NSA Tucks Away Backdoors in HDD firmware

The main concern isn't just that NSA has access, the issue is that hackers can exploit and use the backdoors that NSA implemented.

It is also a concern that NSA might have un-honest employees that steal business secrets and sell them to competitors.

And worst case scenario would be that the USA gets a real bad government, guess what they can do via NSA.
Data manipulation is easy with the right tools, it gives you access to frame anyone for anything you want to frame a person or group for.

 

Plus I doubt there is any proof that the average user can find if they bought a hard drive with this backdoor enabled any way.

 

He is just using a bit more extreme example that can get you framed to jail.

 

i understand the concerns with hackers, the rest just sounds very conspiracy theory to me though.

but what the best way to combat hackers ? better hackers i guess

like i say i dont mind what my government does here with the internet (just addded lol) and thats it really.

 

Override all OS data protection, so they easy can get access to files that you normally wouldn't be able to read without a lot of trouble, think Unix, file encryption and alike.

 

So you trust every single one of your governments employees?

And what if you get a government turns into a dictatorship?

everything that can go wrong...

 

I mean there are a million different cases though, not even jail for a US citizen. But let's say one of our allies, Turkey, or someone has a member of a financial war committee that's against US interests in Iraq. They decide to cut funding to Turkey's efforts in the area, perhaps refocusing it on internal matters, whatever. The US doesn't like this, they need Turkey-US relations to improve and not falter. Suddenly this guy has child porn on his computer, or a picture of the president ****ing a cow or something, or suddenly it turns out that he's been embezzling money from the war fund into his own pockets, there is data on his HD that proves it.

I mean there are like so many possibilities -- whether or not the NSA needs a backdoor on every HD to accomplish that, idk, but it certainly helps.

And if you think this kind of stuff doesn't happen, here is a list of entire regime changes brought on by covert operations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

Let alone the removal of a single person.

 

oh well, i guess im willing to take that "extreme gamble" then

at the end of the day its all about the money .. its only money that makes our world work, well kind of work, the way it does for us today, well work for the governments today i should say.

there are so many bad things happening in our world today worth worrying about, but my internet use is not one of them, for me that is.

 

I guess we could just start virtualizing everything. After all a virtual system is nothing but a collection of files that can be encrypted. So a virtual system that is encrypted and backed up as a package is not really reliant on the hard drive MBR because it has a replicated virtual MBR right. While the physical drive itself still has an MBR, your virtual system does not depend on it and anyone attempting to access your system from the physical file system would only see a large master file(s) that is encrypted, not individual files, folders, etc.

 

For you it is, but what if the target is something that will affect you?
The target could be your very own government, if could be the businesses that you work for.
What about other people? Screw them if they loose their jobs and lives because some company in country X got documents from a company in county Y?

 

Key is to nap that encryption key.

 

I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but my internet use ain't one.

http://youtu.be/6uikJTnmtgw

sorry ....

 

I think we are on the same page

What people don't understand when they say "I have nothing to hide", is that such systems can be misused so badly that it will affect them, they might even end up with having things to hide.
It might not be the intention to misuse such systems when they are created, but since it all is controlled by humans...

 

Nap?

Not sure what you mean by nap? If you mean steal, encryption isn't even necessary, just an added layer. After all, the virtual system is still a container file system that isn't truly accessible without mounting once the entire master file has been downloaded. A good firewall should be able to detect and stop such a massive file download. Point is it wouldn't be as directly vulnerable and be much more secure even without encryption.

 

I know all that, but face it.
If NSA really has the claimed backdoor, what hinders them from having it in your firewall and your virtual environment?
If the story is true, which I hopes it isn't, they got way more influence than anyone would like, except those who can take advantage of such backdoors.

Don't worry, I'm not sitting with a tinfoil hat

 

Son?

Now, I would feel bad for you if that was true, lol.

Anyway, no bad feelings, this is all just theoretical speculations over an issue that might not be reality.

 

lol made me laff

im now making mine it will go nice with my foil headset it only feels right to wear one, the way this thread is going

 

Hehe.

Btw. guess where Kaspersky has it's HQ?
The question is, who is trying to frame who? ^^

 

who owns Kaspersky ? cant remember. what virus software company did intel take over cant remember that either now?

(adjusting foil hat)

 

Russian company just saying