Edit: Changed “the government” to “governments”
I mean, people say use end to end encryption, VPN, Tor, Open Source Operating System, but I think one thing missed is the hardware is not really open source, and theres no practical open source alternative for hardware. There’s Intel ME, AMD PSP, so there’s probably one in phones. How can people be so confident these encryption is gonna stop intelligence agencies?
It’s not just back doors. All governments will have a group of people who’s job is to find security vulnerabilities in OS and use them to attack other nations.
If Wanacry rings a bell the you might be aware that the Eternal Blue exploit was the infection vector which was originally designed by the NSA and leaked by a hacking group. Only after the leak did the NSA tell Microsoft how it worked and it was patched.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor
If I was a government intelligence agency I’d probably sell my soul to get access to these…
I get that they have legitimate use cases for corporations, but why are there virtually no consumer grade CPUs without that stuff ? Surely they would be less expensive and no one would miss the features on their home computers.
They do.
Well, there is this time a few months ago where the Chinese government hacked AT&T and Verizon using the mandatory backdoors the US government left for wiretaps…
https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s-wiretap-systems-targeted-in-china-linked-hack-327fc63b
That’s the reason leaving backdoors is generally a really, really bad idea, because you don’t know who else can use them
Didn’t national treasure Edward Snowden prove this?
AFAIK, his leaks showed that corporations are collaborating, and software could have backdoors. I don’t think they ever showed docs that reveal non-targeted hardware based surveillance. The common understanding post-snowden was, use Open Source OS and use Encryption and you’re safe, unless you are specifically targeted.
My question is asking about hardware-based mass surveillance.
Yeah, we don’t. It’s generally hard/impossible to prove the nonexistence of something. Similar as with God. It’s unlikely, but we can’t prove he doesn’t exist with certainty. These proofs only work for very simple and contained systems.
Wasn’t that something Asange or Snowden blew the whistle on? That the CIA or NSA or something actually has backdoors in pretty much everything, along with all kinds of spyware floating around the net?
I think they were more like Verizon and other carriers logging metadata. Google and Apple, in their server side services. And the government has physically tapped internet cables. HTTP was not widespead at the time, and corporations were (either forced, or willingly) co-operating with authorities for mass surveillance. Also, most devides had no encrption for data at rest. You know, that type of thing.
I don’t think the snowden leaks ever said anything about a hardware backdoor outside of targetted attacks (Correct me if I’m wrong). So it was widely understood post-snowden era that using an open source OS + encryption for both at rest and communications would be good enough for non-targeted attacks.
But my question asks if governments could be listening to everyone as a mass surveillance non-targeted attack, via hardware backdoors
If they listen to everyone, it would show up in some way, using power and bandwidth. Even using like steganography wouldn’t hide it very well IMO. One exception being windows ofc 😅 where they spy on you for sure already.
Wasn’t it that mega share guy (king dotcom or something) that figured out his PC was compromised because his ping skyrocketed on CS-GO?
There’s no way to check the whole thing, but you can totally pick a component and reverse engineer it, which is something people do quite a bit. When spying is found, it’s usually a private company doing it.
The NSA doesn’t care about your search history, but advertisers do. (and the government ever did, they’ll just call up google)
I’ve worked for the government. They had me managing 78 full AWS accounts for various departments. Me, 1 guy. And I had to explain basics of tech to everybody in charge of the cloud accounts.
Our gov can barely manage itself, let alone some next level tech on millions of devices and keep track of it all. They couldn’t even get me a new mouse without 2 forms, 1 online ticket, and 2 levels of approvals.
Yep but the capable agencies know what they want
Which government is this?
A few years ago they had rerouted shipments from Cisco to the NSA and then forward to the intended recipients. Not just a few parcels, but truckloads.
Hardware backdoors are extremely expensive & taxes aren’t enough to cover it
I doubt that’s the case. We already had a good amount of government-sponsored hacking, worms like Stuxnet. The Israelis can make every pager (edit: they’d like to, and fit with explosives) explode. It has been debated if there’s surveillance in some networking equipment. I think it’d be quite affordable to put a few more lines of code into Intel ME and AMD’s equivalent. The hardware is already there.
If you honestly think that the exploding pagers where just standard pagers, and somehow made to explode by hacking them, your grasp of physics and technology could do with some improvement.
The pagers where packed with a small amount of explosive and remote detonation system and then fed into the Hamas group through a supply chain attack.
Sure, that basic physics knowledge was kind of implied in my comment. But yeah, my phrasing is misleading. They can’t make “every” pager explode. But they can make you end up with one with explosives inside. Most of these things are supply chain attacks. Could be targeted at someone and happen after manufacuring. Or you’d make the regular manufacturer include a backdoor. Or you’d do it like with the pagers and set up a whole fake manufacturer and sell them with a bomb inside. I suppose in that case it would be possible to detect it. But I’m not an expert on explosives.
Okay so here’s my take on it not that anybody asked.
There are likely back doors in all computerized Networked devices.
There is likely some identifying information being sent back to random servers from a myriad of places.
That being said, you are not worth the time to directly observe.
Most likely, all of this data goes into a large database where they analyze trends and look for people that are outside of various tolerance zones.
Other than that, all of your data is just noise, grist for the grist Mill.
It is only when you become a person of interest who is worth devoting the time to directly analyze that these risks escalate to the point where you should have concern about it.
99.9999% of us are just not important enough to pay attention to.
Also the government is not all one monolithic entity. Just because the NSA has a backdoor doesnt mean theyll hand that information out to anyone who asks. Maybe if the CIA fills out a ton of paperwork, but if its the FBI theyll laugh in their faces and tell them the data doesnt exist.
The Jersey drone story is a great example.
The FAA posted a a security update for the Picatinny area a few weeks ago. Now where did that come from? Some governmental org that wanted to do testing.
But the rest of government was unaware, so could honestly say they didn’t know anything about the drone activity.
Here’s the most down to earth comment in the whole post
Lol that FBI/CIA government bureuacracy was what (allegedly) led to the 9/11 hijackers getting through the cracks in the fishing net.
Cause the FBI are the keystone cops of the intelligence world. Theres a reason they spun off a whole new agency rather than just give the FBI unlimited resources for the war on terror.
Pretty much, yeah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
Person of interest? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series)
I’ll be cool with that if some badass vigilante would actually save my life.
We will never have a way of knowing for sure. There are stories of government agencies famously requesting backdoor access to Apple devices, seemingly because they can’t get in otherwise, and Apple refusing, however they end up getting access on their own eventually. But who knows how much of that is even true? Government agencies are historically manipulative when it comes to public narrative, so anything made public by them should be taken with a hefty grain of salt
The side of corporation is corrupt as well because they use it for marketing.
What about that thin shiney metallic woodwind instrument? And the musician who plays it?
This is probably going to be a very unpopular opinion but I am much angrier at a corporation having my data than a govermment and the former is much easier to avoid
