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How the Tech Behind Bitcoin Could Stop the Next Snowden

posted by janrinok on Thursday June 04 2015, @11:53PM   

AnonTechie writes:

THE NATIONAL SECURITY Agency knows Edward Snowden disclosed many of its innermost secrets when he revealed how aggressive its surveillance tactics are. What it doesn't know is just how much information the whistle-blower took with him when he left.

For all of its ability to track our telecommunications, the NSA seemingly has little clue exactly what documents, or even how many documents, Snowden gave to the media. Like most large organizations, the NSA had tools in place to track who accessed what data and when. But Snowden, a system administrator, apparently was able to cover his tracks by deleting or modifying the log files that tracked that access.

An Estonian company called Guardtime says it has a solution to that: using the same ideas that underpin the digital currency Bitcoin, the company says it can ensure no one can alter digital files, not even an organization's most senior executives or IT managers. The idea is to stop the next Snowden in his tracks by making it impossible to tamper with data, such as the NSA log files, in secret.

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Original Submission

• 51% attack (Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Friday June 05 2015, @12:59AM

  by stormwyrm (717) on Friday June 05 2015, @12:59AM (#192322) Journal

  If a malicious entity takes control of at least 51% [learncryptography.com] of the computing power of the Bitcoin network they could prevent transactions of their choosing from going through, and reverse transactions that they make. I suppose the analogue of this attack on Black Lantern would have the effect of allowing the attacker to cause a valid transaction recording an alteration in, say, a document access log to fail, an otherwise valid log entry recording that a sensitive document been accessed by, say, Edward Snowden, as being rejected. So then the log doesn't think that Snowden accessed the document even though he had. What incentive do the various people in the organisation running this auditing system have for running it properly? Bitcoin gives its independent miners an incentive by paying them bitcoins, but if someone in a high enough position in the organisation decides that certain embarrassing records documenting their malfeasance should not be made, then well, what's to stop them from taking control of the network in the same way?

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  Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.

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