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Bruce Heerssen

@irenes @timbray @lcamtuf @rfc6919 @projectgus

I think there are many governments that would be willing to do something like this, and wouldn't care if it affected their own systems too as long as only they knew about it. Hell, that probably describes most governments, including in the United States and the UK.

There have been several agencies and officials in the U.S. who have openly expressed discomfort with the idea of impenetrable cryptography.

5 comments
Irenes (many)

@bruce @timbray @lcamtuf @rfc6919 @projectgus oh, absolutely agreed on all that. furthermore, whether or not THIS attack was state-sponsored, now everybody has seen the strategy.

Bruce Heerssen

@irenes @timbray @lcamtuf @rfc6919 @projectgus

Yup. And to be clear, I don't necessarily think the US or UK in particular is behind this. I think it's more likely China, or perhaps Russia. The point is, we don't know. And like you implied, it could still turn out to have been an individual with an agenda.

Janne Moren

@bruce @irenes @timbray @lcamtuf @rfc6919 @projectgus
Or, an individual with the idea of selling backdoors as a service. That'd be one reason to be this patient and persistent: you'd not use it (and presumably other created vulnerabilities) yourself once; you sell access to other people. With luck you could perhaps sell this a half a dozen times before it gets discovered and patched.

lcamtuf :verified: :verified: :verified:

@jannem @bruce @irenes @timbray @rfc6919 @projectgus This is an awful lot of effort to put into a "product" that has a non-trivial chance of getting burned on first try if your customer is careless.

It's something you use when a really compelling need arises, and where you can control most of the variables to minimize the risk of loss.

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