. Truth is that you’re not truly safe from prying eyes unless you’re building your own OS from scratch. Next best thing: Linux!
>Most people don’t realize they have a TPM installed in their machine.
Serously?
Which machines are those?
My laptop died months ago and Dells stuck W8 on it as with all the others, it is terrible.
Windows 7 was a major fix to Visa, now windows 8 is crap again
Because of its touch screen features even in non-touch the screen platforms like mine its seems to be haunted as it opens and closes windows and moves the cursor when you dont want it too, and explorer gives me endless suspicious popups .
telling you to dowload new versions of programs at link provided.
Its very difficult to tell what is going on as it was designed for a 5 year old.
McFee says everythings fine.
I have been a software engineer for over 20 years
Microsoft 8 is the first product that made me want to get violent.
Imagine if you were a garage mechanic and when you showed up for work tomorrow your boss said you had to keep getting everything done but we took all your tools and you only this hammer and this screwdriver to work with.
They were ABSOLUTE IDIOTS when they released this pice of crap.
The CLEARLY did NO comsumer product testing. NONE~!
If they had given this to a room full of secretaries and business people and said “go do what you normally do at work” they would have had people throwing chairs at them in a half an hour.
Then... when you get stuck buyin this crapware and hate it, they tell you that you can BUY a previous version of Windows 7- but you have to BUY an ‘upgrade’ to windows 8 that will let you remove it, so you can install Windows 7
I am surprised the stock has not already nose-dived
I loathe, dispose, hate, and f*rt in the general direction of Microsoft.
Always have.
Always will.
Gate’s only talent was that he was a very good crook.
Let me break this down.
A 1024-bit key means there are 2^1024 possible combinations of keys/codes. That’s 1.797693e^308 possible permutations. So move that decimal point to the right over 300 places.
Now, with a 2.2 Ghz Xeon processor, that’s 2.2 billion processes per second which brings us down to 8.17133^e298 seconds to process the total number of possible codes. That’s 1.3618887^e297 minutes or 2.269814^e295 hours which is 9.45756^e293 days or 2.59111^e291 years. It would take longer than the history of the universe to decrypt it assuming the last key used is the one.
Okay, so to do this in anywhere near-term, you would have to have a QUANTUM computer that could do hundreds of quadrillions of cycles per second to even come close to cracking that in a short term. There aren’t enough computers on the planet to do that at present. Do you honestly believe they’re going to waste time trying to crack a TPM key to get into your computer to find out what porn your looking at?
Actually, it may have been created by a 5 year old.
I once had lunch at a Microsoft building near Seattle. All the staff was in their 20's, with no real world experience. It was like being at a college campus.
The French police are apparently switching all their PC’s over to Ubuntu Linux.
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