The NSA watches you poop.

tad10_sl said:

So he's a mouth breathing moron, yet he was able to undetectably hack into the NSA despite (as chaos tells us) Sysadmins having only restricted access?

Makes perfect sense.

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You mean, so the Director of National Intelligence tells Congress and the world after an investigation into how he got these documents that he very clearly did not have access to. Your theory of "admin accounts can do whatever they want!" is infantile and shows a pretty basic lack of knowledge in IT security BBP. Which isn't that big a deal, after all, why would you know something like that unless you worked with it? Doesn't stop you from pretending you have all the answers on the internet though!

a_skeleton_03, the crusher of dreams. I bet tad was thinking he was almost at the level of being a l33t h4xx0r because he was getting better at sneaking peeks at pin codes. Next up he was going to attempt mashing buttons furiously on his keyboard while spinning around like a madman watching 15 monitors ala Swordfish.

chaos_sl said:

NSA still uses XP

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So we agree, the NSA is incompetent. One wonders why they go to the trouble of developing things like Security-Enhanced Linux and then not use them.

chaos_sl said:

I've read the documents, and the more outrageous claims are not backed up by the documentation that has been released. Like interception and storage of all internet traffic, the whole "any analyst can listen to any phone conversation at the press of a button" thing, etc. I don't remember the documents addressing interception of encrypted documents, either,

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The most 'outrageous' claims were in the PRISM slides, which you and a_skeleton_03 dismiss entirely because they are presentation slides and not PDFs.

The document mentioning collection and storage of encrypted data was 'Exhibit B' with the text

Exhibit B_sl said:

In the context of a cryptanalytic effort, maintenance of technical data bases requires retention of all communications that are enciphered or reasonably believed to contain secret meaning, and sufficient duration may consist of any period of time during which encrypted material is subject to, or of use in, cryptanalysis.

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BoldW_sl said:

He, wikileaks, and their lawyers are carefully choosing what they put out, redacting when needed,

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Snowden isn't leaking through Wikileaks; he is working with The Guardian, the Washington Post, and I think Der Spiegel for one leak. Wikileaks is just protecting him. Snowden mostly worked with The Guardian, who actually calls the NSA and asks them what kind of damage would be done by releasing the stories they are about to publish. Only 8 of the 41 PRISM slides have been released by these papers due to national security interests. Most of the documents have not been released, and only seen by reporters.

Torrid_sl said:

So we agree, the NSA is incompetent. One wonders why they go to the trouble of developing things like Security-Enhanced Linux and then not use them.



The most 'outrageous' claims were in the PRISM slides, which you and a_skeleton_03 dismiss entirely because they are presentation slides and not PDFs.

The document mentioning collection and storage of encrypted data was 'Exhibit B' with the text

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I didn't dismiss anything, bro. I actually read the documents. They don't say things like "the NSA is collecting and analyzing all internet traffic" or "any NSA analyst can tap your phone with no oversight at the touch of a button." They talk about collection of intelligence on foreign targets.

As for the NSA being incompetent, idk. It depends on your perspective. They have a ton of users to provide service to, most of them not computer-savvy to the point you could drop a linux box in front of them and they wouldn't wet themselves. From their perspective, XP is a known and upgrading introduces all sorts of unknown issues, so at least in the military it has to go through a CoN process where they root out issues and work with vendors to mitigate them if possible. This has been a problem of the security community for a long time though, they are focused on security but primarily defending from outside threats. As time and technology move forward more and more you will see them focus on the insider threat. Which, they have been really.

chaos_sl said:

I didn't dismiss anything, bro. I actually read the documents. They don't say things like "the NSA is collecting and analyzing all internet traffic" or "any NSA analyst can tap your phone with no oversight at the touch of a button." They talk about collection of intelligence on foreign targets.

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They have to have the data in their possession and examine it to know that it is foreign or not. The entire objective of the PRISM program is to remove the need to request (demand) the data from providers and just wholesale examine everything, looking for target identifiers and storing foreign communications. All the procedures in the 'Exhibit' documents just outline what can be done with the data AFTER it is already intercepted. It is essentially a pinky swear that they won't look at it beyond the metadata or save if you're a (non-criminal, non encryption using) US citizen.

I could be wrong, but I believe what Snowden meant was that they had the TECHNICAL ability to read and collect everything on everybody, not the LEGAL authority, and that the legal barriers were both thin and lightly enforced.

Either way, the NSA does store a certain amount of data on Americans just to use it to compare collected data with to determine if they are Americans.

Exhibit A_sl said:

Furthermore, in order to prevent the inadvertent targeting of a United States person, NSA maintains records of telephone numbers and electronic accounts/addresses/identifiers that NSA has reason to believe are being used by United States persons.

