Recent nsa news - how to protect yourself?

[tential]

Well title. We've got the nsa going crazy with far over reaches in their power. How can we secure our data and stuff?

With Ryzen 7 out I have a lot of cpu processing capabilities I can add to my server. Could that do encryption for me or something?

Looking for some ideas..
Thanks.

 

[Elixer]

Protect yourself from what exactly?

 

[Red Squirrel]

In basic, don't use cloud services, encrypt everything you can, be very diligent about your firewall/network setup. Avoid "smart" devices, especially stuff like Alexa, etc. Technically even smart phones are kind of bad to have... If you have a smart TV, consider opening it up to look for anything that looks like an antenna or microphone, or camera etc and disconnect it. May have to experiment. Have not tried any of this myself but I have an older generation smart TV so I "think" I'm ok.

This can be an advanced topic though, I need to do more research myself on this as it's really becoming a serious threat. If you really want to be serious get a spectrum analyzer may be useful to look for any transmissions from devices that should not even be using RF. ex: TVs. (even if you're using OTA, it should not be transmitting).

We are living in what seems like a evil science fiction novel. The CIA leaks are not the beginning nor the end. This stuff has been going on for a long time and will continue to.

The biggest issue is all the backdoors in stuff now days. Intel CPUs and some hard drives have backdoors built right in, so your network security is pretty much moot as they can bypass all of that.

Pretty much need to start looking at air gapping our networks now days. Need a faraday cage too given lot of backdoors most likely use some form of radio communication. If I had to guess, the cellular network, but could easily be some special government frequency too.

Keep in mind that the longer the wave lenght, the harder it is for a faraday cage to work. Ex: without knowing what frequencies these backdoors are using it's hard to design a proper faraday cage.

Really you pretty much need to live your life asking the question "could the government..." and the answer is probably yes, if it's scientifically possible.

 

[John Connor]

There's waaaay too many things you need to be aware of before you can even think about preventing the NSA/CIA/FBI/DIA and the hodgepodge of other alphabet soup Fed agencies out there with a virtual limitless amount of tax dollars.

You don't need a super computer to use encryption. Especially if it's AES.

You wanna secure environment, live out on a piece of land and just unplug. Other than that there are very paranoid things you can do. With the Vault 7 crap, I would pay attention to updating all your software. Notepad ++ just got an update.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. The NSA has a vast amount of data, too much data to even be a concern especially if you have nothing to hide. I'm a pretty security conscious person, yet I have an Android and an Echo Dot. I have nothing to hide and I know all they will see on my phone is Facebook posts, Twitter posts and basic crap. If you ever use a phone, that conversation isn't secure anyway.

 

[John Connor]

If you really want to be serious get a spectrum analyzer

HAHAHA! I don't think you have to worry about that level of intrusion unless you are under a criminal investigation, are a lawyer or in the mafia, etc.

And just because you can buy a few thousand dollar spectrum analyzer, you need to know what you're looking for. You need to take classes in TSCM and know what's out there in terms of technology. Especially spread spectrum and finding ghost transmitters. Good luck with that.

 

[John Connor]

Just to trip you out. HAHAHA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquacade_(satellite)

Now a days I bet they have birds that can pick up your crappy little WiFi signal.

 

[mikeymikec]

Rear carrier pigeons.

 

[Red Squirrel]

HAHAHA! I don't think you have to worry about that level of intrusion unless you are under a criminal investigation, are a lawyer or in the mafia, etc.

And just because you can buy a few thousand dollar spectrum analyzer, you need to know what you're looking for. You need to take classes in TSCM and know what's out there in terms of technology. Especially spread spectrum and finding ghost transmitters. Good luck with that.

Not saying it would be easy, you would definitly need to know what to look for. But it could be a first step and determining if a device is communicating to the outside world, when it should not. Of course you'll pickup EMI and stuff too which you'll need to be able to tell apart from actual communication. Though a smart device might even try to mask communication as EMI.

At this point not much is known about how the smart TVs do it, one thing I can think of is using 3G network as it's already established. Though given the physical size of a TV it's probably not that far fetched to have a dipole built in the screen and it could talk to satellites, but that would not enable for a very good transmission rate especially indoors and it would not be able to use that much RF power without being noticeable or even causing interference. Though all TVs might also talk with each other as almost every household will have one, it only takes one idiot to actually plug it into their internet and then it creates an uplink for all the other TVs. Of course this is just theory.

I'm thinking we're going to start seeing more spy stuff in smaller household devices like smoke detectors and maybe even light bulbs. So 3G is probably the cheapest way... we'll just be subsidizing it through our cell phone bills.

A lot of the NSA/CIA stuff requires physical access though, like even that notepad++ one, pretty sure it requires access to the system to change the bad DLL. So at that point, you're already exploited. But HOW they get in, is what is the real concern. Backdoors in cpus etc.

 

[MustISO]

Go off the grid or just stop doing anything the NSA would care about.

 

[John Connor]

Though a smart device might even try to mask communication as EMI.

That's exactly what DSS does. It's buried in the noise floor.

A lot of the NSA/CIA stuff requires physical access though, like even that notepad++ one, pretty sure it requires access to the system to change the bad DLL. So at that point, you're already exploited. But HOW they get in, is what is the real concern. Backdoors in cpus etc.

Applications can be exploited. Any holes not patched can be wedged into. You don't need a conspiracy CPU to do that.