Comment by badminton1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by badminton1 | Hacker News Reader

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One thing is collaborating with law enforcement, another thing is collaborating on mass surveillance. Microsoft collaborated setting up mass surveillance (PRISM).

One thing is a bug, another one is a backdoor. Are these good faith bugs or willful backdoors? Most likely they're bugs, but it is hard to know.

If I was Microsoft and I wanted to willfully plant a backdoor, I would take precautions to be able to get away with it if caught. Because security researchers can analyze them, and foreign governments have Windows source code, leaving intentional bugs as the only choice.

Now, the reasons I am suspicious of Microsoft:

- PRISM. Which is unequivocally mass surveillance.

- The Flame malware was able to install itself via Windows Update: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2503916/malware-vulnera... . The means by which the Flame authors achieved this are easier to explain if they received help from Microsoft.

- When Windows NT SP5 was released, the build accidentally came with debugging symbols (i.e: variable names were visible in binaries). A researcher found a variable called "_NSAKEY" containing a key which could be used to forge signatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY. Microsoft's explanation was that it wasn't related to the NSA, and that NSA in that context meant something else.

This idea that Microsoft is deliberately introducing bugs into its software so nation states can exploit them is so absurd, it really is tinfoil hat conspiracy theory ludicrousness.

How absurd was Room 641A? Congress had to step in and grant retroactive immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Room 641A wasn't a software vulnerability trying to hide in plain sight, it was a secret network tap.

>it was a secret network tap

...trying to hide in plain sight, implemented by a major corporation so nation states cold exploit customers.

It's unlikely the NSA would illegally infiltrate only one multinational corporate entity given the exposed operational success.

Going back to your original comment

> This idea that Microsoft is deliberately introducing bugs into its software so nation states can exploit them is so absurd, it really is tinfoil hat conspiracy theory ludicrousness

Replace Microsoft with AT&T and suddenly it makes sense?

This is why I said:

> Are these good faith bugs or willful backdoors? Most likely they're bugs, but it is hard to know.

My suspicion on Microsoft has more to do with the latter facts I mentioned.

Then, you need to understand this happens within the framework of espionage, which is by nature concealed and discrete, and not necessarily with consent (e.g: infiltration).

It doesn't have to be known by Microsoft management.

It's enough if the NSA has people working at MS on their payroll.

In the case of Yahoo for example, there were surveillance mechanisms that were even unknown to their security team (a Linux kernel module).

That's just an insinuation of conspiracy with no evidence whatsoever behind it. The more believable alternative is that developers simply make mistakes now and then.

But having state sponsored employees is so obvious, effective, and cost efficient it seems odd to assume it's not being done. The US found a bunch of Russian spies a while back.

But true, it's not right to assume any particular vuln is from spies.

Correct. But you have to assume the spies have vulns in there, either intentionally added, or, if they found vulns, they simply reported them to their agency, instead of their employer.

And even if it were true, it wouldn't be a reason to distrust Microsoft as a whole.

You sound like a shill. Typical deceptive argumentation tactics. Casually dismissing anything you don't like, ignoring common knowledge, veiled insults toward your opponents, and hypocritically advocating blind faith in your position without any evidence behind it--a position which happens to leave you completely vulnerable to trivial deception by plausible deniability.

Oh, and a new account, too. I should hope that few people here would be so naive as to not see through you.

everything snowden put out was tinfoil stuff before him. echelon was tinfoil. room 641a was tinfoil.

give us a fucking break from such dangerous naivety.

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