[LINK] All your internets are belong to us

[Stilgherrian]

On 22/11/2010, at 6:47 PM, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-11-22 at 18:36 +1100, Stilgherrian quoted a story:
>> In short, the Chinese could have carried out eavesdropping on
>> unprotected communications — including emails and instant messaging —
>> manipulated data passing through their country or decrypted messages,
>> Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee said.
> 
> Key words "unprotected communications". Anyone using encryption would
> have had no problem at all. Well, non-delivery maybe, but not the wrong
> people reading it, and not "manipulation".
> 
> "Decrypted messages" - how? Conspiracy theories aside, modern crypto,
> available to all, is essentially unbreakable. The VP of threat research
> should have had a great deal more sense than to say that, if he even
> did.

The McAfee VP was quoted in various places. I suspect McAfee's PR people were pimping him around heavily, but I did find him talking on NPR.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=131423973


>> “What happened to the traffic while it was in China? No one knows.”
> 
> I do know that if one of my encrypted emails ended up there, no Chinese
> malefactor would have been able to read it.

On my podcast, Crispin Harris mentioned that only about 20% of traffic that should be encrypted is. I dunno where he got that figure from, but he watched Link and may chirp in.

Stil


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