[sqeaky]

Most users cannot tell the difference between between the Phone, OS, App and the signal (Let alone an app named Signal). Likely the journalists work with tech savvy to make sure their understood this and it was hard for them to make sense of gigabytes of technical jargon and noise.

Arguing this point at all is silly when many people, even many IT professionals don't know and don't care about the difference between bypassed and broken. This arguing detracts from the important news...

The CIA sees fit to ignore the security of Americans by not alerting the companies that make the software the CIA exploits. They do this to insure they can hack whoever they want, and there is no meaningful oversight and no ethical, economic or constitutional consideration.

[lvh]

That hardly matters if people's response is to use other, less secure things, as was the case with the Guardian and Whatsapp.

[sqeaky]

This is entirely a non-issue.

If group with the massive funding and pervasive reach like the CIA can operate with impunity it does not matter what app or what security you think you have.

[lvh]

Going from easy dragnet surveillance of unencrypted communications to having to use expensive to deploy, develop, maintain targeted attacks that get patched (with, on iOS, ridiculously high penetration rates) does not seem like a moot issue.

[sqeaky]

I don't see how this goes from one to the other. It seems that just about every Android and iOS device can be part of an "easy dragnet" without any app installed. If the wikileaks article is correct about the CIA having kept multiple 0-day exploits hidden for each OS, then breaking anything even remotely is a work ticket and not a research project for them.

The fine distinction of one app being singled out sucks, but it really is small potatoes here. The owner of the app should write the NYT and complain that their app was used inappropriately or perhaps write an editorial to get even more free advertising. The real news is that the CIA lied to Americans and the President so they could continue damaging American businesses, in the name of protecting America.

It sounds like we are not too far off from the CIA being able to write self spreading malware that allows monitoring they just haven't because... maybe it would be too easy to spot. Oh wait groups like the CIA did this already and rigged it to delete itself when not on one of their intended target's machines, stuxnet.

[lvh]

You made a specific claim: no app, easy dragnet, work ticket level, because tons of hidden 0days. I'm taking it as read that a publicly patched one doesn't count. Is there evidence for that claim in the actual documents?

Pending that, here is evidence of a counter claim. I'd repeat what tptacek said, but he's whittled it down better than I could: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13811541

To cite Tony Arcieri, the only elite cryptanalysis trick in play here is "Android is a tire fire". Cue surprised gasp from security researchers.

Furthermore, you did not refute my central claim. Popping a Cisco 12k: read a bunch of unencrypted comms until detection. Target a specific person to get bit by a specific iOS exploit: maybe read some of the data until it gets patched. Surely you'll agree that one is drastically more expensive than the other?

[sqeaky]

I haven't gone through all the documents but the summary does say verbatim:

> dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows

The only presumption on my part is that they are remotely exploitable, which is practically a requirement for mobile device exploits to be useful because physical access is hard to obtain. I do plan on going further through these, they look fun.

Of course encrypted communication is better for the user than unencrypted, but this is not the place for that, which is why I ignored it. This was supposed to be a discussion about massive government overreach, not petty squabbles between apps. With unfettered access to these phones there are all manner of hypothetical attacks that could go after any of these app providers and not just snoop on the communications of the users. With root access to a large number of phones and little oversight their capacity for harm is frightening, this seems more worthy of discussion.

[dogma1138]

People who care sufficiently about the security of their crypto don't use NYT or the guardian as an information source to base their opsec decisions on.

[sverige]

And the bonus to the CIA ignoring the deal the Obama administration made with Big Tech to disclose vulnerabilities is that now (apparently) all of the tools the CIA had accumulated are out in the wild, instead of being fixed.

[sqeaky]

I don't know why Obama allowed this, could he have had the CIA shut this stuff down he was the Chief Executive?

I wonder what this administration will do with this knowledge. It will be interesting to see trump respond too, rather than manufacture news.

[sverige]

Frankly, I am not sure if anyone in the White House has been able to truly control the intelligence agencies since the first Bush. And I say that only because he was a former CIA director, so he had a better chance of knowing where the control levers were hidden.