Pluralistic: China hacked Verizon, AT&T and Lumen using the FBI’s backdoor (07 Oct 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net

As if anybody here needs a reason to be wary of what you do online, this essay shares how a foreign adversary used back doors that were intentionally put in place to spy on Americans and how the rest of the world probably has the same back doors.

I especially appreciate the phrase “nerd harder” and the quote, “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”.

How can IT folk help politicans to understand?

  • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    2 months ago

    What’s the outrage? Those backdoors were made for governmental use. The only thing is that it was not made for foreign government use, but hey, that is just due to the incompetence of those who designed the backdoor…

    So the blunders of US agencies did harm to millions of people. Lawsuits, anyone?

    • satanmat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      Eh?

      You can’t build an unpickable back door into a computer system.

      You can’t break encryption for only the good guys.

      The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

      Encryption only works when there is one decryption key. If there are two different keys then it isn’t encrypted bad actors will find a way in

      • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        That is 100% correct. Nonetheless, the US agencies assumed that they were smarter than basically all of the security community and common sense.

      • umbrellaEnglish
        7·
        2 months ago

        The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

        except the intentions werent any good either.

      • Rain World: Slugcat Game@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 months ago

        whenever you encrypt something, encrypt with both the intended public key and the fbi’s public key. and send the one encrypted with the fbi’s key to the fbi.

    • Anonymouse@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      91·
      2 months ago

      No outrage, just a reminder to encrypt, VPN or whatever to protect yourself from surveillance.

      I don’t like your phrase, “incompetence of those who designed the backdoor”. I was not in the room, but in my mind, the execs said “build a back door for the govn’t” and the engineers said “you can’t do that JUST for one party” then the execs said “do it anyways or get fired, we’re getting fistfulls of cash to do it” and the engineers said “I enjoy feeding my family, it’s your company anyways” and did it.