** ** How to remain secure against NSA surveillance****
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-how-to-remain-secure-surveillance **** ** ** **** The NSA has huge capabilities - and if it wants in to your computer, it's*** * in. With that in mind, here are five ways to stay safe**** Bruce Schneier **** theguardian.com, Thursday 5 September 2013 15.06 EDT **** ** ** Now that we have enough details about how the NSA eavesdrops on the**** internet, including today's disclosures of the NSA's deliberate weakening of **** cryptographic systems, we can finally start to figure out how to protect**** ourselves.**** ** ** For the past two weeks, I have been working with the Guardian on NSA**** stories, and have read hundreds of top-secret NSA documents provided by**** whistleblower Edward Snowden. I wasn't part of today's story - it was in**** process well before I showed up - but everything I read confirms what the*** * Guardian is reporting.**** ** ** At this point, I feel I can provide some advice for keeping secure against** ** such an adversary.**** ** ** The primary way the NSA eavesdrops on internet communications is in the**** network. That's where their capabilities best scale. They have invested in** ** enormous programs to automatically collect and analyze network traffic.**** Anything that requires them to attack individual endpoint computers is**** significantly more costly and risky for them, and they will do those things* *** carefully and sparingly.**** ** ** Leveraging its secret agreements with telecommunications companies - all the **** US and UK ones, and many other "partners" around the world - the NSA gets*** * access to the communications trunks that move internet traffic. In cases**** where it doesn't have that sort of friendly access, it does its best to**** surreptitiously monitor communications channels: tapping undersea cables,*** * intercepting satellite communications, and so on.**** ** ** That's an enormous amount of data, and the NSA has equivalently enormous**** capabilities to quickly sift through it all, looking for interesting**** traffic. "Interesting" can be defined in many ways: by the source, the**** destination, the content, the individuals involved, and so on. This data is* *** funneled into the vast NSA system for future analysis.**** ** ** The NSA collects much more metadata about internet traffic: who is talking** ** to whom, when, how much, and by what mode of communication. Metadata is a*** * lot easier to store and analyze than content. It can be extremely personal** ** to the individual, and is enormously valuable intelligence.**** ** ** The Systems Intelligence Directorate is in charge of data collection, and*** * the resources it devotes to this is staggering. I read status report after** ** status report about these programs, discussing capabilities, operational**** details, planned upgrades, and so on. Each individual problem - recovering** ** electronic signals from fiber, keeping up with the terabyte streams as they* *** go by, filtering out the interesting stuff - has its own group dedicated to* *** solving it. Its reach is global.**** ** ** The NSA also attacks network devices directly: routers, switches, firewalls, **** etc. Most of these devices have surveillance capabilities already built in;* *** the trick is to surreptitiously turn them on. This is an especially fruitful **** avenue of attack; routers are updated less frequently, tend not to have**** security software installed on them, and are generally ignored as a**** vulnerability.**** ** ** The NSA also devotes considerable resources to attacking endpoint computers. **** This kind of thing is done by its TAO - Tailored Access Operations - group.* *** TAO has a menu of exploits it can serve up against your computer - whether** ** you're running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or something else - and a**** variety of tricks to get them on to your computer. Your anti-virus software* *** won't detect them, and you'd have trouble finding them even if you knew**** where to look. These are hacker tools designed by hackers with an**** essentially unlimited budget. What I took away from reading the Snowden**** documents was that if the NSA wants in to your computer, it's in. Period.*** * ** ** The NSA deals with any encrypted data it encounters more by subverting the** ** underlying cryptography than by leveraging any secret mathematical**** breakthroughs. First, there's a lot of bad cryptography out there. If it**** finds an internet connection protected by MS-CHAP, for example, that's easy* *** to break and recover the key. It exploits poorly chosen user passwords,**** using the same dictionary attacks hackers use in the unclassified world.**** ** ** As was revealed today, the NSA also works with security product vendors to** ** ensure that commercial encryption products are broken in secret ways that*** * only it knows about. We know this has happened historically: CryptoAG and*** * Lotus Notes are the most public examples, and there is evidence of a back*** * door in Windows. A few people have told me some recent stories about their** ** experiences, and I plan to write about them soon. Basically, the NSA asks*** * companies to subtly change their products in undetectable ways: making the** ** random number generator less random, leaking the key somehow, adding a**** common exponent to a public-key exchange protocol, and so on. If the back*** * door is discovered, it's explained away as a mistake. And as we now know,*** * the NSA has enjoyed enormous success from this program.