Security → Is there Another NSA Leaker

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This morning a partial analysis of the NSA’s XKEYSCORE code was published in Germany. Jacob Applebaum, an evangelist for the The Onion Project (TOR), was one of the authors.

The report details specific rules written for one of the NSA’s data collection tools, XKEYSCORE, which collects the IP addresses of TOR bridges, and users of the TOR network.

TOR is an anonymizing service used by many human rights activists and dissidents around the world to access the Internet and escape persecution from their governments, like China. It is also reportedly highly targeted by the NSA.

One of the amazing offshoots of today’s story is that first Cory Doctorow speculated that the revealed source code came from a second leaker, not Snowden [...]

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»www.securitycurrent.com/ ··· a-leaker

Bruce Schneier apparently agrees:

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And, since Cory said it, I do not believe that this came from the Snowden documents. I also don't believe the TAO catalog came from the Snowden documents. I think there's a second leaker out there.

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NSA Targets Privacy Conscious for Surveillance

Of course there's another leaker. As a matter of fact, there's more than just one. How many? No one knows; the one thing they've learned is to not knowingly communicate with each other, either before or after. Why do you think the NSA was so insistent that Snowden tell them what he'd taken? They don't know if some of the stuff showing up came from Snowden or someone else -- and he's not going to help them out on that one.

Oops, wait a minute. . . . Maybe there's only Snowden. Maybe he never actually did an inventory of what he took, so (even today) he couldn't tell the NSA (or even you) whether a certain document is from his trove or someone else's. Maybe he just randomly distributed the thousands of documents he got to certain destinations through an anonymizer so that even the people who received it really don't know if it came from Snowden . . . or maybe someone else. Maybe some of it is bogus. Who knows? Not even The Shadow.

Wait. Hold on another sec! . . . Maybe there isn't any Snowden? Didja ever think of that? Maybe the real Snowden fell into a sewer after getting off the plane in Hong Kong. Maybe the guy in Moscow that we all think is Snowden is a deep sleeper. I mean, has anyone gotten a verified DNA sample from that guy and confirmed it? Maybe all these leaks are just an extremely sophisticated plant with just enough truth to the revelations to get a bit of confirmation from others who know something about what the NSA actually does (or people who think they do).

Confused? Don't be. The best-selling novel will be out next year.

Come to think of it, I've never seen you and Snowden in the same photograph ...

That's because I wasn't there.

Maybe you're the John Morris, son of John Morris - the NSA guy?

How is John? Haven't heard from him in ages.

Thanks for this nwrickert Two leakers in lieu of one would give us so much more to read about.

The Snowden revelations are getting somewhat long in the tooth although I will still be keeping an eye out.

You are perhaps thinking of Robert Jr, son of Robert Morris who was chief scientist of the NSA's National Computer Security Center. Robert Jr was perhaps more famous as the author of the Morris worm. Robert Sr died in 2011 and Robert Jr is a tenured prof at MIT. jvmorris is the Morris that the other Morris don't talk about

Blake

Does William Binney count?
»www.dw.de/nsa-totalitari ··· 17757008

-nony

That's close enough for FBI SurveillanceX [actual SSID]

@jvmorris
You have been moved up on the list.

-nony

And I kid all of our operatives who work out of NYC (and DC) and keep us safe(r)

But to everyone else - this is not how you win the hearts and minds of the American people.

-nony

Happy Independence Day! - the Brits can eat their hearts out.

And I quote (from memory)

"that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it" (I thank my 4th grade teacher)

And I am taking "government" in its broadest sense to include government "agencies".

So if you work for an agency gone rogue - beware:

You are outnumbered by your retirees, who would like nothing better than to set you straight.

-nony

And there's always the handy Wikipedia entry on XKeyscore

The plot thickens.

Too much corn. (Starch.)

3-5 that we know about ... and very powerful agency's. It seems to be like cancer spreading.

Perhaps we should consolidate them under DHS?

Yea guys, clean up your act or else!

-nony

See also: Reading the XKeyScore-rules source
»blog.erratasec.com/2014/ ··· rce.html

That's Robert Morris, and he died a few years ago. His son Robert Tappan Morris now is a tenured prof at MIT.

But which Robert Morris ?

Actually they know EXACTLY what Snowden took. Ever heard of the windows feature called "auditing"? It's used on all of these government servers and keeps complete records of who accesses what files, when they're accessed, and more.

Auditing is also used on their Microsoft exchange servers at the IRS but for some reason those records pertaining to Lois Lerner's e-mail account have also mysteriously disappeared. Anyone who thinks there isn't a HUGE coverup at the IRS needs their head examined.

I see the satirical nature of that post of mine went right over your head.

Still, I'm rather curious about one thing here: Just what version of Windows do you figure NSA is running on its mainframes and supercomputers on which all these relational database and document management systems providing the repositories for all the stuff that Snowden walked off with?

Actually one of the most interesting stories about this entire debacle remains to be written. The sheer, demonstrated incompetence of the NSA to maintain operational security on such sensitive information. I saw industrial systems over twenty years ago that were better secured than what the NSA was apparently running in Hawaii. Indeed, it rather looks like someone simply disabled all the safeguards, including the most basic.

As recently as a month ago, NSA was assuring us that none of the documents Snowden had were based on the actual content of intercepts. Well, thanks to the Washington Post, we now know that assurance was also BS. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to have problems recalling just what NSA has told us that has really turned out to be true.

With the correct amount of masquerading and finagling of big media and other information outlets almost anything can "become" true.

The NSA reminds me of a high powered vacuum that constantly blows dust remnants out of its filters.

You may want to view Part9 of the Binney interview, and reconsider...
»William Binney on the NSA released June-July 2014
"Perhaps THE most incredible of Mr. Binney's revelations is that NSA has NO IDEA what Snowden took. Mr. Binney explains why."

The Unaudited Tech Analyst Access to US Person Data
»www.emptywheel.net/2014/ ··· on-data/

-nony