AURORAGOLD: How the NSA Gets Inside Every Cellphone Network in the World

[n2doc]

The Intercept has discovered an ambitious NSA operation called AURORAGOLD—which aims to tap every cellphone network in the world.

The finding, discovered amongst an archive of material supplied by Edward Snowden, reveals that the NSA intercepted thousands of emails sent between companies in a bid to identify security weaknesses in cellphone technology.

Further documents reveal that the NSA has been working with that information to covertly introduce new flaws into communication systems, precisely so that they can be tapped in the future. The obvious concern there is that purposefully introducing backdoors not only allows the NSA to snoop on whoever it chooses, but also makes those same people vulnerable to attacks by criminal hackers, too. Karsten Nohl, a security researcher, hammers that point home to The Intercept:

"Even if you love the NSA and you say you have nothing to hide, you should be against a policy that introduces security vulnerabilities, because once NSA introduces a weakness, a vulnerability, it's not only the NSA that can exploit it."

The GSM Association—based in the UK but working with the likes of Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, and Cisco—is named in the report as one of the more high-profile victims of the email surveillance. But the result of the work are wide-reaching, and one map, shown below, reveals to what degree the NSA has its tentacles in the mobile networks of international territories. Clearly, it has reach in virtually every country in the world, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and France—who would presumably count themselves as allies.

more

http://gizmodo.com/auroragold-how-the-nsa-gets-inside-every-cellphone-net-1666631607

[Savannahmann]

1. Privacy, such an outdated notion.

I'm hoping that the what do you have to hide crew is busy today, but they usually get hammered pretty hard on these kinds of threads. Well, we'll see.

I'd quote the fourth amendment again, but since the Government hasn't read that before, and they're all experts on what they can do, I won't bother.

I will point out that this plays into the Rand Paul for President meme. Reigning in the NSA and increasing the respect for people's privacy is one of his usual themes, and I'm betting he'll be all over this before long. If the Democratic Party doesn't get on board with that soon, we're going to lose the election in 2016, because all we'll have to run on is that the Republicans are soft on Terrorists or something.

[hootinholler]

2. What? No Snowden bashing yet?

The NSA People are slipping.

[n2doc]

3. Maybe they are sleeping in this morning n/t

[hootinholler]

6. Or it's a new let it sink strategery n/t

[progressoid]

5. Boxes in his garage!11!

garble garble garble girlfriend! garble garble garble Putin!

.

.

.

How's that?

[neverforget]

7. the call hasn't gone out yet. soon though, we'll be

reminded how none of this matters because Snowden and Greenwald. What they report from the documents means nothing, just their personality.

[Luminous Animal]

4. Link to The Intercept article below...

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/04/nsa-auroragold-hack-cellphones

[woo me with science]

10. Thanks.

[woo me with science]

8. K&R

[Jesus Malverde]

9. We expect the NSA to spy.

Just not on Americans. That we need signals intelligence is obvious, hopefully it will be targeted at our adversaries and not us.

That is the only issue. That we spy on the likes of merkel is what they should be doing.