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NSA: Here’s $300,000, People. Go Build Us a Safer Internet of Things

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-cares-what-my-fridge-thinks dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

The NSA (National Security Agency) is funding development of an architecture for a "safer" Internet of Things (IoT), in the hope of incorporating better security at a product's design phase.

The controversial US intelligence agency is bestowing a $299,000, one-year grant to the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) for a project that aims to build a lightweight virtualisation architecture which will make it easier to build security into IoT systems before they leave the factory.

There are some interesting reactions to the announcement on the Sophos Naked Security blog.

Why would the NSA invest in a project that would make it harder for them to spy on you?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:01PM (#225347)

    To expand on this:

    It is the "National Security Agency" NOT "National Spy Agency".

    They may have lost their way trying to chase after terrorists or something.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:33PM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:33PM (#225361)
    Yes, they are, which is a comment I've made before as well. The quandary they, and similar agencies, seem to be having is that the two roles - securing the nation against hostile powers and gathering intelligence on those hostile powers - often conflict, and when they do they need to choose one or the other - e.g. securing software vs. backdooring it. So far, pretty much without exception, all the evidence (Snowden, et all) seems to be that they default to the latter, and it's going to take a major effort to change that mindset after so long - and it didn't start with 9/11 either - the Clipper chip was 1993, and was probably being knocked around as a concept some time before that. Short of a major incident being proven to have utilised either an exploit they sat on or deliberately placed though, that's a bull I doubt any politician is going to be willing to grasp by the horns.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

  • (Score: 5, Touché) by curunir_wolf on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:03PM

    by curunir_wolf (4772) on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:03PM (#225364)
    Ummm... So: $299 K for reasearch, $10.8 Billion for spying. Okay, got it. Spying is not the "only" thing they do.
    --
    I am a crackpot

  • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Thursday August 20 2015, @05:53PM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Thursday August 20 2015, @05:53PM (#225511) Homepage

    Best to not get caught up in the semantics of naming. How many recent PACs have had names like "committee for the preservation of liberty and freedom" when in reality all they're doing is funneling money to special-interest congressmen for business interests?

    These days, names mean little. They may be for security, but they've interpreted - and been encouraged to interpret - it as a mandate to spy on everyone's every last doing. What they're called and what they do are two different beasts.

    I'd be suspect about taking money from them too. Like taking money from the devil or something. Yes, we all want our internet-enabled refrigerators secure, but the NSA has given us very real reasons to believe they'll be looking for zero-days that turn our refrigerators into recording devices or something else consumer-unfriendly.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:10PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:10PM (#225531) Journal

      They aren't monolithic. It's not totally unreasonable that some division within the NSA is actually funding real security. The problem is, you can never be sure that it's not the spys pretending to be good guys, and they've so manipulated the laws (see NSL) that to count on them being helpful is folly.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.

      • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Friday August 21 2015, @05:14AM

        by zafiro17 (234) on Friday August 21 2015, @05:14AM (#225714) Homepage

        You get ten points for having
        a sig. that basically coMplements your post,

        --
        Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey