Entries Tagged "NSA"

Page 19 of 56

NSA Running a Massive IDS on the Internet Backbone

The latest story from the Snowden documents, co-published by the New York Times and ProPublica, shows that the NSA is operating a signature-based intrusion detection system on the Internet backbone:

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad—including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.

The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” ­—patterns associated with computer intrusions—that it could tie to foreign governments. But the documents also note that the N.S.A. sought to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.

To me, the big deal here is 1) the NSA is doing this without a warrant, and 2) that the policy change happened in secret, without any public policy debate.

The effort is the latest known expansion of the N.S.A.’s warrantless surveillance program, which allows the government to intercept Americans’ cross-border communications if the target is a foreigner abroad. While the N.S.A. has long searched for specific email addresses and phone numbers of foreign intelligence targets, the Obama administration three years ago started allowing the agency to search its communications streams for less-identifying Internet protocol addresses or strings of harmful computer code.

[…]

To carry out the orders, the F.B.I. negotiated in 2012 to use the N.S.A.’s system for monitoring Internet traffic crossing “chokepoints operated by U.S. providers through which international communications enter and leave the United States,” according to a 2012 N.S.A. document. The N.S.A. would send the intercepted traffic to the bureau’s “cyberdata repository” in Quantico, Virginia.

Ninety pages of NSA documents accompany the article. Here is a single OCRed PDF of them all.

Jonathan Mayer was consulted on the article. He gives more details on his blog, which I recommend you all read.

In my view, the key takeaway is this: for over a decade, there has been a public policy debate about what role the NSA should play in domestic cybersecurity. The debate has largely presupposed that the NSA’s domestic authority is narrowly circumscribed, and that DHS and DOJ play a far greater role. Today, we learn that assumption is incorrect. The NSA already asserts broad domestic cybersecurity powers. Recognizing the scope of the NSA’s authority is particularly critical for pending legislation.

This is especially important for pending information sharing legislation, which Mayer explains.

The other big news is that ProPublica’s Julia Angwin is working with Laura Poitras on the Snowden documents. I expect that this isn’t the last artcile we’re going to see.

EDITED TO ADD: Others are writing about these documents. Shane Harris explains how the NSA and FBI are working together on Internet surveillance. Benjamin Wittes says that the story is wrong, that “combating overseas cybersecurity threats from foreign governments” is exactly what the NSA is supposed to be doing, and that they don’t need a warrant for any of that. And Marcy Wheeler points out that she has been saying for years that the NSA has been using Section 702 to justify Internet surveillance.

EDITED TO ADD (6/5): Charlie Savage responds to Ben Wittes.

Posted on June 5, 2015 at 7:42 AM • View Comments

US Also Tried Stuxnet Against North Korea

According to a Reuters article, the US military tried to launch Stuxnet against North Korea in addition to Iran:

According to one U.S. intelligence source, Stuxnet’s developers produced a related virus that would be activated when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine.

But U.S. agents could not access the core machines that ran Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program, said another source, a former high-ranking intelligence official who was briefed on the program.

The official said the National Security Agency-led campaign was stymied by North Korea’s utter secrecy, as well as the extreme isolation of its communications systems.

Posted on June 1, 2015 at 6:33 AM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Nutty Conspiracy Theory Involving Both the NSA and SQUID

It’s almost as if they wrote it for me.

These devices, which are known as super conducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDS for short), can be attached to NSA signals intelligence satellites and used to track the electromagnetic fields which surround each of our bodies.

These devices make it possible for agencies like the NSA (National Security Agency) to track any person via signals intelligence satellite 24 hours a day, while using *EEG Heterodyning technology to synchronize these satellites with the unique EMF brainwave print of each American citizen.

Definitely tin-foil-hat territory. I don’t recommend reading it all.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

And apologies for this being late. I forgot to schedule the post.

Posted on May 31, 2015 at 4:08 PM • View Comments

Why the Current Section 215 Reform Debate Doesn't Matter Much

The ACLU’s Chris Soghoian explains (time 25:52-30:55) why the current debate over Section 215 of the Patriot Act is just a minor facet of a large and complex bulk collection program by the FBI and the NSA.

There were 180 orders authorized last year by the FISA Court under Section 215—180 orders issued by this court. Only five of those orders relate to the telephony metadata program. There are 175 orders about completely separate things. In six weeks, Congress will either reauthorize this statute or let it expire, and we’re having a debate—to the extent we’re even having a debate—but the debate that’s taking place is focused on five of the 180, and there’s no debate at all about the other 175 orders.

Now, Senator Wyden has said there are other bulk collection programs targeted at Americans that the public would be shocked to learn about. We don’t know, for example, how the government collects records from Internet providers. We don’t know how they get bulk metadata from tech companies about Americans. We don’t know how the American government gets calling card records.

