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Truth or Paranoid Legend? NSA Owns popular firewalls, 'secure' email
services
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
[Maybe a bit of both. It's undoubtedly true that the NSA has installed
backdoors into various security software and certainly has the willing
cooperation of major telecoms and e-mail services.
However, for the record, both Safe-mail and Guardster, companies named
by Cryptome and re****ted on in this story, have staunchly denied they
have ever cooperated with the NSA and protested their inclusion in
Cryptome's list. Note this story is from The Inquirer, standard-bearer
of the "woman gives birth to live cabbage" school of "journalism."
See Guardster's response to Cryptome following the Inquirer story.
Regardless, unless it's a public post, it's absolutely true that
encryption is required for private e-mail to be secure. - NYTr]
The Inquirer - Dec 21, 2007
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/12/20/nsa-0wnz-popular-firewalls
The NSA 0wnz popular firewalls and 'secure' email services
All your secrets are belong to them
By Egan Orion
CRYPTOME re****ts that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has remote
administrative access to several of the most popular Windows PC
firewalls, and that it has also taken control of a number of supposedly
"secure " email services within the past few months.
It writes that the personal computer firewall software products from
MacAfee, Symantec and Zone Alarm all "...facilitate Microsoft's
NSA-controlled remote admin access via IP/TCP ****ts 1024 through
1030... without security flag."
That bit of news is merely an aside to the posting's main topic, which
is that:
"Certain privacy [and/or] full session SSL email hosting services have
been purchased [or] changed operational control by NSA and affiliates
within the past few months, through private intermediary entities."
The so-called "secure" email services implicated by Cryptome's re****t
include Hushmail, Safe-mail.net, and Guardster.com.
Just a reminder that, if you're not using strong encryption, the NSA is
probably reading your email, if not also everything that's on your
system's hard drive.
L'INQ
Cryptome
***
Cryptome - Dec 18-24, 2007
http://cryptome.org/nsa-ssl-email.htm
24 December 2007
Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:19:06 +0200
From: "Safe-mail sup****t" <Sup****t[at]Safe-mail.net>
Hello,
Regarding your recent post: NSA Controls SSL Email Hosting Services
on December 19, 2007 at http://cryptome.org/nsa-ssl-email.htm
Please notice that:
1. We never had any contacts, direct or indirect, with the NSA or
any other government agency anywhere in the world.
2. All software we use is in-house development.
3. We have never shared our technology with any other party.
Best Regards,
Safe-mail.net Team
***
21 December 2007:
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:43:55 -0600
From: Guardster Sup****t <sup****t[at]guardster.com>
To: cryptome[at]earthlink.net
Subject: Cryptome. Re: NSA Controls SSL Email Hosting Services, Dec
19, 2007
Regarding your recent post: NSA Controls SSL Email Hosting Services
on December 19, 2007 at http://cryptome.org/nsa-ssl-email.htm:
We can assure you that we do not cooperate with the NSA or any
other government agency anywhere in the world. We invite whomever is
making this statement to provide proof, rather than making a baseless
accusation. With the same level of proof we can confidently state that
whomever is saying this is an alien from Mars. The poster appears on
the surface to be some type of conspiracy theorist and should be
interpreted as such.
The Guardster Team
19 December 2007
***
Original Cryptome post
Subject: NSA-affiliated IPs/DNS as of 19 Dec 2007 05:57hrsGMT
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:40:38 -0700 (MST)
Just learned following within the past few days:
Certain privacy/full session SSL email hosting services have been
purchased/changed operational control by NSA and affiliates within the
past few months, through private intermediary entities.
Hushmail: now fully owned by private entity NSA affiliate; has had
informal relation****p with NSA for a number of years that effectively
provided NSA with real time access to Hushmail's hosting servers.
Safe-mail.net: Israeli-based, ironically privately lauded by NSA and US
military several years ago for its sound implementation of SendMail
with SSL webmail GUI frontend. Now provides mail server info to NSA in
real time.
Guardster.com (SSH/SSL proxy): NSA contractors have "bought" full
access rights to Guardster servers a few days ago. Separate but
related: faciliated ****t sniffing of hosting servers at Everyones
Internet, on NSA affiliates' behalf, has been ongoing for a number of
months now.
More info on industry Windows security software:
Zone Alarm, Symantec, MacAfee: All facilitate Microsoft's
NSA-controlled remote admin access via IP/TCP ****ts 1024 through 1030;
ie will allow access without security flag. Unknown whether or not
software ****t forward routing by these same programs will defeat NSA
access.
I will continue to provide more info on the above and related topics
upon discovery.
*
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