99 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
5.6 KiB
Plaintext
==Phrack Inc.==
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Volume 0x0f, Issue 0x45, Phile #0x03 of 0x10
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|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
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|=------------------------=[ Phrack World News ]=------------------------=|
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|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
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|=-----------------------=[ by the Phrack staff ]=-----------------------=|
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|=-------------------------=[ staff@phrack.org ]=------------------------=|
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|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
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Wow, 4 years have passed! One of the possible positive outcomes of slow-
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paced releases of Phrack is that Phrack World News gives us the opportunity
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to look back on a few years worth of happenings and ponder about the bigger
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picture for a moment. First of all: Snowden. It feels like ages ago now,
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but, for anyone living under a rock, in 2013 Edward Snowden [1] leveraged
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his position working at the United States National Security Agency to copy
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and later leak [2] classified documents on NSA's global surveillance
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operations. If the very previous issue of PWN [3] prophetically warned
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about the massification of surveillance as a threat to our civil
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liberties, the Snowden leaks only proved what hackers and conspiracy
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theorists had believed and proclaimed for a long time: the US government
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unlawfully spies on its own citizens as well as everyone else's.
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While it is probably futile to believe that the social and political
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reactions to the Snowden leaks have had any meaningful impact on the NSA's
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operations, the disclosed information is an invaluable resource to validate
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that governments will go a long way to collect intelligence as broadly and
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deeply as they can. The leaks have shown that the tactics employed by NSA
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ranged from the widespread tapping of phone (e.g. voice, SMS) and network
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traffic to more punctilious methods such as the intercept and tampering of
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export computer and network equipment to insert spying implants. This does
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not mean, of course, that we have global surveillance "figured out". In
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fact, quite to the contrary, it should be expected that many of these
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techniques have been revamped by now, and that many more are to follow, as
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a natural step in the continuous endeavor for stealthiness. As such, any
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effort, technical or otherwise, to safeguard your privacy is more valid
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than ever.
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But indeed, it seems that some of the efforts on designing and implementing
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better crypto systems paid off and governments are starting to have their
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monitoring and investigative capabilities limited by evolving security. One
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indication of that is the growing insistence of various nations on the mind
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-boggling hopelessly insane push for crypto backdoors [4]. The sad and
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unfortunate wave of terrorism the world has been dealing with is repeatedly
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and shamelessly used to support the lobbying for less information security.
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Another (at the moment) ongoing instance of this is the significant dispute
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between the FBI and Apple [5], which refuses to provide the FBI with a way
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to bypass the lock screen of a terrorist's (and everyone else's) iPhone.
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And sure enough the controversies involving governments and information
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security do not stop there. In the past few years we have seen some nations
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being more frank about their offensive capabilities [6] or sometimes
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industry-sourced intelligence [7] combined with publicity on more impactful
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attacks [8] helped demonstrate that hacking is increasingly a bigger deal
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for nation-states. All of this action is (or has been posed as) a driving
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force behind moves such as adding "cyber weapons" to the terms of the
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Wassenaar agreement [9], an initiative that, if not carefully formulated,
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will turn out to be not only utterly ineffective but also extremely harmful
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for the practice of security research and, in consequence, to the
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progressive development of information security in general. Plus, other
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recent breaches, such as Gamma [10] and Hacking Team [11], tell us that
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even government-affiliated organizations are freely operating without
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respecting UN embargoes and international regulations anyway - ironically,
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it was hackers and the security community that exposed them, and not law
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enforcement. So, who is the law working for?
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Lastly, and with a heart heavier than any of the topics above could ever
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cause us, Phrack would like to say goodbye to a few illustrious members of
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our community that have sadly passed away. Since it's been 4 years we
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are not going to attempt to list out every instance, however we can
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easily say that as a community we have lost some incredibly talented,
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charismatic and fantastic people, and we feel the loss greatly.
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Live free,
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- The Phrack Staff
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[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
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[2] - http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-leaks-timeline-2014-6
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[3] - http://phrack.org/issues/68/3.html
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[4] - http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/18/
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us-europe-reignite-debate-back-door-encryption-paris-attacks
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[5] - http://www.wired.com/2016/02/apple-brief-fbi-response-iphone/
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[6] - http://www.wired.com/2016/01/
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nsa-hacker-chief-explains-how-to-keep-him-out-of-your-system/
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[7] - http://www.wired.com/2013/02/chinese-army-linked-to-hacks/
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[8] - http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/
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why-the-biggest-government-hack-ever-got-past-opm-dhs-and-nsa/
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[9] - http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/05/some-notes-about-wassenaar.html
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[10] - http://www.zdnet.com/article/
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top-govt-spyware-company-hacked-gammas-finfisher-leaked/
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[11] - http://www.wired.com/2015/07/
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hacking-team-breach-shows-global-spying-firm-run-amok/
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|=[ EOF ]=---------------------------------------------------------------=|
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