this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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As if anybody here needs a reason to be wary of what you do online, this essay shares how a foreign adversary used back doors that were intentionally put in place to spy on Americans and how the rest of the world probably has the same back doors.

I especially appreciate the phrase "nerd harder" and the quote, "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".

How can IT folk help politicans to understand?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

China's so bad they'll sneakily do what your own government does right in front of your face 😱 /s

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

insists on engineering a security exploit into the software

exploit gets exploited

surprisedpikachu.jpg

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

What's the outrage? Those backdoors were made for governmental use. The only thing is that it was not made for foreign government use, but hey, that is just due to the incompetence of those who designed the backdoor...

So the blunders of US agencies did harm to millions of people. Lawsuits, anyone?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Eh?

You can’t build an unpickable back door into a computer system.

You can’t break encryption for only the good guys.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Encryption only works when there is one decryption key. If there are two different keys then it isn’t encrypted bad actors will find a way in

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

whenever you encrypt something, encrypt with both the intended public key and the fbi's public key. and send the one encrypted with the fbi's key to the fbi.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

That is 100% correct. Nonetheless, the US agencies assumed that they were smarter than basically all of the security community and common sense.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

except the intentions werent any good either.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No outrage, just a reminder to encrypt, VPN or whatever to protect yourself from surveillance.

I don't like your phrase, "incompetence of those who designed the backdoor". I was not in the room, but in my mind, the execs said "build a back door for the govn't" and the engineers said "you can't do that JUST for one party" then the execs said "do it anyways or get fired, we're getting fistfulls of cash to do it" and the engineers said "I enjoy feeding my family, it's your company anyways" and did it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

IIRC the backdoor design and keys came from the agencies, not the companies.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

OTHER PEOPLE CAN USE DOORS???

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It turns out surveillance capitalism was the fox in the hen house all along. Who woulda thunk?

NOTE: I consider the secret police (aka "intelligence" agencies) and the revolving door between their multi-billion dollar contractors a core tenet of, and intrinsic to, surveillance capitalism... because why split hairs when they're all coordinating to attack our civil liberties?