NSA Operation Masquerades as Facebook Server to Infect Users with Malware

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The can infect your 14 year old sister's PC but they can't find a down jetliner, they couldn't predict whether Putin might take Crimea, and they took a decade to find Osama Bin Laden.
 
The can infect your 14 year old sister's PC but they can't find a down jetliner, they couldn't predict whether Putin might take Crimea, and they took a decade to find Osama Bin Laden.

Yup. I'm just as pissed at their incompetence as I am at their overreach. If they were at least good at doing their damn jobs, maybe I would take their arguments about needing these methods a little more seriously, but they have absolutely no credibility on anything right now.
 
Here's a picture of me with noted NSA whistleblower William Binney.

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For those of you who may not know who William Binney is, he was warning people about the NSA long before Edward Snowden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9-3K3rkPRE

They can monitor you even if your phone is off? Jesus how terrifying.
 
The can infect your 14 year old sister's PC but they can't find a down jetliner, they couldn't predict whether Putin might take Crimea, and they took a decade to find Osama Bin Laden.

all those things are 'foreign' this nsa/gchq shitstorm is aimed that their own citizens.
 
I used to laugh as a kid at Enemy of the State thinking there is no way the US government could do this, and for a long time, I actually thought America had it's head in the sand as China, Russia, Iran and many other countries increased their cybersecurity and cyber warfare goals. Who knew that America was leading the pack this whole time.
 
But I always figured the best place to put a backdoor would be in anti-virus software itself. When will that revelation come out?

I think it's a sure thing that someone's done that at some point. Not only do you put your backdoor in a piece of highly trusted (both in terms of the user's trust and in permissions from the OS) software but it's also one that can keep others' malware out.

Who knew that America was leading the pack this whole time.

I didn't think it went as far as it did, but it was never a huge leap in logic to think that if there was large-scale information warfare going on, the US would be in deep. Considering the budget of the NSA, CIA, etc, they'd be in seriously dereliction of duty if they weren't keeping up with China et al.
 
Nothing surprising. If you use anything american made you can be sure it's somehow spying on you and even if you use technologies or sites from other countries it's better to assume the same.
 
Zuckerberg responds: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg phones Obama about NSA

As the world becomes more complex and governments everywhere struggle, trust in the internet is more important today than ever.

The internet is our shared space. It helps us connect. It spreads opportunity. It enables us to learn. It gives us a voice. It makes us stronger and safer together.

To keep the internet strong, we need to keep it secure. That's why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure. We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people's services.

The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world.

This is why I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government.

The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.

I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.

So it's up to us -- all of us -- to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I'm committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.
 
Compare the NSA’s Facebook Malware Denial to its Own Secret Documents

On Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald and I revealed new details about the National Security Agency’s efforts to radically expand its ability to hack into computers and networks across the world. The story has received a lot of attention, and one detail in particular has sparked controversy: specifically, that the NSA secretly pretended to be a fake Facebook server in order to covertly infect targets with malware “implants” used for surveillance.

This revelation apparently infuriated Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg so much that he got on the phone to President Barack Obama to complain about it. “I’ve been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post Thursday. “When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we’re protecting you against criminals, not our own government.”

That wasn’t all. Wired ran a piece saying that the NSA’s widespread use of its malware tools “acts as implicit permission to others, both nation-state and criminal.” Slate noted that the NSA’s hacking platform appears to be “becoming a bit more like the un-targeted dragnets everyone has been so upset about.” Meanwhile, Ars Technica wrote that the surveillance technology we exposed “poses a risk to the entire Internet.”
 
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