On the NSA’s Supercomputer from the 1960s
Really interesting story about Harvest, a specialized code breaking computer built in the 1960s by IBM for the NSA. [...]
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Possible US Government iPhone Hacking Tool Leaked
Wired writes (alternate source ): Security researchers at Google on Tuesday released a report describing what they’re calling “Coruna,” a highly sophisticated iPhone hacking toolkit that includes five complete hacking techniques capable of bypassing all the defenses of an iPhone to silently install malware on a device when it …
Sen. Wyden Warns of Another Section 702 Abuse
Sen. Ron Wyden is warning us of an abuse of Section 702: Wyden took to the Senate floor to deliver a lengthy speech, ostensibly about the since approved (with support of many Democrats) nomination of Joshua Rudd to lead the NSA. Wyden was protesting that nomination, but in the …
1965 Cryptanalysis Training Workbook Released by the NSA
In the early 1960s, National Security Agency cryptanalyst and cryptanalysis instructor Lambros D. Callimahos coined the term “Stethoscope” to describe a diagnostic computer program used to unravel the internal structure of pre-computer ciphertexts. The term appears in the newly declassified September 1965 document Cryptanalytic Diagnosis with the Aid of …
SIGINT During World War II
The NSA and GCHQ have jointly published a history of World War II SIGINT: “ Secret Messengers: Disseminating SIGINT in the Second World War.” This is the story of the British SLUs (Special Liaison Units) and the American SSOs (Special Security Officers). [...]
That Time Tom Lehrer Pranked the NSA
Bluesky thread. Here’s the paper, from 1957. Note reference 3. [...]
“Encryption Backdoors and the Fourth Amendment”
Law journal article that looks at the Dual_EC_PRNG backdoor from a US constitutional perspective: Abstract : The National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly paid and pressured technology companies to trick their customers into using vulnerable encryption products. This Article examines whether any of three theories removed the Fourth Amendment’s requirement …
The NSA’s “Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937–1987)”
In response to a FOIA request, the NSA released “ Fifty Years of Mathematical Cryptanalysis (1937-1987),” by Glenn F. Stahly, with a lot of redactions. Weirdly, this is the second time the NSA has declassified the document. John Young got a copy in 2019. This one has a few less …
DIRNSA Fired
In “ Secrets and Lies ” (2000), I wrote: It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state. It’s something a bunch of us were saying at the time, in reference to the vast NSA’s surveillance capabilities. I have been thinking of that …
RIP Mark Klein
2006 AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein has died. [...]