PDA

View Full Version : NSA Gets Real Time Access to Your Email



champcar99
21-12-2007, 12:21 AM
NSA Gets Real Time Access to Your Email

December 20, 2007
Kurt Nimmo
It was inevitable: the Advanced Research Projects Agency, later to become DARPA, right out of the Pentagon, created the internet. The RAND Corporation invented modern packet switching. DARPA and ARPANET recruited Vint Cerf of Stanford University to work on TCP/IP. Cerf is regarded as "the father of the Internet," or maybe that should be the military-NSA snoop network. Now we learn NSA increasingly controls SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers.

In other words, increasingly, the NSA is reading your email and everything you type in your IM client — and in real time, that is to say there is no delay in the timeliness of the information, the underwear drawer snoopers have the ability to read your IMs as you type them.

(

"Certain privacy/full session SSL email hosting services have been purchased/changed operational control by NSA and affiliates within the past few months, through private intermediary entities," notes Cryptome .

Hushmail: now fully owned by private entity NSA affiliate; has had informal relationship with NSA for a number of years that effectively provided NSA with real time access to Hushmail's hosting servers.
Safe-mail.net: Israeli-based, ironically privately lauded by NSA and US military several years ago for its sound implementation of SendMail with SSL webmail GUI frontend. Now provides mail server info to NSA in real time.
Guardster.com (SSH/SSL proxy): NSA contractors have "bought" full access rights to Guardster servers a few days ago. Separate but related: facilitated port sniffing of hosting servers at Everyones Internet, on NSA affiliates' behalf, has been ongoing for a number of months now.

Geekspeak aside, what this means is that the NSA is buying up key technology in an effort to snoop you even more closely. If this trend continues, we may as well call the internet the NSAnet.

Moreover, according to Cryptome's research, if you own "security" software produced by Zone Alarm, Symantec, and MacAfee, you are in essence throwing out a welcome mat for the NSA and its bevy of underwear drawer sniffing goons. "All facilitate Microsoft's NSA-controlled remote admin access via IP/TCP ports 1024 through 1030," and without a "security flag," that it to say you will be none the wiser.

gustavo77
21-12-2007, 01:34 AM
That's just wonderful...:(

TheBigStink
21-12-2007, 01:42 AM
wow. nothing is sacred.

liquidfire
21-12-2007, 02:10 AM
wow. nothing is sacred.

Except for open source software and encrypting your emails on your own computer with a PGP key :)

thecut
21-12-2007, 02:14 AM
Good but depressing post

Matthew
21-12-2007, 04:22 AM
so now safemail.net is not safe either. Looks like the only way now will be pgp on the desktop with an encrypted hard drive. So who knows how to do this stuff and who can give us a tutorial??

TheBigStink
21-12-2007, 08:54 AM
so now safemail.net is not safe either. Looks like the only way now will be pgp on the desktop with an encrypted hard drive. So who knows how to do this stuff and who can give us a tutorial??

BUMP

Strateg0s
21-12-2007, 10:47 AM
I'm working on one. I'll get it out there when it's ready for prime time.

As far as whole disk encryption goes, you can use PGP desktop or Securstar's DriveCrypt Plus Pack. Both cost a bit, although you can find DCPP as a torrent. Why whole disk encryption? Because if you just encrypt this or that file or group of files, then your hard drive will still be littered with fragments of your files, your passwords, your surfing activity, you name it.
But note well:
1) these things are only as good as your passphrase, which ideally should be 128 mixed characters (letters, numbers, symbols)
2) anything you have open while you are logged in can be hacked while you are online. If you can see it, so can some busybody with an interest in you.

So in addition to whole disk encryption, anyone who wants privacy should have encrypted volumes which you only open when you need to access something. Programs to accomplish this include DriveCrypt, and TrueCrypt which is preferable since its code is open and can be analyzed by experts for vulnerabilities.

Between invasive governmental surveillance, the threat of identity theft, nosy roommates, and everything between, there are plenty of good reasons for decent people to take seriously encryption and anonymization.

Of course, there are always going to be sick bastards out there who stay safe through these same technologies, and hopefully they will be exposed and eradicated. These kind of people will have taken precautions on their own.

Mr.Freeze
21-12-2007, 11:07 AM
good post keep it coming!:)

St
21-12-2007, 08:15 PM
Great stuff the world is safer again.:mad:
Great thread bro.

liquidfire
22-12-2007, 12:32 AM
I'd post a tutorial but I use linux... I have no idea what programs you guys would need for windows or macs as I imagine that's what most of you use. I'll look around a bit and see what I can find... Once you've generated a PGP key the rest should be pretty easy.

Once somebody gets a decent tutorial up we should start a thread were everyone can post their public PGP keys so people can send them encrypted emails.

RJ*
22-12-2007, 02:10 AM
"Zone Alarm, Symantec, and MacAfee, "
if this was your security you should kick your own ass
and im a PC neophyte


encryption of the HD is the best thing you can do, along with pgp of HD, email and IM

Matthew
22-12-2007, 03:02 AM
I'd post a tutorial but I use linux... I have no idea what programs you guys would need for windows or macs as I imagine that's what most of you use. I'll look around a bit and see what I can find... Once you've generated a PGP key the rest should be pretty easy.

Once somebody gets a decent tutorial up we should start a thread were everyone can post their public PGP keys so people can send them encrypted emails.

Please post up a tutorial when you get one. I think more than a few here would appreciate it. What hard drive encryption software is good?

Gib
23-12-2007, 01:12 AM
GREAT post Strateg0s!

So if you can be hacked anytime you are online, does that mean using cable internet makes you more vulnerable? Arent you still connected even when the computer sleeps/hibernates whatever?

Strateg0s
23-12-2007, 02:20 AM
GREAT post Strateg0s!

So if you can be hacked anytime you are online, does that mean using cable internet makes you more vulnerable? Arent you still connected even when the computer sleeps/hibernates whatever?If you encrypt everything when you are online, you will be safe, short of keyloggers and other extreme hacking measures. But you can shut down your whole internet connection easily enough, with the physical cable, accessing the router through your internet browser, or with something like Kaspersky Anti-Hacker (for Windows).

When you are hibernating, I don't think you are vulnerable, if you have a wake-on LAN activity feature enabled, but this isn't something to focus on in any case. My main point was that if you want your secure data secure, you need it encrypted at all times that you are connected to the internet. I used to do work for a company that had some extremely valuable intellectual property, and leaving it open while connected to the internet could have proved disastrous.