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NSA & GCHQ Attempted to Subvert Popular Security Software Tools

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 24 2015, @09:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the so-that's-why-the-antivirus-programs-run-so-slowly dept.

zocalo writes:

The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to a story at Glen Greenwald's Intercept. The document, a GCHQ warrant renewal request written in 2008 and provided under Section 5 of the U.K.'s 1994 Intelligence Services Act, must be renewed by a government minister every six months and seeks authorization for GCHQ activities that "involve modifying commercially available software to enable interception, decryption and other related tasks, or 'reverse engineering' software."

Of note is that while Kaspersky Labs is particularly singled out, Bitdefender, ESET, Avast, AVG, and F-Secure are also mentioned as specific targets, while the US/UK based McAfee, Symantec and Sophos are all notable by their absence raising questions over whether they have might colluded with the NSA and GCHQ, or whether the other vendors mentioned might have colluded with their own national security services. Should that be the case then the debate over the merits of whether or not compromising encryption tools is a good idea given the potential for the backdoor to be found and exploited by foreign governments and criminals perhaps ought to apply to more general security software as well.

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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:09PM

    by zocalo (302) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:09PM (#200506)
    While I agree with the sentiment (hence the "somewhat necessary"), unfortunately we don't live in that utopia (not even the Swiss [admin.ch]). Here in the real world, where just about every other nation is playing the same stupid and immoral games against everyone else, it's viewed as something of a necessary evil - along with armed forces and various other entities. Given that someone going into that line of work certainly ought to have an idea of what they might be asked to do, then it stands to reason that they would have rationalised their work away from "immoral" and into "necessary evil", "protecting my nation", "fighting terrorists", or whatever other justification they use so expecting them to say "no" is unlikely at best. Not even Edward Snowden had a problem with the espionage, per se, so much as the fact that the NSA had gone so far above and beyond its officially sanctioned, and thus quite legal, scope and the extent of the wholesale spying on US citizens - much of which was (and still is) absolutely illegal.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:12PM

    by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:12PM (#200533)

    While I agree with the sentiment (hence the "somewhat necessary"), unfortunately we don't live in that utopia (not even the Swiss).

    Not accepting a job where you're required to do evil things does not mean you live in a utopia. If so many countries are committing these heinous acts, then all that means is they must all be stopped.

    it's viewed as something of a necessary evil

    Then they're unprincipled scumbags.

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:15PM

      by zocalo (302) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:15PM (#200563)

      Not accepting a job where you're required to do evil things does not mean you live in a utopia.

      True, but that's not the utopia I'm talking referring to.

      If so many countries are committing these heinous acts, then all that means is they must all be stopped.

      However, achieving that goal, laudable as it might be, *is* the utopia I'm referring to. There are only two ways I can see that happening - actually achieving world peace or the extinction of the human race, and my money would be on the latter.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

      • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:02AM

        by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:02AM (#200675)

        A world without mass surveillance or out-of-control spying isn't a utopia, either; it would still have numerous other issues.

        We'll likely never get rid of all corruption, but we can most likely reduce the amount of corruption to a great extent.