Full Disclosure mailing list archives
RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern?
From: James.Cupps () sappi com
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2004 09:59:03 -0400
It isn't nearly as difficult as you might think. A number of companies already make sniffing logging tools capable of the volumes you mention. They are used mainly in large financial traffic firms to ensure their data traffic is recoverable and to monitor for abuse. They are able to store terabytes of data. Of course terabytes isn't enough is it? So you only look for specific phrases and content matter. You use fuzzy logic to grade on a scale of interest and discard what you don't want (or that doesn't seem important enough to take up other space). You can keep a very large amount of related data that way. You use some logical way of determining what to look for, certain not so common phrases, specific equations, Specific chemical or equipment lists, specific names. I'd probably also look for key exchanges and open line key transmissions and storages. You come up with these filters based on prior knowledge and intelligence. You also know that certain traffic paths are likely to hit pay dirt. You don't have just one terabyte sized database you have many that the agents report back to. You have a team monitor each one. Databases and teams each report into an associated Hierarchy. The Db's feed up information and the teams coordinate with the other teams with guidance from leaders with access from other information sources. The NSA has over 3 Bill USD/Year in open book funding. So they are able to afford hundreds of teams. The FBI has more as does the CIA so pick your big brother. So it is defiantly possible. The real question though is why should we care. In the sense that we as individuals still have some privacy the statements about huge volumes still applies. The people who would be running these filters don't know who they are watching and they don't care. All they want to find are the people trying to make Anthrax or build a bomb. (If they are watching, I bet this mail meets their filters. I hope they get a kick out of it) It is very much a data coordination and mining job. Things that are easy to do and thousands of companies with less motivation are already good at data mining. Probably fairly boring most of the time with moments when they actually find something making it worthwhile. Also there are a lot of other things they could spend those budgets on so it is quite likely that they are not doing anything like this but it is possible. James Cupps Information Security Officer -----Original Message----- From: Feher Tamas [mailto:etomcat () freemail hu] Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 6:26 AM To: full-disclosure () lists netsys com Subject: [Full-disclosure] Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Hello, I wonder if the "Magic Lantern" trojan truly exists? I don't quite get this "Big Brother watches all Internet traffic realtime" story. 1., The sheer volume of all traffic (IM, SMTP - including spam, P2P, webmail, etc.) must be too much no matter what Crays you have. (Imagine someone uses command line FTP right now, types "bin" and all the warning lights suddenly turn red at NSA HQ.) 2., The terrorsts are not stupid, they use strong encryption and there is proof that PGP repels NSA. 3., So I think it was some bugging method , either a software or hardware device (small thingie hidden in the keyboard). Regards, Tamas Feher. ******************************** http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040406.gtterr or06/BNStory/Technology/ Canadian terrorist arrests a key win for NSA hackers by DAVID AKIN, Globe and Mail Update, 6 April 2004 A computer hacker who allowed himself to be publicly identified only as "Mudhen" once boasted at a Las Vegas conference that he could disable a Chinese satellite with nothing but his laptop computer and a cellphone. The others took him at his word, because Mudhen worked at the Puzzle Palace - the nickname of the U.S. National Security Agency facility at Fort Meade, Md., which houses the world's most powerful and sophisticated electronic eavesdropping and anti-terrorism systems. It was these systems, plus an army of cryptographers, chaos theorists, mathematicians and computer scientists, that may have pulled in the first piece of evidence that led Canadian authorities to arrest an Ottawa man on terrorism charges last week. Citing anonymous sources in the British intelligence community, The Sunday Times reported that an e-mail message intercepted by NSA spies precipitated a massive investigation by intelligence officials in several countries that culminated in the arrest of nine men in Britain and one in suburban Orleans, Ont. - 24-year-old software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja, who has since been charged with facilitating a terrorist act and being part of a terrorist group. The Orleans arrest is considered an operational milestone for this vast electronic eavesdropping network and its operators. But Dave Farber, an Internet pioneer and computer-science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said the circumstances are also notable because it will be the first time that routine U.S. monitoring of e- mail traffic has led to an arrest. "That's the first admission I've actually seen that they actually monitor Internet traffic. I assumed they did, but no one ever admitted it," Mr. Farber said. Officials at the NSA could not be reached for comment. But U.S. authorities are uniquely positioned to monitor international Internet and telecommunications traffic because many of the world's international gateways are located in their country. And once that electronic traffic touches an American computer -- an e-mail message, a request for a website or an Internet-based phone call, for instance -- it is routinely monitored by NSA spies. "Foreign traffic that comes through the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws, and the NSA has a perfect right to monitor all Internet traffic," said Mr. Farber, who has also been a technical adviser to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. That's what happened in February, when NSA officers at Fort Meade intercepted a message between correspondents in Britain and Pakistan, The Sunday Times reported. The contents of that message have not been revealed, but are significant enough that dozens of intelligence officials were mobilized in Britain, Canada and the United States. The intelligence officers at Fort Meade rely on a sophisticated suite of supercomputers and telecommunications equipment to analyze millions of messages and phone calls each day, looking for certain keywords or traffic patterns. Internet traffic is chopped up into small chunks called packets, and each individual package is then routed over the Internet, to be reassembled at the recipient's end. The packet is wrapped in what computer scientists sometimes refer to as the envelope. And just as the exterior of a regular piece of mail contains important addressing information, so does the envelope of a digitized packet. These bits of information are called headers, and they can be valuable to investigators as well. Headers typically contain generic descriptions of the packet's contents, in order to let computers make better decisions about how to route the packet through the Internet. E-mail traffic gets a lower priority than Internet video traffic, for instance. Headers also pick up the numeric or Internet Protocol (IP) address of all the computers a packet touches as it travels from its originating machine all the way to its destination. Every computerized device connected to the Internet has its own unique IP number. Investigators could program their supercomputers to flag packets of information that met certain criteria, such as a certain IP number, a certain traffic pattern or a certain kind of content. As soon as a packet is flagged, investigators would apply for warrants to assemble the packets and read the messages' contents. ************************ _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html This message may contain information which is private, privileged or confidential and is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity named in the message. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, please notify the sender thereof and destroy / delete the message. 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Current thread:
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern?, (continued)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Maarten (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Szilveszter Adam (Apr 08)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Cael Abal (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Brent Colflesh (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Maarten (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Byron Copeland (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Ron DuFresne (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Brent Colflesh (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Exibar (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Maarten (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Caraciola (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? James . Cupps (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Valdis . Kletnieks (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? madsaxon (Apr 07)
- Re: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Valdis . Kletnieks (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Jos Osborne (Apr 07)
- Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Feher Tamas (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Aditya, ALD [Aditya Lalit Deshmukh] (Apr 07)
- RE: Wiretap or Magic Lantern? Jos Osborne (Apr 08)