Bonum Certa Men Certa

More Details Revealed About How the NSA Infiltrates Windows and Other Proprietary Software, Governments Should Now Ban Microsoft

RSA Conference



Summary: RSA is the latest (known) entity to have received bribes from the NSA in exchange for back doors; Germany may move towards banning software from companies that share data with the NSA

A COUPLE of nights ago Reuters published an explosive report about RSA, basically showing that Windows does not have back doors, it is a back door and so is a lot of the software that's proprietary. Free/libre software does not suffer from the trap [1]. This is a serious wakeup call to any government that still relies on proprietary software and US companies that collect data.



Munich moved to GNU/Linux owing to political determination to do so [2], but what about other cities? Their politicians are in serious trouble and a constant threat of espionage.

"This is a serious wakeup call to any government that still relies on proprietary software and US companies that collect data."As the Reuters report revealed [3] (and there was a lot of journalism linking to it [4,5]), "RSA Weakened Encryption For $10M From NSA," to quote Slashdot, which consequently also published the item "Microsoft Security Essentials Misses 39% of Malware" (especially NSA malware that enables system compromise). Remember that Windows XP will soon receive no patches, so not just the NSA will get easy access through back doors. IDG's advice on this matter is misguided as it basically offers continued use of Windows XP rather than runaway to a secure platform like GNU/Linux. As the author put it, "Microsoft's support for Windows XP ends in less than four months, and the company has warned users repeatedly that it's time to move on. But a lot of them are sticking with the aged OS. And for Microsoft, that's a problem."

Security is not really a problem here because there was never really any security to begin with. As we showed in our articles about the NSA, Windows is just a Trojan horse. It is obviously not secure and the only variable is, how many people can seize control of it?

The latest news makes almost all proprietary software suspect, even fake 'open source' like TrueCrypt (it is proprietary). As one tweet put it, "Check all on this list who use Dual_EC_DRBG as possible recipients of NSA bribes [...] Note Blackberry, Cisco, Juniper [...] Blast from the past: Call tracking Dual_EC_DRBG "Bribe Finder": Any use by default post 2007 required either an implicit or explicit bribe."

This is another good reason to avoid all proprietary software, including widely-used GNU/Linux programs like Skype. One tweet said that "Dual EC_DRBG was suspiciously absent from Wednesday's report by President Obama's NSA advisory panel."

Going back to Microsoft's flawed detection of malware, MinceR wrote that "their alleged "anti-malware" efforts started with stopping detecting claria as malware just as they were about to buy it, so i don't know why anyone trusts them with such ... [it] manages to out-sleaze even the other "antivirus" companies."

" With Microsoft, NSA gets video/audio surveillance, not just through Skype but also through people's webcams on computers that have Windows installed (and are idle)."Sosumi said that "they don't detect NSA backdoors as malware, so why trust them?"

Nobody can trust Microsoft. The above report says that "latest tests from Dennis Publishing's security labs saw Microsoft Security Essentials fail to detect 39% of the real-world malware thrown at it."

It's not just a case of access to one's files by the way. See the new post titled "Windows users: Your webcam lights aren't safe from the FBI either" (we wrote about CIPAV almost 5 years ago).

"In recent news," says the post, "it was revealed the FBI has a "virus" that will record a suspect through the webcam secretly, without turning on the LED light. Some researchers showed this working on an older Macbook. In this post, we do it on Windows."

"The more you know about how the NSA gets along with RSA & Microsoft," writes one Twitter user, "the more perspective you have on their handling of Lavabit." With Microsoft, NSA gets video/audio surveillance, not just through Skype but also through people's webcams on computers that have Windows installed (and are idle). This is a good enough reason to immediately abandon Microsoft and some politicians in Germany already think about moving in this direction. See [6,7] below for details of the latest news and pay attention to the explosive new article "Snowden ally Appelbaum claims his Berlin apartment was invaded" [8]; clearly it's not about terrorism but about cracking down on activists [9].

