Using a security loophole that allows the US government access to anybody’s electronic traffic, Chinese hackers gained access to an unknown quantity (perhaps all) of internet traffic on American networks. [More]
To me, the question is “Who let them gain access?”
And if we don’t hang them, will they?
[Via bondmen]
I don’t think the question is meaningful. Nobody let them in, they figured out how to hack in. What they hacked into was a backdoor “wiretapping portal” mandated far back in the Clinton Administration:
“…enacted by Congress in 1994 to require that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have the necessary surveillance capabilities to comply with legal requests for information. CALEA is intended to preserve the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance while protecting the privacy of information outside the scope of the investigation.”
Note that “intended to” is far from “guaranteed to,” especially when the government is involved.
Here is a primer for novice network operators explaining what the government requires them to do (the first section is non-technical).
“pour encourager les autres”
https://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-autres/
Not really a “mea culpa” but…….
You simply cannot attach a pair of alligator clips to a pair of wires carrying a T1 or higher level bitstream and listen to the conversation. As the telephone network got more and more digital and so less and less analog, tapping a phone like you see in the movies got to be more and more of a joke. Kind of like putting a suppressor on a revolver.
So the “Law Enforcement Complex” bitched to Congress who passed CALEA which was signed into law by Pres. Clinton. CALEA allowed law enforcement to tap a phone by typing a message into the relevant central office switch. But in order to implement that, all of the central office switch software in the country had to be on the current revision. I managed a crew that upgraded nearly every one of the 31 switches in the South East Florida area, some of them twice. Not exactly a trivial task. Prepping and reloading a #5ESS switch is not like upgrading MS Windows. Took my crew a year and a half before all of our switches were ready.
“And that’s all I have to say about that.” — Forrest Gump