Activists d & # XE9; nounce the activity & # XE9; s NSA before the D & # XE9; Department of Justice & # xE0; Washington, January 17, 2014
Activists denounce the activities of the NSA before the Justice Department in Washington, January 17, 2014 – Nicholas Kamm AFP

20 Minutes with agency

    • Created
    • Updated
  • Keywords

The magazine Der Spiegel published, alongside the Chaos Communication Congress (annual conference on technical and policy issues related to computers and hacking), which just took place in Hamburg, new documents provided by Edward Snowden, dated 2012. Ceux- it details the efforts of the US Information Agency (NSA) to pierce the strongest protection on the Internet.

Decrypt algorithms and encryption techniques used on the Internet, the only way to resist surveillance government, that is the workhorse of the agency is working hard to counter these technologies. And what tools still resist him? That’s the question that tried to answer journalists who, thanks to the documents provided by the US whistleblower, published online their inventory before also present it to the Hamburg conference. The answer? “Almost nothing can resist the NSA”

Skype, SSP, VPN, HTTPS

First software as quoted by the German magazine failed. Skype, messaging Microsoft. The conversations through the program, which boasts an encryption that protects Listens “by malicious users,” are in fact available since February 2011. Spiegel even reveals a 2012 document which has the Skype data recovery procedure

Snipped from NSA document: Encryption Considered a & # Xab; & # Xbb threat;

Microsoft’s software is not the only one to fold against the attacks of the NSA. Several protocols used for encryption for virtual private networks (VPNs) were foiled by the agency for several years (NSA with a dedicated unit to interception and espionage connections protected by VPN). One of them, SSL is used daily by the general public (it allows the “secure” connections to certain Internet sites). In other words, HTTPS, which enables secure web connection, no longer seems to be a problem at the agency, which had set the goal in 2012 to intercept and decrypt HTTPS 10 million a day.

PGP or Truecrypt on the grill Tor

The good news? NSA, despite his constant progress, still considers the popularization of encryption tools is the main threat today on continuing operations. And the agency to break teeth on programs asking her “major” problems or “catastrophic”. PGP protocols, Truecrypt and Off The Record are probably indecipherable. Like other open source project, Tor. Successive encryption layers on which the Internet network relies prevent the NSA to intercept data passing through. “Right now,” says Der Spiegel.