If we take General Hayden at face value—and I think you’re an honest guy—if the purpose of the 215 program is to identify people who are calling Yemen and Pakistan and Somalia, where one end is in the United States, your average Somali-American is not calling Somalia from their land line phone or their cell phone for the simple reason that AT&T will charge them $7.00 a minute in long distance fees. The way that people in the diaspora call home—the way that people in the Somali or Yemeni community call their family and friends back home—they walk into convenience stores and they buy prepaid calling cards. That is how regular people make international long distance calls.

So the 215 program that has been disclosed publicly, the 215 program that is being debated publicly, is about records to major carriers like AT&T and Verizon. We have not had a debate about surveillance requests, bulk orders to calling card companies, to Skype, to voice over Internet protocol companies. Now, if NSA isn’t collecting those records, they’re not doing their job. I actually think that that’s where the most useful data is. But why are we having this debate about these records that don’t contain a lot of calls to Somalia when we should be having a debate about the records that do contain calls to Somalia and do contain records of e-mails and instant messages and searches and people posting inflammatory videos to YouTube?

Certainly the government is collecting that data, but we don’t know how they’re doing it, we don’t know at what scale they’re doing it, and we don’t know with which authority they’re doing it. And I think it is a farce to say that we’re having a debate about the surveillance authority when really, we’re just debating this very narrow usage of the statute.

Further underscoring this point, yesterday the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General released a redacted version of its internal audit of the FBI’s use of Section 215: “A Review of the FBI’s Use of Section 215 Orders: Assessment of Progress in Implementing Recommendations and Examination of Use in 2007 through 2009,” following the reports of the statute’s use from 2002-2005 and 2006. (Remember that the FBI and the NSA are inexorably connected here. The order to Verizon was from the FBI, requiring it to turn data over to the NSA.)

Details about legal justifications are all in the report (see here for an important point about minimization), but detailed data on exactly what the FBI is collecting—whether targeted or bulk—is left out. We read that the FBI demanded “customer information” (p. 36), “medical and educational records” (p. 39) “account information and electronic communications transactional records” (p. 41), “information regarding other cyber activity” (p. 42). Some of this was undoubtedly targeted against individuals; some of it was undoubtedly bulk.

I believe bulk collection is discussed in detail in Chapter VI. The chapter title is redacted, as well as the introduction (p. 46). Section A is “Bulk Telephony Metadata.” Section B (pp. 59-63) is completely redacted, including the section title. There’s a summary in the Introduction (p. 3): “In Section VI, we update the information about the uses of Section 215 authority described [redacted word] Classified Appendices to our last report. These appendices described the FBI’s use of Section 215 authority on behalf of the NSA to obtain bulk collections of telephony metadata [long redacted clause].” Sounds like a comprehensive discussion of bulk collection under Section 215.

What’s in there? As Soghoian says, certainly other communications systems like prepaid calling cards, Skype, text messaging systems, and e-mails. Search history and browser logs? Financial transactions? The “medical and educational records” mentioned above? Probably all of them—and the data is in the report, redacted (p. 29)—but there’s nothing public.

The problem is that those are the pages Congress should be debating, and not the telephony metadata program exposed by Snowden.

EDITED TO ADD: Marcy Wheeler is going through the document line by line.

Posted on May 22, 2015 at 5:45 AM • View Comments

Eighth Movie-Plot Threat Contest Semifinalists

On April 1, I announced the Eighth Movie Plot Threat Contest: demonstrate the evils of encryption.

Not a whole lot of good submissions this year. Possibly this contest has run its course, and there’s not a whole lot of interest left. On the other hand, it’s heartening to know that there aren’t a lot of encryption movie-plot threats out there.

Anyway, here are the semifinalists.

  1. Child pornographers.
  2. Bombing the NSA.
  3. Torture.
  4. Terrorists and a vaccine.
  5. Election systems.

Cast your vote by number here; voting closes at the end of the month.

Contest.

Previous contests.

Posted on May 14, 2015 at 11:26 PM • View Comments

More on the NSA's Capabilities

Ross Anderson summarizes a meeting in Princeton where Edward Snowden was “present.”

Third, the leaks give us a clear view of an intelligence analyst’s workflow. She will mainly look in Xkeyscore which is the Google of 5eyes comint; it’s a federated system hoovering up masses of stuff not just from 5eyes own assets but from other countries where the NSA cooperates or pays for access. Data are “ingested” into a vast rolling buffer; an analyst can run a federated search, using a selector (such as an IP address) or fingerprint (something that can be matched against the traffic). There are other such systems: “Dancing oasis” is the middle eastern version. Some xkeyscore assets are actually compromised third-party systems; there are multiple cases of rooted SMS servers that are queried in place and the results exfiltrated. Others involve vast infrastructure, like Tempora. If data in Xkeyscore are marked as of interest, they’re moved to Pinwale to be memorialised for 5+ years. This is one function of the MDRs (massive data repositories, now more tactfully renamed mission data repositories) like Utah. At present storage is behind ingestion. Xkeyscore buffer times just depend on volumes and what storage they managed to install, plus what they manage to filter out.

