NSA Cracked Into Encrypted UN Video Conferences 427
McGruber writes "According to documents seen by Germany's Der Spiegel, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) successfully cracked the encryption code protecting the United Nations' internal videoconferencing system. NSA first breached the UN system in the summer of 2012 and, within three weeks of initially gaining access to the UN system, the NSA had increased the number of such decrypted communications from 12 to 458. On one occasion, according to the report, while the American NSA were attempting to break into UN communications, they discovered the Chinese were attempting to crack the encryption code as well."
The dilema ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the NSA can do it, so can other people. So should the NSA reveal what they can do so the UN can switch to more secure communications. Or should the NSA have continued to monitor with the knowledge that the Chinese, Russians and probably a few others were also listening in?
Diplomatic implications (Score:5, Interesting)
If I was the state department I would be furious about this.
Short of a direct attack on a diplomat I don't think there is a worse breach of international custom and law.
Snooping on citizens is bad enough, but this is playing with fire.
Leaked? (Score:5, Interesting)
So where did Der Spiegel get these documents? On Friday, Edward Snowden accused the US government of intentionally leaking documents to The Independent that were potentially damaging, in an effort to discredit the responsible reporting being done by The Guardian and the Washington Post. He said he had never worked with nor even spoken to anyone at The Independent. Is the same thing happening here?
Another source/translation of Der Speigel? (Score:5, Interesting)
RT is infamous for being virulently anti-American; it's a Russian news organization with an agenda that is fairly obvious at times. Now, that said, Der Spiegel is a totally valid news organization...so can someone provide something directly from that, instead of interpretation by people with their own agenda regarding this?
Ah, never mind: here you go: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/25/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSBRE97O08120130825 [reuters.com]
Re:Diplomatic implications (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a cruel reality. Instead of using advanced high tech and knowledge to create impartial and protected communication networks for the UN the member countries try to take the systems down for their own use.
Hold the Phone Here (Score:2, Interesting)
Was the encryption cracked, or was it just bypassed?
Very worrisome if it's the former.
I can't tell if they just disabled encryption on one of the end points.
Re:The dilema ... (Score:2, Interesting)
We have always been at war with Eurasia.
Re:The dilema ... (Score:3, Interesting)
not going to happen unless the isa kicks the UN out(which we should do).
the UN is a bunch of useless cry babies. they don't do anything unless forced to and that takes a lot. Look at Un's response to Syria. Chemical weapons being used lets issue a statement.
The USA should just close 90% of the out of country bases, and go back to a mostly isolation stance. let the world fuck themselves over for the next 20 years until the world wants to apologize for being limp dick idiots. Let Iran have Nuclear weapons. Israel won't be the first target of Iranian nukes but either pakistan or Saudi Arabia will be. Let North Korea invade South Korea, and then blame Beijing for not controlling their pets. Let Russia stomp all over eastern Europe again. Maybe next time they won't cry about the USA being Bullies.
Tariff all imports 200% and force American industry to rebuild itself. Force the issue of just in time manufacturing(a combination of CNC machines, 3D printing, and robotics) to build generic fabrication facilities.
20 years of smaller Military(but let development continue) will put the USA in a spot so when we are forced to once again save the idiots from themselves we will have the tech and weapons in place.
Of course that is no longer really an option. At least not until we solve the Power (oil dependacy) and Fabrication issues(the just in time building I mentioned).
Re:LOL, a German bragging about social protests (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh give it up. How about early European settlers wiping out 12 million indigenous Americans by smallpox and influenza within a decade of landing on shore? Yes, we should remember the Holocaust during WWII. And Rwanda. And Nanking. And godknowswhatelse. Nobody's ancestors have much of a moral high ground.
Move along.
Re:The dilema ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: The dilema ... (Score:0, Interesting)
Thank you peragrin!
It's about time that someone here sees it like it is.
The world loves the USA when we are saving or protecting their asses, but they have a fucking short memory problem.
I agree with everything you said. Lets leave these fucking asshole (and ungrateful) Europeans to the Russians. How do you think the EU will be doing when all of Eastern Europe is under Russia again? Fuck them. As if the Germans don't do any spying of their own.
