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Frederic Jacobs

China targeted and might have held for months access to the infrastructure used to do wiretaps on the AT&T and Verizon networks.

This is a huge "told you so" moment for the cryptographic community that has been saying that such infrastructure does present a huge risk to national security. China reportedly used this capability for intelligence collection, obviously without a warrant ...

wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/u-s

18 comments
zl2tod

@fj
The WSJ is somewhat inaccessible to me.

Are the compromised systems at the Lawful Interception level or the NSA Room 614A level?

Jenny 🏳️‍🌈

@zl2tod @fj "lawful" intercept level. On the other stuff the providers themselves have no access and it would never become public knowledge if it was breached. The CIA and NSA would keep that under wraps and probably not even report it to the intelligence committee.

zl2tod

@srtcd424

Ta.

"potentially" and "might" are seriously load-bearing.

@fj

Lyricismist

@fj Hackers eh? If it’s not the Chinese, it’s the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians - it’s never NATO nations that Trump encouraged Russia to attack.

bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-6

Michael Darweesh ☑️

@fj Certainly off-topic, but I want to ask: Are there similar known compromises to services like Siri, Alexa, Google?

Mx. Eddie R

@mdarweesh @fj
Known, no, but the capability exists so it's 100% possible. They don't even need a physical connection like the old wiretap rooms, it can all be done remotely these days.
We already know law enforcement can subpoena the voice assistants for recordings.

lainoid the omniscient
@fj after only announcing twenty million different possible threats, the “community” finally got one that actually happens. That’s close to TSA levels of efficiency.
Ciarán McNally

@fj Does this mean the systems can be used without Warrants (as in its not enforced as part of the wiretap process)?

In terms of Observability, do we know what they were targeting, if we don't, does that also mean we don't know what the US targets with its wiretap tech.

Did China observe who and what was being wiretapped?

All interesting thoughts to ponder 🧐

And Human (it/it's)

@fj If China can do it imagine what America already does…

Richard

@fj There don't seem to be any articles on this outside the WSJ (yet?), and the lead paragraphs visible over the paywall are heavily caveated with "potentially" and "might" so it is still unclear what was actually breached. This could be something serious, or it could just be Chinese teen hackers able to submit unverified wiretap requests for "Deez Nutz" which are ignored. It is currently the silly season for generating political drama, so use appropriate skepticism until more details emerge.

Jenny 🏳️‍🌈

@fj this whole incident just makes it obvious why those systems should not exist in the first place.

Hans-Cees

@fj May I please tap into your device

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