full-disclosure - Wiretap or Magic Lantern?

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From: fulldisc at ultratux.org (Maarten)
Subject: Wiretap or Magic Lantern?

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 12:26, Feher Tamas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I wonder if the "Magic Lantern" trojan truly exists? I don't quite get
> this "Big Brother watches all Internet traffic realtime" story.

I say, where there is smoke there is fire... 

> 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.)

If a single commercial entity like Google can already index a very large 
amount of the web using of-the-shelf linux boxes, a vastly much more 
determined agency with _virtually_unlimited_ resources and funding can 
certainly index a LOT of information that's flying through the wires.
The trick is tuning the system which triggers the alarm bells.  My guess is, 
that is an endless process of trial and error and retune.  But realize that 
they have years, decades of experience in that field.  I'm sure the most 
ingenious algorythms are being deployed, presumably algorythms that haven't 
even been disclosed anywhere yet. You can bet they don't (just) use a tweaked 
spamassassin script to filter all that information. ;-)

Your example above, the string 'bin' is just plain stupid.  We don't have 
snort triggering on strings like 'sbin' or 'kernel', now do we ?  Me thinks 
you vastly underestimate how the NSA filters, and more importantly, what they 
filter on, and how they parse the context in which something is found.
And secondly, do you actually think that two terrorists will even include a 
string "bin laden" in their mails ?  They're not stupid either.  So the NSA, 
thinking a few steps ahead, may well disregard any "bin laden" strings (since 
that most probably is just another CNN news story) and concentrate on finding 
the "harmless_at_first_glance" communications. HOW is anyone's guess...

> 2., The terrorsts are not stupid, they use strong encryption and there is
> proof that PGP repels NSA.

If they [only] use PGP they would indeed be quite stupid.
Most of the time, the only thing the NSA needs is seeing a communication 
between a suspect party and another one.  The content of said communication 
is largely irrelevant, the fact that a contact was established is enough.
Remember, terrorists don't need to be _secret_, they need to be inconspicuous.

Maarten

-- 
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding hardware.