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And if they cannot determine if you are American or not, they just keep the data.

Exhibit A_sl said:

in the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person, a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person, or the nature or circumstances of the person's communications give rise to a reasonable belief that such person is a United States person.

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The items that qualify you for 'foreignness' are laughable. You got a friend in Canada that has you on a buddy list? You qualify!

Exhibit A_sl said:

Information indicates that the electronic account/address/identifier is included in the "buddy list" or address book of an electronic communications account/address/identifier reasonably believed by the US. Intelligence Community to be used by an individual associated with a foreign power or foreign territory;

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Your friend in Canada SAYS YOUR NAME in a chat with a person who is not you? You qualify!

Exhibit A_sl said:

Information indicates that the electronic account/address/identifier has been transmitted during a telephone call or other communication with an individual reasonably believed by the US. Intelligence Community to be associated with a foreign power or foreign territory;

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Slides like these don't help the NSA's case, either:


Spoken by the man who ordered the original illegal wiretaps under Bush. Because he is trustworthy now.

chaos_sl said:

XP is a known and upgrading introduces all sorts of unknown issues, so at least in the military it has to go through a CoN process where they root out issues and work with vendors to mitigate them if possible.

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Win 7 has been out for 4? years now and XP's EOL is a mere 9 months away and that was after the EOL was extended.

They spend billions on multiple new datacenters, Keith Alexander is nicknamed 'emperor' because he gets whatever he wants and they can't upgrade from XP?

Wizardhawk_sl said:

I bet tad was thinking he was almost at the level of being a l33t h4xx0r because he was getting better at sneaking peeks at pin codes.

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You and a_skeleton_03 really need to work on reading comprehnsion. Chaos OTOH got the sarcasm.

@Chaos it's well established that the the director is a lying SOB so come up with another cite.

Someone told me they can't disable USB storage without disabling the entire port, which they use for all kinds of other shit. "They" being the government. But then I had a friend recently tell that isn't true, and you can differentiate by service. So I don't know which is true.

I'd imagine this also depends on what office/department/organization you are in, as well as how high up the chain you are. In all offices I've worked, the lowbies get locked down, and the uppies get access. USB ports are generally disabled via policies, no? So a sys admin shouldn't have much trouble getting it enabled again. Obviously, disconnecting the cable, locking down the box, and adding the policy would generally be the most secure route. For those that need to use USB devices but not storage, yes, there are several ways of doing it, also including policies, removal of USB storage drivers (or denied permission to install), etc.

Assuming you're using XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/823732

My understanding is that most breaches in security don't happen via "hackers" but from people inside the organization and that walking out with a thumb-drive or even a hard drive is the most common form of corporate secrets being stolen.

The Army has pretty much entirely migrated to Win 7, minus some outliers. I really hope they skip 8 but I know they won't.

BoldW, it depends. Whoever owns the network dictates the rules for connecting. For instance, you have to comply with DISA STIGs in order to connect to NIPR or SIPRNET. So you couldn't have a SIPRNET machine that had malware on it or something (in theory). Then whoever owns the forest can set additional restrictions. For instance, USB storage is outlawed on all Army MI machines unless you have specific authorization. That is enforced by policy and also by HBSS. There are a ton of levels, without working for the NSA it is impossible to know for sure.

chaos_sl said:

Someone told me they can't disable USB storage without disabling the entire port, which they use for all kinds of other shit. "They" being the government. But then I had a friend recently tell that isn't true, and you can differentiate by service. So I don't know which is true.

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Someone hopefully is not a sysadmin, because that's so ridiculously wrong.

You can have all kinds of settings for USB, even on XP, such as UMTS sticks working but storage not working.

Quineloe_sl said:

Someone hopefully is not a sysadmin, because that's so ridiculously wrong.

You can have all kinds of settings for USB, even on XP, such as UMTS sticks working but storage not working.

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Snowden could have been the guy behind the scenes that reset the password in AD when someone used the forgot password button on their FO intranet site.
Technically that would be an admin, but it doesn't mean his access or priviledges on that system were unfettered. Now it could be true, if his firm had a shit system with shit policies, but lets assume there is some standard the contractor has to meet to do business with the NSA. There are tons of different ways to implement this, but it is not out of the ordinary to have levels of Admins.

You can look at that recent deal with the sysadmin at hostgator that tried to infect all the servers with malware. A higher admin with more priviledges than him saw it easily.

A lot of people who do first level support like password resets consider themselves "system administrators" these days, even though they have next to no knowledge about computers. I assume chaos's "Someone" is one of these people

Daniel Ellssberg the guy who released the Pentagon Papers, said that Snowden did the right thing fleeing the country because America is a very different place than the one he used to know.http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.co...stayed?ref=fpb