alt Hacker NewsXKeyscore
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How relevant is this (and the NSA's general spying capability) in 2025?
We hear a lot about local agencies perusing the services of private companies to collect citizens' data in the US, whether that's traffic information, IoT recordings, buying information from FAANG, etc. What's the NSA's position in the current administration? (e.g. we've heard a lot of noise in the past about the FBI and CIA getting the cold shoulder internally. I wonder how this applies to the NSA.)
This is a reminder why all the traffic should be encrypted and obfuscated (i.e. no SNI in clear text). Ideally, the traffic should be encrypted to resemble a random noise. If you are making an app, you can embed public keys and use those to completely encrypt traffic, without relying on CAs.
For example, Telegram does this, using a homemade encryption protocol that has no clear-text SNI like HTTPS. As I remember, WeChat also uses some home-grown form of obfuscation.
As a bonus, this makes it more difficult for telecoms to discriminate against certain sites or apps and helps enforce net neutrality no matter if they like it or not.
Being familiar with the USG classification system, I was thrown off by the beginning of this article. It doesn't sound like something that would be classified merely as Secret.
The article begins with:
> XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a secret computer system used by...
This should be edited to:
> XKeyscore (XKEYSCORE or XKS) is a classified computer system used by...
The program is allegedly a Top Secret program.
Back in they day, it is claimed they could only store 20 TB a day, but technology has improved considerably... but so have data volumes. I wonder if they can store more content for longer now or if the volumes have increased too much.
The most interesting detail about the whole XKeyscore story is that it was apparently not leaked by Snowden
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_p...
https://www.reuters.com/article/opinion/commentary-evidence-...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/11/second-leake...
It is possible that the "second source" and the shadow brokers are one and the same.
https://www.electrospaces.net/2017/09/are-shadow-brokers-ide...
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/09/15/shadow-brokers-and-the...
And here's an interesting tidbit about a possible link between TSB and Guccifer 2.0
https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/11/01/show-me-the-metadata-a...