NSA "undermined the fundamental trust in the internet"

How a Crypto 'Backdoor' Pitted the Tech World Against the NSA | Threat Level | Wired.com: " . . . Even without more explicit confirmation that the weaknesses in the algorithm and standard constitute a backdoor, Kocher and Schneier believe they do. “It is extraordinarily bad cryptography,” says Kocher. “If you look at the NSA’s role in creating standards [over the years] and its general cryptographic sophistication, none of it makes sense if there isn’t a backdoor in this.” Schneier agrees and says the NSA has done too many other things for him to think, when he sees government-mandated crypto that’s weak, that it’s just by accident. “If we were living in a kinder world, that would be a plausible explanation,” he says. “But we’re living in a very malicious world, it turns out.” He adds that the uncertainty around the algorithm and standard is the worst part of the whole matter. “This is the worst problem that the NSA has done,” Schneier says. “They have so undermined the fundamental trust in the internet, that we don’t know what to trust. We have to suspect everything. We’re never sure. That’s the greatest damage.”. . ."

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FBI Proposal for Wiretap-Ready Internet - "misguided"

FBI's Latest Proposal for a Wiretap-Ready Internet Should Be Trashed | Wired Opinion | Wired.com: "The FBI’s misguided proposal would impose costly burdens on thousands of companies (and threaten to entirely kill those whose business model centers on providing highly secure encrypted communications), while making cloud solutions less attractive to businesses and users. It would aid totalitarian governments eager to spy on their citizens while distorting business decisions about software design. Perhaps worst of all, it would treat millions of law-abiding users with legitimate security needs as presumed criminals — while doing little to hamper actual criminals."


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We are already fighting an Internet Cold War

Are We Ready for an Internet Cold War? | Endless Innovation | Big Think: " . . . . Compare that to what the rest of the world is doing. Just this week, the Chinese touted plans for a "next-generation” Internet that would be faster, more secure and more flexible than anything we have in the United States. Meanwhile, nations such as Iran are busy at work creating an alternative Internet they can shut down at will. Something very interesting is happening -- nations around the world are starting to think of "Internet space" in the same way they once thought about "air space." They want the ability to see what's coming in and what's coming out - and the ability to shoot things down. Maybe the Chinese next-generation Internet is just a way to accommodate the billions of new users the nation plans to bring onboard within the next few years. OK. But you can also view it from another perspective – as a sign of America's own vulnerability in the face of a potential cyber war. The new Chinese Internet backbone includes a number of safeguards that makes it more invulnerable to the threat of malware or suspicious code. In other words, if the Chinese unleash a lot of malware on the U.S. to take out our grids, it has the potential to do a lot more damage than if the U.S. unleashes a lot of similar malware in China. We are already fighting an Internet Cold War, we just don’t yet know it. . . . "


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Sir Tim Berners-Lee accuses government of 'draconian' internet snooping

Security or threat to security?--

Sir Tim Berners-Lee accuses government of 'draconian' internet snooping - Telegraph: "The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has accused the government of invading the privacy by monitoring internet use . . . The draft bill extends the type of data that internet service providers must store for at least 12 months. Providers would also be required to keep details of a much wider set of data, including use of social network sites, webmail and voice calls over the internet. Mrs May has justified the need for the new legislation by saying that it is necessary to combat organised crime and terrorism. Sir Tim's comments came on the same day as he denied that there was an 'off'; switch for the internet. He said the only way the internet could only ever be completely shut down is if governments across the world coordinated to make it a centralised system: "At the moment, because countries connect to each other in lots of different ways, there is no one off switch, there is no central place where you can turn it off. "In order to be able to turn the whole thing off or really block, suppress one particular idea then the countries and governments would have to get together and agree and coordinate and turn it from a decentralised system to being a centralised system. "And if that does happen it is really important that everybody fights against that sort of direction.""

Sounds like Sir Tim may be against the ITU takeover of the internet via the WCIT!

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Some strange stuff on the internet

Sometimes you just come across some strange stuff on the internet--

The strange case of the inte1sat domain name - Security Labs: "Using the registration information, we found a paper authored by Command Five that indicates that the contact has been registering domains involved in APT and corporate cyber espionage attacks. The entire document is available here: http://www.commandfive.com/papers/C5_APT_SKHack.pdf  We cannot confirm that there is a problem in the Google OCR PDF caching mechanism that results in instances of "inte1sat.com" showing up in search results, particularly those of papers hosted by the FCC. We can conjecture that if there is a flaw, it is being exploited via a typo squatting technique to deliver an exploit. Continuing our search, we discovered additional strong evidence. Going back to the beginning of the analysis, it turns out that the IP address 174.139.91.163, where "inte1sat.com"  is hosted, also hosts many other domains. Four especially attracted our interest. Specifically: . . . "


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