**** ** ** TAO also hacks into computers to recover long-term keys. So if you're**** running a VPN that uses a complex shared secret to protect your data and the **** NSA decides it cares, it might try to steal that secret. This kind of thing* *** is only done against high-value targets.**** ** ** How do you communicate securely against such an adversary? Snowden said it** ** in an online Q&A soon after he made his first document public: "Encryption** ** works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things* *** that you can rely on."**** ** ** I believe this is true, despite today's revelations and tantalizing hints of **** "groundbreaking cryptanalytic capabilities" made by James Clapper, the**** director of national intelligence in another top-secret document. Those**** capabilities involve deliberately weakening the cryptography.**** ** ** Snowden's follow-on sentence is equally important: "Unfortunately, endpoint* *** security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around*** * it."**** ** ** Endpoint means the software you're using, the computer you're using it on,** ** and the local network you're using it in. If the NSA can modify the**** encryption algorithm or drop a Trojan on your computer, all the cryptography **** in the world doesn't matter at all. If you want to remain secure against the **** NSA, you need to do your best to ensure that the encryption can operate**** unimpeded.**** ** ** With all this in mind, I have five pieces of advice:**** ** ** 1) Hide in the network. Implement hidden services. Use Tor to anonymize**** yourself. Yes, the NSA targets Tor users, but it's work for them. The less** ** obvious you are, the safer you are.**** ** ** 2) Encrypt your communications. Use TLS. Use IPsec. Again, while it's true** ** that the NSA targets encrypted connections - and it may have explicit**** exploits against these protocols - you're much better protected than if you* *** communicate in the clear.**** ** ** 3) Assume that while your computer can be compromised, it would take work*** * and risk on the part of the NSA - so it probably isn't. If you have**** something really important, use an air gap. Since I started working with the **** Snowden documents, I bought a new computer that has never been connected to* *** the internet. If I want to transfer a file, I encrypt the file on the secure **** computer and walk it over to my internet computer, using a USB stick. To**** decrypt something, I reverse the process. This might not be bulletproof, but **** it's pretty good.**** ** ** 4) Be suspicious of commercial encryption software, especially from large*** * vendors. My guess is that most encryption products from large US companies** ** have NSA-friendly back doors, and many foreign ones probably do as well.**** It's prudent to assume that foreign products also have foreign-installed**** backdoors. Closed-source software is easier for the NSA to backdoor than**** open-source software. Systems relying on master secrets are vulnerable to*** * the NSA, through either legal or more clandestine means.**** ** ** 5) Try to use public-domain encryption that has to be compatible with other* *** implementations. For example, it's harder for the NSA to backdoor TLS than** ** BitLocker, because any vendor's TLS has to be compatible with every other*** * vendor's TLS, while BitLocker only has to be compatible with itself, giving* *** the NSA a lot more freedom to make changes. And because BitLocker is**** proprietary, it's far less likely those changes will be discovered. Prefer** ** symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. Prefer conventional**** discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have**** constants that the NSA influences when they can.**** ** ** Since I started working with Snowden's documents, I have been using GPG,**** Silent Circle, Tails, OTR, TrueCrypt, BleachBit, and a few other things I'm* *** not going to write about. There's an undocumented encryption feature in my** ** Password Safe program from the command line); I've been using that as well.* *** ** ** I understand that most of this is impossible for the typical internet user.* *** Even I don't use all these tools for most everything I am working on. And*** * I'm still primarily on Windows, unfortunately. Linux would be safer.**** ** ** The NSA has turned the fabric of the internet into a vast surveillance**** platform, but they are not magical. They're limited by the same economic**** realities as the rest of us, and our best defense is to make surveillance of **** us as expensive as possible.**** ** ** Trust the math. Encryption is your friend. Use it well, and do your best to* *** ensure that nothing can compromise it. That's how you can remain secure even **** in the face of the NSA.**** ** ** ==========================================**** (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this **** message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to* *** these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed **** within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with**** "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. **** The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The**** Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain**** permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials* *** if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,**** teaching, scholarship, and research." 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