As for crypto capabilities, a lot of stuff is decrypted automatically on ingest (e.g. using a “stolen cert,” presumably a private key obtained through hacking). Else the analyst sends the ciphertext to CES and they either decrypt it or say they can’t. There’s no evidence of a “wow” cryptanalysis; it was key theft, or an implant, or a predicted RNG or supply-chain interference. Cryptanalysis has been seen of RC4, but not of elliptic curve crypto, and there’s no sign of exploits against other commonly used algorithms. Of course, the vendors of some products have been coopted, notably skype. Homegrown crypto is routinely problematic, but properly implemented crypto keeps the agency out; gpg ciphertexts with RSA 1024 were returned as fails.

[…]

What else might we learn from the disclosures when designing and implementing crypto? Well, read the disclosures and use your brain. Why did GCHQ bother stealing all the SIM card keys for Iceland from Gemalto, unless they have access to the local GSM radio links? Just look at the roof panels on US or UK embassies, that look like concrete but are actually transparent to RF. So when designing a protocol ask yourself whether a local listener is a serious consideration.

[…]

On the policy front, one of the eye-openers was the scale of intelligence sharing—it’s not just 5 eyes, but 15 or 35 or even 65 once you count all the countries sharing stuff with the NSA. So how does governance work? Quite simply, the NSA doesn’t care about policy. Their OGC has 100 lawyers whose job is to “enable the mission”; to figure out loopholes or new interpretations of the law that let stuff get done. How do you restrain this? Could you use courts in other countries, that have stronger human-rights law? The precedents are not encouraging. New Zealand’s GCSB was sharing intel with Bangladesh agencies while the NZ government was investigating them for human-rights abuses. Ramstein in Germany is involved in all the drone killings, as fibre is needed to keep latency down low enough for remote vehicle pilots. The problem is that the intelligence agencies figure out ways to shield the authorities from culpability, and this should not happen.

[…]

The spooks’ lawyers play games saying for example that they dumped content, but if you know IP address and file size you often have it; and IP address is a good enough pseudonym for most intel / LE use. They deny that they outsource to do legal arbitrage (e.g. NSA spies on Brits and GCHQ returns the favour by spying on Americans). Are they telling the truth? In theory there will be an MOU between NSA and the partner agency stipulating respect for each others’ laws, but there can be caveats, such as a classified version which says “this is not a binding legal document.” The sad fact is that law and legislators are losing the capability to hold people in the intelligence world to account, and also losing the appetite for it.

Worth reading in full.

Posted on May 11, 2015 at 6:26 AM •

Detecting QUANTUMINSERT

Fox-IT has a blog post (and has published Snort rules) on how to detect man-on-the-side Internet attacks like the NSA’s QUANTUMINSERT.

From a Wired article:

But hidden within another document leaked by Snowden was a slide that provided a few hints about detecting Quantum Insert attacks, which prompted the Fox-IT researchers to test a method that ultimately proved to be successful. They set up a controlled environment and launched a number of Quantum Insert attacks against their own machines to analyze the packets and devise a detection method.

According to the Snowden document, the secret lies in analyzing the first content-carrying packets that come back to a browser in response to its GET request. One of the packets will contain content for the rogue page; the other will be content for the legitimate site sent from a legitimate server. Both packets, however, will have the same sequence number. That, it turns out, is a dead giveaway.

Here’s why: When your browser sends a GET request to pull up a web page, it sends out a packet containing a variety of information, including the source and destination IP address of the browser as well as so-called sequence and acknowledge numbers, or ACK numbers. The responding server sends back a response in the form of a series of packets, each with the same ACK number as well as a sequential number so that the series of packets can be reconstructed by the browser as each packet arrives to render the web page.

But when the NSA or another attacker launches a Quantum Insert attack, the victim’s machine receives duplicate TCP packets with the same sequence number but with a different payload. “The first TCP packet will be the ‘inserted’ one while the other is from the real server, but will be ignored by the [browser],” the researchers note in their blog post. “Of course it could also be the other way around; if the QI failed because it lost the race with the real server response.”

Although it’s possible that in some cases a browser will receive two packets with the same sequence number from a legitimate server, they will still contain the same general content; a Quantum Insert packet, however, will have content with significant differences.

It’s important we develop defenses against these attacks, because everyone is using them.

EDITED TO ADD (5/14): Detection for QI was recently released for Bro, Snort and Suricata.

Posted on May 4, 2015 at 6:17 AM • View Comments

1 … 17 18 19 20 21 … 56

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.