SPIES
The National Security Agency, located in Fort Meade Maryland, is the largest spy organization in the world. It's about halfway between Washington and Baltimore. With its 38,000 employees, it is more than twice the size of the CIA, and at least twice as secretive. This NSA complex is surrounded by a ten-foot Cyclone fence crowned with multiple rows of barbed wire. Along the fence are warnings telling you not to take pictures or make sketches of the building. Inside this fence is another, consisting of five thin strands of high-voltage electrified wire attached to wooden posts. After that is ANOTHER Cyclone fence reinforcing the others. This last fence is occasionally patrolled by armed guards with dogs.
Inside they monitor every electronic communication in America, including your phone calls. The governments eavesdropping network is called ECHELON. To avoid the fact that it is illegal for the U.S. government to spy on Americans, all the information is gathered in England. Then it is relayed by satellite to the national security agency's headquaters in Fort Meade. This system is designed to intercept virtually all email and fax traffic in the world and subject it to automated analysis, despite the laws in many nations (including this one) barring such activity. The laws were circumvented by a mutual pact among five nations. It's illegal for the United States to spy on it's citizens. Likewise the same for Great Britain. But under the terms of the UK-USA agreement, Britain spies on Americans and America spies on British citizens and the two groups trade data. Technically, it may be legal, but the intent to evade the spirit of the laws protecting the citizens of those two nations is clear.
ECHELON has been in development since 1947, the result of the UK-USA treaty signed by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The purpose of the UK-USA agreement was to create a single vast global intelligence organization sharing common goals and a common agenda, spying on the world and sharing the data. The uniformity of operation is such that NSA operatives from Fort Meade could work from Menwith Hill to intercept local communications without either nation having to formally approve or disclose the interception.
They have supercomputers that have what they call dictionaries. This is a long list of what they call red flag phrases. If one of your conversations contains one of these red flag phrases, your communication will be electronically marked. It then goes directly to the N.S.A's computers.
There they have anylists who listen to your phone conversation, or if you have a computer, read your fax or E mail. It is against the law for the CIA or the NSA to spy on American citizens. Obviously the law means very little to these people. These high tech communication monitoring systems, combined with video camera surveiliance, and bio metric facial identification, allow for widespread surveiliance of the population without the need for warrants or formal investigations.
What the KGB and east German security police could only dream about a few years ago, is now a reality here in America. With facial recognition tehnology, if you pass in front of any video camera linked up to this system, they can identify you immediately. If you look around the town or city where you live, You will see cameras in various places. Some are hidden. They will tell you it's for traffic monitoring. But they also use it for crowd surveiliance.
Back in 1989 the Chinese used it in Tianemen square. They took the photograph of every protester with surveiliance camera's, and tracked them down. Many of them were killed. The rest were imprisioned. All they have to do is run the picture through the supercomputer with the stored information, and instantly identify you through the digital recognition system. A national I.D. card is now mandatory. Your drivers license now has a digitalized photograph, and encoded information on a magnetic strip.
Every nation around the world that has enacted these national I.D. cards, without failure, has moved closer to despotism and tyranny. It is also moving people closer toward a cashless society, and a numbering system. A national I.D. card is only the begining of what they have planned to intrude into your privacy. With global positioning satellites, brain scanners, cameras so small they can float on air among other toys, they have an amazing array of methods to spy on you, especially if you are known to have unfriendly attitudes toward their agenda.
The complete transfer of power from local and state governments, to the Federal government, is already in preperation. There is also a plan in the works where the Federal government will takeover private utilities. The forces used to implent this plan will be government trained terrorists. SWAT teams from your local police department, wearing gestapo like black uniforms, will be among these forces. Resistors will be arrested. There are already concentration type camps at the ready, all across America, for just such an event.
Behind all of this there is a shadow government. This shadow government has a rigid control over the major media in this country. If anything at all ever comes out about their illegal activities and lies, it's only to terrify people into submission, or to divert the public's attention from something else they're involved in which is even more illegal or unconstitutional. Using biometric technology, they can, with a sensor, scan a persons physical characteristics, which are unique to them. Then this information is digitized, encripted, and filed away in a data base. This information can then be used in the future, much like a bar code.
The intelligence community works with big business and the major universities to find better ways to spy on you. The U.S. Secret Service paid a private company, called Image Data, 1.5 million dollars to keep a photographic image data base of all Americans on file. The phone monitoring system the NSA employs anylizes every conversation where such words as White House, Jesus, nuclear, charcoal and sulpher are used. Thre are so many words they consider "red flag phrases", that you can be sure that in a recent phone conversation, you used some "red flag" words. That means that someone at the NSA was listening to and anylizing your phone conversation. A hacker once got into the NSA computer system, and in order to crash it, added the words "the" and "is" to their list of red flag phrases. It worked. It took about 1 second to bring down the entire system. To prevent this from happening again, the government opened up a new agency called the National Infrastructure Protection Center.
That should help you sleep better at night.
Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
How NSA access was built into Windows
Duncan Campbell 04.09.1999
Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA.
A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.
The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.
Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:\Windows\system directory of your computer.
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ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.
Dr Nicko van Someren reported at last year's Crypto 98 conference that he had disassembled the ADVADPI driver. He found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with US export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.
A second key
Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY".
Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.
A third key?!
But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.
Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.
Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA's burgeoning corps of "information warriors".
According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system "is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system". The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.
"For non-American IT managers relying on Windows NT to operate highly secure data centres, this find is worrying", he added. "The US government is currently making it as difficult as possible for "strong" crypto to be used outside of the US. That they have also installed a cryptographic back-door in the world's most abundant operating system should send a strong message to foreign IT managers".
"How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a 'back door' for NSA - making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?" he asked.
Can the loophole be turned round against the snoopers?
Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.
Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's website.
According to one leading US cryptographer, the IT world should be thankful that the subversion of Windows by NSA has come to light before the arrival of CPUs that handles encrypted instruction sets. These would make the type of discoveries made this month impossible. "Had the next-generation CPU's with encrypted instruction sets already been deployed, we would have never found out about NSAKEY."
Artikel-URL: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html
Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA.
A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.
The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.
Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:\Windows\system directory of your computer.
Anzeige
ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.
Dr Nicko van Someren reported at last year's Crypto 98 conference that he had disassembled the ADVADPI driver. He found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with US export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.
A second key
Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY".
Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.
A third key?!
But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.
Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.
Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA's burgeoning corps of "information warriors".
According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system "is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system". The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.
"For non-American IT managers relying on Windows NT to operate highly secure data centres, this find is worrying", he added. "The US government is currently making it as difficult as possible for "strong" crypto to be used outside of the US. That they have also installed a cryptographic back-door in the world's most abundant operating system should send a strong message to foreign IT managers".
"How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a 'back door' for NSA - making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?" he asked.
Can the loophole be turned round against the snoopers?
Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.
Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's website.
According to one leading US cryptographer, the IT world should be thankful that the subversion of Windows by NSA has come to light before the arrival of CPUs that handles encrypted instruction sets. These would make the type of discoveries made this month impossible. "Had the next-generation CPU's with encrypted instruction sets already been deployed, we would have never found out about NSAKEY."
Artikel-URL: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/5/5263/1.html
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