Following the revelations above there is some new effort [10] -- including from GNU/Linux developers [11] -- to sack with prejudice potential NSA moles.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Worried OpenSSL uses NSA-tainted crypto? This BUG has got your back
    As fears grow that US and UK spies have deliberately hamstrung key components in today's encryption systems, users of OpenSSL can certainly relax about one thing.

    It has been revealed that the cryptography toolkit – used by reams of software from web browsers for HTTPS to SSH for secure terminals – is not using the discredited random number generator Dual EC DRBG.

    And that's due to a bug that's now firmly a WONTFIX.

    A coding flaw uncovered in the library prevents "all use" of the dual elliptic curve (Dual EC) deterministic random bit generator (DRBG) algorithm, a cryptographically weak algorithm championed by none other than the NSA.

    No other DRBGs used by OpenSSL are affected, we're told.


  2. Moving a city to Linux needs political backing, says Munich project leader
    This year saw the completion of the city of Munich’s switch to Linux, a move that began about ten years ago. “One of the biggest lessons learned was that you can’t do such a project without continued political backing,” said Peter Hofmann, the leader of the LiMux project, summing up the experience.

    The Munich city authority migrated around 14,800 of the 15,000 or so PCs on its network to LiMux, its own Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, exceeding its initial goal of migrating 12,000 desktops.


  3. Exclusive: Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer
    As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.


  4. NSA Gave RSA $10 Million To Promote Crypto It Had Purposely Weakened
    Earlier this year, the Snowden leaks revealed how the NSA was effectively infiltrating crypto standards efforts to take control of them and make sure that backdoors or other weaknesses were installed. Many in the crypto community reacted angrily to this, and began to rethink how they interact with the feds. However, Reuters has just dropped a bombshell into all of this, as it has revealed that not only did the NSA purposefully weaken crypto, it then paid famed crypto provider RSA $10 million to push the weakened crypto, making it a de facto standard.


  5. How much did NSA pay to put a backdoor in RSA crypto? Try $10m – report
    Latest Snowden claims: Flawed encryption tech switched on by default in exchange for cash


  6. Germany should ban U.S. contracting companies passing data to NSA - report
    U.S. contracting companies such as Cisco, which manages much of the German armed forces' data, should be contractually barred from passing sensitive information to the U.S. security services, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives was quoted saying.


  7. German government buildings and charities were targets of GCHQ and NSA, says Edward Snowden


    Humanitarian organisations and German government buildings are among the targets of UK and US surveillance agencies, documents leaked by Edward Snowden are said to show.

    The latest disclosures from the Snowden archive also highlight the key role in national security played by the small Cornish holiday resort town of Bude.

    A government listening facility on the Cornish coast had a unit that was used to analyse samples of electronic date to assess whether surveillance targets were worth the effort of listening in on their communications more frequently.

    A significant amount of the Bude listening post’s funding comes from the National Security Agency (NSA), the US surveillance body, because of shared operational projects.


  8. Snowden ally Appelbaum claims his Berlin apartment was invaded
    Jacob Appelbaum, a US Internet activist and one of the people with access to Edward Snowden's documents, has told a Berlin paper that his apartment was broken into, saying he suspected US involvement.


  9. The Real Purpose of Oakland's Surveillance Center
    City leaders have argued that Oakland needs a massive surveillance system to combat violent crime, but internal documents reveal that city staffers are also focused on tracking political protesters.
  10. Critics: NSA agent co-chairing key crypto standards body should be removed (updated)
    Security experts are calling for the removal of a National Security Agency employee who co-chairs an influential cryptography panel, which advises a host of groups that forge widely used standards for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

    Kevin Igoe, who in a 2011 e-mail announcing his appointment was listed as a senior cryptographer with the NSA's Commercial Solutions Center, is one of two co-chairs of the IETF's Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG). The CFRG provides cryptographic guidance to IETF working groups that develop standards for a variety of crucial technologies that run and help secure the Internet. The transport layer security (TLS) protocol that underpins Web encryption and standards for secure shell connections used to securely access servers are two examples. Igoe has been CFRG co-chair for about two years, along with David A. McGrew of Cisco Systems.