Leave Asia to the Chinese. Fuck em all.
Everyone hates the US so much, lets leave them on their own. See how much we are missed.
The funny thing is that prior to Snowden, it seemed like 3 or 4x a week there was something in the news about Chinese hacking and spying. Fuck they stole all of our IP and turned it into cheap shit. They can't even innovate. But everyone's forgotten about Chinese and Russian hacking and spying.
I agree peragrin - fuck them all - pull the US back, rebuild our industry, and put nation earplugs in for when the inevitable cries for US help come.
Re:This is their job (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Yo Dawg we heard the chinese (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. So it's OK the USA does it but not the Chinese?
Actually, I suspect at least half the break-ins blamed on the Chinese are actually the NSA doing it, then planting a trail designed to point to the Chinese. Not that I doubt the Chinese are doing hacking, just that because the do attempt to penetrate important sites, the NSA can use that as cover.
Hold up. (Score:4, Interesting)
No - the presence of the UN on US soil messes this (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: The dilema ... (Score:4, Interesting)
>Fuck they stole all of our IP and turned it into cheap shit.
Not hardly. We gave it to them just as fast as we could, since they could make the physical products for 50% less than anyone else, allowing executives to simultaneously undercut our competitors and pocket fat profit margins. Then one day we suddenly woke up from this beautiful dream and realized we had exported virtually all of our manufacturing industry, and the Chinese were quite happy to use the factories they built for us to make the same exact things without our company logo on them, undercut us right back, and pocket the profit themselves.
The rest maybe you can pin on the Chinese, but that one was all us. What exactly did we think would be the result of exporting our manufacturing to a country which never made any more than token gestures towards patent protection?
Re:The dilema ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand insightful rating of the above post.
Just another long running conspiracy theory, a minority of Americans believe the UN is run by totalitarians that are planning to destroy the US and take over the world. Then there's the other minority that believe only the US and her allies are worthy of a vote in the general assembly. Basically these people are isolationists, it's the same ideology that saw the US sit on it's hands at the start of WW2 in Europe, they will point at (and even invent) scandals to show that the UN are "bad people" and ignore everything else. Also it's cool to be a cynic these days, don't find out what it's about just dismiss any and all political cooperation out of hand.
Re: Yo Dawg we heard the chinese (Score:2, Interesting)
And when the King wanted to stop and treat the natives with equality, the American colonists revolted as they wanted the land. With many of the founding fathers being land speculators they were well motivated to convince the common person that the revolution was over taxes (taxes that were used to defend the colonists against the natives who did not like being pushed out of their land) and when they realized they were a minority they went on a terror campaign against there neighbours.
Re: Yo Dawg we heard the chinese (Score:4, Interesting)
(I'm not commenting on the actions of the US with this, as a side note.)
A crime is a crime is a crime! Or are you saying there are good crimes and bad crimes?
Yes and no. As a staring point: the vast majority of people recognize that there are different degrees of crime, usually based on the amount of harm done -- for example, it's worse for soldiers to kill & rape civilians than it is to take some of their belongings. Both actions are bad and qualify as crimes most of the time, but they're not "a crime is a crime" by any measure.
People that have reached the later stages of moral/ethical development also recognize that sometimes a "crime" means violating a law that would insist upon the person doing or allowing something harmful. In these cases, the "crimes" are a matter of violating laws that either demand we do something objectively bad (like turning in a sick little old lady for eating marijuana brownies to treat nausea), or refrain from doing something that will prevent a truly bad outcome (the Heinz dilemma [wikipedia.org], of whether a man should steal outrageously overpriced drugs to save his sick wife's life, is a classic example).
In addition to that, sometimes laws defining crimes are arbitrary and shift to suit the ruling force in that place at that moment. Some places make it a horrible crime to not be heterosexual, others outlaw whistleblowers identifying corruption in government, or for an adult of sound mind to be in a consensual relationship with someone of a different skin color... If "a crime is a crime is a crime" were true, then being gay, murdering people, and stealing kids' lunch money would all be equivalent, which obviously isn't very logical!