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N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption
New York Times ^ | September 5, 2013 | NICOLE PERLROTH, JEFF LARSON and SCOTT SHANE

Posted on 09/05/2013 12:14:05 PM PDT by Alter Kaker

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Breathtaking -- both the scale of the NSA's exploits and the scale of this leak.
1 posted on 09/05/2013 12:14:05 PM PDT by Alter Kaker
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To: Alter Kaker

And what they can’t break, they record until they can.


2 posted on 09/05/2013 12:17:16 PM PDT by Jack of all Trades (Hold your face to the light, even though for the moment you do not see.)
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To: Jack of all Trades

Bingo. But nobody is listening in... there’s no “there” there.


3 posted on 09/05/2013 12:23:16 PM PDT by Bogey78O (We had a good run. Coulda been great still.)
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To: Alter Kaker
all I know is I was looking up a recipe for "cowboy beef" a couple of weeks ago and today Amazon emails me about a Cowboy recipe book.....

keep your friends close and your enemies closer...

4 posted on 09/05/2013 12:25:43 PM PDT by cherry
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To: Alter Kaker

Our government practically owns and operates Google and Facebook, too.


5 posted on 09/05/2013 12:27:36 PM PDT by GeorgeWashingtonsGhost
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To: cherry

I remember freepers trying to assure us that loyalty cards and asking for zip codes was not to track us but to make their service better. We were assured that it didn’t get specific enough to track us personally.

Then my Brother In Law recieved some awesome coupons for the items he bought all the time. The coupons were specifically tailored to his buying habits. I kid you not.


6 posted on 09/05/2013 12:28:17 PM PDT by GeronL
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To: Alter Kaker

“Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,” he said, though cautioning that the N.S.A. often bypasses the encryption altogether by targeting the computers at one end or the other and grabbing text before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted.”

The usual method used is either to steal the encryption passphrase, or use a passphrase-guessing program. These programs are quite useful if you know a lot about the target.


7 posted on 09/05/2013 12:30:10 PM PDT by proxy_user
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To: Alter Kaker

The NSA are wussies living in their mothers’ basements reading everyone’s emails to get their jollies.

Haven’t stopped a single terrorist attack, by all indications.

The Tsarnaevs are laughing at them.


8 posted on 09/05/2013 12:30:41 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Are Marines required to salute Al Qaeda yet?)
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To: Alter Kaker
I read previous articles saying that the NSA is able to read the weaker PTPP encryption, but not the stronger L2TP/IPSec or OpenVPN protocols, at least not in anything approaching near-real time.

I think it's like cracking WEP, but not WPA2.

-PJ

9 posted on 09/05/2013 12:31:16 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: Jack of all Trades

10 posted on 09/05/2013 12:32:12 PM PDT by Uncle Miltie (Are Marines required to salute Al Qaeda yet?)
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To: GeorgeWashingtonsGhost

US telecoms fight claims of illegal spying [Bush wins, case dismissed]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2264404/posts

Ruling: Telcoms Not Liable for ‘Illegal Spying
Publius’ Forum ^ | 6/04/09 | Warner Todd Huston
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2264552/posts

But back then, spying on Americans was ‘good’.


11 posted on 09/05/2013 12:32:13 PM PDT by TurboZamboni (Marx smelled bad & lived with his parents most his life.)
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To: proxy_user
The usual method used is either to steal the encryption passphrase, or use a passphrase-guessing program. These programs are quite useful if you know a lot about the target.

Not just that, they've also apparently come up with a mechanism for storing encryption keys for commercial encryption technologies, found a way to break SSL and hack into VPNs. This will cause every country in the world to create new encryption technologies -- unbelievably broad leak.

12 posted on 09/05/2013 12:32:34 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: Political Junkie Too
I think it's like cracking WEP, but not WPA2.

Except WPA2 is already hackable by 13 year old kids, not just the National Security Agency.

13 posted on 09/05/2013 12:34:54 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: Alter Kaker
Maybe that was a bad comparison.

-PJ

14 posted on 09/05/2013 12:35:58 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (If you are the Posterity of We the People, then you are a Natural Born Citizen.)
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To: Uncle Miltie
Haven’t stopped a single terrorist attack, by all indications.

Stopping terrorism is only a new priority of theirs -- their original mission is foreign intelligence. And this leak will cause the Russians, the Chinese, the Pakistanis and probably every other country in the world to switch technologies.

15 posted on 09/05/2013 12:36:35 PM PDT by Alter Kaker (Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind...)
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To: GeronL

Wait until people start getting health insurance premium hikes based on the groceries they bought. Oh, and some stores (I’m looking at you, Target!) are requiring the cashiers to swipe the driver’s license into the cash register for all alcohol purchases. I left the cashier with that bottle of Baringer and bought one at walmart instead.


16 posted on 09/05/2013 12:40:19 PM PDT by Orangedog (An optimist is someone who tells you to 'cheer up' when things are going his way)
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To: Alter Kaker

They are apprently using key-stealing to do this. The algorithms are mathmatically unbreakable, but that doesn’t matter if you swipe the key somehow.

You have to understand how SSL works to understand how this is possible. It is a three-step handshake. The server sends you a signed message, which you verify against the public certificates in your browser’s keystore. You then send it an message encrypted with its public key, and it replies with an encrypted message with a proposed symmetric key. You then accept the symmetric key, and from then on communicate in a symmetric cipher.

Now all the NSA has to have is the server’s private certificate, and it can read the asymmetric traffic and pick up the symmetric key as it is sent. If you have a buddy at Verisign, this is easily done.


17 posted on 09/05/2013 12:40:46 PM PDT by proxy_user
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To: Alter Kaker

Because this leak contained information they weren’t already aware of...

I need to find that article about the 4000+ security risks who work for NSA.
Here we go:

http://news.yahoo.com/report-secret-budget-cited-4-000-nsa-leaks-182750941.html

All this leak does is let the REST of us know that encryption is teetering on the edge of nonusefulness.


18 posted on 09/05/2013 12:40:50 PM PDT by Black Agnes
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To: proxy_user

This is why passwords should not be words but instead ramdom characters, # and if you know how to make special ascii characters even better.


19 posted on 09/05/2013 12:41:33 PM PDT by qman (The communist usurper must go!)
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To: Orangedog

What if you present a US passport rather than a driver’s license?


20 posted on 09/05/2013 12:41:42 PM PDT by proxy_user
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