  11. Kevin M. Igoe should step down from CFRG Co-chair
    I've said recently that pervasive surveillance is wrong. I don't think anyone from the NSA should have a leadership position in the development or deployment of Internet communications, because their interests are at odds with the interest of the rest of the Internet. But someone at the NSA is in exactly such a position. They ought to step down.


Recent Techrights' Posts

Lookout, It's Outlook
Outlook is all about the sharing!
Updated A Month Ago: Richard Stallman on Software Patents as Obstacles to Software Development
very recent update
Is BlueMail a Client of ZDNet Now?
Let's examine what BlueMail does to promote itself
OpenBSD Says That Even on Linux, Wayland Still Has a Number of Rough Edges (But IBM Wants to Make X Extinct)
IBM tries to impose unready software on users
 
The 'Smart' Attack on Power Grid Neutrality (or the Wet Dream of Tiered Pricing for Power, Essentially Punishing Poorer Households for Exercising Freedom Like Richer Households)
The dishonest marketing people tell us the age of disservice and discrimination is all about "smart" and "Hey Hi" (AI) as in algorithms akin to traffic-shaping in the context of network neutrality
Links 29/11/2023: VMware Layoffs and Too Many Microsofters Going Inside Google
Links for the day
Just What LINUX.COM Needed After Over a Month of Inactivity: SPAM SPAM SPAM (Linux Brand as a Spamfarm)
It's not even about Linux
Microsoft “Discriminated Based on Sexuality”
Relevant, as they love lecturing us on "diversity" and "inclusion"...
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 28, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Media Cannot Tell the Difference Between Microsoft and Iran
a platform with back doors
Links 28/11/2023: New Zealand's Big Tobacco Pivot and Google Mass-Deleting Accounts
Links for the day
Justice is Still the Main Goal
The skulduggery seems to implicate not only Microsoft
[Teaser] Next Week's Part in the Series About Anti-Free Software Militants
an effort to 'cancel' us and spy on us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Permacomputing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Professor Eben Moglen on How Social Control Media Metabolises Humans and Constraints Freedom of Thought
Nothing of value would be lost if all these data-harvesting giants (profiling people) vanished overnight
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 27, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, November 27, 2023
When Microsoft Blocks Your Access to Free Software
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." [Chicago Sun-Times]
Techrights Statement on 'Cancel Culture' Going Out of Control
relates to a discussion we had in IRC last night
Stuff People Write About Linux
revisionist pieces
Links 28/11/2023: Rosy Crow 1.4.3 and Google Drive Data Loss
Links for the day
Links 27/11/2023: Australian Wants Tech Companies Under Grip
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Links for the day
[Meme] Leaning Towards the Big Corporate CoC
Or leaning to "the green" (money)
Software Freedom Conservancy Inc in 2022: Almost Half a Million Bucks for Three People Who Attack Richard Stallman and Defame Linus Torvalds
Follow the money
[Meme] Identity Theft and Forgery
Coming soon...
Microsoft Has Less Than 1,000 Mail (MX) Servers Left, It's Virtually Dead in That Area (0.19% of the Market)
Exim at 254,000 servers, Postfix at 150,774, Microsoft down to 824
The Web is Dying, Sites Must Evolve or Die Too
Nowadays when things become "Web-based" it sometimes means more hostile and less open than before
Still Growing, Still Getting Faster
Articles got considerably longer too (on average)
In India, the One Percent is Microsoft and Mozilla
India is where a lot of software innovations and development happen, so this kind of matters a lot
Feeding False Information Using Sockpuppet Accounts and Imposters
online militants try every trick in the book, even illegal stuff
What News Industry???
Marketing, spam, and chatbots
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 26, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, November 26, 2023
The Software Freedom Law Center's Eben Moglen Explains That We Already Had Free Software Almost Everywhere Before (Half a Century Ago)
how code was shared in the 1970s and 80s