[117643] in Cypherpunks
Re: NSA key in Windows
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Zombie Cow)
Tue Sep 7 20:42:12 1999
Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 03:25:00 +0300 (EEST)
From: Zombie Cow <waste@zor.hut.fi>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9909080321530.30396-100000@zor.hut.fi>
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Reply-To: Zombie Cow <waste@zor.hut.fi>
Plausible deniability is always a requirement for any backdoor.
See some security reports on buffer overflows for a better example of
possible ex-backdoors. You can probably bribe a programmer to leave a
bug in the code for a few thousand dollars.
Suppose that you have to decide how to spend $30+ billion dollars
entirely on spying on behalf of the US government. What would you do
with the money? How and where would you invest it?
Spending a few thousand dollars to get a few "backdoors" in
various software programs would seem like a very good investment
to me. The same goes for a lot of various hardware systems.
$30+ billion dollars also buys you a lot of hidden cameras in
copy-machines, etc.
Considering the amount the US spends on spying alone, the whole
electronic infrastructure in EU should be in doubt. There are serious
economical consequences this spying has and some places need really
badly to wake up to the situation.
The fact that this particular Windows key may or may not be a "back
door" is irrelevant. Still, this is a very good way to bring some
highly due attention to the extremely serious issue.
Why do people still believe that no-one would do such things
and refuse to believe anything else? NSA brainwashing at work?
http://caq.com/cryptogate
http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/ic2kreport.htm
http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/body/0,1634,89923-142316-981920-0,00.html
The facts and history should speak for themselves. Just try to make a
budget and economically invest $30+ billion per year into spying and
see just how insanely much you can buy. The US defence budget which is
roughly the same size, is a good comparison into what kinds of systems
and programs that kind of money can buy and finance, and it is
available online. Just imagine a comparable spy-budget and program
variety.
http://www.fas.org/man/docs/fy99/topics.htm
http://www.fas.org/man/docs/index.html
