Saturday, December 22, 2007

NSA Owns FireWalls and E-Mails

The NSA Ownz Popular Firewalls and 'Secure' Email Services

All Your Secrets Belong To Them

By Egan Orion
Friday, 21 December 2007, 9:19 AM
TheInquirer

CRYPTOME reports 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 ports 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 report 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

No comments: